The first week of Saluti Cards in the App Store was crazy… In a good way that is. We had more than 750 downloads of the application and a lot of real cards and e-cards have been sent by you. But there is more.
The next release (1.1) of the App is coming real soon. A few of our users are experiencing errors after sending their real card, we have been working very hard to solve this problem. The new release will be handed over to Apple for approval in a couple of days. This release will fix this bug. We also proudly present Saluti Cards to our friends in Belgium… The first step abroad.
Right after approval we will be formally introducing Saluti Cards to the press. We are sending our press release around and hoping that the press is as excited as we and yóu are.
And after that? Bring on some new features!
First off, availability. At the moment Saluti Cards is only available in The Netherlands, so only the Dutch can share their life. With the 1.1 release we’ll be making Saluti Cards available in Belgium as well and with release 1.2 we’ll be opening up shop to Europe and the United States!
To give the application a boost we are going to add some features and change a few things around to make this more clear. For instance, we’ll be tweaking the way you can select your recipients so you can add a personal touch to an address without having to change your addresses. We have some more requested features up our sleeve, so stay tuned for more information!
So what’s next? We have got some really cool ideas and we cant wait to share them with you later. But we are also really curious what you would want to see in the App. Let us know! You can reply to this post, send us a message on Twitter or on our Facebook fanpage.
Saluti, it is finally real. After a few months of hard work, brainstorm sessions, long nights…You know what I mean: lots of blood, sweat and tears, our iPhone application is live. And we are damn proud of it!
Why? Because everything you see in this application is made by ourselves. As Mathieu was spending his spare time developing till all was black and not a right in the mind soul was out on the streets, Jasper and I were fuzzing over the design and bending over backwards to make the texts and product images the way it is supposed to be: honest. I can assure you it was a fun thing to do.
Oh, of course I nagged sometimes, as the woman I am, about spending to much time working without actually having quality time. *Blush* Sorry dear, I couldn’t help myself But it was worth it. Like I said we are damn proud of this achievement and we certainly will keep developing and improving. Not just because we want to keep up the quality, but also out of love for this project.
The pictures you see in Saluti are made by me (Bibi). As I am also a Photographer and really like to shoot some nice images. I took the ‘responsibility’ to make the product images: examples of the cards you create! However, photographing some product images is actually rather hard especially when you don’t have all the equipment you need. But hey, it doesn’t matter. What you see, is what you get. And that’s about that.
What equipment did I use for this session? I used my Canon 40D, a Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 lens and to be sure the lighting was okay I set up my light pack, which means two speedlites, a mini soft box and my umbrella. When al was set and done; I was ready for take off. In the gallery you can see me in action (iPhone shots made by Jasper with the Hipstamatic app!)
A small handful of people have contacted us regarding a problem with Saluti Cards. When sending the card to our postoffice, they received the error ‘I can’t reach the Saluti postoffice website‘ (or in Dutch (’Ik kan de Saluti postkantoor website niet bereiken‘).
We have noticed that weirdly enough their cards do make it to our postoffice. This can be easily verified by checking the amount of stamps you have left. On the stamps page you can reload your stamp count (with the reload button in the top right corner). If you find that a stamp has been redeemed, please contact us to check if your card arrived safely!
If you have used more than one stamp to send out one card, we will of course redeem these stamps.
We are on top of this and are currently working hard to solve this problem. Of course we will keep you updated on our progress!
Saluti Cards has been in the App Store for only two days now and the response has completely surprised us. Our main target was to get the app approved as soon as possible. We had absolutely no idea what to expect.
Thanks to our Twitter friends, we created quite a lot of buzz. One day after launch we hit the magic number of 100 downloads! We gave away a voucher for one postcard on Twitter to celebrate that number. Within minutes one lucky follower cashed it in. The second day after launch, we had 250 downloads! Stunning!
You won’t believe the amount of ecards and real cards that have been made and sent! The first real and ecards have already been shared with us by happy users and the results are amazing. Share your creation on ecard[at]salutiapp.com, post them on Twitter with the #saluti hashtag or upload them to our Facebook fanpage.
Because we do not want to leave you standing here empty handed, we are giving you an inside look into our production process. We shot this after we finished linking our virtual postoffice to the printing computers. What you are seeing here are the first ever Saluti Cards being printed. This was shot with an iPhone, so the quality is not that good. But for now it is the impression that counts Enjoy!
By the way, to introduce you with our App and just for fun, we will be giving away more vouchers. So be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
So what kind of real product can you make with the App?
A Saluti Card is 12×16,5 cm (4,7×6,5 inch). The cards are printed in full colour with a professional glossy finish. Your personal message is printed on the inside of the card.
We print and post your card within 1 working day. Cards are sent out in an enveloppe with a real stamp. How old school is that!
Yesterday we finally submitted Saluti Cards to Apple. We are, of course, hoping for one of those magic approval within a few hours, but we are not promising anything. You should follow @SalutiApp on Twitter if you want to be the first to know when we are approved!
We are really looking forward to hear your feedback once the App is approved.
Update:
Within 24 hours after submission Saluti Card is in review by the App Store team. Woohoo!
Saluti, a new way of sharing your life by creating greeting cards. Simply use your iPhone or iPod Touch. It is not so hard, who walks around without a (smart)phone these days? And make a message more personal or fun with your own photos.
The idea was born a few months ago in 2009. We were excited about the new iphones and were kicking around ideas for a new iPhone application we could make ourselves. Most ideas resulted in a disappointment after searching through the AppStore… There are thousands of them
One idea that seemed viable was a Time Lapse application. Mathieu downloaded the iPhone development kit (SDK) and started learning about the platform. However, this application never saw the light of day because of some software (SDK) limitations. Which was very unfortunate. But never keep on trying until it is really a lost case!
Jasper uses the camera on his iPhone rather frequently: you can almost follow his life through Mobypicture! Inspired by his photo’s and the rising popularity of iPhoneography, he started to think about a way of making the most of photography just by using an iPhone. Like Chase Jarvis (famous iPhoneographist) Jasper thinks that ‘the best camera is the one you have with you’. People are using their cellphone-cameras more and more to share their life, using services like mentioned before: Mobypicture for example.
Sharing your photos online is a great and foremost an easy way to keep in touch with friends and family on a daily basis. Some of these photos you take are really special and these photos deserve to be shared in real life. A greeting card is a very physical reminder of great times and great memories so, after brainstorming with Mathieu about the idea, an application was born: Saluti!
Mathieu immediately worked his butt off and a first proof of the concept was concrete darn fast. With the major technical bumps out of the way Jasper began designing the look and feel of the application, with some help of Bibi Veth (text editor & design). Their mission was to create an application which feels very native. And more importantly, which is straightforward and easy to work with.
The next big step to take was to find a partner for the fulfillment. Within a few days Jasper had a meeting with a potential partner. This particular meeting felt so good right away that an actual partnership was almost decided in a second. That was the last sniff of motivation we needed to get cracking on finishing the application!
So here we are. After a lot of iterative updates, new builds, a few last minute features and finally some great testing by friends, family and colleagues, some last tweaks have been made. Finally Saluti was ready to be submitted to the AppStore. Right now we are waiting for approval so everyone can start sharing their life! We hope you will
But it was worth it. Like I said we are damn proud of this achievement and we certainly will keep developing and improving. Not just because we want to keep up the quality, but also out of love for this project.
(iPhone shots made by Jasper with 
We have noticed that weirdly enough their cards do make it to our postoffice. This can be easily verified by checking the amount of stamps you have left. On the stamps page you can reload your stamp count (with the reload button in the top right corner). If you find that a stamp has been redeemed, please 
