As part of a new service, Moo, an award-winning online print business that customizes business cards and postcards, is letting Facebookers take their Timeline offline with Facebook Cards. The concept incorporates images from your Facebook Timeline that you can couple with choice quotes and statements in order to create fun business cards you can hand out to people. From their press release that they shared with WebProNews:

Each of the cards, designed and personalized by each individual, can feature a different photo image on the front of the cards together with a favorite quote or saying on the reverse. Instead of every business card having the same look and feel, with MOO.COM’s Printfinity feature people can pair just the right images for the right business or social occasions.

The integration will give Facebook users the ability to leverage the content they’re adding to their Timelines for their own Facebook Card. People will now be able to take snapshots of their lives from their Timelines and bring them into their offline social and business networking experience with the Facebook Card.

I spoke with a representative from Moo’s PR firm who assured me that you don’t have to actually use these for any specific business purposes, either – anyone can sign up for the cards, so you don’t have to be a professional to have rad business cards. Give’em to friends. Put’em on the windshield wipers of cars in your apartment’s parking lot to introduce yourself to your neighbors. Slip one to your bartender (it sure beats the hell out of the dopey practice of leaving your scribbled phone number on your receipt). Need an intro for that story you love to tell about how you fell off a boat in Patagonia last spring? Introduce the tale with a card created from your Timeline about the event. Show off your science however you please.

Pretty fun stuff, really. But here’s the best part: starting today at 12PM EST, Moo is giving away bundles of 50 Facebook Cards for free to the first 200,000 people to sign up for the service. One small detail to note, though: you will have to have the Timeline enabled on your Facebook account to create your cards; otherwise, you’ll be prompted to head back to the Facebook page to make the switch.

But even if you miss the promotion, the Facebook Cards will remain available to everyone on Moo’s website only then you’ll have to pay for them like normal people.

Think of these cards as the old school method of friend requests when you actually had to approach somebody in person and talk to them while sharing information about yourself. Facebook Cards consolidate a little of bit of that awkward exchange by giving you a fun way to offer up some of your info. As a sample, here’s what mine looks like.

The front:

And the back:

Once you’re ready to start designing your Facebook Cards, you can customize your name (if you should want to) and add a brief statement along with your website. On the flip side of the Facebook Cards, you can customize quotes as well as include your phone number and email address (a link to your Facebook profile is already included in the info). So head on over to Moo’s page to start fixing up your Facebook Cards before the freebies are gone.

Last December, Google offered military families free $10 international call credits with the goal of helping soldiers stay in touch with their families as they were deployed around the world. Shortly thereafter, Google decided to just offer free calls from Gmail for the U.S. and Canada.

Now, a year later, Google announced that this will continue. In a post on the Gmail Blog, the company says:

As the holiday season approaches, we’re happy to announce that we’ve extended free domestic calls within the US and Canada for 2012.

This is our way of helping you connect with friends and family across the country. And you can still call the rest of the world from Gmail at our insanely low rates.

No word on other countries.

Do you ever use Gmail to make calls? Let us know in the comments.

Leading up to the reading, you could see that Knox was anxiously awaiting the official word from the jury. You saw her breathing quite heavily and bring her hands up to her face several times. At one point her lawyer leaned in and was talking with Knox, it looked as though she could be sick at any moment.

Below are some powerful images from the verdict reading:

AT&T has issued a press release, announcing the news. Starting from March 11th, and ending on March 31st, calls and texts from the US to Japan are on the house. Here are a few details from the announcement:

- Text messages to Japan, which originate from a US wireless number are free.

- Wireless customers will receive free international long distance on calls made from US and Puerto Rico to Japan.

- Wireline customers will be comped for 60 minutes of call time. Though it states in the release that users will have to call AT&T to receive credit for the minutes.

The free call time will either show up as no charges, or as credit applied towards the call.

Mark Collins, senior vice president, Voice and Data Products, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, said this of the initiative, “We want to help our customers connect with loved ones in Japan in anyway we can” he continues, “Connecting with family and friends is most important at times like this- we want to make it as easy and worry free as possible for our customers.”

Updated: Verizon has just tweeted their plans to allow free calling to Japan as well.

Time Warner Cable has joined the list of telecommunication companies to allow free calls and texts to Japan. They’re also a part of a group of carriers which are providing free access to Japan TV as well.

This week, JetBlue ran a very successful campaign in New York City. How do we know it was successful? No one was hurt, no one is really complaining, and it got some press. While many in the social media world would use other metrics, I think these are pretty darn good.

So what did they do? They gave away 1000 round trip tickets in three locations that required people to follow their "guidance" on Twitter to know where to go and what to show up with. This is where the "no one got hurt" part makes sense, huh?

CNET reported:

It was apparently one step short of a cattle stampede when low-cost airline JetBlue used its Twitter account to announce that, as part of its 10th anniversary celebration, it would be giving out about a thousand free round-trip tickets at three undisclosed locations in Manhattan on Wednesday.

"One of the things we knew was that people were just going to follow us," JetBlue public relations representative Morgan Johnston told CNET, relating anecdotes about one woman who claimed she sprinted in heels from midtown to the Financial District (one of the giveaway spots), people chasing the JetBlue team in taxis as they left one location to head to the next, entire offices clearing out when they heard that one of the ticket giveaways was nearby, and a cab driver who left his passenger behind in order to get out and claim a ticket. "It was like the Pied Piper of Hamlin."

Once again I reiterate: no one got hurt. I have to admit that if I was responsible for this kind of promotion that caused mini-panics in offices and a run on taxi cab fares in NYC, I would have some concerns. Fortunately for JetBlue, this one worked well, and I tip my cap to them.

So, would you have the confidence to give something like this a shot? Of course, it would be best if your business lends itself to this kind of reaction. If you are selling pipe fittings in Peoria, you will need to tweak the concept considerably.

This is the fun of social media, though. There is a chance to do things that have never been done before. As people begin to experiment more and more, it is likely that those with jangly nerves need not apply.

What do you think about JetBlue’s "event?" What could you do that would cause a stir and make the cash register ring?

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AdAge reports that news monitoring service VMS values the amount of publicity that Twitter has received over the past 30 days (the actual time period is a bit vague) at an astonishing $48 million. That’s the value of media mentions and buzz that Twitter has not paid for but because everyone wants to talk about it and use it including CNN and Fox News.

Twitter received almost 3 billion impressions — 2.73 billion, to be exact — in the past month, a time period that doesn’t even include the frenzied weeks in April in which Oprah and Ellen weighed in on the micro-blogging service. TV contributed to 57% of the PR value, newspapers 37% and magazines 5%. Incidentally, Fox News bested CNN in terms of total PR value delivered by its Twitter mentions, although CNN dropped the name more often.

These numbers could even be much larger since VMS does not monitor the coverage given by smaller newspapers. Even if you look at the numbers with a skeptical eye and decide they may be overstated (which I am not saying they are so please relax) most companies would take 10 % of that number as a value for free press in any given 30 day period.

To give some perspective the supposed value of the media coverage for bing only hits the $573,834 mark in the same period. The real rub for Microsoft is that the launch of bing is being supported with around $100 million in advertising. Twitter is even getting more value than Google these days which is really a feat in and of itself.

So once again Twitter hits a media landmark but there is some sense that the media coverage is outpacing the real life impact of the service.

Twitter’s unique visitors in June totaled almost 21 million as it grew 14% over May traffic. In May it grew 7%, a slowdown from the furious growth the site experienced in January through April, according to Nielsen Online.

It’s growing for sure but will the buzz continue to grow? History says that other social media outlets like Facebook and LinkedIn all had their version of a spike in media attention but it eventually leveled off into reality. I would like to see the value of what Facebook generates since much of its news as of late has been about improvements rather than just Internet chatter.

So how do you see the buzz around Twitter playing out? Will it take drama like the great document leak of 2009 for people to pay attention or will Twitter be so relevant that people will just have to talk about it – in 140 characters or less of course.

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Yahoo wasted little time in generating more buzz around its IndexTools purchase. The web analytics toolset of IndexTools becomes available for free today.

“Today we will communicate that we

Just three months after they started the experiment, Radiohead is going back to the traditional way of selling albums – in stores. The band let their fans decide what to pay for their new album. Some fans thought free was a great price. Radiohead didn’t give out numbers, though comScore took a stab at it. They estimated that 62 percent of those who downloaded In Rainbows didn’t pay for it.

It seems like they could sell the album on the site (which could use a redesign of the shopping process) and create a model where you had to pay a set price. But for now there are no downloads.

The music industry keeps taking one punch after another as they try to figure out something that works. Free downloads are plentiful and just like Web 2.0 business models, ad-supported seems to be the buzz. But is it sustainable?

Too bad they skipped Christmas for in-store sales. The CD/vinyl and download won’t be at stores until December 31st. No official word on if they’ll be back on iTunes. You can buy the Discbox online.

What is known (according to Wikipedia) is that they aren’t signing back on with EMI. They will go with indie labels XL Recordings in the UK and TBD Records in North America.

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