Make a Wish List and Get What You Really Want

Everyone loves to receive gifts. Being a recipient is even better when the gift is exactly what you wanted. Dropping hints doesn’t always work and coming out and just saying it seems tacky. So how can you let people now what you are hoping for  on that next birthday, graduation or other gift opportunity?

Amazon wish lists are the answer.

            Amazon.com offers a mind-swirling array of gifts from e-readers like the Kindle to spa sets and Sephora goodies. Named after the largest river on Earth, Amazon.com strives to offer the largest selection of online goods.

As you browse through the various areas of Amazon.com keep an eye out for must-have items. You will notice a button directly under the “Add to Shopping Cart” button that says “Add to Wish List”. Click Add to Wish List and your item will be added to a new Wish List. You can create any number of lists and then share with everyone or only with a certain few.

            There are a few ways to (tactfully) let people know that you have a Wish List. First head to the page of the Wish List that you want to share, be sure that you have made the list public, then copy the address (something like http://amzn.com/w/SG42WVCC ) from the address bar in your browser.

Add a link to your Wish List on your Facebook page, email signature or any place online that friends and family will see it.

Amazon.com Wish Lists are a fun way to window shop and let people know what you think the perfect gift would be.

iPod Touch Give Away Winner!

Congratulations to ParkerMama! Stand by everyone for details on our iTunes giftcard giveaway in January and lots of new posts about creative communication.

iPod Touch Give Away

MobileMambo is giving away a shiny iPod Touch! Use it for music, email, web browsing and thousands of apps from Apple.
Some details:

• can hold 1,750 songs
• store and view 10 hours of video
• store up to 10,000 photos
• Up to 30 hours of music playback
• Up to 6 hours of video playback
• iPod touch 3.1 software
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• Nike + iPod support built in
• Built-in speaker
• Earphones

To get your chance to win become a twitter follower of MobileMambo by clicking this link: FOLLOW MOBILEMAMBO. We will pick one lucky twitter follower before December 19th. That's it!

Send Gorgeous Party Invitations Easily-On-line, Professional-Looking and Free

Sending holiday invitations (or birthday, welcome home etc.) can be made much easier by using a free, online service like Pingg.com.
Services like Pingg.com offer full-color invitation designs for you to add your party details to. Once your online invitation looks just the way you want it to, the service delivers your custom invitation to your guest’s email boxes, you can even have some invites sent via U.S. mail for guests without email addresses.
Online invitations make it easy for guests to RSVP as well. No more phone tag! Guests simply click Yes or No on their invitation email. You get the results sent to your email inbox each day. You know at a glance how many guests to expect.
Let’s get started! Head to Pingg.com and click “Create Invite”. Use the drop down list under Browse to select a category of designs. There are hundreds of free designs to choose from.

1.) Click on a design to preview, if you want to use that design click the green Select This Image link. Once back on the main page click Save Design. 

2.) Move down to the Event Details section and click the heading to open. Enter your event’s date, time and other details. When adding your address select the Add a Map feature, this adds a handy link to a map in each invitation. Write your message to guests and click Save. 

3.) Click on the Guest List heading. Add guests to the mailing list by cutting and pasting a list of emails. 

Once guests have been added you can choose (individually) to send them an email invitation or a printed invitation. There is a small fee for printed invites.
4.) Click on the Additional Options heading to set up RSVP options and create rules about forwarding of invitations. This area also lets you add a picture; this could be an area landmark or perhaps a baby picture of the 40-something birthday boy.
In this area you can also add a charitable giving link and ask people to make a donation in lieu of gifts. 
Be sure to click the blue Review and Send button! 

That’s it! With invitations, directions and RSVP all taken care of you can focus on planning and hosting your event.

As always, let us know how we can help by emailing carol@mobilemambo.com .

Share the Holiday Sales You Find With Friends and Family

Haga clic aquí para leer este mensaje en español.

Everyone’s holiday budgets are stretched to the limit, but there are some really good deals out there this holiday season, if you know where to look! 
Are you the shopper that knows about the deals, the early-bird specials and who has free shipping this week? If you are, then you can begin to help your circle of friends stretch their holiday budget.

By using Twitter (a free notification service) you can add a brief message about sales and deals that you find, your friends and family see the message and can take advantage of those sales or deals and save money. It only takes five minutes to set-up, it’s free and there is nothing to install. After set-up you can add messages in under a minute. So let’s get started!
1.)    Head to Twitter.com and click the green Sign Up Now Button.
2.)    Create your account. Enter details such as your name and email and then choose a user name (we picked holidaycoupon). Click "Create My Account."

 
3.)    The next screen will offer to find people on Twitter that you already know. If you have Gmail, AOL or Yahoo mail you might want to see who you can find, if not skip it!
4.)    You should now find yourself on a home page that asks “What are you doing?”, enter your first sale message in the form box and click update. 

5.)    Now send an email out to family and friends letting them know that you will be keeping an eye on sales for everyone this season. Add a link to your Twitter.com page. Your page will be www.twitter.com/yourusername. Here is a sample email that the MobileMambo staff used. 

 
6.)    Lastly, head to Twitter.com when you spot a great deal and update your message!
The MobileMambo staff is updating everyone on sales that we find this holiday season. Click here to learn about sales and deals that we find.

As always, if we can help email carol@mobilemambo.com .

Create a Gift Email Journal

Looking for the perfect gift, something really special? MobileMambo has got just the thing!
A gift email journal is completely free to create and there is no software to install. This is a one of a kind gift.
A gift email journal features your memories, thoughts and stories, (even pictures) all tucked into one special email box that the recipient accesses anytime to read, reflect on and enjoy. You create a gift email journal by sending email messages to the gift email journal from your own email address, anytime that it is convenient for you.
In our example a mother has created an email journal filled with individual email memories about her daughter’s childhood Christmases. When her daughter receives her login and password she can open and read the individual email memories as often as she wants.

1.) Start by setting up a new email address, this will be the permanent location of the email journal. We used Gmail for our demo purposes but you could also set up an email in any number of free services. If you also use the same email service for your own email be sure that you are totally logged out of your account before clicking the New Account button.

Consider choosing an email name for the new account that is meaningful to the person that you are creating the journal for, Holidaymemories09@gmail.com for example.
2.) Once the new email is set up you can take a moment to customize the look and feel of the mailbox by selecting a theme that the recipient will see when they log in to read your email entries. Themes are usually located under Settings.

3.) Once you have created the account and selected a theme (if desired), log out of the new email account. Safely store the username (usually the email address) and the password that you chose to set up the new account.
Begin sending emails to the new email address from your personal email, each email that you send to the new address is a journal entry that the recipient will read. Consider attaching pictures as well.
4.) When you are ready, present the account information to the recipient. Be sure to include the website where the gift email journal is located.
For example:
Dear Diane,
This holiday season I wanted to give you something special. I created a gift email journal filled with individual memories from our holidays together.
Go to www.gmail.com
The username is holidaymemories09@gmail.com and the password is reindeerMA.
Enjoy!

Gift email journals are wonderful ways to record a baby’s first years, reflect on wedding anniversaries, birthdays and more. And, as always, if we can help in any way drop us a line, carol@mobilemambo.com .

Create a Custom Radio Station Featuring Your Holiday Favorites to Send to Friends and Family, Free!

The holidays are a great time to enjoy those special tunes and the memories they hold. This tutorial teaches you how to create an online radio station that features your favorite holiday tunes and artists, for free, in less than 10 minutes, no software to download.
Once you create your holiday radio station you can email a link to it out to your friends and family with a personal note from you. Anyone with Internet access and speakers will be able to listen to your gift station, and it will cost them nothing, no downloads either.
1.)    Start by heading to http://www.Pandora.com. Be patient as the first page loads. Register as a new account. You will be asked to enter the name of an artist you like to get your first station started, pick anything you want for this step-you can change it later.
2.)    Once your first station has been created close your browser window completely. Open a new window and head back to Pandora.com. Look to the bottom of the page for a blue box titled “Station Gifting”, click it!

3.)    Follow the 3 easy steps by choosing up to five different artists or songs that you want your Gift Station to play, Pandora will "learn" from your choices and include similar artists and tunes as well. Give your station a title, we called ours “Happy Holidays from the Nelsons”.
4.)    Choose a colorful theme and then enter as many email addresses as you like, just separate them with a comma.
5.)    Enter your personalized message, your friends and family will see this in the email they receive. 

You are done!
Everyone that you added to the email list will receive this beautifully designed email featuring your message and full-color cover art from the artists that you chose to be featured in your Custom Radio Station. 

Head back to Pandora anytime to create new gift stations for birthdays and other special events or add to your personal station and listen while browsing eBay or reading the news.
 
Geeky factoid: Pandora is based upon the work of founder Tim Westergren and The Music Genome Project. Tim and a group of artists and musicians set out to “map” the genes of hundreds of thousands different songs. They use that research to create radio stations filled with exactly the type of music you like. By asking you for an example of an artist that you like Pandora can “predict” similar types of music and play them for you. You can create as many stations as you want, we have one for Jazz, one for American Blues and of course-one for the holidays!

Need help? Email the author, carol@mobilemambo.com .