I've Been Working on the Web Site, All the Livelong Day

Every day -- EVERY DAY -- I cut and paste and edit and reedit. I changed the name of the site from PhotoGiftPlace (yawn) to FeeFiFoto, which I find oh-so-much more appealing and memorable, and I'm tickled by how darn much fun it is to make tiny changes here and there and bring this site to a funky, tongue-in-cheek point of view.

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Design personalized photo totes and handbags.

My Midlife Crisis Fantasy Used to Include a Porsche

But now a tummy tuck seems more appealing.

Sigh. When did I become so fuddy?

My sister was complaining about having to attend her new sister-in-law's idiotic baby shower and she said: "When did I get so old and grumpy?" I pointed out that, with three kids ranging from the 17-year-old menace-behind-the-wheel drama queen, to the 11-year-old social-butterfly-never-stops-kibitzing-to-do-his-homework, she's long past the days where she has the time or inclination to oooh and aaah over the latest Diaper Genie.

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Create calendars with your own special photos and personalized dates.

Secret Identity

The site I've been operating since last September offers sophisticated technology that can put digital photos on almost anything. The people who created it were among the first to offer personalized photo calendars and those huge mylar balloons you can make up for your bar mitzvah or wedding shower with photos of the honorees on them. They even included this amazing feature that allows you to design some items and then examine a digital prototype in three dimensions and from all angles. So, you can put your photo on a mug, for instance, and then grab an image of the mug with a tool and drag it around to look at the back, side, even inside (although they haven't yet included a feature that lets you put your picture inside the mug, which would be so cool).

As I also may have mentioned, while the technology was definitely futuristic, the site itself looked like it was run by a bunch of twelve-year-old boys in somebody's basement (sorry, guys, if you're reading this, but I know even you'll admit this is true). The color scheme was dull, the graphics were flat and the text was boring. Plus, there was the name: PhotoGiftPlace.com.

Now, PhotoGiftPlace.com certainly is descriptive: "Where are you going?" "Oh, I'm off to PhotoGiftPlace.com to buy some photo gifts!" But, as a probably-much-too-savvy internet shopper, I know that you might find PhotoGiftPlace.com through Google one year and then the next year, when you can't quite recall the name, you might end up at PhotoGifts.com and think it's the same place you visited last holiday season. Just ask me about my attempts to locate the site where I bought my kids a couple of gifts a few years ago: "Let's see -- was it 'Menorah.com', or 'Menorahs.com', or 'BuyMenorah.com', or 'Jewishstuff.com'...?"

So the first thing I needed to do when I started running the site was find a new name, something funky, memorable, easy to say -- something that would take on a life of its own, become part of the vernacular, catch the imagination, make sense in any language or culture. Unfortunately, Google, Amazon, Kodak and Zappos were all taken. So were PhotoSchmoto, PhotoToto, Photopia, Photokomodo (that one was a bit esoteric, I admit), Photophoria, and just about everything I came up with. And some of these names were only reserved and not even being used!

Finally, I hit pay dirt with FeeFiFoto.com, which I reserved under about a dozen different spellings (did you know that you'll get to Google even if you accidentally type "Foofle"?) It's easy to say, easy to remember, and easy to type. Try it -- all those 'f's just roll off your fingers. The name change will be completed in a few weeks, probably right after Mother's Day; I may be impatient but I'm not dumb enough to change the site's name in the middle of a busy season.

And certainly, as soon as I do it, I'll be seized with self-doubt for as long as I run the site.

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Put favorite photos on porcelain Christmas ornaments.