Last week a South African based company launched Personera, a pretty smart website that allows you to create your own personalized calendars using your Facebook account.

It is almost sad how little we print of photos after the whole world went digital, but many smart services such as Personera might help change that.

Personera Overview

Personera's calendars are built from your Facebook information so they have, maybe cleverly, decided to have their login done solely with Facebook connection. But this is the first service I have seen which requires you to have created account somewhere else before you connect to them.

You are taken through three step process as you:

• select your theme and start month for your calendar
• pick birthdays and special events (from Facebook, you can also add further events)
• pick photos from your Facebook albums

The whole process is very simple, but will take some time as loading your Facebook photos can take a while. If and when I complete creating a calendar with Personera, I think I will pick my photos first and create a specific album on Facebook for it.

One of the greatest surprises I had with Personera was that it remembers! How many of us have spent considerable amount of time creating something like this on the internet and half way through we pressed a back button or the internet froze and all was lost. Personera seems to have this covered and automatically saves your process.

Of course like with all new websites one can pick at few things. When you are through setting up your calendar I could not find a way to view it complete. It allowed you to see one month but nothing else. It is important to allow people to view the whole calendar before pressing the purchase button.

There is very limited on offer for the themes (only 5 types) and while the Facebook link is awesome, it could be an idea to offer uploads of photos as well.

Currently their solitary product is the calendar. Personera is looking further ahead though and is likely to bring us more, such as business cards or daily planner.

Summary

With a modest pricetag of 24.95 USD (includes shipping anywhere in the world) I think Personera is here to stay! The alluring interface and simple process makes ordering a hardcopy of a calendar that you will never use sound like a good idea.

Questions for you?

Have you ever purchased photos or products with your photo on the Internet, and if so where and what?