Scrapblog, a startup that lets you build rich Flash-based online scrapbooks, is launching a nifty new tool today, called QuickMix, which lets users create personalized scrapbooks in minutes. The launch is coupled with the announcement of Jill Braff as the new CEO and president of Scrapblog.

QuickMix lets users upload photos from a variety of photo sites and applications, including Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Picasa and more. You can then select a pre-built “kit,” which is a layout and design for the online scrapbook. Kits have a variety of styles, including designs catered to weddings, birthdays, travel, holidays, and babies. For example, you could select a Halloween-themed kit for photos from the holiday. Then, QuickMix will instantly produce a digital scrapbook tailored to the photos themselves.QuickMix’s technology will crop all the photos and organize the images vertically and horizontally. I demoed the new feature and it’s very quick and easy to use; high-quality, pretty scrapbooks can be made in minutes.

QuickMix users can also tweak their scrapbook using the application’s online design tools, or access Scrapblog’s virtual marketplace to add additional stickers, backgrounds, music, video, and more. Scrapblog monetizes the site via this marketplace, which offers users premium stickers, backgrounds and images to decorate scrapbooks. After a scrapbook is created using QuickMix, the user has the option to print the scrapbook professionally and/or to share it online via Facebook or MySpace.

Scrapblog is also welcoming a new CEO, Jill Braff, today as the startup’s founder and CEO Carlos Garcia, steps aside. Braff most recently led worldwide publishing efforts including licensing, marketing and sales as SVP of global publishing at Glu Mobile.

The company, which recently raised $4 million in funding, was first introduced back in 2006, briefly went offline, and relaunched in March 2007. The site has grown to over 2 million registered users who have created over 4.4 million Scrapblog pages.

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Scrapblog, a startup that lets you build rich Flash-based online scrapbooks, has closed a $4 million funding round led by Disney’s Steamboat Ventures and Longworth Venture Partners. The round brings Scrapblog’s total funding to $7.5 million.

Scrapblog offers an online editor that allows users to decorate their scrapbook with text, images, colorful themes, and other embellishments, which can then be shared on the web or printed out. The company was first introduced back in 2006, briefly went offline, and relaunched in March 2007. Now it has grown to nearly 2 million registered users who have created over 4 million scrapblog pages. The site has partnerships with major media sites including Disney, Discovery, Photobucket, and ABC.

The site generates revenue through scrapbook printing, sponsored promotions, and a recently launched virtual goods market called the Scrapblog Marketplace. The marketplace allows users to purchase designs from leading artists to decorate their scrapbooks, and has been likened to an “iTunes for Scrapbooking” – a strange description, but one that certainly appears to the niche scrapbooking demographic.

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It reminds me a lot of Geocities back in the day (remember?), perhaps because of the colorful backgrounds and chaotic mess that results when you create a page. Lots of people created Geocities pages, added a picture, a little text, a guest book and a website counter, and that was their home page. No one visited more than once, though, since the page lacked fresh content.

And that was waaaaay before the days of social networking and the explosion of blogs. Today people have a lot more to do on the web except read news, buy stuff at Amazon and send a few emails. Glogster either needs to find a way to widgetize this in a way that gets MySpacers and Facebookers excited (see Slide, RockYou, etc.), or they will likely stay a ghost town. Strike that, even with a reasonable widget strategy, I doubt Glogster has a very bright future. Frankly, it isn’t as good as Scrapblog, which targets the same niche and launched nearly a year ago.

People remain enamored with Flash as an environment to create websites, though. Wix, an Israeli startup in private beta that is doing something in this area, is getting good reviews from people who’ve seen it (we still haven’t). We’ll see if they have a business model that breaks out of the Geocities ghetto.

Glogster is giving away some iPods and gift certificates to new users who create posters and satisfy a set of too-complicated-for-me-to-read rules. So if you’ve got some time and lack an iPod, there you go. See Download Squad and Go2Web2 for their take on Glogster.

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Scrapblogs are Flash-based slide shows made up of pages of photo or video layouts you can jazz up with a myriad of designs and effects. Transitions can be added between each page and you can set the mood with some background music as your show plays. You can publish a Scrapblog publicly or by invite only and embed it as well. If you choose, viewers can leave Flickr like embedded comments on key spots of the show.

Scrapblog’s editor is a flash application, which may make a lot of you cringe, but not for good cause. Scrapblog, as we’ve mentioned before, has one of the most natural feels of any online application out there. It’s full screen and closely mimics the design of a Windows desktop application.

Creating a Scrapblog starts with a creation wizard that lets you pick one of 19 different design themes to frame your pages of photos. You can then cover this canvas with by dragging and dropping in photos, clipart, shapes, text, and even videos. Each of these media objects can be hyperlinked, overlayed, resized, rotated, and edited along several parameters.

Photos are given special treatment and support frames, shadows, as well as that quintessential web 2.0 effect, reflections. Photos can be pulled from your computer, Photobucket, Yahoo Photos, Flickr, and WebShots. Video, on the other hand, is drawn solely from YouTube. After you’ve laid out the pages, you can choose from 12 different transitions between them and from 22 different songs to play along with the show.

Photo slide shows are a crowded space which includes the 38 million user giant, Photobucket, along with two newer players, RockYou and Slide, bringing in tens of millions in financing. Like FlipTrack, however, Scrapblog keeps a distinct niche by offering a more richly designed presentation less like a series photos and more like a hipper version of Powerpoint.

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If you’ve been waiting to see the new Scrapblog, demo’d last month at the We Media Conference in Miami, you only have to wait another day or so. The site is offline, and users have been emailed to expect the new version soon.

This application hasn’t twittered yet, but it has a hardcore base of rabid users. That’s always a sign of good things down the road.

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The new version has the same drag and drop functionality of the original, but more closely mimics a desktop application by following the same menu bar metaphors along with a full screen option. They have also beefed up the editing features a bit without making it too intensive for the web. Users will be able to use “edit” and “properties” toolboxes to control transformations on photo and layers, effects, as well as photo cropping. Transitions between frames have also been added (various types of fades and wipes).

The release will allow users to import photos from more sites sites, such as Webshots, Photobucket, and Yahoo!. They only supported Flickr previously. Audio and video will also be added to the product. Users will have the option of having songs play along with their Scrapblog slide show and embedding YouTube videos into their pages. You will be able to rotate and scale the videos just like photos. Scrapblog also hopes to have the slide shows import into YouTube as well. Scrapbook pages can already be exported into Flickr accounts.

Scrapblog is shaping up nicely and looks to be branching out of the scrapbook niche as it more closely resembles slide show web apps like RockYou, BubbleShare, Slide, Photobucket, and Filmloop.

Scrapblog is currently privately financed through Carlos Garcia’s previous company Nobox.

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The amount of smooth control over layout that Scrapblog allows is really impressive. It’s a tool that will appeal beyond the usual scrapbooking demographic and could be of great use in making things like artist portfolios and online graphic presentations. Even scrapbooking, though, is one of the leading folk arts in the US today. Don’t let that dissuade you if you’re an art snob; Scrapbook is lots of fun to use just for its web interface.

The company was started by Carlos Garcia and is currently self funded. It will be monetized through printing photobooks, burning DVDs and selling pro-accounts. Some advertising may appear on the site as well. There’s a less sophisticated beta version available for free on the Scrapblog site today, but the site I previewed here will be launched before the end of this year.

Scrapblog allows users to move and change the directional orientation of a long list of graphic elements, add effects like shadows, text and audio narration. It’s like having Photoshop Elements on the web, but with drag and drop image adding, multimedia support and bidirectional syncing with your account at Flickr, Webshots and Photobucket.

Tabblo offers a similar service, but OneTrueMedia is a more direct competitor. OneTrueMedia has a far more locked-down corporate feel to it, but that company does also have a number of high profile distribution partners.

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