Dec 11

Seasons Greetings CyberStyle
Sun Review Dec. 11, 1999

If you're pressed for time and still haven't mailed out any Christmas cards, try sending your greetings via the Internet. You won't have to worry about postage, and your greetings are sure to arrive on time.

There are several ways to send your greetings online: you can attach photos or cards to your e-mail message using the Attach function of your e-mail program (look for the paperclip icon), or create a special postcard, complete with animation and music, by visiting an electronic greetings website.

The largest, and probably the oldest postcard and electronic greetings website is Blue Mountain Arts (www.bluemountain.com).

Blue Mountain Arts is a greeting card publisher based in Boulder Colorado. They offer hundreds of free electronic animated and musical greeting cards that you can e-mail to anyone in the world. Some of these cards contain messages of love and appreciation, some are for saying sorry, some offer encouragement or friendship, and others are whimsical. Their holiday collection is amazing, and features categories such as Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's, for anyone and everyone on your list. Cards are also available in Chinese, French and Spanish.

E-greetings (www.egreetings.com) is also worth a look. Choose from over 4,400 digital greetings - with elements such as animated cartoons, photos and music-that you can personalize and send to people to celebrate holidays, job promotions, special occasions, or just to say "hi."

With "MyEgreetings", they'll even help you keep track of all your addresses, important dates and occasions to ensure you'll never miss an important date again! You can also try their Living Letterheadª , which works just like the greetings. You choose who you want it to go to, add your message (of any length), then preview and if you're satisfied with your message, hit send.

Another great idea for Christmas (or any time, for that matter) is to create your own screensaver and send it to your friends and family. Collect your favourite family photos, company logo or any of your favourite images and turn them into screensavers or wallpapers for the PC.

You can also add a soundtrack, password-protection and various transition effects. You can find software for making your own screensaver at www.customsavers.com, or try downloading programs such as Screen Saver Builder and Screen Saver Toolbox from Download.com (www.download.com).