Dec 23

Seasons Greetings Cyberstyle
Sun Review December 23, 2000

If you're reading this and you still haven't mailed out any Christmas cards, don't despair. Just get online and send 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: attach photos or your own digitally designed Christmas cards to an e-mail message, or create a special postcard, complete with animation and music, by visiting an electronic greetings website.

If you plan to do it yourself, it is usually best to format your photos or cards in JPEG format so they can be easily read by your recipients. You can attach these files to an e-mail using the Attach function of your e-mail program (look for the paperclip icon), then select the file you want to attach. The ever-mounting threat of viruses has spooked many people this year, so to avoid problems, I would steer away from attaching that cute .EXE Christmas greeting, in favour of your own JPEG Christmas card.

If that's not up your alley, there is an amazing selection of electronic greeting cards available on the Web for you to express your holiday sentiments. Just remember that most of these animated greetings will require the Flash plug-in, so make sure you download the latest version from Macromedia (www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download), and let your recipients know that they should do the same.

The largest, and probably the oldest postcard and electronic greetings website is Blue Mountain Arts (www.bluemountain.com), offering hundreds of free electronic animated and musical greeting cards that you can e-mail to anyone in the world. 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, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.

E-greetings (www.egreetings.com) is also worth a look. Choose from thousands of 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."

Hicards (www.hicards.com) features traditional Christmas greetings, as well as more bizarre cards for events such as the solar eclipse, quitting smoking, historical events, alien toons, and a goofy Canadian collection.

Ecards (www.ecards.com) has cards for all occasions in many languages (yes, there are even 35 cards in Dutch!), but some of the coolest cards can be found under "Game Day. These interactive holiday cards let you play games such as Snowman Builder, Tree Decorating, Find Santa, and the Xmas Memory Game.

So even though there are only 2 days left till Christmas, you'll still be able to send your holiday greetings, cyberstyle!

Best wishes to you and your family for a Happy Holiday!