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E-card
An e-card' is similar to a postcard or greeting card, with the primary
difference being it is created using digital media instead of paper or other
traditional materials. E-cards are made available by publishers usually on
various Internet sites, where they can be sent to a recipient, usually via
e-mail.
E-cards are digital "content", which makes them much more versatile than
traditional greeting cards. For example unlike traditional greetings,
e-cards can be easily sent to many people at once or extensively
personalized by the sender. Conceivably they could be saved to any computer
or electronic device or even viewed on a television set, however E-card
digital content has not yet progressed as far as digital video or digital
audio in terms of varied usage.
Usage
Typically an e-card sender chooses from an on-line catalog of e-cards made
available on a publisher's web site. After selecting a card, the sender can
personalize it to various degrees by adding a message, photo, or video.
Finally the sender specifies the recipient's e-mail address and the web site
delivers an e-mail message on behalf of the sender to the recipient.
Printed e-cards
Some e-cards are intended to be printed out rather than sent via e-mail. The
advantage to this over a traditional greeting sometimes can be cost savings,
or sometimes simply the ability to "create" something for the recipient
rather than choosing a fully completed paper card.
Technological evolution
E-card technology has improved significantly since 1996 around the time of
their inception. One technical aspect that has remained mostly contstant is
the delivery mechanism: The e-mail received by the recipient contains not
the e-card itself, but an individually coded link back to the publisher's
web site that displays sender's card exactly as it was originally
configured.
Postcards
"Postcards" use static (non-moving) images. These were the first type of
e-card in use. The recipient sees a single artistic image, accompanied by a
personalized greeting message.
Flash animation
This type of e-card is based on two-dimensional vector animation controlled
with a scripting language. The format is proprietary to Adobe, however,
widespread usage of Adobe's software allows this type of card to be easily
viewed on most of today's computers. The recipient sees an animated short
usually 15-30 seconds in duration. The animation often appears to have a
cartoon style due to the nature of the content, however, some Flash
creations can be quite sophisticated and realistic. A sound track usually
accompanies the animation which may contain speech or music.
Flash animated greeting cards can include interactivity, for example, asking
the viewer to choose a picture to animate, however, most Flash e-cards are
designed to convey the sentiment of the sender through simple observation.
Flash animated cards are offered today by almost all major e-card publishers
and are consequently the most common format used.
Mobile Revolution
Traditionally e-cards were sent via computers but with the explosion of
mobile phones and its portable technology have given way to e-cards being
delivered via mobile phone. Mobile e-cards or 'Mcards' as they are more
commonly known were originally created by a UK company called Sharpcards Ltd
in 2004. The mcards are purchased via mobile phone networks WAP sites then
are downloaded to the mobile then it is sent via MMS straight the recipients
handset.
History
The greeting card metaphor was employed early in the life of the World Wide
Web, and by Valentine's Day 1996 it was popular enough to be documented.
That year, Valentine's cards were offered by Infobahn.com and Sony
Entertainment, among others.[1]
In October 1999, Excite@Home bought the web site Blue Mountain Arts (which
operate bluemountain.com,[1] an e-Card site) for $780M (which represent a
price of $71 per unique monthly user).[citation needed] The transaction has
been referenced by CNN and Business 2.0 as evidence of the Dot-com bubble.
On September 13, 2001, three weeks before filining for bankruptcy on October
1, 2001, Excite@Home sold BlueMountain.com to American Greetings for $35M,
or $3.23 per unique monthly user.[citation needed] The web site
BlueMountain.com remains a large web site, primarily focused on E-Cards. In
May 2007 MushyGushy.com became the first E-Card site to allow users to
personalize E-Greetings based on ethnicity, skin-tone, and gender.[2]
Originally, most E-Cards were free, by virtue of being sponsored by
advertising. While free greeting cards are still the most prevalent and
popular, some sites charge for either all e-cards or special premium e-cards.[citation
needed]
Security
Since many e-card companies are privy to the e-mail address of the recipient
and often also the sender, and whether the recipient reads the card,
spammers can use E-Cards for finding active e-mail addresses.
Sending an e-card to a given recipient invariably involves giving that
recipient's email address to the e-card service -- a third party. As with
other third-party email services (such as mailing-list companies), the
operator has the chance to misuse this address. One example of misuse is if
the e-card service sends advertisements to the recipient's address. Under
anti-spam rules used by major ISPs, such advertisements would be spam, since
the recipient never asked ("opted in") to receive them.[3] The e-card sender
as well as the service could be held responsible for the act of spamming,
since while the service sent the spam, the e-card sender provided the
address.[citation needed]
In some cases, it may be illegal for an organization or business to use an
e-card service to send greetings to its customers. For instance, data
privacy laws may forbid a business from disclosing information about
customers to a third party -- including names and email addresses.[citation
needed]
References
1. ^ "Valentines Day on the Internet", NETbytes, 1996-02-12. Retrieved on
2007-03-23.
2. ^ "A NEW ``SHADE OF E-CARDS", PRWeb, 2007-05-04. Retrieved on 2007-06-04.
3. ^ "http://www.mail-abuse.com/an_listmgntgdlines_current_news.html".
* http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/23/technology/eyeballs_biz20_122305/
* http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2001/09/10/daily70_current_news.html
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