One is generally aware of major festivals like Diwali or Christmas, but there are many other days for which one would like to send greetings. For example, if you have a Jewish friend you would like to send across greetings for Yom Kippur (which fell on 8 October this year). These sites generally list all the current festivals so that if you bookmark them you get a ready reminder. Then all you have to do is click on the festival, select your card, fill in the details and send.
Where e-greetings score over paper is in the field of animation and multimedia. Thus you can get someone winking at you, a clown doing sommersaults and a card being completed for the recipient as he clicks on an image, all to the accompaniment of some lively music.
Some international sites list events of different countries and major Indian holidays also figure in them. Besides events, there are the personal categories of cards like birthday, anniversary, friendship, love, weddings, retirement, sorry, invitation and new baby.
Since the services are all free, all these sites generate income the old fashioned way -- through banner ads and sponsors.
Greetsomeone
Did you know that yesterday (21 October)
was 'Sweetest Day?' I didn't, until I checked out this site and
promptly sent a greeting to my sweetest. The site has a ready-to-click
list of festivals for the current month (October) which included
Wildlife Week, Mahatma Gandhi's birthday, Dassera, Halloween and,
of course, the coming Diwali. Events of the past month are also
listed, so you can also send a belated card. You can also make a
card by selecting pictorial motifs like virtual flowers or
virtual holidays. In the last, there are some important
historical monuments (like the Taj Mahal) which you can pretend
to have visited and send the pics like you would postcards. A
good range of personal cards is also available here. The site
offers you a free e-mail address (@grabnet) so you can select and
send your cards from under 'one roof.'Orangepie
The five-year-old kid next door was
fascinated when I dug out a Diwali card with a dancing flame.
Each click on the flame spelled out 'Happy Diwali' - accompanied
with music. This is an Indian site so it offers a wide choice of
cards related to Indian festivals and relationships. Thus,
besides Dassera and Diwali, there are masti cards and maska cards.
Yes, there is a whole range of personal cards too with some
unusual categories like Zodiac signs, cyber chocolates and 'flirt
with me.' An address book saves you the trouble of repeatedly
entering addresses and enables you to send similar cards to
multiple recipients.Bluemountain
This is perhaps THE most famous e-greetings
site, and not without reason. It has the most comprehensive
calendar of events among sites of its ilk, with almost every day
of the month marking some event or the other, and some days
marking multiple events. Did you know, for example, that today is
Simchat Torah and that Friday, 13 October, was also Scream Day?
And if you're in the mood, do indulge in some forgiveness on 24
October which is International Forgiveness Day. There is a wide
selection of personal greetings and country/religion-wise
listings which also include India and her religions. The site
offers you a free e-mail address.Gcards
The events listing is not very
comprehensive, but it still managed to include 'Babbling Day,'
which was yesterday. Among Indian festivals, only Diwali is
included. A section called 'Magic Moments' gives you cards for
tender moments like 'A candle-light dinner,' nostalgia or just
plain old love. The section called 'Daily Cards' lists event-free
greetings like sorry, thank you, keep in touch or saying 'hello!"
Here too you can get a free e-mail address.E-cards
This is a site which is quite partial to
the conservation of wildlife for every card sent helps generate a
donation for nature. E-cards attempts to support both World
Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy through site content,
events and visits. When we accessed the site, the featured e-card
was the giant panda, the most beautiful symbol of endangered
species of animals. While you can use the pictures in the normal
way for sending e-greetings, clicking on it helps you to learn
more about the animal. When personalising the card, you can
select your music and a 'stamp' like 'save the planet' or 'love.'
There is no listing of calendar events, but plenty of personal-card
and picture choices. The video section features pictures taken by
Web cams and are updated every few minutes.All-yours
Besides the events calendar and the
personal cards, this site features several galleries offering
animations, virtual baloons, fractal images and clip art with
which you can customise your e-card. Among the events featured
for October we found Nut Day and Plush Animal Lover's Day (today),
Daylight Saving Time Ends (29), Candy Corn Day (30) and Halloween
(31). And did you know that this is Adopt A Dog Month? When
designing your card you can select the background, font and music
of which there is a goodly collection. No, there is no Indian
content here.