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. A postcard or post card is a rectangular piece of thick Paper or thin cardboard intended for writing and mailing without an Envelope and A greeting card is an illustrated folded card featuring an expression of friendship or other sentiment Digital media (as opposed to analog media) usually refers to Electronic media that work on digital Codes. E-cards are made available by publishers usually on various Internet sites, where they can be sent to a recipient, usually via e-mail. The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks Electronic mail, often abbreviated to e-mail, email, or originally eMail, is a Store-and-forward method of writing sending receiving It also considered more environment friendly compared to traditional paper cards. E-card businesses are considered environmentally friendly because their carbon footprint is generally much lower compared to paper card companies and because paper is not used in the end product.
E-cards are digital "content", which makes them much more versatile than traditional greeting cards. A digital system uses discrete (discontinuous values usually but not always Symbolized Numerically (hence called "digital" to represent information for 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.
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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, to most people however are not considered e-cards and are simply home-made greeting cards. A greeting card is an illustrated folded card featuring an expression of friendship or other sentiment 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. Adobe Flash (previously called Shockwave Flash and Macromedia Flash) is a set of Multimedia software created by Macromedia and currently 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 Devices
Eventually e-cards were offered that could be sent to mobile devices and phones. Mobile e-cards or 'Mcards' as they are more commonly known were originally created by a UK company called Sharpcards Ltd in 2004. e-cards for mobile devices may delivered 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. A greeting card is an illustrated folded card featuring an expression of friendship or other sentiment The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked Hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. Valentine's Day or Saint Valentine's Day is a Holiday celebrated on February 14 Year 1996 ( MCMXCVI) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display full 1996 Gregorian calendar) That year, Valentine's cards were offered by Infobahn. com and Sony Entertainment, among others. is a multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato Tokyo, Japan, and one of the world's largest Media conglomerates with [1]
In October 1999, Excite@Home bought the web site Blue Mountain Arts (which operate bluemountain. Year 1999 ( MCMXCIX) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar) See @Home Network for more information about that company For the term referring to an elevation in energy level see Excited state. com,[1] an e-Card site) for $780M (which represent a price of $71 per unique monthly user). The transaction has been referenced by CNN and Business 2. Cable News Network, usually referred to by its Initialism CNN, is a major English language Television network founded in 1980 by Ted Turner 0 as evidence of the Dot-com bubble. The " dot-com bubble " (or sometimes the " IT bubble " was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2001 (with a climax on March 10 On September 13, 2001, three weeks before filing for bankruptcy on October 1, 2001, Excite@Home sold BlueMountain. Events 509 BC - The Temple of Jupiter on Rome 's Capitoline Hill is dedicated on the ides of September Year 2001 ( MMI) was a Common year starting on Monday according to the Gregorian calendar. Events 331 BC - Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of Gaugamela. Year 2001 ( MMI) was a Common year starting on Monday according to the Gregorian calendar. com to American Greetings for $35M, or $3. American Greetings Corporation Inc is the world's largest publicly-traded Greeting card company 23 per unique monthly user. The web site BlueMountain. com remains a large web site, primarily focused on E-Cards.
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.
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. E-mail spam, also known as "bulk e-mail" or "junk e-mail" is a subset of spam that involves nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by
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. [2] 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.
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.
In late June 2007 a spat of emails with the subject line "You've received a postcard from a family member!" and other similar subjects, was seen making their way across the internet. Unfortunately most of these emails contained links to malicious web sites where javascript was used to exploit the browser in order to compromise a system. [3]
See also
References
- ^ "Valentines Day on the Internet", NETbytes, 1996-02-12. Cardmaking is the Craft of handmaking Greeting cards Many people with interests in allied crafts such as Scrapbooking and Stamping have begun A greeting card is an illustrated folded card featuring an expression of friendship or other sentiment Electronic mail, often abbreviated to e-mail, email, or originally eMail, is a Store-and-forward method of writing sending receiving Hallmark Cards is a privately owned American company based in Kansas City Missouri. Year 1996 ( MCMXCVI) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display full 1996 Gregorian calendar) Events 1429 - English Forces under Sir John Fastolf defend a supply convoy carrying rations to the army besieging Orleans from attack by the Retrieved on 2007-03-23. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 1174 - Jocelin, Abbot of Melrose, is elected Bishop of Glasgow.
- ^ "http://www.mail-abuse.com/an_listmgntgdlines.html" .
- ^ "Riding out yet Another Storm Wave", SANS, 2007-06-28. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 1098 - Fighters of the First Crusade defeat Kerbogha of Mosul. Retrieved on 2007-06-28. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 1098 - Fighters of the First Crusade defeat Kerbogha of Mosul.
- http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/23/technology/eyeballs_biz20_122305/
- http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2001/09/10/daily70.html
- http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=3063
External links
- Festival Greetings at the Open Directory Project
- E-greetings at the Open Directory Project
- Ecards at the Yahoo! Directory
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