Part of Apple's iTools suite of online web-based
services, iCards is unique as a web greeting card service in that it sends the card to the
recipient as a JPEG image email attachment, rather than having
the user follow a link to the web card service's website so that
they can collect their meager revenues from banner advertising.
This is a nice approach, as you can avoid the possibility of
subjecting your card's recipient to the wiles of that
infernal,masochistic internet
monkey and also because your beautiful card can be saved for
posterity.
There's quite a broad variety of cards to choose from and the
categories seem to be frequently changing. Some of the current
categories include: occasions, fine art, nature, vacation,
holidays,sentiments, etc. Although there are a
lot of sappy sentimental cards, there is also some truly
amazing photography. Once you've found a card you want to send, you can add a text message about 150 characters in size using one of the four font choices. The message is then rendered as part of the JPEG.
Another unique aspect of iCards is the Member's Portfolio
category. If you're a MacOS 9+ user, you can submit images that
you have on your iDisk to be considered for inclusion in the
Member's Portfolio category, where it will be featured and
presumably sent to thousands of people as a greeting card.
You can check out iCards
here:
http://icards.mac.com