What's Next in ECards?

Amazon Gift Cards with eCards

There are a lot of people asking on the web how they can send Amazon Gift Cards with an eCard.

The problem is there are a lot of outdated answers with links that are not valid, so here are some facts to help:

• You can send an Amazon Gift Card with an eCard here:  www.hdgreetings.com/Amazon
• The eCard is free and can include personal messages and photos
• There are no hidden charges or service charges for the Gift Card
• It's delivered via e-mail - great for last minute gifts
• You can track the status of when the card was delivered and opened

It's especially helpful for last minute gifts that need to be there fast, but still have a personal touch to them.

HD Greetings ECards on Television Again, Rated 5/5 Stars

A quick update to mention that HD Greetings has again been covered on television and rated 5/5 stars, this time by Germany's WDR.  The coverage is on-line here.

We feel pretty honored being that out of the 1 billion ecard sites on the net only a select few get this kind of coverage.  I didn't mention previously that London Channel 4 news also did a segment including us a few months back.

Thank you to WDR and everyone from Germany who visited the site - we love you guys and hope to get a local translation of the site soon.

Wir schätzen sehr, unsere Freunde aus Deutschland!

For Easter send someone an Eggroll

New Easter ecards are now available for 2008 at www.hdgreetings.com.

If you feel like having a little fun I recommend sending someone an Eggroll Easter ecard.

Have fun -

ECards 2.0 - What's New?

Most things on the Internet in the past 10 years have been vastly improved, yet ecards seem to be still partying like it's 1999.  Most new ecards made during 2007 are old style flash animations, just like they were in 1997.

Any Internet activity you can think of has probably much improved or didn't exist 10 years ago.   But the list of ecard improvements has been pretty small, or at least it has been until now.  :-)

Below are some of the things we're doing differently at HD Greetings:

• New content  -  Content is not just old style flash based cartoons.   Our cards use everything from the latest 3d animation, to artistic stop motion styles.
• New music  -  Ever wonder why ecards don't offer high quality stereo mp3 music with different soundtracks to select from?  We couldn't think of a good reason either so we did it.
• Personalization gone wild  -  Instead of just including a photo with a card, your photos can be added inside the actual animation:

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• Send cards to any iPhone  - All of our cards can be sent to and viewed by anyone with an iPhone, while not giving up any audio-visual features.
• Artistic Freedom  -  Cards are based on work from an entire community of artists, in addition to the cards we create ourselves.  This allows for an amount of creativity that's really not possible to get from one company.
• Save cards forever  -  Normally an ecard is only around for as long as a company feels like keeping it for you.  Our cards can be saved as a video file for as long as you like.
• High definition  -  Most of our cards are created at HD (high definition) resolution.  Currently we allow cards to be sent in a standard resolution,  but having everything in HD already allows us to flip the switch at any time to allow an amazing quality experience.  More on this one in 08'.

If you can think of anything that would make ecards better please let us know.  We don't plan on stopping any time soon.

"The Catch" to Free ECards

We received an email recently from a person suspicious of HD Greetings free ecards and they refused to use the site until we proved to them our intentions were honorable.

Our crime that caused suspicion was the site is simply too good to be true.  No subscription fees, no advertising, and no registration required?  Blasphemy!  Surely it must be a bunko trick!

The irony was harsh - we've been so obsessed with creating a great experience for people and building good will on the web that the efforts backfired - at least in one case.

So here is a summary of what we told the very nice lady who inquired:

• Since HD Greetings is new, we are making the service available free and without ads for now in the hope of getting more people to try out the site.
• Our policy is to never provide email addresses to any outside company, including advertisers.  In fact our email is accredited which requires us to make guarantees on how we treat the privacy of others.

So really the catch is that we hope you will mention us to family or friends, or post a link to us if you have a blog or web site, or tell us how we can improve.  But none of that is required.

Eventually we will probably start placing ads on our site and/or offering subscriptions. 

For now, please enjoy the site and let us know if you have any more questions.