Let’s face it. Old fashioned love letters in air-mail envelopes and collectible postcards have somewhat died already, thanks (or no thanks) to the worldwide web. Now that there’s instant messaging and e-mail (yay for attachments!), most people would rather type away and click “send” rather than lick a stamp and wait for Mr. Postman. And with signatures, smileys and changeable fonts, e-mail messages are now personalized more than ever. For the more visual ones, there are the animated e-cards—cartoonish greetings that mostly kids and the young-at-heart’s enjoy.
Older ones with a more mature sense of humor will definitely enjoy the e-card site JibJab. It boasts of several video and postcard Sendables, all witty and hilarious.
There are e-cards for all sorts of occasions: from birthdays to anniversaries, from weddings and engagements to graduations, from Halloween to Christmas. Other categories include Politics & Issues, Celebs & Pop Culture, Everyday Fun and Just to Say.
Just like other e-card sites, JibJab lets you personalize your electronic greeting cards by adding in your own message. The site ups it a notch though with a feature called Starring You! This feature lets you upload your picture so you can add it to their postcards. Think studmuffin you popping out of a cake or your little nephew riding a stork.
The Starring You! feature also applies to their videos and this is the more enjoyable part. For example, JibJab has a lot of dance videos and you can attach a head shot to make it seem as if you’re the one busting out those impressive hip-hop moves. There are even those that involve two or more people so you can upload your friends’ pics too. If you don’t have the time to upload your own pics, you can just choose from their roster of headshots (from Brad Pitt to Tom Cruise) and just have a laugh looking at familiar faces square-dancing or doing the hula.
JibJab is very addicting. It will make you spend lots of time uploading headshots, cropping them, choosing which body it goes to and finally, having a grand time watching your personalized videos, which you can share or send to anyone. You can even post them in accounts such as Friendster, Facebook or Multiply. Sounds perfect? Well, not really. The choices for postcard and video Sendables are pretty few and you need to be a subscriber to get exclusive access to all the e-cards, make unlimited Starring You! videos and share as much e-cards as you want.
The limited number of videos and postcards is a downer but considering how you have a lot of pics of yourself and your friends that you can upload, the possibilities are many.
Apart from Sendables, JibJab also has other segments: JibJab Originals, which features flash animations; and JokeBox, a trading hub for funny vids, pics, plus audio and text jokes.
Found any great sites lately? E-mail the author at ninomarksablan@yahoo.com
