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Net Gains (Jun 18, 97) |
There are sites springing up left right and
center, offering free cards on the Internet - birthday cards,
friendship cards, romantic cards, cards for relatives, and special
festive days like Easter, Christmas, and New Year. Then there
are cards just to say a simple "I'm thinking about you".
They all operate on more or less the same funda
: the recipient has to have an e-mail address, and a graphical
browser. You go to a particular site, choose the card you find
most appropriate, and send it off. The recipient gets an e-mail
informing them that you have sent a card which is available at
http://blah.blah.com. The recipient is also given a unique "pick-up
number" to identify the card at the site. The card exists
as a temporary web page that typically lasts for not more than
a month. The recipient then goes to the site given, and enters
the "pick-up number" at the pick-up window, and is automatically
redirected to your greeting on the Internet.
Now while there are sites - a - plenty on the
web catering to the general card categories, I came across these
three sister sites that have carved a niche on the WWW. They cater
to specific taste buds - well the first of these three literally
does so.
Mail A Meal
(www.mailameal.com) is a fun website for sending free food
postcards to friends in cyberspace. There are currently over 300
gourmet postcards spread over 20 categories available for the
choosing. The categories range from appetisers, soups, fastfoods,
and gourmet stuff to breakfast, home cooking, romantic meals,
vegetarian food, and low calorie meals. Then there are the more
interesting beverages section, snacks, dessert, cakes, chocolate,
fruits, pies, and ice - creams - enough already - this newspaper
is getting wet with all your drooling ! You choose a particular
section, pick your meal from that section and dash it off to get
someone's tastebuds working up the juices. As much as I looked,
I couldn't find a nice Indian meal - well, I had to make do with
a romantic candlelight dinner instead. When the real thing is
not possible, you can make do with the cyber version of a meal
now !
Mail A Meal's
first sister site is Virtual Presents (www.virtualpresents.com)-
a site that delivers presents virtually anywhere, once again with
the constraint that the recipient has to have an e-mail address
and a graphical browser to be able to receive the gift. Your gift
could be virtually anything - everyday objects like lipstick,
big furniture gifts like an entire bathroom, cars, planes, jewelry,
food, flowers, pets, clothes, tools, odds & ends, or entire
vacations for that matter. Virtual presents also offer you the
option of sending your own present, if you're not satisfied with
what they have to offer. All you have to do is send them the URL
(home page address) of the gift, and they'll send it across. Now
while their pet section has turtles and even elephants, I couldn't
find a single dog in sight for this friend who goes fida
over those curs. So I ended up browsing the jewelry section, looking
for gold, diamonds and pearls to pacify her - it's the thought
that counts, right ?
The last of the trio is Toonogram (www.toonogram.com)
- the site that allows anyone to send a cartoon postcard via the
Internet. Everyone loves cartoons, and toonogram has gone and
simplified your work with cartoons neatly classified into categories
- business, family, travel, people, health, computers, and animals
just to name a few. Choose one that suits your tastebuds, and
more importantly, the receiver's humour buds, and your smile is
on it's way. Oh yes - Toonogram even has some funny cartoons !
So the next time you can't make it to that
special anniversary dinner for two, send a meal, a gift, and a
cartoon across to compensate. Be warned however : in extreme cases,
you may just get paid back in the same coin someday !