I found out very recently that possibly my favourite free service on the Internet is no more. It’s a sad loss.

A friend was celebrating their birthday, so as usual I decided to go to Apple’s iCard site to send them an iCard. These were electronic greeting cards: you selected the image you wanted, selected the typeface, wrote your greeting, added the recipient’s e-mail address and clicked the send button. The recipient would then receive an e-mail from you with the card as a JPEG attachment. Simple, elegant and spam-free.

For some reason, it was a service that Apple provided free of charge despite being at least nominally part of their .Mac package – I had this for a while but decided it wasn’t worth the money to me as I had more than enough provision elsewhere.

And It Just Worked.

But now Apple has rolled out its MobileMe service and has confirmed that the iCards service is no longer available. Their suggested solution?

“If you do not use Mac OS X v10.5, there are many third-party greeting card services that are available online that can easily be located using your favorite Internet search engine.”

That’s as may be, but without exception – in my experience – they’re all shite and/or look like Spam/dodgy sites. Another blogger, Thomas Fitzgerald, puts it very well:

“Most e-card sites and services offer either advertising riddled flash cards or ridiculous website hoop jumping for the recipient to receive their card. Many offer poor quality animation and annoying sound in something that looks more like spam than a greeting card. Apple’s solution on the other hand was incredibly simple. They licensed some high quality artwork and photography and made it super simple to both send and receive. For the sender, you simply select an image, add your message, select the recipient and click send. On the receiver’s end they simply got an email with a jpeg of the card and message attached to the email. No jumping through hoops, no clicking through websites, no barrage of advertising. Simple, effective, elegant, and unfortunately, soon to be gone.”

Amen to that.