iCards


iCards are digital postcards that you can send via email. Your recipients see the iCard appear right in the email message body, and don’t need to click a link to visit a Web site in order to see the card as in similar services.

iCards is the only part of the .Mac services that is completely free (see Figure 18-50). You don’t need to be a .Mac member to use iCards, or even a .Mac 60 day trial tire-kicker.

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Figure 18-50: The iCards welcome page. (Web page courtesy of Apple Computer, Inc.)

iCards can be sent or viewed on any Macintosh or Windows computer, via the default Web browser and standard email programs.

Over 400 designed iCards are available from the iCard Web site, organized into categories such as Birthday, Love, and Holidays, to name a few.

If you are a .Mac member, you can also create your own custom cards featuring digital photos or artwork from your iDisk. If you design a really beautiful iCard, you can submit it to the

Member’s Portfolio, and Apple will review it and consider adding it to the public selection. If you are an artist, you can offer your artwork for others to send by submitting it to the Featured Artist category.

To send an iCard:

  1. Visit the iCards Web site by setting your web browser to www.mac.com, and in the .Mac menu bar, click iCards. The iCards welcome page, Main Categories, appears.

  2. Choose an image category you want to explore by clicking on a category image. See Figure 18-51.

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    Figure 18-51: Clicking on an iCards category leads to its collection of images. (Web page courtesy of Apple Computer, Inc.)

  3. Choose an image from the category by clicking it. Some categories have more than one page of images to explore, and you will see links to additional pages in the top-right corner. Also notice that your path through the process is displayed from the top left; to go back, click on the path you want to return to.

  4. Compose a message in the Write your message here field on the Edit page, shown in Figure 18-52. Select a font from the list on the right. When done, click Continue. On the Address Card page shown in Figure 18-53, you see your card at the bottom, complete with your message as it will appear to your recipients.

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    Figure 18-52: The iCards edit card page. (Web page courtesy of Apple Computer, Inc.)

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    Figure 18-53: The iCards Address Cards page. (Web page courtesy of Apple Computer, Inc.)

  5. Enter your name and email address in the fields on the left, and check Send a copy to myself if you want a copy. Check Hide Distribution List if you don’t want your recipients to see your other recipients.

    To send a card to one recipient, type their email address into the field on the top right.

    To send a card to several recipients, type the first person’s email address in the field. Then click Add Recipient. Repeat until the Recipient list contains all the addresses you want.

    Remove an address from the Recipient list by selecting it and clicking Remove Recipient.

  6. Click Send Your Card.

    The Thank You page appears, as shown in Figure 18-54.

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    Figure 18-54: The iCards Thank you page appears after you have sent your iCard. (Web page courtesy of Apple Computer, Inc.)

You can return to the Main Categories page from here by clicking the Return to Categories button, or Send Same Card to send the same card to someone else.

You must be a .Mac member to use your own image on an iCard. You might want to do this to send a holiday photo of your family, share a favorite vacation photo, or show grandparents a scan of your kid’s latest artistic scribblings. To place your image on an iCard, follow these steps:

  1. Save your image in either JPEG or GIF format.

  2. Name the image following these guidelines:

    • End the file name with a .jpg or .gif extension.

    • Use only uppercase letters (A-Z), lowercase letters (a-z), numbers (0-9) or the underscore (_) in the file name.

    • Don’t use spaces, accented letters, or special characters or symbols.

    • Don’t start a file name with a period (.)

  3. Copy the file into the Pictures folder on your iDisk or into a folder within the Pictures folder. The folder name must also follow the naming guidelines in the previous step.

  4. On the iCards Main Categories page, click Create Your Own. (See Figure 18-55).

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    Figure 18-55: A folder called iCard Photos, has been copied to the iDisk, where its contents can be selected and previewed in the iCards Create Your Own page. (Web page courtesy of Apple Computer, Inc.)

  5. Enter your password if necessary and press the Return key.

    On the Create Your Own page, you see the contents of your iDisk pictures folder in the list on the left. If you need to add other images to the pictures folder of your iDisk, do so and then click Update Folder. Select a new folder from the pop-up menu, look inside a folder by selecting it and clicking the Open button, or select an image and click Preview to see a thumbnail on the right. When you find the image you want, click Select This Image.

  6. Send the iCard. (Refer to Steps 4 through 6 in the first list in this section.)

If a recipient cannot view the iCard (which is a JPEG attachment to the email message), his email application may not display attached images automatically. Ask them to open the JPEG file attached to the message to view it.




Mac OS X Bible, Panther Edition
Mac OS X Bible, Panther Edition
ISBN: 0764543997
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 290

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