Staying in virtual touch

Far-flung members of the SHELLEY HOWELLS gang make maximum use of the internet for Christmas togetherness.

It has taken ages to get there, but after years of trial and experiment, we have managed - on the whole - to beat the season into submission. We nearly enjoy Christmas.

Yes, every year this extended family has enthusiastically contributed to studies that find four out of 10 Kiwis end the year in a state of exhaustion.

We have our share of stirrers, substance abusers and common-or-garden familial dysfunction coming to boiling point about now.

But we no longer fear Christmas because, these days, we exchange increasingly bizarre and creative home-made cards instead of gifts (kids still get prezzies, and couples work out their own deal), share catering duties and make maximum use of the internet.

The net has helped ease seasonal stress because it makes keeping in touch with each other - spread across the country and world - so much easier, quicker and cheaper.

Inboxes are overflowing with e-mailed Christmas logistics, invitations, itineraries and end-of-year catch-up newsletters.

We use widely available free seasonal clip-art and photos to create home-made printable delights.

Those of us with no shame even send e-cards instead of the hand-made offerings.

There are many fine sites offering any number of Christmas cards, and many more really trashy sites.

I've always used Blue Mountain.

Though they now charge for unlimited access, like American Greetings, there is still a wide range of free cards.

Hallmark still has a top free selection, with the occasional work of Flash genius.

I'll do my patriotic bit by sending scenic NZ e-cards to friends and rellies freezing overseas as we (theoretically) frolic by the seaside.

One thing to bear in mind when sending virtual greetings and seasonal family snaps is that not everyone has a powerful computer.

There is nothing as infuriating as having your old dunger of a machine crash because someone has e-mailed you a dancing elf. It is nearly always preferable to send a link than the card itself, so check what the recipient will receive before hitting "send".

That goes for the cute animated computer stationery too. And photos.

Cousin Mindy's 30 snaps of her cat in a Santa hat may well be a riot, but not if getting them in your in-box uses up a month's free connection time.

Mindy needs to get smart and head to an online photo album, upload her pix, then send the link to one and all.

It's not difficult these days, once the registering palaver is over. Yahoo!'s online album service is just fine, easy to use and has clear, step-by-step instructions.

The Mac site's free iTools offers sleekly designed photo albums, moron-proof home-pages and design-your-own card service that allows the user to e-card their own photos.

With most neighbourhood photo shops able to put traditional snaps on to CD-Rom for an extra $10 during standard photo processing, I get by without a digital camera to get holiday shots online and in the rellies' faces in no time.

But we are hoping the net star of this year's Christmas will be instant messaging. We have toyed with online real-time chatting in the past.

First, there was an attempt to get together as a group in a Yahoo! Chat room. Disaster.

Those of us who actually managed to get into the chat area - having braved the headache of working out international time-zones, registering and signing in - lumbered helplessly from chat room to chat room searching for each other.

I sat, waiting alone, in Welcome Famdamily with no one to talk to except some weirdo named Abdul.

And we have tried free download ICQ, which lets you type to each other from a window on your desktop, but some family members found it too complicated, while others complained of too many unsolicited sex site invitations.

MSN Messenger is our present hope for Christmastime group chats. It seems to have wider appeal, especially for the Hotmailers among us who find themselves ready-registered.

Key to all this online joy to the world is, like traditional Christmas, getting organised ahead of time. Like anything computer-related, setting up all of the above can take an extraordinary amount of time for we tech-mortals, and the first try nearly always goes strangely wrong.

We are not about to give up holiday visits, phone calls, or cards made of dead trees.

But the net has made organising all that a little easier and although we won't all be in the same room, town, or even country these holidays, this family will be more in touch than ever before (www.geocities.com/shells64/XMAS.html).

* Seasonal clip art
Christmas Graphics

Kids Domain

Freefotos

Blue Mountain

American Greetings

Hallmark


* NZ e-cards
NZ Nature

nzoom e-cards

Auckland Postcards


Online Photo Album

iTools

icq

MSN Messenger

Shelley's Christmas greeting