Hanukkah – there are a few more days until it ends on December 19th
Winter Solstice – December 21st
Festivus – December 23rd
Christmas Eve – December 24th
Christmas – December 25th
Boxing Day – December 26th
Kwanzaa – December 26th thru January 1st
New Years Eve – December 31st

We have posted some new ecard designs for the holidays as well. Take a look:

Send personal video greetings to friends and loved ones this holiday season:

Jalapenyo.com for holiday video ecards featuring your children, babies, kids, families.

OnfuegO.com holiday greetings for friends, lovers, romance, for him, for her.

BirthdayVideoEcards.com for all the December birthdays — and to set reminders for next year!

FidoFlix.com for holiday videos of your dog and other furry friends.

For the first test of this new feature, users can submit questions via webcam to their reporter, Mark Shapiro of the Center for Investigative Reporting, who is located in Copenhagen this week for the U.N. Climate Change Summit from December 7 – 18, 2009. Leaders from around the world are gathered at COP15 to develop a new climate treaty.

FRONTLINE/World will use a few of the questions submitted in a video interview with Mark that will be post to their site before the summit ends on December 18th.

This is “your chance to be heard, and seen” on what is arguably one of the most important events of the year — and certainly an issue of tremendous global importance.

Please submit your comments today! FRONTLINE/World Carbon Watch – Submit Video Comments

You can also learn more about the technology behind this feature by visiting PVMme.com. Start your own video email inbox today!

What is PVMme.com? It’s a free, hassle-free and client-free online service that allows you to send and receive email messages that are entirely video based. PVM stands for “personal video messaging.” Just like email, you designate who receives your video messages. We provide you with a central inbox that you manage just like you would any other email service. All you need to get started is a webcam and Adobe Flash Player.

Like I said, it’s still in somewhat of a Beta mode, so please let us know what you think and any issues you find. We love the idea and we’re having a great time sharing PVMs among friends and family. We hope you’ll try it and find it to be as much fun and as useful as we do.

Tell us what you think! Send us your feedback at customersupport@pvmme.com and thank you!

“The gloomy months of November, when the people of England hang and drown themselves.”
- Joseph Addison

Hmmm, I’m thinking if you live in Northern Europe November is a tough month. Not so here in sunny California. And when I lived in New York, November was still bright, crisp and, well, fashionable with leather boots and warms sweaters and beautiful coats! I digress… video ecards, November.

November is another great month for sending video ecards, for so many reasons:

1. Halloween – yes, since it happens on the eve of the last day of October, you have November (the early part at least) to share videos from all the trick or treating, costume wearing, party going. This is the perfect occasion for uploading those videos into an ecard and sharing them with friends and family.

2. Día de los Muertos – November 2nd is known in Mexico as el Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), and the whole month of November is dedicated to praying for the dead. It’s a time to honor and remember friends and family members who have passed away. Send a video ecard in remembrance.

3. Marines – November 10th is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps. Send a video greeting to your favorite marine to say thank you for serving our country. Heck, even if they are in the Army, Navy or Air Force too, send thanks to all our troops for Veterans’ Day on November 11th!

4. International Men’s Day – huh??? Apparently, this is commemorated on November 19th and was inaugurated in 1999 in Trinidad and Tobago. It was supported by the United Nations, and received principal support from men’s groups in USA, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Of course it did. Ok Ladies, send a video ecard to your favorite guy on this day.

5. Independence Day in Lebanon is November 22nd. Party it up and send videos to friends and family of the festivities!

6. Thanksgiving – In 1863, in the middle of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November to be a National Day of Thanksgiving in the (well, not so United just yet States). It has been celebrated as a national holiday every year since. It’s the perfect occasion to send video greetings to loved ones near and far. Be thankful for the amazing people in your life — and tell them so in a video ecard.

7. Moustaches (again, huh???) – According to Wikipedia “It is quite common for some males in Australia (especially in the city of Melbourne), and New Zealand to sport a moustache during the month of November. The custom being known as Movember (Movember is a portmanteau of the words ‘Moustache’ and ‘November’), and being a fundraising event for men’s health issues.” To the men again Ladies – surely you know someone with a moustache?! Send him a video ecard this month!

8. On a somber note, November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month, American Diabetes Month, Lung Cancer Awareness Month, National Homeless Youth Awareness Month, Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis Awareness Month. Video ecards are a great platform to urge awareness, increase advocacy, solicit donations and help find a cure. We’ll even design new ecards if you need them to help support any of these causes – just ask us.

9. And finally, don’t forget all the November birthdays! Send a birthday video ecard to someone born this month.

We have a video ecard site for almost every occasion including “just because”:
Jalapenyo.com for video ecards featuring your children, babies, kids, families.
OnfuegO.com for friends, lovers, parties, dating, romance, for him, for her.
BirthdayVideoEcards.com for all the November birthdays coming up — and to set reminders for next year!
FidoFlix.com for videos of your dog and other furry friends.

November affords us so many important occasions to reach out to the people we love. Share a personal video greeting with your friends and family. We hope you’ll send a video ecard this November.

Using Your Webcam

You can record messages directly into video ecards using your webcam. Follow the instructions that came with your webcam to get it hooked up – it must be working before you use it to make an ecard video. If you are having trouble setting up your webcam, see Setting Up Your Webcam in our Help section. If you need a recommendation on a webcam, please visit our Amazon store.

Using Your Video Camera or Your Photo Camera Set on Video Mode:

The first step is to follow the instructions that came with your camera to record a video. Be sure to adjust the video settings to record your video at 320 x 240 for video ecards. This is optimal so you don’t get weird resizing or stretching of your video. Acceptable file formats for our sites include: .avi, .mpg, .mov, .flv, .mp4, .wmv. Once you set all the settings properly and you have taken the video you want to share, simply connect the camera to your computer and save the video to your hard drive or desktop. When you’re ready to upload your video into an ecard, you will be asked to browse to the video file on your computer, wherever you saved it. Attach and go…

Visit our Amazon store for recommendations on video cameras.

You can also find our favorite photo cameras with video capabilities listed here.

1. Back to School – a video of the first day back to school is a great way to share this occasion with grandma, aunts and uncles, friends near and far.

2. The FIRST Day of School – surely any good parent captures their child’s first ever day of school on video! You did, didn’t you?! Then you should share it with the family in a video ecard.

3. Labor Day Weekend Fun – the last hurrah! The last true days of summer are this coming long weekend of Sept 4-7. Capture the fun with family and friends and share it in a video ecard.

4. Independence Day Baby! Party it up and send videos to friends and family of the festivities:
—September 7th is Brazil’s Independence Day
—September 16th is Mexico’s
—September 18th is Chile’s

5. A somber occasion, September 11th is a day to honor loved ones lost and give thanks to the heroes who risked their lives. Send a video ecard in remembrance, to give thanks or just to say I love you.

6. September 21st marks the start of the equinox. Start the new season by reaching out to someone you haven’t spoken to in a while. Send them a special video greeting in a video ecard.

We have a video ecard site for almost every occasion:
Jalapenyo.com for video ecards featuring your children, babies, kids.
OnfuegO.com for friends, lovers, parties, dating, romance, for him, for her.
BirthdayVideoEcards.com for all the September birthdays coming up.
FidoFlix.com for videos of your dog and other furry friends.

See, September is a great month for so many reasons. We hope you’ll send a video ecard this September.

1. Your mom is on Facebook and you don’t want to share that video with her (or with the whole wide web), but you want to have a laugh with a few good friends.

2. It’s super easy to record a video with your webcam and actually “talk” to the person on the other end. If pictures are worth a thousand words, a video of your mug has got to be… priceless.

3. It’s got that special touch when you can’t be there in person. People love receiving personal greetings that are specially made for them.

4. They’re fun to make and you can send one for any occasion: holidays, birthdays, invitations, birth announcements, to say I love you, or just for fun!

5. It’s “green” – ecards reduce waste from paper and use less energy to create. Here’s the good word on that from Treehugger: “E-Cards save energy, rainforests, bees!”

We hope you’ll try sending a video ecard today!

A recent article from The Business Insider entitled Facebook’s PayPal-Killer Will Be Bigger Than Facebook Ads, Some Execs Believe, talks about how Facebook users will be able to buy and pay for virtual and physical gifts from third-party vendors using “Pay With Facebook”.

What is interesting to us is that two of the four app developers helping Facebook to execute on this new feature are ecard providers: American Greetings Interactive and someecards.

It feels like the time is ripe to get serious about charitable gifting on our video ecard sites. Not sure yet if there is a tie in to Facebook for us, but certainly it’s validation that we have a good idea.

Learn more about GlobalGiving – connects donors with community-based projects that need support.

Learn more about Mokugift – plant a tree somewhere in the world for $1 and help fight climate change.

Since we don’t have a very robust user base just yet, we are still grappling with what other holidays to add into the mix. Any suggestions?

For example, we fully recognize the importance to some folks of holidays like Ramadan and Diwali — people may want to send video e cards for these occasions too. We want to be the place where people can do that. We hope to get there soon.

Check it out, become a fan — and be the first to get news, updates and special announcements.