Apple iCards

Hallmark and Apple worked together with the original WebObjects team to develop iCards, a service that allowed people to create and send personalized digital greeting cards. The project involved a team of engineers and designers from both companies, who collaborated to create a tasteful and delightful stationery experience.

One of the key challenges in developing iCards was building a web-based image compositing engine that could handle the high-resolution images and complex layouts required for digital cards. To meet this challenge, the the WebObjects team worked closely with Hallmark to impress the world with innovations in online stationery.

WebObjects was a web application server and development framework created by Apple, and it was used to build the iCards service. The team used WebObjects to build the server-side of the application and the compositing engine which was used to combine the different elements of a card, such as the text, images, and backgrounds.

The compositing engine was designed to handle multiple layers of high-resolution images, as well as various image formats, fonts and sizes. This allowed people to create high quality and personalized cards.

Working with Hallmark and the WebObjects team, we were able to deliver a high-quality, web-based service that offered a wide range of customization. iCards service was well-received (and missed) and it was considered a significant achievement in the industry at the time.