If you’re like me, sending holiday cards is one of those “necessary evils” of the holidays. A new service, Ecardlets.com, hopes to make the process a little easier — at least for your friends with iPhones.

Ecardlets.com is a San Francisco, CA startup founded by ex-Microsoft and ex-Googlers, and has just launched its initial public beta of the first-ever ecard platform designed specifically for the iPhone. The unique three-dimensional greeting cards take advantage of the iPhone touch screen by allowing recipients to open and flip the cards with just a flick of the finger.

I tried out the service today by sending myself a few cards. The service couldn’t be any easier to use. Simply design your card and hit “send.” The service sends a text message to your AT&T iPhone recipient which includes a link to your card. Then simply swipe your finger to open the card and read the enclosed message.

There are plenty of stock cards ready to send (there’s even a “Congratulations on your new iPhone” card), but the service will become a lot more interesting as more people begin uploading their own card designs. The site offers a Photoshop (PSD) template that you can download to make your own ecardlet that others can then send. Right now you have to email your designs to ecardlets.com but the site is working on a system to enable user-generated ecardlets.

So spice up your greeting cards this holiday season and send your iPhone-toting friends something different.

Ecardlets.com is, at least for now, completely free to use…so send to your hearts content.

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