Make Your Own Ecards, Games and See Which Celebrities You Resemble

We've come a long way since the days of drawing black magic marker mustaches on people's photos. Or have we? Perhaps the internet has just given us a new, more sophisticated way to sweep that black magic marker across those virtual faces.

Below is a list of fun and interesting sites that allow us to personalize ecards, match us up with celebrities and even turn us into Santa's little helpers. All at the clicks of some mouse buttons.

Max Ischenko's Ultimate Flash Face (flashface.ctapt.de) is an interesting site and makes me feel a bit like I'm at the police station after a crime has been committed. Upon entering the site, more than a dozen hairstyles are offered and once chosen, appear on the right. It is an interesting experiment to see how close one can get with just a mind's eye memory of a person's face. Every imaginable detail is featured from head shape, hair, eyes, eyeglasses, eyebrows, jaw, mouth, beard, etc. All modifiable and changeable within the context of the canvas. A lot of fun and may also teach children a thing or two about drawing and geometrical proportions of the human face.

MushyGushy (www.mushygushy.com) features ecards, widgets and games "starring YOU." What could be more fun than placing your real life photo on the head of a cartoon? These folks offer ecards for every occasion: get well, anniversary, birthday, holidays, new baby, invitations, kids, interactive - and all of them are customizable and get YOU involved. After registering and logging in, you can upload photos and then discern the folks' "heads" you want involved in the ecards. They offer an easy, user-friendly interface that clearly defines the head to make it believable (and more believable is definitely more funny).

Monoface (www.mono-1.com/monoface) is a conglomeration of just fifteen employees' visual features. However, over 759,000 different combinations are possible. With a click of the mouse the employees' eyes, noses, mouths, everything will rearrange seamlessly to create hilarious new faces. This fun site is the creation of the Minneapolis ad agency, Mono and was nominated in this year's Webby Awards.

Jowlers (www.jowlers.com) "Where Distortion is Cause for Celebration" is a unique photo site that offers photos of folks while shaking their head vigorously - that goofy, jaw to the side, lips protruding look is called a "jowler." These are somewhat interesting to see, and a whole group of jowlers looks strangely like a band of zombies. They offer a shop to purchase "jowling" items like t-shirts (though honestly, I'm not sure why you would).

My Heritage (www.myheritage.com) is a two-fold site. Here you can trace your geneology through similarity of pictures, plus you can use those same pictures to define (percentage wise) how much you resemble certain celebrities. There are a number of things to do on this site including creating your own page and researching and sharing family pictures. Once you upload a photo, the software scans the photo for a face (can be more than one at a time).

And finally, one of my all time favorites: Elf Yourself (www.elfyourself.com). After uploading photos of you and your friends, and then trimming around the heads, choose the background where your elf-selves will sing and dance. If you choose the photos with just the right expressions, the results can be hilarious. Perfect for Holiday time ecard sending!