Evite

InterActiveCorp's Evite might still be the biggest name in online invitations, but Martha Stewart has made her endorsement elsewhere.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia has partnered with and made an undisclosed investment in Pingg, a much smaller competitor.

The chief executive of New York-based Pingg, Lorien Gabel, spoke to CNET News a few months ago to make the case for his company as a more refined alternative to the clip art-friendly Evite, saying he hoped Pingg would be appropriate for "a whole segment of event types that people just (do) not want to use electronic invitations for," like … Read more

Web party invitation and management service MyPunchbowl on Tuesday relaunched with a new look. While mostly a new paint job, the big, new feature is the invitation designer, which has been renamed as a "studio."

Where the service's former system had users simply picking colors, pictures, and some ready-made templates, the results of using the new tool resembles a real life paper invitation. Users can still select things like the coloring and background, but there are new flourishes like colored ribbons, textured backgrounds, and various form factors that mimic proper card stock.

All of this amounts to … Read more

As of Wednesday, Evite's Send-to-Phone text alerts--which let users get event details on their mobile phone--include a voice-activated directions service. Yes, the addition of direction texts means partiers have lost one of their top excuses for being late. That drawback aside, this free new feature could be quite helpful.

It works from any cell phone and doesn't require any GPS, data plan, or registration. Guests can just click the "directions" link in the Evite event details text message to launch a call to the voice-activated service. They then say their start address or intersection and get … Read more

Evite is getting a much-needed overhaul on Friday.

Saying the invitation service has become "cluttered, messy, and confusing," new Evite general manager Rosanna McCollough has had the service re-engineered from the ground up. Users will see major changes in the interface and the features offered, but there's also, I am told, a lot going on under the hood.

A new user interface stuffs noncritical features into tabs, simplifying the layout. The simpler interface is necessary, since Evite has more functionality in it than before. There are more templates, for example, and users can also modify any element … Read more

Coordinatr is a new events communication service that's been designed for creating spontaneous get-togethers among tight knit groups of friends. The setup is similar to MyPunchbowl and Crusher, with just a few form fields that need to be filled out to create an event. What makes the service particularly useful is its integration with high profile media sharing sites and a great mobile service that lets you send quick distributed messages to the rest of your party friends.

While MyPunchBowl was one of the first of these services to really embrace that people using these services share their party … Read more

Many folks might have experienced this at one time or another in high school or later on in college. That awkward time you had someone with whom you weren't really friends sign your yearbook. The result was usually the wonderfully vague "have a great summer!" written as speedily as possible. You might have even written the phrase yourself.

Later in life, this comes back to haunt us all, when co-workers we might not know very well get a group card for leaving, getting married, having children, etc. A virtual equivalent to such a card called SquidNote manages … Read more

Evite added mobile capabilities yesterday to speed up the party-planning process. Its QuickVite features let you send invitations in one step from an e-mail account or mobile phone, and handle RSVPs the same way. Of course, you can also juggle the details at Evite.com.

This could help to make managing a party less exhausting. Even picking a design for an online invitation can waste time, especially for a last-minute get together. For instance, Evite offers 57 templates for cocktail parties alone, not to mention options for dozens of events from anniversaries to weddings.

The painless sign-up process requires adding … Read more

Phonevite is a new free invitation and RSVP service that turns your Web browser into a personal assistant of sorts, letting you call a large group of friends, family, or contacts without having to spend all day on the phone. Instead Phonevite provides an asynchronous solution, giving you an easy way to record a personalized invitation message using your computer's microphone, and send it out to a list of hand-picked phone numbers. From there you can send out the "invitation" right away, or schedule it in for a later date.

When an invitation goes live, Phonevite will … Read more

There's yet another new invitation service emerging: Crusher. In many ways this service is the antithesis of MyPunchBowl, which we've recently covered. Crusher's design is super-clean and simple, and it doesn't have the over-the-top feature set of MyPunchBowl. We like MyPunchBowl. But we also like Crusher.

The site does the things you would expect from an invitation service: You can invite friends and track responses. You can use the service to find a good date for an event, too, if you've got some flexibility. It's clean and light and very Web 2.0.

What … Read more