On Christmas Day, most of us pick up the phone and give our friends and family a seasonal greeting.
But for people in remote locations, sending a festive message is not always an easy thing to do.
Twenty years ago, the only options were a crackly long distance call or a letter sent six weeks early.
Today, advances in technology mean that even if you are in the middle of the ocean, or half way up a glacier, there is always a way to send a message home.
So rather than making a good excuse as to why this year's Christmas card did not arrive on time, here are some of the technological solutions on offer:
E-MAIL: For many, this is the cheapest and easiest choice. Electronic mail covers the entire spectrum, from basic text message, through to sound and movie files.
As long as you have got an internet connection and a means of getting online, then an electronic season's greeting can be sent with just a few clicks of a button.
SMS / TEXT MESSAGE: Short Message Service's - or SMS's - are almost as versatile as e-mails, enabling users to send photos and short video clips, as well as traditional text messages.
The popularity of the service has skyrocketed in recent years. According to the Mobile Data Association, more than 1.4 billion texts were sent in the UK every week in 2008, which is more than the entire number of texts sent in 1999.
According to data from the Mobile Data Association, from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day last year, 6,466,506 video and picture messages were sent.
VOIP: Internet telephony aka VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol to give it its full name) is a way of transmitting voice communications over the web.
Although the first communication of someone's voice over the internet happened in the early 1970s, it wasn't until the late 1990s - when internet speeds rose from an average of 300 bits per second (bps) to 56 kilobits per second (kbps) - that it became a viable proposition.
Today, with a typical internet connection typically running at 3,000 kbps, you can now not only send speech over the net, you can send video too.
What's more, you can often use your VOIP package to dial into a public switched telephone network (PSTN), meaning you can make a call anywhere there is an internet connection, with only a minimal charge made by an Internet Telephony Service Provider.
However, unlike PSTN networks, quality can often be hit and miss and due to frequent distortion and delay, using VOIP to send a fax is very difficult.
SMS is available anywhere there is a regular cellular network, although unlike e-mail, users have to pay for every message sent.
IM: Instant Messaging is a way of sending text messages (and in some cases, images) in real time across the internet.
Chat - or IMing - allows users to have a conversation between two or more people, or to send pending messages to a user, who will then get the message when they log in. Think of it as hybrid of e-mail and SMS in real time.
BLOGS & SOCIAL NETWORKS: For some, constant or regular access to the internet is impossible. One solution is either writing a blog or sending a electronic greeting through a social network site, such as MySpace or Facebook.
It does mean you can send a global message to everyone you know, although they often lack that personal touch.
Source BBC.co.uk
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