Darwin was right.

So is Federov.

If you’re sending someone a card, whether physical or digital, the goal should be to trigger an emotion.

Isn’t that why we send cards?

If that’s not the reason, it’s just a selfish act on the sender’s part to communicate that they did remember the recipient’s birthday/graduation/Bat Mitzvah.

So if triggering an emotion is the goal, why do so many cards fail to do so? Between physical stores and e-card sites, there are tens of thousands of card options, yet maybe 1% are written well enough to trigger an emotion?

99% look something like this.

Really? Who sends cards like this?

(To be fair, I guess this card does trigger an emotion with me, but it’s not the desired one.)

Well in my never-ending quest to serve you, my brilliant and attractive Daily Sense readers, I have researched and found two sites to use to permanently upgrade your e-cards.

Someecards
This site is brilliant. The humor is often sarcastic and crass, something you would expect when one of the co-founders is a former writer for The Onion. Not all cards are safe to send to grandma, but it’s easy to find the perfect card to remind a friend or significant other of that inside joke or funny memory.

One of my favorite things about someecards.com is that users can customize their own cards and submit to the site. Leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds, The Editor’s Picks in the User Cards section are often some of the best.

Story People
This is the site of artist Brian Andreas. Story People is much more than e-cards. Brian has built a nice little empire out of his inspirational snippets and whimsical artwork. You can browse the entire collection, creating your own e-cards by combining any of the text with any of the images. You can also order the physical prints for framing and other products.

The Story People cards are often amazing and emotionally moving.

[The full "Hi, Mom" disclaimer: My mother originally introduced me to Story People and she's been a fan for a long time. As always, all credit goes to her.]

Use these two sites to save you from ever sending another forgettable e-card.

I’m sure there are more than just these two. What other sites have emotion-triggering e-cards?

There is a lot of friction in buying a new house. Agents. Lawyers. Notaries. More agents.

I recently helped design a social media campaign for a client. The campaign was less successful than it could have been because there was too much friction. The process to participate had too many hurdles and some people abandoned it before completing.

One of the most effective things to do to improve your business (not always the simplest but the most effective) is to remove as much friction as humanly possible.

Then remove a little more.

I know a lot of companies that ‘secret shop’ their competitors. Many should secret shop themselves first, with an open mind and a critical eye toward removing friction.

Mint.com beat Intuit’s Quickbooks because it was web-based, but they weren’t the first web-based money management system. A tool called Wesabe was around first. But to use Wesabe (back then), users had to download a .csv from their bank’s website and upload it to their Wesabe account. (I can’t fathom the meeting where that level of friction got approved.)

Friction killed Wesabe.

The lack of friction made Mint.com millions. $187m to be exact.

Netflix took share from Blockbuster by removing friction. With Blockbuster, you had to drive to the store. With Netflix, you just had to go to your mailbox. (Blockbuster quickly followed suit.)

Redbox is taking share from both by removing even more friction. With Redbox, you don’t need a mailbox or even an account.

Think of the amount of friction in a typical Verizon store. Now think of the lack of friction in an Apple store or a Chipotle or a Starbucks.

The simple act of not having to sign certain credit card transactions under $25 removes friction and saves both the retailer and the customer time, saving companies like McDonald’s and others millions of dollars.

Most airlines did a decent job of removing some friction with online check-in and handy touch-screen kiosks. Unfortunately, they stopped there.

Think of the loads of friction in a typical primary care doctor visit. My friend Jay Parkinson is completely reinventing health care delivery, and he’s doing so by removing friction from the process.

I can stop by my local dry-cleaner, leave my shirts on the front counter and smile and wave to the owner in the back. In three days, I come back and my shirts are clean with light starch.

If he can remove friction from his business, you can too, right?

One of the best websites in the world just got even better.

TED.com recently rolled out a “Best of the Web” section, designed to be a “one-stop portal to the very best talks on the Internet”.

You can view some of the early selections at the TED Talks page here. In the ‘Show by Event’ selector on the left, scroll down to the bottom to “Best of the Web”.

Martin Luther King Jr.: I Have a Dream
Steve Jobs: How to Live Before You Die
Michael Sandel: What is the Right Thing to Do?
Robert Sapolsky: The Uniqueness of Humans
and the famous “last lecture” of Randy Pausch.

Wisely, TED is crowdsourcing new content for the page from their intelligent and connected tribe. If you find video worthy of TED’s new page, email contact@ted.com with “Best of the Web suggestion” in the subject line, and a link to where the talk can be seen.

Thanks to Jimmy for pointing out this great video that he found on Tristan Walker’s blog.

My wish for Martin Luther King Jr. day is for all of us to have a dream. And act on it.

If you can’t see the video, click here.