

Email to Postal - wyclif
http://www.email2postal.com/

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thorax
I signed up to try it out.

I actually think the convenience could be a huge win. I already see lots of
potential in the UI. Some thoughts I had:

1\. Bridging the gap between digital and analog is not a bad strategy if you
can bring all the advantages of digital along with it.

2\. Already their UI lets you queue up letters to send, schedule letters for
particular days, save drafts, etc.

3\. It could track more metadata in the digital world, i.e. all sorts of other
mechanisms like custom fields/notes to help you track these against customer
problem numbers or account numbers at a business. Automatically support using
a Google Doc, etc.

4\. I suppose an API to tie it into your own applications could be pretty
nifty. Especially if they get to the point of allowing businesses to get more
bulk mailing options that are much cheaper than $1 a letter.

5\. As I mentioned earlier, add support for a community of user-generated
content of greeting cards that can be voted/upvoted,

6\. Add support for viral/political/consumerist letter templates that can be
shared/embedded. Provide a link and let people pile onto a letter-writing
campaign. It might look like astroturf, but could allow people to at least
scribble an electronic signature.

Lots of potential here. Just need to follow through. I'll see how my first
letter looks.

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soundsop
The cost of credits is: _$10.00 - 10 credits, $20.00 - 22, $30.00 - 33, $40.00
- 45, and $100.00 - 110._

So the cheapest per-credit cost is at $40. And there is no price difference
between the $20, $30, and $100 options as they all give 10% more credits than
dollars.

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thorax
They have greeting cards, too. I think this service could do well if it
emphasized that.

Advice/Request: Can you add user-generated greeting cards like threadless does
for T-shirts?

If you do, I think your service will win. Thanks! Bye!

(not sure if the founder is reading this, of course)

~~~
wyclif
I'll make sure he sees this. I just sent him the link.

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RyanGWU82
I don't get it. When I need to mail a letter, why can't I just send it myself?

Hint: If there are some good usage scenarios, it would be good to explain them
on the home page. Customers evaluate new products by their benefits, not their
features.

~~~
staticshock
laziness, i assume. here's the steps i need to take in order to mail a letter:
(a) buy a printer/set it up (b) buy paper/envelopes (c) visit the posto office
with my sealed letter, so that they can tell me how much it will take to ship
it to some destination abroad (because how the hell would i know)

for something i do, maybe, once a year, that's a hell of a lot of work

and, no, i _don't_ own a printer. it's not useful in the general case. ditto
television. my toaster oven rocks the house, though.

~~~
ejs
The same way I am, I mail so rarely that I usually dont have any stamps, and
when I do they are usually the wrong amount (seems to change often). So I need
to spend the time to find the correct price, maybe go buy more stamps then
mail it. If I could just use a service like this I would probably do it.
Although when I do have to mail things I usually have to include things so its
a manual process anyway.

Maybe this is tailored to use for complain letters or threats that people
don't want coming from their geographically location...?

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wallflower
Earthclassmail.com does the reverse - it's for people living abroad who still
need access to postal mail

"Thousands of customers in over 130 countries are using our service right now.
They have their postal mail forwarded to one of our processing facilities,
instead of to an office or home address, and then they can view scanned images
of each envelope’s exterior (via a secure online account) and direct us
to..[open it+scan the contents/discard it/shred it]"

~~~
davidw
Interesting...and kind of scary. I think I'll keep relying on my parents for a
while yet:-)

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emal2postal
Thanks for the comments and all the good ideas - we'll revisit the font
complaint below and think through some of the other suggestions.

International goes online within the next few days, as does the ability to
include a photograph (4x6 glossy print).

Thanks for mentioning the unicode as well; we'll be sure to begin testing
that. As for pre-written and shared political letters, that's a great idea
we've been considering.

email2postal.com

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vikram
The indian post office has been doing this for over 10 years.

~~~
kirubakaran
<http://www.indiapost.gov.in/Netscape/epost.html>

(About 15 cents per page)

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nickb
Hey, it's sort of like Gmail Paper but it's not April 1st yet.

<http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html>

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tel
The non-parallelism in the name of this service is really a problem as far as
brand and influence goes, but I'm interested to see if the service is actually
useful.

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jdewey
An API-accessible variant: <http://www.postalmethods.com/>

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staticshock
interesting service that, i suspect, might actually find an audience. i, for
instance, wouldn't mind using it to communicate with some friends abroad.
speaking of which--i hope they print unicode okay?

~~~
aneesh
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't send mail abroad for just a dollar. And indeed
they serve "US Domestic, APO, FPO" ie within US, plus US military mail.

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kingkongrevenge
USPS.com already lets you upload or type in a document to send as hard copy
mail.

~~~
bayareaguy
Can you provide a specific link?

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bmaier
Its almost a parody of itself. Part of me wants to believe its in jest.

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bkrausz

        font-family: "lucida grande", "lucida sans", verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif;
    

Bad call on the font choice...

It's sad that the first thing I notice when visiting websites nowadays is the
usability/design of it

