
Postagram Transforms Any Instagram Into A Postcard And Delivers It For $0.99 - thankuz
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/12/postagram/
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a_m_kelly
This seems like a really good idea, except that for me, it destroys two of the
main reasons I send post cards when I travel:

* The physical mail is moving from where I am travelling to where the recipient is back home. It has to travel, just like I am.

* The best post cards are cramped with text.

* postmarks: (for me at least) you see where it was mailed from and when, additional ties to the time and place when it was written. A postmark from wherever the postagram warehouse is located isn't as interesting as the Paris mail exchange or the airmail stamp from Dehli.

seems to me like they've missed what gives value to postcards to me: their
timeliness & physical history. No one really looks at the picture anyway,
that's incidental, it's the message that's important.

I always put a _lot_ more than 140 characters on the back of a postcard. I put
more than 140 charters just into the "DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE" space on the
postcard. Postcards aren't about the picture, they're about sending a message
from a specific time and place, forward to a person in a different place.

So, this is a good idea, but won't replace actual postcards for me. I could
see using it for a number of other things, but I don't think this is in any
way "at least 1,000 times better" than a long, thoughtful note crammed onto
the back of some cheap cardstock you bought for a quarter at the beach. EDIT:
spelling.

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brezina
a_m_kelly - i'm the founder of Sincerely (creator of postagram)

I totally hear where you are coming from. We don't intend to replace old-
school postcards.

Instead, we think of postcards simply as a delivery mechanism for photos. We
are arbitraging the US postal service's subsidized delivery rates to get a
photo printed and delivered from an iphone. If we make it incredibly easy to
print and deliver a photo, we think it will create new photo sharing
behaviors. Part of it will be the canonical "here is a photo i took while
traveling" use case you mentioned. But I'm more interested in the "Brad -
thanks for inviting us on the ski trip" thank you card or simply sending a
photo of my niece to my parents & relatives.

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jerrya
Ya know, I am kicking myself for telling you this when you haven't hired me,
but the best part of my suggestion is that it makes YOUR trips to the Eiffel
Tower, to the Grand Canyon, to Maui, to Tokyo, to Niagara Falls completely tax
deductible as you work to sign up local vendors who will do the printing and
shipping and marketing at the local attraction for you.

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jerrya
And you probably can find actual vendors in those locations that can, at the
location from their streetcart or small shop take the photo emailed to you
(perhaps via QR code), print it out locally at their stand, and then they hand
it back to the customer along with the proper stamp, and the customer can
write anything they want on it, and drop it in the mail.

Hey, um, I have some free time this summer, happy to make those trips with
you....

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endlessvoid94
I'm really interested in the logistics for a service like this. In fact,
taking any kind of digital content and massively putting it offline is
fascinating to me.

Is there a 3rd party service you use to send data via an API and you get back
all the postcards? Do you do it yourself with an expensive printer?

I've had lots of ideas in the past similar to this, I never had the resources
to follow through. Interested!

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scraplab
I'm one of the co-founders of Newspaper Club
(<http://www.newspaperclub.com/>), so I've got a little bit of experience in
this area.

Honestly, there's nothing special to it. Pushing atoms around is hard work,
but there's thousands of years of technology designed for it.

It's boring legwork calling and visiting logistics companies, fulfilment
houses, and printers, trying to find the right combination of expertise,
location, attitude, and so on.

But it's also what most traditional manufacturing businesses do all day long -
us web folk have it easy. There's lots of people out there to help, but they
don't appear in Google.

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snewe
Great idea, but if you don't use instagram (i.e. share your photos with the
world) there is one alternative that I could find in 5 minutes of Googling:
shoot it!

<http://www.shootit.com/>

They appears to send it from the nearest country you are in.

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jerrya
I don't think so. Their play is on speed and reduced postage, not on coolness
of trip through the mail systems of the world:

From their faq:

"How can you deliver a card in Western Europe that fast? shoot it! has
established an international distributed print and mail network. This means
your card will print and mail the next business day from the country closest
to your recipient’s address. This is how we eliminate the need for
international postage and long transit times. Postcards destined to North
America print and mail from the U.S. Soon, you will be able to send shoot it!
postcards to Japan and South America. But again, you can send postcards "from"
anywhere day one! "

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famousactress
Awesome. I don't have anyone's address though. I assume I can use their email
and the service will send them a 'someone wants to send you a postcard, give
us your address email' ?

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brezina
unfortunately this app requires you to type in the physical address. But we do
save it, so you'll never have to again

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famousactress
Then consider the above a feature suggestion. I actually think this would help
you quite a bit. Here's why:

Using this app is an impulse decision. I'm three mimosas in and I _have_ to
send this to my friend who I have the inside joke with. Oh. No address. I
guess I can email my friend, wait a day or two for a reply.. then phone-copy
and phone-paste the address into your app, _and_ pay a buck.

I think it's enough of a momentum killer that it would be a good idea to
smooth out the process for the payer. The receiver has a post-card coming, so
I think there's plenty of motivation to enter an address.. especially if you
confirm to them who the sender of the postcard is, and assure them you won't
use it for evil.

Plus, you could build up a database of addresses to emails if you wanted, and
then receivers would only need to do this once. Seems like a win.

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jonah
I was approached about building a very similar postcard service last year.
They biggest issue I saw was this. We don't keep track of people's mailing
addresses any more. Do a thought experiment - how many of your friends or
family's addresses can you remember? How many do you have in your computer
address book? How many on Facebook? Very very few.

The first approach we came up with was exactly this - email the person
explaining we have a postcard for them and requesting their address. It's
probably the best solution.

One drawback is it kills the delight in a surprise postcard, though that is
offset somewhat by anticipation.

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famousactress
Totally, but there's a hidden win here. You'd only have to do this the _first_
time.. I'd let them keep my email-address-to-physical-address relationship if
it meant being surprised next time I get a post card.

If it works out, suddenly they're the source of truth on physical addresses..
or something close to it. Seems like a service and dataset that has leverage.

You know, but don't do anything evil with it!

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jonah
True. There could also be some kind of Xobni/Plaxo/etc. tie-in here to connect
email addresses or phone numbers to mailing addresses.

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kariatx
I seriously woke up in the middle of the night last night thinking how I need
to send my 84 year old grandma more postcards. This is so perfect for that.

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rokhayakebe
_The biggest photo service are the photos that are already on your phone_

This is one great piece of wisdom I frankly would not have shared.

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e03179
I would like to use this service from my Camera Roll, with or without
Instagram.

I guess I could go to Target or Walmart and print via Bluetooth from my iPhone
for pennies, write a note on the back of the picture, and then put a stamp on
the picture and send it to family/friends.

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btucker
I wonder if Polaroid will ever make a version of this that works with
AirPrint:

[http://www.amazon.com/Polaroid-CZA-20011B-Instant-Mobile-
Pri...](http://www.amazon.com/Polaroid-CZA-20011B-Instant-Mobile-
Printer/dp/B0019UGCLG)

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Tiktaalik
Easier than teaching your grandparents how to use a computer.

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jerrya
There is a similar service on Android, but I think much of the value of a
postcard is in the postmark, and the postmark is going to be 99 percent wrong
on these.

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PanMan
It seems, from the article, you are not using apple's in-app billing. How did
you get the app approved? I thought it was mandatory these days?

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Timothee
According to a tweet from Postagram is because the in-app billing is for in-
app stuff, and can't be used for physical stuff.

"apple won't let us sell physical products with their billing system"
<http://twitter.com/postagram/status/57912193940852737>

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plusbryan
That is correct. Apple does not currently allow in-app billing for physical
goods, but they also don't currently regulate physical goods purchases either.

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jtriest
just played with it.. really amazing...cheap too.

