

Show HN: SendWrite.com - your email just got physical - colevscode
http://sendwrite.com

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win_ini
Be more upfront about the cost - I knew it was coming...I got the activate
email link, still no mention of price - but I see you're alluding to
something....stationary. After registering (3 steps) then I see - $4.99. I
wrote a note to my mom. I prefer to skype with her for free. Put some use
cases in your initial email - (ie: Interview follow ups, etc) for what your
service might be used for.

It also wasn't clear where you deliver to....I wasn't sure if Canada would
work.

By the way - the logout button is in a most unfortunate position when you are
going through registration. I clicked logout rather than the BIG HUGE submit
button because it was placed where I am used to the submit button normally
being placed. Why would someone logout during registration? And it seems you
needed to make this button BIG so people would see it (perhaps because others
were doing the same thing as me?). Why not just cave, and put the submit
button where it belongs and get rid of the logout button till i'm in the app?

~~~
colevscode
I hear you. More cost transparency. I'll get it up on the front page asap.
Thanks.

Right now I'm only delivering in the US.

I'll take a look at the submit/logout issue. Thanks again.

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openczun
This opens up the door to some pretty nice automation.

You know, the kind that makes me look like less of a negligent
husband/father/son/friend/uncle/etc...

(startups take their toll in many ways)

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rodgerton
90% of my affection for a letter is for being handwritten, not merely physical
(and printed).

~~~
ubi
Can Task Rabbits send letters? May be an interesting option.

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jmtame
I was a beta tester, and I sent my mom a card using SendWrite. She just told
me she got it and that it was the single best thing she received this year =]

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grok2
This type of service used to be popular among expats from India at one point
when Internet service in India was not as wide-spread. For some reason most of
the companies providing this type of service died out (the government run
Indian postal service still seems to provide such a service though). Maybe
there is some lesson to be learned from why a lot of these companies failed?

~~~
alexholehouse
I'd argue that the use case was different (judging purely by what you've said,
so correct me if I'm wrong). In the Indian expat community, this was providing
"the" means to easily contact people (as opposed to positing a letter from
somewhere else around the world), but clearly as internet connectivity
appeared this turned out to be a lot easier than a middle man. As an aside,
bizarrely, I was looking at India's internet and connectivity growth earlier
today - it's a mad world!

SendWrite is (as far as I can tell) not pretending it's the only way to
contact someone, more it's allowing "physicalization" of your digital message,
maybe where this is necessary (such as older businesses that haven't fully
adopted the webz), but perhaps more just where getting/sending a letter is
nice, because frankly, people like stuff they can touch. I'd imagine thank you
notes, and things of that nature would be perfect.

~~~
grok2
You are right in that contacting people was easier via the postal service that
via the Internet.

BTW, my intent was not to discourage sendwrite.com, but to see if any lesson
can be learned from the earlier attempts and avoid those issues. One of the
issues I can see is charging small amounts (micro-transactions) for occasional
use...it seems like it would be hard to make money that way. But I can see
them doing well if they provide choices of stationery, providing a hard-
written service, etc for a monthly subscription for people who do have a
constant need for such services.

~~~
alexholehouse
Yeah totally, I'd say people would almost welcome a subscription service -
invariably this kind of thing is something you "should" do, and SendWrite just
makes that easier. A subscription might make people use it more, as it adds a
financial incentive to "get your money's worth", like paying for a gym is
often the incentive people need to actually make them go.

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sologoub
This made me thing of a possible use case you could monetize - sending "Thank
you" notes post interview. This is something that I always forget to do,
although the last 2 times I interviewed I got the job anyways :)

An FAQ would be nice, otherwise it's a bit scary just emailing you a street
address...

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skrebbel
Feedback: only after step 3 of the signup process I discover that "The
Netherlands" isn't in your list of states.

Of course I should've seen that coming, given how early launch this is and the
cost of overseas mail, but still it's a late anticlimax.

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dangero
I find myself really bothered by the fact that you would be reading all the
messages. Granted I realize that in order to stuff the letters manually you
would be able to see them if you wanted to, but the fact that you have to
search each message for the address and then remove the address from the
message seems very human meaning you're at minimum skimming every message. I
would much prefer some other method like a web form that included a separate
box for address and the message itself.

I too would be interested in an API for this in combination with some kind of
developer pricing model.

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dongle
I also sent a card to my mom. Next I'm going to send a card to some people who
hosted me while I visited Canada. The difference between this and postcards
(and postagrams) is that I can remember to use sendwrite.

Feature request: scheduled emails to remind me to send a card to a person. I
can simply reply to the email to send the card. I'd definitely send monthly
cards to various members of my family, or a long-distance sweetie, or what
have you.

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iamgoat
I wonder if there would be any money in having a free option that includes
third-party advertising in the envelope. May need to limit the number of free
sends per person over a period of time.

I'd be interested in knowing what type of messages people would send with the
free method vs paid. You wouldn't send a birthday/congratulations note with
ads, but maybe something witty/humorous to a friend. A semi-physical poke, as
lame as it sounds.

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eugenejen
I remember my old boss Bob Wyman said in 80's when Digital Equipment
Corporation got connected to ARPANET. Because only few in the world then has
email addresses, so one guy wrote a program that print out emails with snail
mail address in first paragraph on typewriters and let mailmen deliver
printouts.

Everything new was once old again.

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kabir_h
I thought about this recently, but because I need to send mail to a few
government offices, and to my university for my transcripts. Both have to be
done in paper, but I'd love to upload a PDF, add an address and be done with
it. I'd try to market this to legal offices as a time saver.

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rolleiflex
Thanks, you just saved me from a chore. although I've bought three mails, I
have one I had to send, I am happy to pay $5 to send one. Make it so that I
can upload PDF's or choose paper stock, I, and probably many other designers
will be waiting in line for your service.

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eekfuh
Reminds me of this really old website <http://postagram.com/> that does the
same for $1.00 -- note the site is ugly and mails really ugly letters in an
untimely fashion, however it is somewhat usable.

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vangale
Will there be an API? I can think of a few services that could integrate with
this nicely.

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mattdeboard
I'll pay for this. I would pay an annual or (small) monthly fee for this.

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angryasian
are you doing all of these manually, I looked around but didn't see that you
require the message and address in any particular format ? So how are you
programmaticly parsing the incoming emails ?

~~~
colevscode
Right now its partially automated. I get a message if my algorithm can't
figure it out.

~~~
mattdeboard
Why not just a separate field for the address?

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dorkitude
This is intriguing.

How do you pay for it? (Do we, the users?)

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flarg
Compuserve used to do this; it got old quickly; but good luck!

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CoryMathews
Maybe I am missing something.. but, where does one register?

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duncantuna
hmm .. click2mail.com, email2postal.com, and postalmethods.com seem to have
had the same idea.

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dongle
Transmedia reification.

~~~
jonnytran
If only I had a service that did it the other way around. i.e. snail mail =>
email. Besides getting rid of the annoyance of having to physically throw away
junk mail, I could get spam filtering on so I'd never even see it.

