Postcard App has stamps licked Postcards that take longer to return from holiday than the sender are a pain for those of us who observe the age-old tradition of holiday hellos. Postcard App Not to worry. eCard Media, a firm based in Devon, has the solution. The Postcards App, a free download, allows holiday makers to create their own postcards through an …
Unfortunately it was wrong.
This is for a physical actual post card. Remember the only method of written communication before the interwebs and email came along?
Well, what happens is a physical bit of card (which costs money) has some ink put on it (which costs money) and is dropped in a postbox which gets put on a van (which costs money) and some bloke walks around and puts it through doors in your street (which costs money).
If you're unsure about this, I have selected an educational video which describes how communication used to be, before we had electricity.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/postmanpat/
I think the cost is quite reasonable. Postcards cost, what, 30p? Then a foreign stamp to send it home. It could easily cost you more than a pound. Mentioned it in the office and everyone thought it was an excellent idea. I can see stamp collectors being a little disappointed though.
Young people tend to know older people.
Older people like to get postcards
The carbon footprint of sending a postcard from Devon to elsewhere in the UK is tiny compared to the carbon footprint of sending it from Bogota
and much much much more to the point..
The carbon footprint of going to Bogota vastly outweighs the carbon footprint of a bloody postcard.
I like the idea, although why does it use bloody paypal? We already have in-app purchases linked to itunes accounts..
Also, if you have a jesus phone and can't find a single wifi signal in your holiday hotspot, well, you're just not trying hard enough. If you can get free wifi in Macchu Picchu, you can get it anywhere (fnar fnar).
I remember it too - my SE k800i (with Vodafone software build) has the stuff in it to send pictures from the phone as a postcard. I only put my head above the parapet once to try it, and it didn't work. An auto refund had already been credited to my account when I called up Voda CS to moan. Excellent idea, but 1. they should have made much more of it on the phone - I bet most people didn't even know it existed!; and 2. I' m not sure it was that reliable. But a quid plus MMS charge of 36p all in for a custom postcard? I, for one, welcome, and so forth!
Err... it's a postcard guys.
Not an email.
Not a text.
Not an MMS.
Its a real physical rectangle of card with a stamp on it that they post for you.
It has a picture on one side (that you took with your phone) and your message printed on the reverse.
You would send it to your gran or auntie so she can stick it on the fridge and show it to Ken when he pops round with the garden shears he borrowed from her last week. 'Oh, Ken look what our Steve sent. It's a postcard of him and Jackie on a camel. Hasn't Jackie put on weight...."
etc...
...was that it arrived from the place where the sender is having their holiday, and arrives with a stamp and postmark of the same place.
I don't know, somehow I think I would feel a little cheated at receiving a postcard, from somebody staying somewhere nice and sunny, that had a Royal Mail stamp and postmark on it.
When I send 'electronic' messages from abroad, I simply use email, I can still send the pictures (in fact more than one in a message), I can still send a personal note. I also send a proper postcard too, in the full expectation that I will probably arrive back in the UK before it does.
"it's becoming more and more common for hotels and the like to provide it."
Have you *seen* the prices they charge for in room internet?
They have extremely "popular pricing" they do. Just like their minibars and those godawful, grainy movies-on-demand piped through to a shiny new but horribly elcheapo widescreen telly with a totally borked aspect ratio configuration?.
16:9 aspect ratio? What's that?
God I hate hotels
I know this will probably sound pathetic, but all these online card/postcard services seem lazy to me. If I receive a birthday card (from a shop) from certain members of my family (not all, admittedly), I know they have spent hours looking for it. They've made the effort to go and get it, then made the effort to write it out, and post it.
As such, it feels a little more special. If I get a card from one of these online services, what have they done? Turned on their computer (which if their house is anything like mine was probably on anyway), gone to a website, clicked on a link, typed some text, clicked on a button and entered their credit card details. In short, it feels like they haven't bothered.
I think I would get the same feeling if I got one of these postcards.
Indeed, I've recently come back from a couple of weeks away and out of the six airports I used, only one did not have free WiFi (Heathrow, naturally...). Even the waterfront at Stanley, Hong Kong had full access.
And still waiting for the postcards to arrive at the office and my local boozer...
I can't understand why you chose to highlight this application when Touchnote is so much better. No, the initial application is not free, but just buy a couple of packs before you go on holiday and you are sorted. I also like Touchnote's inclusion of a little Google Map image on the back of the card showing exactly where the picture was taken. And it's integration with my phones address book is fantastic.
Yes, of course there is still the issue of the cost of actually uploading the picture and the details while abroad, but we all know that.
Oh, hang on, iPhone, right, well, I guess there must be an iPhone application, given that I have been using it on my N85 for 18 months or so now.
I have the Android app and never use it. It's a very nice idea, but a Postcard needs a local stamp and a local postmark.
A postmark from some other place, and no stamp, renders this useless.
More fun on Android is "Retro camera" + an app like PicSay that lets you easily writes short messages on photos and then send that.
But there is still the problem of roaming data in the absense of wifi.
Needs WIFI or a network data connection neither of which were on St Kilda in the Atlantic west of the Outer Hebrides - so i used the National Trust chappie to send a postcard of a puffin with the St Kilda stamp - which of course arrived after I got back. Sometimes the technology just can't hack it...
for this i will use o2 to explain. cos i dont know the data charges for other phone companies but im asuming they will be similar.
with o2 the data charges are:
£3 per MB used in the EU.
and
£6 per MB used out of the EU.
photos taken can be anything upto 10mb possibly more, depending on what ress your camera is set to. and lets face it we would all want to take the most clearest, awsome picture to send as a postcard.
i will use 3MB for this explaination.
3x£3 =£9
£9+99p= £9.99
£9.99 for a postcard in EU
3x£6= £18
£18+£1.49= £19.49
£19.49 for a postcard out of EU
So if you use this app find a WiFi spot. if you cant find one you maybe spanked for charges.
you maybe spanked for charges anyway if you are going to use a smartphone abroad.
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