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Cartolina Postale
New apps make it easy to mail a paper postcard from your smartphone.
No matter how high-tech you are, there’s still something special and sweetly old-fashioned about getting a “Wish you were here” paper postcard from a friend or family member who took the time to buy a stamp, scrawl a message and locate both your street address and a mailbox.
For a while, it seemed digital cameras and camera-equipped mobile devices would making carrier-delivered postcards obsolete. But now there are apps and websites that make it easy — and fun — to turn digital images into high-quality, personalized, and in some cases, scented postcards that arrive in the mail.
Here are few options:
Cartolina Postale
Cartolina is predominantly a paper greeting card company with an app that allows users to send text and e-mail messages with vintage imagery, but last month Cartolina Postale released an app that allows users to mail postcards that mix the company’s signature designs with their own pictures.
Cartolina Postale
Cartolina Postale
“It’s already become quite popular,” said Cartolina founder and creative director Fiona Richards. “You can put in a partial e-mail and the app will pull the mailing address from your contact list. You can also put an address list from your desktop onto our service provider’s website and the app can draw from there.”
Cost: The iPhone app is free. Printing and mailing: $1.99 to addresses in U.S., $2.99 elsewhere.
Postagram
Launched in April 2011 by Sincerely, Inc., Postagram allows users to turn a digital photo into a mailed postcard with a pop-out picture.
Postagram
“A printed photo sent in the mail is the simplest, least expensive and most ubiquitous and appreciated gift on the planet,” said Sincerely, Inc. CEO and co-founder Matt Brezina, who came up with the idea for Postagram while snapping photos with his iPhone along a highway in Maui. “I can’t think of anything else people would like to get from a friend and there’s nothing you can send across the world for this cheap a price.”
Over the holidays, Sincerely, Inc. introduced an app called Dotti. Users take a "roll" of 12 pictures on a mobile device, e-mail the roll in and in a few days receive a packet of high-quality prints in the mail. “You can review them before you send them for processing,” said Brezina. “And even though I’m a high-tech guy, I feel that in the future, there’s a better chance someone will look at the photos I have in a shoebox than those I have posted on Facebox, which may not be around.”
Cost: The iPhone and Android apps are free. Mailing a postcard anywhere is 99 cents.
Dotti: The app is free; $4.99 to develop and mail a ‘roll’ of 12 pictures.
Postcard on the Run
“No matter how old you are, everyone loves getting mail,” said Josh Brooks, CEO of Postcard on the Run. “As long as it’s not a bill or junk mail.”
Postcard on the Run
Brooks, who calls his digital photo-to-mailed postcard app a “utility convenience,” notes that there was a time when printing photos taken on vacation was just what you did. “Now you just email them or add them to Facebook or Twitter, and the memory from that fades in seconds.”
In addition to features that include the ability to add a signature to a card with your finger and a patent-pending service called Postal Gopher that tracks down a recipient’s street address by e-mailing them an alert message, in November Postcard on the Run began offering a unique option: Smell Mail.
Users can add a scratch ‘n smell coating in one of 11 different scents, including baby powder, chocolate, popcorn, bubble gum and holiday spice. There’s also Brooks’ favorite: Teen Spirit, which he said “smells like a mix of band sweat and skunk.”
Cost: The app is free. Mailing a postcard costs $0.99 to $1.69, depending on the number of postcards mailed. Smell Mail is an additional $0.50.
More on Travel Kit
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- Check out that rental car before driving off
Find more by Harriet Baskas on Stuck at The Airport.com and follow her on Twitter.
Leave a Comment:
I have been using Touchnote for quite a while. I can snap a picture on my phone, write a few lines to say hello, pick who to send the postcard to and hit send and my postcards are on the way to my friends and family!
Also check out SendPostcard This is a new app allowing you to send postcards from your iPhone. Their prices are very low. $0.59 to $0.99 each depending on the quantity you purchase.
Why?
It's just as "special" and "sweetly old-fashioned" as any other cookie-cutter, tree-killing piece of paper mass-printed by a faceless corporation.
We make an app called Halftone that uses the same service as Postagram to turn photos into vintage comic postcards.
I'm an old guy. I have never once sent a postcard to anyone from within North America. Why would I start now? It would be nice to be able to send a postcard from Tahiti or Paris, but the companies providing these apps don't mail from countries. Still, as the article says, it means so much more to people when they know how difficult it can be to find stamps and mail a postcard to someone. I did this last week from Mexico. The mailbox in the town I was in 'didn't work', but I found someone to mail the cards for me, a weekly run to the 'city' she makes to mail things. I know my postcards may be the only one on my friends' fridges. Other than the one they may have received from New York from a web company middleman.
I don't have a smartphone (and have no intentions of buying one), but I think this is a great idea for those who do have one. I love getting postcards from anywhere, even from places here in the United States. As one person who was quoted in the article said, "people love getting mail as long as it's not bills or junk mail."