back to article 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 …

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  1. g e
    Thumb Up

    Nice

    I like this idea a lot. Bit pricey but it is your own custom card though!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Pricey?

      Compared to buying a card and a stamp? Are you sure???

      add to that the time to get to a postbox and back and I think its positively cheap.

      now if you were abroad how much for the postage then?

      Superb idea I'm off to d/l the app now.

      1. dogged
        Thumb Down

        Data roaming charges

        have fun with those.

  2. Tom 7

    Nice?

    charging people to deliver someone's e-mail by hand?

    Sort of the worst of both worlds really.

    1. TheOtherJola
      WTF?

      ISWYDT

      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/

  3. Piers
    Joke

    But...

    ...does it say "sent from my iPhone" across the bottom of each one!

  4. swisstoni
    Unhappy

    Nice try but......

    Postcard to UK....99p

    Postcard to Europe.... £1.49

    The look on your face when you come back from holiday and see your data roaming bill.... priceless!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nothing that cant already be achieved..

    ...using MMS?

    Put sh*t out there and some mug will buy it.

    Put "i" infront for anything and "apple types" will buy it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      You forget

      It's for the iPhone. Given how they lack 3G video calls, I'm assuming that they lack MMS capabilities as well. At least, I sorta recall hearing laments about how the first two gens lack MMS capabilities. Not sure if that finally made it in with the 3rd gen.

  6. Bassey

    Sounds Brilliant

    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.

  7. Lloyd
    WTF?

    Um

    Didn't you neglect to add the £27.50 charge for using 4MB on roaming overseas?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      the truth in jest

      My network charges £6 per meg... so you are not far off the price there. I am talking world wide rates since i never really go to Euro-land.

  8. Chris Eaton
    Megaphone

    I always like these ideas

    O2 had this service but discontinued it a few years ago.

    The only problem I can see with this though is the data chrges as photos can be pretty large datawise

  9. Chris 211

    this will die

    This idea will die out when the older generation does. No self-respecting teen, 20s person would send a postcard, who needs all that carbon footprint?

    1. Bassey

      Re: this will die

      > No self-respecting teen, 20s person would send a postcard

      Right, so that just leaves everyone over the age of 29 then. A market limited to probably around 5bn people and due to expire in only 70 years or so. Media Studies graduate, are we?

    2. Tom 38
      Joke

      On the other hand

      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).

  10. Matt Tibbitt

    Vodafone were doing this years ago

    Vodafone Live offered a post card service for a while. It worked with an MMS and a structured text entry section.

    It was too expensive then, I suspect it's too expensive now.

    1. paulf
      Welcome

      I was just about to post this myself

      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!

    2. travismeboy

      I don't think you understand

      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...

  11. GettinSadda
    Alert

    Hidden cost

    "Processed through PayPal, a postcard sent to the UK costs 99p, and £1.49 when sent overseas."

    Plus £75 data roaming charge to upload the picture and send the message!

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    hmph

    *kicks self for not coming up with this idea for milking the iFanbois first*

  13. Stephen Moll

    I thought the whole point of a postcard...

    ...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.

  14. Stuart Baird
    Go

    Data Charges

    Roaming charges would really only affect you if you don't happen to stay in somewhere with free Wi-Fi - at least it's becoming more and more common for hotels and the like to provide it.

    Just wait until you're in for the night to send your card!

    1. Goat Jam

      @*^$#*)&%^ Hotels

      "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

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Agree about the data roaming costs being prohibitive...

    ...but come on, you lot are geeks. You're reading El Reg.

    Are you seriously choosing to stay in hotels on holiday that DON'T have wi-fi?

  16. McMoo
    Go

    Works fine :)

    I tried this a month or so ago - works fine. Not stunning quality, but not shabby either.

  17. Stuart Castle Silver badge

    This seems lazy..

    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.

  18. Ol'Peculier

    Wi-fi

    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...

  19. JaitcH
    Stop

    Anything associated with PAYPAL ...

    is a risk.

    They have a terrible complaint history with onerous "that's our money now" habits.

  20. Insane Reindeer
    Happy

    Touchnote

    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.

  21. Anonymous John

    Posible problem.

    If it's sent half way round the world electronically, how do they ensure it arrives well after the sender gets home?

  22. jerry 4
    FAIL

    Postmark= Picture + Letter + STAMP + POSTMARK

    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.

  23. Mike Forsyth

    Not on St Kilda it won't

    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...

  24. Select * From Handle
    Thumb Down

    Data Charges

    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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