Le Chic Geek
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I’m really good at collecting postcards. Â No, not intentionally. Â I see postcards I think would be really great for someone and I…. never send them.
I have a Chihuly postcard my sister would love.  That’s why I bought it for her.  But it is currently sitting on my dresser and has been there for about a year.
Enter Postagram, where you can outsource the whole sending part of the postcard.
Instead of purchasing a postcard, take a photo on your cell phone. Â Load it into Postagram and they’ll turn it into a real, physical postcard and mail it to your loved one for $0.99 to US recipients and $1.99 for everywhere else.
The cool part is they can scan the QR code on the postcard and save the photo to their phone.  (Don’t worry, creepy disembodied hand not included with every shipment).
If the recipient wants to keep the photo but not the postcard, they pop out of the postcard. Â Sometimes Postagram will let you send branded postcards for free, so this makes being able to pop out the photo even more valuable. Â (For example, they had Hyatt House themed postcards, but once you popped the picture out, it was just a picture).
The one downside is, you are limited to a twitter-length message on the card despite all that space on it. Â So you cannot tell grandma all the wonderful things you saw–just that you are thinking of her. Â (Or if you aren’t thinking of her, just do her a favor and say you are). Â I read that this is changing soon though.
It will remember addresses, so it also saves the hassle of trying to located someone’s address on the go every time you send postcards.
My favorite part of this is that I can send photos to my grandmother very easily. Â My immediate family is on instagram for the most part and sees my trip photos food I’m eating, but she doesn’t have a computer or a cell phone.
Now I can “text” her photos of my fun trips and she can follow along.
I’m tempted to offer to send a certain number of readers a postcard, but it would probably either be a picture of my lunch or the Vegas skyline.
Postagram is available in the iTunes, Play, and Amazon stores.
The downside is not getting a postcard with a stamp and cancellation from the foreign place you were visiting – even if it is only Vegas. A handwritten note that maybe only says ‘Hot here, lots of fun’ that arrives after you’ve been back and shared you trip stories have so much more meaning , and are always worth the extra 10-15 minutes out of your trip.
This was my first thought! You can see pictures of all the places we travel easily online, but the stamps from foreign countries are often beautiful and interesting.
Of course, this is good if you want to send a photo with yourself or family or friends in the photo to document that you’ve been there.
That’s really true. For me, the stamp never makes it (or if it does, it ends up being a US stamp from me sending later!)
I have been using these for several years and also postcards by SimplyPostcards. For the most part they have been terrific for enabling me to send cards to my son in sleep-away camp where he does not have access to online photos or texts. They are also good to send to relatives who will put them on their fridge with a magnet.
With both companies, I loaded up by purchasing credits when they had sales, so the cards cost me much less than a buck each. By the end of camp each year, my son has a stack of cards from my wife and me, which he collects like trading cards.
I am upset with SimplyPostcards, though, because they just switched from standard heavy-weight postcard stock to a much thinner paper stock.
There a several other competitors. Just do a search for postcards on the App Store.
I went to school with the founder of this company, and I’m glad he’s found much success in this endeavor. Unfortunately, I send lots of postcards but rather dislike this as a service for my travels for reasons mentioned: no cancelled stamp (“proof”), no written message, the picture isn’t very postcard-like. It just feels less exciting to send or receive. That said, I think the service is a great way to send a personalized in other circumstances. For me, I’d say it fits a different market segment.
Now something I could really get behind would be a service that sent me postcards and stamps for the locations I was going to go before I went there. I know, I know: a market of one. But I cannot list how many times I’ve acquired either the stamp, or the postcard, but not both (or forgot my address list).