The Other Half of Mail
July 24, 2008
Being able to send letters from your computer is great. But you still have to go down to your mailbox and pick up your incoming mail. Thankfully, there are several services willing to take care of that for you.
Earth Class Mail allows you to set up a mailing address at one of their facilities and direct your incoming mail there. They scan the mail and provide it to you online. If you need the actual letter, they handle forwarding that on to you. It really seems that this is something the USPS should do (and working with national postal systems is part of Earth Class Mail’s model).
Pixily is a new entrant. Rather than automatically handling your mail, they have you collect your documents and then re-mail them to their center. If you still want to receive your mail directly but would like to have someone else handle document scanning (for bills or other pieces you want saved), this is a great option. There are similar services like Shoeboxed which focus on receipts (as I glance nervously at the wad on receipts on the floor next to me).
Paper documents and mail still have a place, but for many of us, that place should be far away from our desks and offices. Postful lets you handle the outgoing side. These services let you handle the incoming. It’s a combination which allows you to stay connected across all formats while working in the way that’s best for you.
Downtime [UPDATED: 5:15 PDT]
July 20, 2008
Like many websites that utilize Amazon’s storage services, we’re experiencing some technical difficulties. Amazon is working on the problems and we expect a resolution soon.
In the meantime, the key thing to note is that none of your letters are lost. They are held and will be processed as soon as Amazon’s services are back online. Our system is designed to avoid losing messages in the event that even large portions of our service go down (no failover system is perfect, but this has been a high priority for us).
We’ll update here as soon as the situation changes.
UPDATE: Things seem to be back online. We’ll be monitoring closely to make sure this is a stable fix.
Ballmer’s Wrong, Print is Already Dead
June 6, 2008
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer predicted today that print will be dead in ten years.
There will be no media consumption left in ten years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.
Ballmer is off by at least ten years since at least the first part of this is true today. Whether the final output is screen or paper, there is no significant media left that isn’t “delivered over an IP network”. Print as a fundamental distribution medium is already dead.
Information is produced in whatever format is most convenient to the producer, moved into a digital network (open or closed), and output in whatever format is most useful to the consumer. But the final output is far less important than the intermediate phases of aggregation and distribution which are already entirely digital.
On the other hand, print as an output format is not going to be gone in ten years. Some people prefer print. Some situations make print a better solution. Sometimes print is just fun (candles are still sold, after all). As long as any of those are true, some media will still be delivered to consumers in print.
But all of that information and media will pass through digital networks before delivery. It already does. Companies that are looking for opportunities in the death of print have missed the point that as the fundamental distribution medium, it’s already dead. The change isn’t coming 10 years from now, or five, or even tomorrow. It’s already here.
Newspapers or magazines will continue their decline. Print as a whole will become less common even for output. But the details of that rate of change are incidental to the fundamental change has already taken place. Any company waiting ten years for this has already missed the point.
API Videos
June 4, 2008
Eric Lee of CounterPunch Software has posted some great videos on using the Postful API. Definitely worth checking out!
Web Integrated… Shirts?
June 4, 2008
As you know, here at Postful we’re big on digital/physical integration. ReadWriteWeb has an interesting article on Nota’s offering of what they call C-Shirts. These are shirts with scannable codes allowing anyone to view, edit, and order a copy if they see someone wearing a shirt that they like.
The key to this is the ubiquity of QR (Quick Response) codes in Japan. Nearly all Japanese cell-phones are built to read these. Posters have them as links to more information, ads have them, even vending machines and, now, clothes have them.
In the US, various barcode formats and systems have tried to replicate this. In print, there have been efforts to create both custom readers (CueCat) and proprietary barcode standards.
The alternative has simply been to include a raw url. Lately, print vendors have been pushing PURLs (personal urls), mainly for use in direct mail. But the difference between briefly pointing your phone at an ad and copying down a url for later entry is huge. Looking at the Japanese mobile market, you see the difference that an established, consistent format makes.
But whether through QR, RFID, or some other technology, we can expect to see this trend continue to mature in Japan and expand elsewhere. In print (whether on paper or on clothing) the capability is already here. For other physical products, it won’t be long. For all of us, it will be another step to bringing together our physical and digital spaces.
Conversations, Not Desktops
June 4, 2008
For the last few decades, the “desktop” metaphor has dominated computing. We treat information like paper documents, software as pencils, pens, staplers, all designed to fit a single human hand. That metaphor is eroding as we move towards web-based systems. While no new metaphor has yet replaced the desktop, the best candidates seem clustered around the concept of conversations.
This change is obvious in much of the online world. It’s a cliché to refer to blogs as conversations. Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and others are really only definable in terms of these new metaphors (what precisely would constitute a Facebook document or a Twitter desktop?).
Even the humble word processing document is adjusting to these new concepts. With online office suites, multiple users can work at the same time, link data into dynamic sources, and connect to external tools and outputs. Its no longer about the pile of papers (which may be odd coming from a company which produces precisely that).
Read the rest of this entry »
Digital Print is 1/3 of the Way There
May 31, 2008
Digital print technology is rapidly maturing. While drupa continues to demonstrate the huge range of existing print methods and technologies (and cool new ones), calling this the digital drupa is not an exaggeration.
Which makes it important to look at the three pieces needed for this transition to truly take hold.
- Digital presses and finishing equipment
- Software and processing
- Integration with digital information and sources
While the first (presses and equipment) is maturing, the other two have a long ways to go.
Read the rest of this entry »
Print Market Size
May 30, 2008
We’re still occasionally asked why get into print. Isn’t it a dead market?
Right now drupa is taking place (the world’s largest print conference, held once every four years). We’ll be talking more about some of the very cool innovations on display there later. But for now, let me just pass along one number provided by our friends at HP. They estimate that, in 2010, the value of printed pages in the global graphic arts market will be $663 billion.
Now, even if you think (as we do) that the total print market is destined to decline, the portion of the total originated through the web continues to grow at triple digit rates. With a total market of that size, a decline is simply an opportunity for firms ready to take advantage of the transformation.
Downtime Tonight
May 23, 2008
Postful will be briefly down tonight for a server upgrade. This is scheduled to begin on Saturday, May 24 at 0000 PDT (0700 GMT). We’re allocating 3 hours for this, although we expect it take far less than that.
[Update 5/24/08] We’re back up and everything is running smoothly again.
