I was recently invited to join the beta test for Postful, a service whose concept is so simple you might wonder why it hasn’t already been done — email you send to Postful is printed, stuffed into an envelope, stamped, and mailed to a physical address.   What’s the point?   While anyone reading this blog undoubtedly has an email address (or several), we all still have family & friends who, for one reason or another, don’t have email yet.   Postful hopes to help bridge this digital divide...

So, for 99¢, you can fire off an email (plain text, with attached photos, or even a multi-page PDF document) and it’ll arrive as a glossy, full-color, physical letter in Grandma’s mailbox.

Perhaps most interesting (and ironic) is that, while the Internet has nearly rendered the U.S.P.S. irrelevant, it is simultaneously playing a small part in keeping snail mail propped up on life support.

I see some distinct advantages to this, but Dede doesn’t believe there’s much use or need for such a service.   So, do you think it’s just wishful thinking, or will Postful actually be useful?

Labels: opinion, technology