{"id":1550,"date":"2009-06-20T06:58:30","date_gmt":"2009-06-20T11:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/?p=1550"},"modified":"2009-06-20T07:00:09","modified_gmt":"2009-06-20T12:00:09","slug":"postcards-an-iphone-app-idea-and-hazelmail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2009\/06\/20\/postcards-an-iphone-app-idea-and-hazelmail","title":{"rendered":"Postcards, an iPhone app idea, and HazelMail"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"First<\/a> A few months ago, I had this idea, that I shared with a few people, for a cool iPhone app. The idea was roughly:<\/p>\n

\nTake a photo. Use said app. Add a message. Pick an address (preferably out of your Address Book). And have it mailed out, without you having to look for a post office, a postcard or a stamp. And never have to worry about charges — it’ll just be billed via your account on file, either via PayPal or direct credit card debit.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem with this business model is that:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I need to work out printers – there must be local printers in various locations, typically of the destination.<\/li>\n
  2. I need to work out how postal services work, in general, and what’s the most profit-friendly option<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The margins, I figured, will be low. The application will either work via (roaming – one would assume) 3G\/EDGE, or a common WiFi network, which you tend to get pretty much everywhere these days. WiFi should be preferred, since you don’t want to be slapped with a large roaming data bill. \"The<\/a><\/p>\n

    Anyway, I purchased the iPhone 3.0 SDK about a month back<\/a>, and started hacking. Finding a name was going to be interesting, since apps like iPostCard, already existed. Ha! Names are so important, I think.<\/p>\n

    Today, I read about how to Turn your iPhone photos into postcards with HazelMail<\/a>. HazelMail<\/a> does exactly what I was planning to do. They’ve worked out all the business aspects, too, and charge your account with HazelBucks (so 1 postcard = USD$1 basically).<\/p>\n

    The only problem I can see with this whole idea (HazelMail’s and mine)? Stamp collectors. Some people love stamps from foreign lands, and that is part of the appeal, of receiving a postcard. However, I don’t know that many stamp collectors these days, and I do want to send postcards, so this was really, just trying to scratch an itch, and I’m glad that HazelMail has done so. Time to give it a try, and work on my next app idea ;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A few months ago, I had this idea, that I shared with a few people, for a cool iPhone app. The idea was roughly: Take a photo. Use said app. Add a message. Pick an address (preferably out of your Address Book). And have it mailed out, without you having to look for a post […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[983,311,984,438],"class_list":["post-1550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-hazelmail","tag-iphone","tag-postcard","tag-rawideabin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4vJD-p0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1550"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1552,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions\/1552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}