Bridging 2 worlds

Hey guys,

I've always liked services or products that try to close the so-called digital divide between the people who use technology regularly and those who do not.

My dad is one who falls into the latter category. Ironically, he was in a Masters of Computer Science program at the University of Waterloo in the 1970's. This was well before Waterloo became a favorite recruiting ground for Microsoft. I faintly remember boxes and boxes of punch cards we had at home :)

Anyways, today my dad feels like that the Internet is too insecure, so he isn't online. That makes communication a bit of a burden between us.

I found something really interesting today that I think is going to help us talk, so I wanted to share it.

The service is called www.postful.com. After you sign up, you can send them an email with an address in the subject line (you can create favorites as well). When they get your email, they print it out and send a physical mail on your behalf.

They also have an API to allow you to integrate this into other applications as well.

Even if you don't have an Luddites in your family, this could be a really useful service. There are still times when you need to send a real mail message. If you're like most people I know, you don't usually have stamps and envelopes ready. Postful charges .99 cents for each message you send; that seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Thanks!

Eric.