How would you like to be able to make a postcard right on your phone and have it sent to a family member or friend, through the mail, for a very reasonable price?
With the Nokia Lumia family of smartphones and the Nokia 808 PureView having amazing cameras and stunning image quality, an app like Postcard on the Run is a fantastic way to send thoughtful wishes to friends and family.
To talk about Postcard On The Run, now available for the Nokia Lumia 900 and Lumia 710 and Symbian handsets alike, we had a chat with Josh Brooks, co-founder and CEO of the LA-based company.
Tell us about your company and what interested you about producing Postcard On The Run for Nokia.
Josh: We’re a seven-person company and we’re located in Los Angeles, California. We’ve been around for less than a year and I met the Nokia Developer Relations team at CES in Las Vegas in January of this year.
Nokia hit me as a company that is reaching out to developers for real. They’re building an ecosystem of developers that is tailored to making us successful. The Developer Relations guys at Nokia are truly amazing.
As for Nokia’s product line, when I first saw the 808 PureView, I couldn’t believe what I was holding in my hand. With the 808, Nokia is truly differentiating by offering an imaging device that absolutely blows everything out of the water. From the lens to the shutter to the accompanying software, the 808 PureView is revolutionary.
As an imaging startup, Nokia is the perfect hardware partner for us.
Also, I love how global Nokia’s footprint is. They offer us the ability to get to many markets and as an entrepreneur; this is important to me.
How was the process for developing your Windows Phone and Symbian apps?
Everything from planning to building and executing our application for Windows Phone was straightforward, though the approval process to get our app listed in the Marketplace took a little too long.
For our effort, we had one developer writing the app and we were amazed at how the Windows Phone interface is so clean and fun to work with. Personally, I’m a huge fan of live tiles.
Tell us about Postcard On The Run.
Josh: Our app is free and sending a postcard costs only costs $1.49 to a recipient in the United States and only $1.69 for sending it outside the US. That cost includes printing, posting, mailing and delivery.
If you want to add a scent to a postcard, we add on 50 cent. This is handy when you’re sending a postcard from say, Hawaii and you want to put coconut smell on the postcard for added affect.
The user interaction with the app goes like this:
- You can either snap a photo with the camera or grab one from the gallery or from Facebook.
- Then, you compose a message using the keyboard and digitally sign with you finger.
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The application will grab your phone’s current location and add a nice map or image of where you snapped the photo.
- Lastly, you can enter in the address of the recipient. If you don’t know the address or have it handy, we have a proprietary technology called Postal Gopher that will SMS or email the recipient and prompt them to enter in their address, then automatically inserts it into the Postcard app. It’s a really nice value-add for our customers that isn’t offered by our competitors.
Then, within a few days, your recipient will get their postcard in the mail with your awesome photo and personal message. You don’t have to find a post office box, get a stamp or anything – the Postcard On The Run app does it all.
Is there anything you want readers to know?
Our apps are available for Symbian and Lumia phones – the app is in Windows Marketplace and the Nokia Store and is absolutely free.
Exclusive discount. If you use the offer code NOKCON, the first 250 users will be able to send a free postcard. After the 250 uses are up, users will get a 20% discount on any order!
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