Please Send me a Postcard

Hey, Welcome Back and Happy New Year. I am sorry for the lack of updates – a few things have been tugging at my attention which has kept me away. But I’m back with some new postcards and I will be banging the drum to get more. I have made another video [well spoke to the camera for a minute] which I hope is OK, as you will see I am still not great doing video, nor is it a great video. So – more postcards to be published and more to be received I hope.

As we are talking about travel and stuff, it would be wrong not to mention the Haiti Earthquake. I know you will have seen it everywhere but it wouldn’t be right if I did not at least link to the UK’s Disasters Emergency Committee that works on centralised fundraising and support for countries in crisis.

News Updates

Well, I am delighted to report we are now getting a good variety of postcards in, form the UK and across Europe. We have had two ‘non travel’ postcards (Socialist & Ewan) which are making me smile and we have our first piece of art going up tomorrow. The postal strike in the UK won’t help the site too much but in the grand scheme we are somewhat irrelevant to the problems of businesses and the postal workers themselves.

You may have noticed a new Facebook Fan Page box on the site, it is my first attempt at a fan page but should grow in time, if you would like to become a fan that would be great! I am also working on a Flickr account to widen the audience, that should be up early November.

For people on the go, I am adding a mobile plugin to the site which will make the site read better on iphones and the like, let me know if you try it.

Once we have more postcards, I plan to create some form of map ‘mashup’ to display the cards and their locations but I haven’t worked out how yet.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for sending in the postcards, keep them coming!

Jamie

News

Firstly, thanks to all of you who have responded positively to the idea, and have visited the site so far. The postcards are starting to trickle in and I am excitedly checking the post box every day to see where the new postcards are coming from. I hope the trickle will grow but all in good time.

I have added a few more additions to the site, most noticeably the voting button. If you would be kind enough to rate each postcard post we can start to see what is good and what is average. In time I would like to add in a vote for the postcard picture and the tip so we have two criteria. I need to play with the settings to work that out.

Second, I am about to trial some auto translation tools. I can add in the Google dynamic translate which will allow any visitor to translate on the fly but the first one I will trial actually caches the pages in different languages which hopefully means I can offer direct pages for our international visitors, Hungary, France, Russia and India so far this week.

If you do stop by it would be nice to know who you are (if you wish to share) as this is quite a personal project. I have added Google Friend Connect or Myblog on the right hand side if you roll with those services or leave a comment.

Thanks for reading, there is another postcard coming up shortly.

News

Hi, thanks for reading.

So, what is Please Send me a Postcard?

The concept is simple. I am asking you to send me a postcard from wherever you are, or whever you are going. On the postcard I am asking for one travel tip. This could be, “if you are in New Jersey, try the burgers at Janey’s” – really anything you want.

You then send it to me:

PSMAP
PO Box 906
Ipswich
IP1 9PP

I then receive your postcard, scan the front and write up the tip, sharing it with you all. If you wish to add a relevant link that would be useful for our readers, then please do. Note, however that I will check all links and won’t publish anything that is rude, offensive of no value or relevance.

If you wish to leave your name, I will credit it to you, using first names only.

And that’s it! If you wish me to let you know when your postcard is up add your co-ordinates (email, twitter, whatever) – I will not publish, share, rent or sell these details.

Why are you doing this?

I feel the art of postcard writing has been lost. It is quicker to text from the beach than send a postcard. I am just as guilty as the next person for not sending postcards. I thought this would be an interesting exercise to see if people will send me a postcard and from where. I sometimes daydream that we could get a postcard from every country in the world, or break the Guinness World Record for number of postcards [I don't know if there is one!] but those are just daydreams.

If we get enough postcards to make this interesting then I will be happy.

This is not a money making exercise, so you shouldn’t see much advertising on here. If the site takes off I may need a little to cover post costs and stuff but we will see. This site does not need to be commercial and I don’t want it to be.

Who is behind it?

Hi, I’m Jamie Riddell – I live in Suffolk, on the East Coast of England with my family. I have a succesful background in digital marketing and I am currently taking time to have some fun. You can read my other blog here, or my professional biography here. I am also on Twitter.

What’s the Catch?

There is no catch. This site will succeed only if I get enough postcards to make this interesting so I do need your help.

So.. please send me a postcard!

News postcard