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Facebook will send postcards to verify US election ad buyers
Facebook has a new yet very old solution to fighting Russian manipulation attempts during future US elections: conventional mail. Global policy program director Katie Harbath has revealed that the social network will send postcards to verify the identities and locations of anyone hoping to buy ads related to federal-level candidates. Recipients will have to enter a code on the postcard to prove that they are, in fact, living in the US. The requirement won't apply to state-level candidates or ads based around issues.
Postcard on the Run giveaway: discounts, free postcard packs and a personal card from Selena Gomez!
Selena Gomez, Postcard on the Run, and TUAW have teamed up for an awesome promotion for all our readers, as well as the chance to win some pretty sweet prizes to boot. Postcard on the Run is an iOS and Android app that allows you to bring a physical touch to your digital memories by letting you turn any image on your iOS device into a physical postcard that can be mailed by the postal service to anyone, anywhere in the world. Besides being a great app, Postcard on the Run has some serious star power behind it with investor and creative advisor Selena Gomez. You can check out my review of Postcard on the Run here and read my interview with Selena here. Then be sure to leave a comment in this post to enter the prize giveaways. Just what are those prizes? A little something for everyone. Everyone reading this post can use the promo code "TUAWSG" when ordering postcards through Postcard on the Run. All you need to do is download the free app, then enter the code after you've customized your postcard and are ready to check out. The promo code is worth 30% off your order. The code is good until January 15th, 2012. 10 First Prizes: We're also giving away codes for 10-postcard packs to ten lucky readers. Each prize gives a single winner a code for ten free postcards they can create and mail for free through the Postcard on the Run app. Grand Prize: One lucky winner will receive a personal postcard from Selena Gomez. The winner will be the envy of her 25 million Facebook fans and 9.1 million Twitter followers. And chances are it will be the coolest postcard you've ever received. So, want to win 10 free Postcard on the Run postcards or a postcard from Selena Gomez herself? Here are the rules: Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older. To enter simply leave a comment on this post. The comment must be left before Thursday, December 29, 2011, 11:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time. You may enter only once. Ten First Prize winners will be selected in a random drawing. Each winner will receive one Postcard on the Run promo code good for ten free postcards (Total Value: Up to US$19.99 per winner). One Grand Prize winner will be selected in a random drawing. Winner will receive one personal postcard from Selena Gomez. Click Here for complete Official Rules. Winners will be contacted by email after the conclusion of the drawing. Now leave your comment below and good luck!
Daily iPhone App: Postcard on the Run
I've traveled to over 30 countries since 2009, and today I wish I had brought Postcard on the Run with me. I've been using the app for the last few weeks and have become infinitely fond of it. Postcard on the Run lets you take a picture on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad and turn it into a postcard that can be instantly snail-mailed to anyone in the world. I know, I know; that sounds suspiciously like an app by a certain company in Cupertino. But Postcard on the Run succeeds where Apple's Cards app consistently falls short. It's fun, it's uncomplicated, and it's even kinda kooky. When you launch the app, you're asked to select a photo to use as your postcard image. You can choose to either take a new photo, use an existing photo from your camera roll, or choose any photo you've posted to Facebook. That Facebook integration alone makes the app more useful than its closest competitor. Once you've chosen a photograph, you can zoom in or out of it and position it as you please. From there, write a short message of up to 200 characters, and choose your font and color. The next screen is particularly cool, as it lets you sign your name with your finger (or even draw little doodles on the card itself), which adds a level of personalization that you don't find in other apps. What's really nice about the app is it offers you some unique tools and lets you apply some unique features to your postcards to make them more memorable. The most handy tool is called "Postal Gopher." If you choose a recipient from your address book whose address you don't have, the Postal Gopher feature will send a text or email to that individual requesting their address. When they reply, their address will instantly be added to your saved postcard order, which will then be automatically processed and sent. Another nice feature is the ability to add a GPS photo map right onto the back of the postcard, particularly handy if you take pictures of lots of things you see when out and about. For instance, I can snap a picture of a cool, old bookstore in Germany to use as the postcard and the recipient can see right where I took the photo. But perhaps the most fun element is the ability to add smells to your postcard. Using the appropriately-named "Smell Mail" feature, users can choose to add one of eleven scratch and sniff scents to their postcards. It's an old throwback to the time when scratch and sniff was "high-tech." But that's really the point of Postcard on the Run: With the digital world moving so fast, receiving another quickly written email isn't that meaningful anymore. If you don't agree, just ask your mother (or mine). She'd much rather get a letter or postcard from me while I'm on my travels than an email. And even in this instant-everything, living-behind-a-touchscreen world, it's still really nice to have a physical memory that you can thumbtack onto your wall or hang on your 'fridge. The quality of the postcards is also top notch, with the same glossy goodness that you'd expect from any you'd find in a souvenir shop. I've already sent several holiday greetings to friends around the country using them. Each postcard costs between US$0.99 and $1.69, including postage. It's only another 50 cents if you add a Smell Mail scent to it as well. Check out the gallery below, where you'll find more samples of the postcards plus also screenshots of the app. Finally, those of you with keen eyes might notice that some of the postcards in the gallery are addressed to singer and actress Selena Gomez. That's because she's involved with the creative direction of the app, and those are some duplicates of postcards she liked that were sent to her from fans, which she was kind enough to share with me. If you're among the millions of her fans be sure to check back Friday for my exclusive interview with Selena about her involvement with the app, and keep an eye out for a sweet promotion and giveaway from Selena, Postcard on the Run, and TUAW in the very near future. Postcard on the Run is a free download and the perfect app for sending a little holiday love. %Gallery-142245%
Postagram creates postcards from Instagram photos
We've been fans of Instagram for a while, so we were keen to see what would happen when its developers opened Instagram's API to others. While there have been a few toe-in-the-water experiments, the first really interesting idea we've seen is Postagram. The service allows you to turn any Instagram image into a 300 dpi postcard for just US$0.99, posted to anywhere in the world. It'll be delivered within 2-5 days in the USA and will take a bit longer to get elsewhere. Sounds like a bargain. Download the app now and give it a try if you already have Instagram installed. Postagram has a special launch offer that gives you your first postcard for free. Perfect for sending real postcards to your parents and anyone who isn't quite up there with you on the cutting edge of e-postcard delivery this summer.
TUAW review and giveaway: Bill Atkinson PhotoCard for iPhone
When it comes to famous names in the Apple pantheon, Bill Atkinson ranks very high in the list. The brains behind MacPaint, HyperCard, the Mac OS menu bar, and a host of other innovative software applications has been a professional nature photographer since 1996, but now he's melded his development mojo with photography and released his very first iPhone app, Bill Atkinson PhotoCard for iPhone. At first glance, the US$4.99 app looks like yet another postcard app for the iPhone. But when you actually start looking at the details of PhotoCard, you realize that it's much, much more. To start with, the app comes with 150 of Atkinson's fabulous nature photographs that can be used in the creation of postcards. That takes care of the front of the postcard, but what about the back? Like many of the apps of this genre, PhotoCard has a space for typing in a message to the recipient. It ups the ante with 150 stamps to add to your card (more on these later). There are also 325 little stickers that can be added to the back of your card. Once the card is ready to send, you have your choice of either sending it to the recipient via email or having the card printed on an HP Indigo digital press and then sent through snail mail.
EVE Evolved: Postcards from EVE: Reader Submissions
As a tribute to EON Magazine's "Postcards from the Edge" feature, last week I started this two-part series of postcards from all around EVE Online. In last week's first part I presented a gallery full of postcards from my own travels in EVE. I then asked readers to email in any of their own screenshots that they wanted to appear as postcards. This week, I finish the series with a mixture of reader submissions and my own remaining postcards. As with last week, they're all high-resolution shots suitable to be used as widescreen backgrounds. Feel free to save them out from your browser to get them at full resolution. Thanks go to Massively readers "Mike", "Mark Pittam" and my corpmate "Retalus" for their submissions. Included are some shots of the new planets coming with the Dominion expansion in December and a lot of pictures from Sleeper space. Hope you enjoy! %Gallery-76973%
EVE Evolved: Postcards from EVE: Wish you were here!
Whether you love EVE Online or hate it, there's one thing people tend to agree on - it makes for some great screenshots. EVE has a history of players producing some amazing videos, screenshots, artwork and fiction. YouTube is filled with intense PvP action videos and over four hundred players write the stories of their travels on personal blogs. People have even created some incredible papercraft ship models. Because we all love eye candy, screenshots from EVE even make a regular appearance in Krystalle's daily MMO screenshot column "One Shots".EVE's Official magazine EON runs a regular feature called "Postcards from the Edge" where players write in with a screenshot and a short story about it. As a tribute to EON, who I wrote for before coming to Massively, this week and next I present galleries full of postcards from my own travels in EVE. They're all high-resolution shots suitable to be used as widescreen backgrounds, feel free to save them out from your browser to get them at full resolution. %Gallery-76482% Do you have a particularly awesome screenshot you'd like to see as a postcard? Email it to me at brendan.drain AT weblogsinc DOT com along with a few words describing its contents and I'll make it into a nice postcard for next week's second part of this gallery piece.
Nvidia offering up a chance to go to BlizzCon
The chances to head off to BlizzCon are coming fast nowadays -- Nvidia is the latest company in on the race, as they're offering up an all expenses paid trip to Anaheim in August for the winner and a guest to experience Blizzard's big show. To enter, they say you have to buy a qualifying Nvidia card, and then use the promo code inside the package to enter. Which might make you think, as we did, that it's a pretty lousy deal -- you have to buy a new graphics card just for a chance to win? But their official rules say "no purchase necessary," So we did the work for you: if you want to enter without buying a card, you have to send a letter or postcard to "NVIDIA "BlizzCon 2009" Sweepstakes – Entries by Mail (USA & Canada), NVIDIA Corporation, 2701 San Tomas Expressway, Santa Clara, CA 95050, U.S.A," and include your full name, your email address, mailing addresses, your telephone number, and "a short paragraph (100 to 250 words), written or typed in English, stating why you like or have an interest in the 'World of Warcraft' game or Nvidia or its products."Not exactly a lot of fun, but then again, it's cheaper than buying a new graphics card, and their rules say that mail-in entries have the same chance at winning that the coupon codes do. We're behind you, readers -- we hope you win.And if you do make it to BlizzCon, keep an eye out for WoW.com -- we're gonna have a nice big shindig on Thursday night (location still TBA, but soon!), and we'd love for you to be there.
First Look: Postman adds social networking to the iPhone ecards mix
In the ecosystem of the App Store, the postcard-sending app occupies a healthy niche; about two pagefuls -- 60 apps -- show up in the store, for a category weighting of 0.125 flatulans. The flatulan, of course, is the unit of measurement of App Store penetration, equaling the 480 individual apps that include the word 'fart' somewhere in their description. Among those postcard apps, there are several standouts for virtual cards (ADA winner Postage, for example) and even a few that let you send physical postcards for a small fee (TapTapCards, goPostal and Postino). With Postman (iTunes link/website), released today by Freeverse and Taptivate for $0.99 for iPhone OS 3.0 devices, the postcard-sending app category gets a social media boost. Postman lets you deliver your two-sided ecards (yes, the app gives you the option of simulating the back of a traditional postcard, complete with stamp graphic) via Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, email, or simple upload to the postmanapp.com website for public review. You can already track several tweeted postcards (some which probably should never have been sent.) You can also simply save your postcards to the photo roll on the device. Creating postcards with Postman is fast and easy; all the controls are persistent in a small icon bar at the top of the screen and large front/back and 'share' buttons at the bottom. Postman has style and several handy features. In addition to using your own camera images/photo library or the included stock images for postcard sources, you can locate yourself on a Google map and use that graphic instead (this leverages the Map API in iPhone 3.0). Once you pick a graphic, you've got a choice of one-click filters to apply that spice up the look of your card. You can easily switch fonts and colors for your text input on the card front or back, and then send with a couple of taps. There are a few rough edges with the first release. I found the lack of a portrait mode frustrating, as I'm actually a faster typist on the vertical keyboard; not that you'll be keying in a chapter of War and Peace, but there's quite a bit of room for copy on the postcard back and I'd like to be able to rotate on that screen. The selection widgets seem cramped a bit, particularly the one for the stock templates. It would be nice to save postcards in progress and switch back to them, but for now there's only one card and no way to revert to earlier versions. If you want to have super-slick, email-only postcards from your iPhone, and are willing to spend a couple of dollars more for some added flexibility, you may be better off with Postage or the still-awesome Comic Touch. For $0.99, however, the first pass of Postman delivers ease of use and some very handy delivery mechanisms on the back end.
Massively's holiday postcard contest
Here at Massively, we want to wish you a happy holiday by giving stuff away! Keep reading for your chance to win a Plantronics DSP-400 headset, a Logitech G15 gaming keyboard, a Logitech G9 laser mouse, or, if you're our grand prize winner, all of the above! For your chance to win, we're asking you to send us holiday postcards from your favorite game! Your postcards can be unmodified screenshots (with or without the standard postcard text), edited images like the one above (by WoW Insider's Chris Jahosky), or original artwork. (All trademarks and copyrights are owned by the respected owner.) Show us how they celebrate the holiday season in your favorite game! So hurry up and get your images ready, because the contest starts right now! To enter, just send a copy of your image to contests@massively.com. It should be in JPG format, no larger than 900 pixels wide, and no larger than 1MB in size. We'll be accepting entries until December 28th at 11:59 PM EST, at which point the Massively staff will judge all entries based on artistic merit and expression of the holiday theme. To be eligible to win, you must be age 18 or older and a resident of the United States or Canada -- please read our official rules for full details.
PostCard Makes Custom Postcards Easy
Although the they're not as sophisticated as the Flash greeting cards you can now get, I've always liked the simplicity of Apple's iCards. With PostCard you can now make your own iCard style postcards with your own images. You just drag the image onto the card, adjust the size, write your text and pick your stamp. If you so desire you can even customize the stamp image and postmark text. As you can see above there's a convenient button for copying it to the Clipboard for pasting in your email application. PostCard is $10 and a demo is available (though as you can see, it will watermark the image until you register).[Via Hawk Wings]
