UK's Royal Mail Launches First Intelligent Stamps

An anonymous reader writes "The Royal Mail on Friday issued what it called the world's first 'intelligent stamps,' designed to interact with smartphones using image-recognition technology. The Royal Mail's latest special-issue stamps, devoted to historic British railways, are designed to launch specially developed online content when a user snaps them using an image-recognition application available on iPhone or Android handsets. 'This is the first time a national postal service has used this kind of technology on their stamps and we're very excited to be bringing intelligent stamps to the nation's post,' a Royal Mail spokesman said in a statement. 'Intelligent stamps mark the next step in the evolution of our stamps, bringing them firmly into the 21st century.'"

Comments

Barcodes

[sakdoctor]

2D barcodes designed to be read by a phone, largely for marketing purposes, have been in use in Japan since forever.

Also, this is pointless.

Intelligent stamp, or phone?

[DamienRBlack]

It's kind of the phone that is providing all the intelligence, right? I mean, you have to dig pretty far before you can call an image intelligent.