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.

Stamps for how long?

[CRCulver]

Except for philately (marketing to collectors is a somewhat lucrative way to raise money for postal services), are not stamps with nice designs on the way out? Go to the post office in many countries today, and what you'll get on your letter is a simple sticker printed by a computer with a bar code or other machine-readable images. The recipient of your letter in another country no longer gets an exotic representation of some facet of your country's culture.

Re:Stamps for how long?

[Jesus_666]

In Germany we still have stamps (although they're self-adhesive now). However, business mail often uses either barcodes (for packages) or alphanumeric codes or DataMatrix barcodes in the envelope's window. I think that's a good split; you still get nice stamps for personal mail but business mail can use much more efficient ways of franking their mail.

Oh, we do however have stopped putting stamps on packages; those have a standardized adhesive label and are paid for directly at the post station. But at least the letters remain.

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.

Help

[dandart]

So... how will putting phone-scannable barcodes on stamps actually help? And what do I need it for?

There's an even higher tech kind of mail

[Anonymous Coward]

They have a kind now that you can send right from the iphone and it gets there instantly without a stamp or envelope, and it's free.
I think that's kind of more high-tech than a stamp you can take a picture of.

Personally...

[gilesjuk]

I just wish they would stop wasting money on such gimmicks and actually bother to deliver the mail correctly. I received someone's birthday card a while back, the house number was a match for mine but the rest of the address wasn't close. Was in the same town of course, but rather than ruin someone's birthday I hand delivered the card myself.

So to sum up, the Royal Mail can't even be bothered to deliver until after noon and it seems like they now are employing people who can't even be bothered to deliver to the correct address.

But hey, they have "cool" stamps.

Poor attempt to be cool with the 'new thing'

[mindwhip]

To interact with the stamp, a user needs to download the Junaio application, available from the iPhone’s App Store or the Android Market, the Royal Mail said. This can then be used to snap an image of the stamp, which triggers a short film of English character actor Bernard Cribbins reading W H Auden’s poem, “The Night Mail”.

So let me get this right...

1) Buy stamp with one of 6 pictures on it
2) Download App onto your phone using part of my monthly quota (and possibly have to pay for the App as well)
3) Using the App have it recognize one of 6 images (remember Google goggles can manage images of tons of things...)
4) Use the phone to download and read/listen to some web content using more of my quota on the tiny screen and low quality speaker

Seems complex and expensive when it could be

1) Put a short and easy to remember web address of the content on the bottom of the stamps and maybe some posters in the Post Office (the few that are left)
2) Type the address into my web browser on my PC with big screen, good speakers and unlimited use...

Or

1) Go to local library, borrow book for free with many poems including the one relating to the stamps on it and read while enjoying the sunshine...

Sometimes technology is not the answer you have been looking for