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UK's Royal Mail Launches First Intelligent Stamps

Posted by Soulskill on from the stamplons-were-created-by-man dept.

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.'"

5 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Barcodes by sakdoctor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  2. Stamps for how long? by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Stamps for how long? by Jesus_666 · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
  3. Intelligent stamp, or phone? by DamienRBlack · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  4. Personally... by gilesjuk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.