If you find Christmas cards to be one of the most draining tasks of Christmas, keep an eye on your smartphone apps.
To the list of things our clever phones can manage for us, you can add Christmas cards- and not just texted ones that are sent and received on your phone. New smartphone apps are popping up that allow you to plow through your address book for Christmas cards in line at the DMV, at your lunchbreak at work or while your kids play at the park. Photo cards can be managed and sent through the mail via the apps, taking all the pen and paper and post office work out of the chore that in the past sucked up several weekend days that now can be spend playing Angry Birds, the Christmas edition.
iPhones, iPads, Android devices and others often allow for the apps, like Sincerely Ink . The free interface allows you to create real, live photo cards, which you can send for $1.69 each. The heavyweight 5×7 inch postcards arrive at their destinations in 3-7 days in the US, Canada, UK & Europe, and 2-3 weeks everywhere else in the world. Competing service from app master Apple costs about $3 per card using Apple Cards.
The Los Angeles Times spoke to the 30-year-old entrepreneur behind Sincerely Ink, Matt Brezina. Brezine revealed what inspired him to launch the service:
“It dawned on me that the iPhone is absolutely the new camera, and being the entrepreneur that I am, I realized there would be business opportunities around that… What I thought would be really interesting is printing photos as a postcard or a greeting card. That is something that could be appreciated by every single person on the planet,” he said. “You can create a gift for someone and deliver it by mail for the same price that Zynga is selling us fake sheep. But our cards are 100 to 1,000 times more meaningful.”
Will you be using an app to send photo cards this year, or will you do your Christmas cards the old fashioned way?