It might be a “Back to the Future” Web 2.0 application, but handy if you need to pound out a postal letter to your grandma, business associate, or you just want to have your own virtual mail room to feel like a corporate giant. Nonetheless www.postful.com (not to be mistaken with the makers of Raisin Bran) provides a nice service to allows you to translate e-mail to print in the matter of minutes.
Signing up is easy and in the mater of a couple minutes you can associate a unique email address (something@postful.com) to accept email and send to the postal address you assign to this address.
Here are a few of the listed features..
- Send photos by including them as attachments.
- Send PDF and Office documents.
- Send letters just by including a name and mailing address in the subject line.
- Create special e-mail addresses for frequent contacts so that you don’t have to type in their address each time.
- Send to an entire mailing list with a single e-mail.
- Full color, high quality printing.
- Use rich text formatting.
- Keep records of all letters you send.
- Send to military APO and FPO addresses as easily as any other address.
- Send letters internationally (50 countries in place, more to come).
The service also has an integrated API (Application Programming Interface) meaning programmers can integrate it your applications. A useful idea I had was a WordPress-Postful Plugin that you allow subsribers to pay a monthly fee and have your articles and blog posts mailed to those willing to pay a fee.
For example, if I had 14 people that wanted my vital and helpful blog posts mailed to them, I could use PostFul to send send an email notification to user1@postful.com, user2@postful.com, ect.. and they would receive the print edition of Another Mans Blog.
Useful? No, it’s Postful!
Pricing is as follows:
Letters Mailed to the United States:
99¢ for the 1st page, 25¢ each additional page
Letters Mailed Internationally:
$1.49; for the 1st page, 39¢ each additional page
I am not thinking my blog posts would be worth the $.99, but should you feel differently and want these mailed to you, I will gladly work on the WP-Postful Plugin for the world to use.
A word of warning when using this service - use UNIQUE @postful.com addresses and get crazy about it, if a spammer get’s a hold of this address you will be in a world of hurt. An email address like bnf63gh554-3385566@postful.com is good. Never (and I mean never) share this with anyone, the last thing you want is a SPAM to Postal Mail Service that costs you $.99 each time one of those devils sends you a Viagra Advertisement.
Tags: email, postal mail, postful
I am anti-buffet, but my kids like it so from time to time we visit the local casino (Isle of Capri) to devour as much food as possible and feel terrible afterwards. We have visited this specific buffet about 4 or 5 times in the last year and every time leave disappointed but still full. My last 4 tips were less than a quarter (25 cents), just to let them know I didn’t forget, but honestly they didn’t deserve my quarter.
I wanted to provide the waiters/waitresses a few tips to garner more changes and maybe even some dollar bills from my pocket the next time I arrive.
Beverages Before I Eat - Seems silly, but while eating I enjoy a beverage. You see some food is hot, salty, and requires liquid of some form. Your only real job at a buffet is to bring me drinks and clear my dirty plates, so make it a priority to get me an ice cold Coca-Cola and keep it full.
Take my Plates - I eat, I return to the long line of patrons looking for more food, and when I return my dirty plates should be gone. If they stack up and I have no place to sit my fresh plate of food, I am going to get frustrated!
These are the two basic concepts you could drive your earnings through the roof, however each time I visit you have failed me. I keep coming back, but trust me it’s not for the service, it’s simply because my children think it’s cool to pick their own food out.
For the record, I am a 20-25% tipper when it comes to service and when things start going south I deduct about 5% off the top of your tip until we hit zero. It’s a little scoring system I keep in my head and if we dip too far into the red, I will probably complain to your manager. The last trip to the Isle of Capri resulted in again no tip, instead the $10.00 bill (that had your name on it) was passed to my wife at the end of the meal and she stuck it in a slot machine. Here are some additional tips for you if you want to make even more money.
Tip 1: Act like you care. You don’t have to really care, but fake it with some cheezy smiles and greetings. You might even get risky and ask me how the food is.
Tip 2: Be available. While I love playing hide and go seek, it’s not my favorite activity while dining out. Even though it’s a buffet, such items as extra napkins, salt, and creamer shouldn’t require me to use my GPS to locate you.
I am pretty sure the next time I visit I will receive the same type of service and I expect it, however if you are a buffet waiter or waitress and require more than $3.00 an hour to survive, take your job seriously and provide your customers the basics.
Be Available, Take My Plates, Give Me Drinks, and Smile Like You Mean It.
Stop back, I will go into a more advanced service with smile tutorial sometime in the near future and tell you how to achieve big tips from misers!
Tags: AM on Service, isle of capri waterloo, restaurants, waiters, waitresses
