Posting that 'selfie', with a real stamp

Adrian McCusker and his PostASelfie app.

Personal postcards could make a comeback if an app developed by an Irish company gets a big public 'stamp of approval', writes Brian Byrne.

It could also mean that permanent versions of many millions of 'selfies' which fleetingly make their appearance in the digital age might well be sources of smiles and memories in future years.

The PostASelfie app developed by Adrian McCusker has a simple premise. The pic you take with your phone camera can be turned into a real mailed postcard by a couple of clicks that include payment of €3.99 using Stripe tech. The picture will then be posted to anywhere in the world as a postcard, with a real Irish stamp.

In 25 years, the sending of postcards has dropped from 20 million a year to just five or six million, according to surveys. And now just 16pc of people on holidays send postcards home, compared 80pc in the 1970s.

One area where postcards remain something of a business is in collectibles forums, where old ones are traded as memorabilia of older times.

Picture postcards first appeared in the 1890s, and in 1903 Kodak produced a personal camera which made postcard-sized prints. The company also sold photographic paper with pre-printed postcard backs, so amateur photographers could make their own postcards for mailing to friends and family. These are now well regarded as snapshots of local and personal history. Many of us will have come across one or two while trawling through those dusty boxes of family memorabilia.

Some real-photo postcards trading on Collectors Weekly.

With the availability of Apple Pen and similar technology, maybe we can also reproduce our individual handwriting scrawls on our 'selfie' postcards?

The PostASelfie App is available free to download from Google Play or the Apple App store.


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