Postful is the real Gmail Paper
I wrote about Gmail’s “Paper” April Fool’s gag a couple of weeks ago, and said I thought the idea of a service to print email on paper “wasn’t entirely foolish.” Turns out I’m not alone. Just a few days after Gmail’s “announcement,” a new service called Postful launched its private beta. And Postful is, you guessed it, a service that will print out and mail any email you send it. Of course, unlike Gmail Paper, this isn’t a free, unlimited ad-supported service. Sending an email by paper with Postful will cost about a buck (for one page; after that it’s 25 cents per page). Postful could be a surefire winner—in 1997. Today, however, there are fewer and fewer people who don’t have email. And some of the uses Postful suggests on its site (using Postful to send letters to soldiers overseas or for business correspondence) seem like a bit of a stretch. Still, I could see using a service like this once or twice a year, and if there are enough people like me out there, this could be a real business, even if it’s not on the scale envisioned for Gmail Paper.