The whirlwind of lists continues. Ahead of the upcoming holiday season, here’s my quick list of some of the apps I’ve been using to quickly and easily send my friends and family real physical postcards and photos. Screw the thoughtless email, let’s go straight to the old fashioned paper mail:

1. Postagram – Grab photos from your Facebook, Instagram, of camera roll, apply a trendy filter effect, and have them show up in your friends door in the form of a neat square popout card. I love how cool the cards look and feel – however when you popout the actual printed image, it’s small and square, and loses a lof of the sender information the rest of the card had.
2. Cards – Apple’s new greeting card sending app sends fold over, “letterpress” greeting cards. I used it to send my parents a greeting card, and the results are OK. The card stock is nice and heavy, and there’s a letterpressed border around the edge of the inside of the card, but besides that the photo and lettering is printed with a somewhat low res commercial color printer. The photo has good color but is really just a high quality laser print, and the type is dither/pixelated with washed out colors. Next time, Apple, print the type as a true font on a laser printer, and print the photo with a real photo printer. Or take a cue from Postagram and use glossy stock for the front.
3. Simply Postcards – By far my favourite post card sending app. Simply Postcards sends your friend a 4×6 full bleed post card – no small popout square, but a full color, full bleed photo printed on a postcard. While the actual photo print is merely “magazine quality”, the overall product is great. One caveat – the app sucks. Its UI, layout, and general project flow are not great, need some major work. But the finished product is great.
4. PopBooth – Very similar to Postagram, but instead of a single photo, you get two photostrips with 4 photos each. The app first snaps a photobooth style 4 photo montage, allows you to add a few effects, and then sends you the results in the mail. A little expensive at $2.99, but fun nonetheless.
   
5. StickyGram – Instagram photos + Magnets. Simple and fun, turn any of the square photos in your Instagram feed into flexible fridge magnets.
6. Sincerely Ink – Sincerely, our buddies behind PopBooth and Postagram are sticking their toes into the greeting card arena and going stamp to stamp with Apple’s “Cards” app.