Postcrossing Blog

Ever wondered if there is a way to speed up the delivery of the mail sent to you? Well, actually there is!

It’s quite an obvious fact, but is many times overlooked: writing your address in the most complete and correct way for your country helps a good deal on the speed of the delivery. However, each country has it’s own guidelines of how to write the address so, to help with this, the Universal Postal Union (UPU) has created guides for each country describing how to correctly write the address in that country. This not only insures that the mail is always delivered to you but also that it is done as fast as possible when all the mail is sorted and distributed on the postal services.

To help you find the guide for your own country you can go to your edit address section where you’ll find a direct link to it, or go to the UPU website for all the guides.

Oh, and also very important: if your country has a postal code system (most do), make sure you have your postal code in your address and that it is complete. That will also help the postcards arrive faster to you!

During this week we’ve made a couple of changes that you might have noticed already. If not, here’s a quick summary:

Upload sent postcards

Many users are very proud of their postcards walls. They upload every postcard they received, but till recently, they could do very little about the postcards they send: if the user to whom they sent a postcard didn’t have the chance to upload it, then there would be some gaps on the wall.

Now, that’s easy to prevent: the sender is also able to upload the postcard image. This will help keep the walls complete. By the way, if the postcard is still traveling, then the image will be visible only when the postcard gets registered.

Direct swaps

We have revamped the edit profile section which was getting very long and a bit confusing. Now, there’s a separate edit account section where you can manage your Postcrossing account details and another one just for the profile bits. And together with it, we introduced a new profile option: interest in direct swaps. What is it? Simple: if you are interested in doing direct swaps with other users, you can check this box. This way your profile will indicate that you are interested in doing direct swaps. Conversely, users who are not interested will note so on their profile so that they don’t receive enquiry messages. Please mind that direct swaps are not tracked by the Postcrossing website and it is totally up to the users to coordinate those swaps. By the way, the default value is “not interested” so be sure change this if you are interested.

As usual, let us know what you think of the changes and keep submitting your thoughts and ideas on how to improve the project.

Need an idea for a Valentine’s day present to the love of your life? Does he or she like postcards too?

We have just stumbled upon the perfect little gift: the postcup!
Postcups are lovely mugs that have a heart or message engraved on one side. On the other side you can customize them with your own message – as if they were a postcard :)

Isn’t that sweet? They’re handmade by Etsy user baileydoesntbark, and you can get them in her shop.

Over the past weeks we have received a lot of feedback from the Postcrossing members for what kind of statistics they would like to see. While we can’t possible implement everything that was requested (or the system would be too complex to both use and make) we collected what were the most requested items and started working on it.

Today I’m happy to announce that we have the new user statistics ready for you to give it a try! Each account has its own personal statistics that reflect its account data.

You can access your own stats using the left menu on 'My stats’. Please keep in mind this is work in progress so if you find any problems, be sure to tell us so we can fix it as soon as possible.

As usual, please let us know what you think!

We have just reached another great milestone! For the first time, a Postcrossing member received his 1000^th postcard! Congratulations Wyando! That’s a very impressive mark and we couldn’t be happier about helping with such.

We asked Wyando to share with everyone how this experience has been for him, which he kindly accepted:

Woha! 1000 postcards received. This is really incredible…

End July 2005 it all started. I remember I was on vacation in Stockholm checking on my mails and in the bookcrossing forum they mentioned this new site, where you could send and get postcards to and from all over the world. Fascinated, I thought, and switched over to that new website, curious to know how this would worked. And before I realized what I was doing, I already had signed up and got my first 3 addresses…

And now, almost 3,5 years later, I must admit, that it’s still fun. Although, there was a time, where I’ve been thinking of quitting anyway, due those inactive accounts and cards which never arrived their targets (even sending them twice or more cards!). Waiting for addresses has always been very though those days. But then the new rule of multiple addresses came up and this is the best thing what could have been done. More postcards on the way so that even if some of them expire, it does not affect your habits in sending a new card on the way…

Although one of the habits that has been changed by this new rule: I’ve started to create my own sets of postcards created by some pictures I shoot myself on my city. So called (numbered) Limited Editions. Till now I have 5 sets created of each 100 cards and the next set is in preparation (cat lovers will love that one for sure ;) . At least I hope this way to have something special (and from the reactions I’ve got, it seems to be), even if I often don’t know to write something interesting in my cacography ;)

Receiving cards on the other side starts slowly to become an everyday surprise (BTW, not only for me, but also for our secretary, who is getting the mails first – I use my works address to get those cards). It is a nice distraction from the daily job and each card is so unique, different. It would be hard to decide, which ones of those 1000 I prefer. Of course, all wolves cards are high price, but really, every card I get is interesting somehow. Besides, mostly there are also nice stamps to look at. Nevertheless, I have to admit, that one card I’ve got is really very special. Earlier this year, I got a card sent from Norway. It was a limited Edition postcard from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. And although my profile mentioning I like Pink Floyd, The Wall is one of my favorite albums (and film) so you can guess what this card meant to me. Thanks again, Joey!

From time to time I’ve been asked, what do I do with all those cards. Well, first they stay a while at work (and there I’ll pick some kind of “card of the week”). Since we now have that beautiful function of uploading cards to this website, I’ll try to scan them in between. After that while, I’ll take them home and store them in a big box for now. Now and then, I flip through the cards. And to be honest, I still don’t know what’s the best way to categorize them…

What’s next?
Well, keeping up with the cards as long as this whole addicting hobby is fun :) Receiving wonderful cards which makes me smile (either by the picture or what is written) and hoping that the cards I’m sending will create pleasure. And to scan and upload the cards I’ve received in the last years – that already will be a hell of job (and sure take its time).

Thanks Paulo for this wonderful idea!
Thanks Paulo & the DevTeam for this wonderful Website!
Thanks all participants in sending postcards all over the world.

Wyando

P.S. Some of you may know me due the Personalized Statistics.
For those interested in my 1000 cards statistics, I’ve created a snapshot here.

Once again, congratulations Wyando! We hope you receive many more! As a bonus, here are a couple of photos of Wyando’s busy mailbox: