I was fortunate to visit Costa Rica recently. I was there for a couple of weeks, touring around the country, recharging the batteries. I was in a group of 10 and we travelled from the Caribbean coast to the Pacific, discovering Costa Rica’s lush green rainforests, white sand beaches and amazing abundance of wildlife along the way. They say that Costa Rica represents 0.1% of the world's land mass (it's the same size as Belgium) and 5% of the world's biodiversity. As you can imagine, there were many tales and photos to share. One friend, Ant, was updating his Facebook profile every other day - you'd be surprised, but wherever we went there was a decent internet connection. He took a notebook with him - they are really quite cool and good value at £325. Give me one of these over the iPad any day.

Several of the group wrote postcards and we were all amazed that place after place, we couldn't find a postbox. Of course, by this stage, I had already written and sent personalised postcards using Carderoo. Several of the group also used the site to send a few tio their loved onmes - thankfully, they all liked the idea and execution.Eventually, at La Fortuna, we found a post office, but this was closed for 2 days, and we had to wait for the 9th day to find a postbox, at Monteverde. In summary, it was 10 times easier to find a decent internet connection than a postbox.

 

As I was walking through the back streets on London, bear Oxford Street and Bond street, I stumbled upon a cafe called Postcard Teas.

Tim d'Offay runs Postcard Teas and says "Our teas are from people and places we know. The reason I travel is to learn more about tea directly from the small family producers we work with. In my experience it is these smaller producers who make the best tea and do the most to protect both the local environment and the local tea traditions. We are concerned that ancient tea culture and heritage is under threat in Asia from ever larger tea farms and factories. By buying our teas you can help small scale traditional tea production and culture survive."

Postcard Teas sells an array of interesting tea from around the world, from Green teas to Pu-erh tea (which I had never heard). I popped in for a cuppa, and rthoroughly enjoyed the experience.

 Tim writes about his love of travel "

Our teas are from people and places we know. The reason I travel is to learn more about tea directly from the small family producers we work with. In my experience it is these smaller producers who make the best tea and do the most to protect both the local environment and the local tea traditions. We are concerned that ancient tea culture and heritage is under threat in Asia from ever larger tea farms and factories. By buying our teas you can help small scale traditional tea production and culture survive.  

The majority of our tea farmers use natural farming methods and these we have distinguished by putting an asterisk after the tea's name. Many are far too small for organic certification to be economically variable. Furthermore as most of our producers get a premium price locally for their tea because of its quality, they are usually uninterested in international certification for export. We always pay the prices set by them. When we find tea growers whose tea quality, ethics and environmental philosophy match our own ideals we establish long-term partnerships. The growers benefit from a good steady annual income from us and we benefit by being offered their very best teas. Postcard Teas also works with some of these producers to make financial contributions to the local communities. In India, we support the work of Doke Estate’s educational foundation and David Earp’s charity Shuktara, and in Sri Lanka we have helped Handunugoda Estate to buy boats for the local fishing village devastated by the tsunami in 2004 and have made regular contributions to a workers' sinking fund.

My first tea travel was to the famous Japanese tea town of Uji in 1993 but it was visiting the mountains around Pin Lin in Taiwan a couple of years later that made me want to work within the tea industry. The misty mountain setting perfectly suited the teas I had come to see being made and from that time onwards, I have wanted to visit and work with the best small estates and master tea makers in Asia.

I hope the photographs and descriptions from my tea travels make you want to try some of the wonderful teas we import and maybe to travel and discover these very special tea cultures on your own or with us in the future.

Timothy d'Offay"

 

Whilst I was on Google, serching for their website, I also found the Postcards Cafe, based in Hawaii. This is what their guests say about Postcards:

"When we leave Kauai, we dream of the seafood rockets and pasta Francesca at Postcards. "

"A perfect blending of flavors and textures, beautifully  presented."

"This was the best seafood we've had in the islands."

"Our favorite restaurant - three nights in a row!"

"Wish there was a Postcards Café in our town."

Here is Postcards Cafe menu. Anyone hungry?

E N T R E É S


Prices range from 19.00 to approximately 31.00 (market price)

Ingredients are subject to change

 

FROM THE SEA

Fresh island fish grilled or blackened to perfection, served with special rice or potatoes and our fine fresh vegetables. Choose a luscious sauce: honey ginger Dijon, macadamia butter, or peppered pineapple sage

 

THE FRANCESCA

Our puttanesca features tonight’s pasta with sun-dried tomatoes, pepperoncini, mushrooms and Kalamata olives, sautéed in a sherry marinara sauce

Another fine choice: The Francesca with Shrimp

 

WASABI CRUSTED AHI

Hawaiian tuna with a mirin shoyu ginger sauce, served with rice pilaf and tonight’s fresh vegetables

 

THE SOMBRERO (GF) and (V ~ without shrimp)

Luscious enchiladas! Corn tortillas layered with vegan jack cheese, veggies, spices and mole sauce, topped with a macadamia sauce and served with pinto beans

or try the Shrimp Sombrero, with savory grilled shrimp

                         

SAFFRON RISOTTO (GF)

A colorfully divine rice dish with shrimp, mussels, scallops, mushrooms, and pesto, perfumed with white truffle oil

Or you may replace seafood with diced tofu and vegetables

 

SEAFOOD SORRENTO

A divine seafood pasta with fish, shrimp and scallops, oven-dried tomatoes, braised organic greens, goat cheese, red onions and garlic, sautéed in a light Chardonnay sauce

So I have now realised nthat there is more to a Postcard than a Postman!

Christmas is just around the corner. What better way to let someone know that you're thinking of them than to send a Christmas postcard with Carderoo. You can choose from a super range of images, add your own personal Christmas message, and send from the comfort of your home - no need to brave the outside cold and rain and wait for long queues in the post office.

To make a Xmas postcard using one of the specially chosen images, simply go to Make a Postcard, Select an Image, and you'll see a range of Xmas images that we have chosen for you from Flickr. There are some lovely images of Xmas trees, decorations, Christmas markets, Christmas lights and even an image of mince pies and Christmas shortbread. 

There are only 17 working days before Christmas, so we suggest you get your cards in the post as soon as possible. 

The postal workers strike in the UK over the last few weeks and in particular over the past 2 days has had an impact on all postal deliveries. It is estimated that about 30 million letters have been delayed, up to 30% of a typical day's post, Royal Mail has said.

STORY SO FAR...

• Postal workers, especially in London, have been holding intermittent one-day strikes for months in a row over the way Royal Mail is to be modernised
• Earlier this month, postal workers voted three to one in favour of nationwide industrial action (though Royal Mail said 60% of the total number of postal workers in the UK did not vote to strike)
• The CWU set dates for the first nationwide postal strikes in two years
• Last-gasp talks failed to reach an agreement and indeed the split between the union and Royal Mail management became more acrimonious, with the CWU announcing further strike dates

 

This is an unfortunate episode for Carderoo's customers. We have had mixed experiences of the strike, and from the testing processes that we have put in place, about 80% of postcards are being delivered fairly quickly, within 2-3 days. Please do be reassured that the cards will eventually arrive, so please bear with us. To avoid these waits, why not duplicate your postcards, and send them by email, or via Twitter, as well, so you know your friends and family will hear from you.

We will be monitoring the strike very closely and do all we can to minimise the effect to our customers.Let's hope the Royal Mail can sort out their isues quickly before they destroy a British institution, as the private operators will come in and start to take business away.

 

You can imagine my delight when I received a phone call from Richard Tyler, Enterprise Editor, at the Telegraph, asking me to feature in an article about new start-ups thinking global. I was delighted to be asked, and here's the story:

I feel bad. One of my best friends has just had a baby. I bought a congratulations card and wrote a lovely note. Then the card sat on the mantlepiece for two weeks. First it was the address: the pain of digging the latest one out of the handful of different address books I own. That done, it’s the lack of stamp. Pathetic really. The wildcat Royal Mail strikes didn’t even come into my thinking. Yesterday, I handed the card to my friend as we met to mark his eldest’s third birthday. It was OK, but I still felt bad. I’m not very good at sending cards, even though I instinctively want to.

Holiday postcards are even worse. I buy one for my Gran but only send it on the last dayl. I am, I discover Carderoo.com's target market.

Serial entrepreneur Rob Eberstein, 36, is launching his latest venture on Monday. While existing sites like Moonpig.com could solve my greeting card problems – it lets you design bespoke cards and send them for £2.99 – Caderoo is the easy way to send postcards to friends and family from overseas.

Eberstein explains: “The vision behind Carderoo is the frustration of sending postcards. You have to find them, find the stamp, then a post box. It’s invariably at the end of the holiday and they invariably turn up after you’ve got back.”

This isn’t a problem for people who delight in writing postcards. But for those that find it difficult to turn their good intentions into action, they can now log on, upload one of their own photographs or access a library of images from Flickr or Wikimedia, chose their typing font, write their message and the address and then press send.

A hard copy postcard is then sent from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world – initially printing will be done in London but the plan is to hire local printers in other English speaking countries. The price, if you buy 10 postcards, is 99p. If a virtual card will suffice, it can be sent for free to Twitter followers via the Twitpic application, or via email.

“The real confidence I get is if you look at the greeting market in total it’s £1.3bn a year in the UK. The percentage that’s print on demand, like Moonpig, is 1pc of the market. That’s forecast to grow to 10pc over the next few years,” says Eberstein. “We think there’s a really nice market there.”

The ‘we’ includes Julian Guppy, the chief technology officer and former colleague at Zebtab.com – an application that delivers news and video to computer desktops – that was heralded as a bright prospect but has been knocked sideways by the collapse in advertising. It is now in administration.

Eberstein was co-founder of Zebtab and says he has learnt a lot from the experience. “We were getting millions of ad impressions a month [on Zebtab] but in terms of revenue it was nothing. We put in three years of our lives into that. The big lesson is the revenue model.

“Carderoo has a very simple revenue model. We have a really good team; the market looks like being a really great market; it’s fun, which is great; social media is taking off; and it’s got the potential to grow quickly.”

Refreshingly, he’s open about the post-mortem on Zebtab: “Was it really service a consumer need? If a product is withdrawn and dies, do people miss it? If I am honest I do not think we were meeting a need. Twitter came along and did a lot of what we were doing and that was it.”

“Technology moves very, very quickly. You go through business school and you are told these things. For whatever reason you have this dream and vision and everybody gets really excited and says what a great idea. You can’t give up. You have to keep going until it collapses.

He adds: “But now people are being much more realistic. You have to meet a need and have to make it pay.”

 

Carderoo was one of 8 lucky companies, chosen from 72 who applied, to pitch at the Microsoft BizSpark summit on Monday 28th September 2009 at their Victoria HQ.

The BizSpark (@BizSpark) program offers support and services to emerging technology companies. Success stories like Huddle began on BizSpark before being put on Microsoft’s Startup Accelerator Program.

There were some amazing speakers throughout the day, incluing talks with “Dragon” James Caan, Moo’s Richard Moross and WAYN’s Jerome Touze. The best line of the day came from Richard Moross who said "It's better to have a hole in your team than an asshole in your team".

TechCrunch Europe editor Mike Butcher (@mikebutcher) hosted the pitches. Rob and Holly spent several hours in the afternoon cutting the pitch down from 12 slides and 7 minutes long to 6 slides in just under 3 minutes. Rob was nervous and spoke about Carderoo enthusiastically to the 200 folk who were in the audience and handled the questions as they came his way. The winner on the day was Siondo, so congratulations to Christian and team. We received some really interesting feedback after the pitch, which we are sure will make Carderoo much stronger. A great first day out for Carderoo. Thank you Bindi Karia (@bindik) for organising such a great day.

Carderoo is supporting Englishman Oli Broom, who's going to be cycling 25,000km to the first Ashes test match in Brisbane, on a bike with a cricket bat, all for charity.

I first heard about Oli's trip through The Corridor, a cricket blog written by Will Luke. Will connected me to Oli and I immediately thought that Carderoo should help out by providing Oli with a load of real postcards and a way to send postcards by email and to his Twitter account. We met in a pub in Marylebone a few weeks ago after he had just left his job and he's a great guy, full of energy, fearless adventurer and above all else, a slightly barking mad Englishman. I have always wanted to travel London to Cape Town and was fascinated by his routes through Sudan, before heading off by ferry to Mumbai. 

In short, Oli's expedition has 3 aims:

1. To cycle from Lord’s to The Gabba in time to see England play Australia in the first Ashes Test Match of the 2010/11 series. I’m hoping to have friends / colleagues join me for certain legs of the journey – quite a few have expressed an interest.

2. To raise £10 for every kilometre that I cycle (so about £250,000). Funds raised are to be divided between two charities – The Lord’s Taverners, whose mission sits very well next to the aims of the expedition – and the British Neurological Research Trust at UCL (a close friend I used to play cricket with broke his neck and is now paralysed and needs 24 hour care – the BNRT undertake ground breaking research into such injuries).

3. To play cricket in as many countries as I can on my way across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Sub-Continent, South-East Asia and Australia. These games wont all be scheduled matches, although I’m hoping to get a few proper ones through contacts at the ICC, MCC and Lords Taverners.

If you'd like to donate, please view: http://www.cyclingtotheashes.co.uk/how-to-donate.php

I wish Oli the best of British as he starts his trip next week and can't wait to view the postcards as they start to come through (assuming that the images are for Public viewings!!). As a few of you may know, I myself am a massive cricket fan. I have the best Twitter name in the world at @EnglandCricket and tweet as often as I can, have been on several England oversea's tours (Sri Lanka 01, New Zealand 02, Aus 03) and still play cricket reguilarly in London for Clapham In and The Whalers. I'd love to say that I'll be joining Oli watch England destroy our archrivals next year.

It's really easy to transfer photos from your camera or phone to Carderoo. Check our guide below and ensure you can successfully upload images when you're away.

 

Transferring images from a camera

1. USB cable

  A USB cable will come with your camera, but if you cant find it or have lost it, you'll be able to go to find one at any decent electrical store.

 

2.The SD slot in your computer.

  Many computers now have these and it's a very handy feature.Simply remove your SD memory card from your camera and slot into your computer. Easy as pie!

3. SD Memory Card Readers. These are really useful and fairly cheap. You can find these at all good electrical retailers and will probably cost around £10. Alternatively, search online, and you'll find one for much less.

What's the difference between a SD, MicroSD, xD and CF Memory Card?

SD cards, short for Secure Digital, are the most common type of memory cards, and have a good comprimise between size, storage capacity and speed. Most cameras will use SD memory cards. MicroSD cards are used in Mobile Phones. xD cards are slightly smaller than the SD card and are used in Fuji or Olympus digital cameras. CF cards (Compact Flash) are much bigger with greater storage and are used in high end cameras, camcorders, PDAs etc.

     

SD Card Reader      MicroSD Card Reader   xD Card Reader    CF Card Reader

You can either buy a memory card reader that accepts one card, or you can purchase a multi-card reader that accepts them all.

 

A Multi Card Reader

4. There are soom very cool developments with WiFi and memory cards. We especially like Eye-Fi memory cards, that makes your camera wireless. 

 

Transferring images from a phone

1. Wireless transfer. Use Bluetooth on each device to transmit the image.

2. Multimedia message (MMS) - send a photo to your email & uploa. This is an easy way of transferring images but just make sure you know how much this is costing you.

 

    

Here is a question that we have asked a thousand times. Do we offer our customers great value and will they come back to us time and time again? We think the answer is yes to both and here are our thoughts as to why. Value is described as 'relative worth, merit, or importance' by Dictionary.com.

Is Carderoo the cheapest way to send postcards? No. You can go to a cheap store and buy a thin postcard for about 20p if you looked hard. Postage costs to send this overseas cost 62p, so you could send a postcard from the UK to say the USA for 82p. However, on average, if you buy a mid range decent postcard in London, this will cost you about 60p. I've seen them cheaper, and many more expensive. On average, we say that it costs approximately £1.22 to send a postcard overseas. Another way to look at it, you could send about 2 postcards for the price of a Starbucks Latte and 3 postcards for the price of a small glass of Chardonnay.

 

It costs the following to send a postcard overseas from the following countries (I've calculated the equivalent price in GBP's £);

Australia  $1.40 (£0.67)

USA         $0.94 (£0.67)

France     0.70E (£0.60)

By adding the price of the postcard on top, taking the cost of 60p as an average, and you can see how we come to the toal costs.

 

	UK	USA	Canada	Australia	France	Carderoo
Total	1.22	1.27	1.51	1.27	1.33	0.99

You can therefore see that we believe we offer great value compared to the traditional way of sending postcards.

There is a great article in The Times last year "Forget texting, a gloating postcard is still best for saying ‘we’re having a lovely time’" which outlines how the humble postcard is booming, even in light of newer technologies such as texting and emailing.

The message “wish you were here” was often as big a lie as the picture featuring azure seas and cloudless blue skies.

But despite the retouched photographs of drab resorts and sometimes insincere sentiments, the picture postcard has never been more popular.

According to the latest figures from the Royal Mail, Britons are sending about 135 million postcards each year - an increase of 30 million on just five years ago.

E-mailing and texting may have grabbed the headlines, but for many holidaymakers the picture postcard is the only way to ram home the message: “We’re having a wonderful time (and you aren’t).”

Patrick O’Neill, a spokesman for the Royal Mail which released the figures, said: “These are huge levels. They have not been at these levels before.

“There are certain things about postcards that people like using. They are a physical connection with the recipient, unlike a text or e-mail.

“It requires a certain degree of effort to write a postcard, which means you care enough to do it.

“It is also true that people take many more holidays than they did 25 years ago. It is about people getting across that they are somewhere special.”

The rise of the postcard parallels the growth in post generally, with the Royal Mail delivering an average of 80 million items of mail a day, four times as much as 50 years ago.

Mr O’Neill added: “People have this idea in their head that it’s an old-fashioned medium but it’s not. The claim that’s often made by telecoms companies that text or picture messaging is killing the postcard simply isn’t true.”

Royal Mail’s figures came from a survey of 1,000 households that recorded every item of post that they received.

Brian Lund, editor of Picture Postcard Monthly, said: “We’ve noticed a stark increase in the number of postcards being sent over the last few years.

“Back in the early Nineties, when the internet and mobile phones took over, the number of people sending postcards dropped for obvious reasons - sending a text is easier and cheaper.

“But now people are realising that a postcard is far more thoughtful than a text message or an e-mail, and that they can be displayed for all to see in the home.

“It’s my hope that we will see a return to the glory days of the postcard in the Fifties, when sending one was all the fashion.”

Digitally enhanced images of seaside resorts are not the only big sellers. The Postcard Company sells more than 6,000 different images of movie and pop stars, as well as reproductions of classic film posters.

Simon Hunter, the company’s sales manager, said: “It depends a lot on who happens to be in vogue, but Elvis, Monroe and Audrey Hepburn are always big sellers. We have a range of over 400 Star Wars cards too that are incredibly popular.

“People buy them to send to each other or keep and there’s a growing trend of competition entrants wanting something eye-catching in the hope of being picked. If it’s a dog food contest, for example, they will buy a card of a particularly cute looking dog.”

The golden age of the postcard began in 1894 when the General Post Office, the forerunner of the Royal Mail, first approved them for delivery by post.

The first cards coincided with the explosion of interest in photography and many featured pictures of famous landmarks or scenic seaside views.

By the 1930s the black and white landscape had been overtaken in popularity by the saucy cartoon postcard featuring a risqué cartoon and a double entendre.

Collecting postcards, known as deltiology, is also growing in popularity with at least 60 clubs across Britain. The nation’s largest private collection is held by Roger Peck, a pensioner from Colchester, Essex, who owns an estimated 37,000.

We are now testing the site and functionality and expect the site to be launched in the next month. It's going to be a busy few weeks!

We are delighted to announce that you can now create Twitter Postcards through Carderoo. Make the postcard the normal way, select 'Twitter' in the Card Type and off you go. All you need to do is add your Twitter username and password, and when you checkout, your postcard will appear in your Twitter stream. Easy peasy.

Britons to send 130m summer postcards, Times Online, 29-07-09

In a world of email, text and Twitter, the tradition of sending friends and family a postcard will hit a new peak this summer, say new figures.

A survey of 3,000 adults by the Association of British Travel Agents (Abta) finds that more than half say sending a postcard is an "important part of British and family travel culture."

Many combine old and new communications, with 71 per cent using text to keep in touch with friends and family at home.

A third use email, while 22 per cent send their own version of a picture postcard via a photo message.

But an overwhelming 59 per cent of holidaymakers stilll prefer to send postcards, says Abta.

Brian Lund, Editor of Picture Postcard Monthly Magazine, said: “Postcards are a Great British tradition and it’s wonderful that people have such affection for them still, whether they’re travelling abroad or at home.

"The range of destinations for travel has broadened over time, as has the variety of postcards depicting these locations.

"Postcards continue to be a great way to share our tales of travels with people elsewhere in the world.”

Unsurprisingly, the survey found that recipients of messages from abroad appreciate the personal thought that goes into a handwritten card much more than a quickly typed note.

Two-fifths said they like to hear how friends/family are doing, while 22 per cent said receiving a postcard makes them feel very happy.

Psychologist Donna Dawson said: “Picture postcards will always beat emails, texts and SNS messages, because they are something that you can hold in your hand and observe close up, utilising both the senses of touch and vision, and thus triggering the pleasure-centres of the brain more quickly.

"They also create a stronger emotional response than the newer methods of communication, and tie in with a long and sentimental history of traditional seaside holiday postcards.

“A postcard becomes a souvenir of a person or persons at a particular time and place, as well as a physical reminder that someone has gone to the time and trouble of selecting, writing and posting you something.

"And in these technologically fast-moving times, that is something to be treasured.”

• 130 million postcards predicted to be sent this summer, with over 28 million in the UK alone
• Londoners are biggest postcard senders, sending an average of 3.83 per person a year. Belfast sends the least sending an average of 1.63 per person per year
• Postcard keepsakes: a quarter of Britons keep all the postcards they receive
• Women are generally more proactive at keeping in touch when they’re away

DESTINATION ESTIMATED POSTCARDS TO BE SENT FROM MAY-OCT

Spain 16.2 million

France 10.08 million

Italy 3.46 million

USA 3.24 million

Greece 3.06 million

Portugal 2.52 million

Ireland 2.02 million

Turkey 1.8 million

Netherlands 1.44 million