TNW Pick of the Day: Inkly lets you buy and send handwritten greetings cards directly from your iPhone

Have you ever wanted to send a hand-written greetings card to someone, but couldn’t be bothered a.) going to the shop to buy a card, or b.) sending it?

Well, Inkly is a new iOS app that promises to let you circumvent the impersonal-printed text problem of cards procured online, by using nothing more than a pen, piece of paper and a compatible iOS device.

How it works

First up, you choose a card from the hundreds of designs within the Inkly app.

Then, you take a handwritten message from a white piece of paper and snap it with the camera on your iOS device.

It’s worth noting that this will only work on handsets with the auto-focus camera feature, so the iPhone 4/4S/5, iPod Touch (5th generation), iPad (3rd generation) and iPad Wi-Fi+ 4G.

The app then removes the paper and leaves your handwriting, placing it on the inside of the card.

All you have to then do is enter the recipient’s details, and pay £2.99 ($3.99, €3.49) plus £0.49+ postage for it to land anywhere in the world – the postage cost will depend on the exact location.

While the Inkly app is available for free in all 133 App Stores, as things stand it only prints in the UK, though it is setting up printing locations in the US and Australia too.

Some local currencies are used, so in addition to GBP there is USD or EUR. If the user’s local currency is none of these, USD is used by default. Payment is charged either by credit card or PayPal, and UK delivery will take from 1 to 3 days, with international destinations taking up to 10 days.

“Inkly uses advanced patent-pending image-processing and extraction techniques to make sure the handwritten message looks exactly as you wrote it,” explains Lee Hawkins, the London-based Inkly Co-Founder. “It is so accurate, that the recipient won’t even know the handwritten message is printed. Combined with industry-leading printing presses and card stock, Inkly cards are printed to the highest possible quality every time.”

In terms of the available cards, Inkly sources designs by independent artists, designers and publishers from around world, and has around 500 different cards to date. Every time a card is purchased, a percentage of the sale is given to the artist who created the design.

The app certainly worked well for us (however, we didn’t buy any cards), and naturally it does require reasonable lighting for the snap.

Upcoming developments include Facebook integration, to remind users of upcoming birthdays and other special occasions, and it will also eventually tie-in with your address book for easy access. An Android version is on the way too.

Meanwhile, check out the official Inkly promo video below.

➤ Inkly | iOS

http://youtu.be/Up5jUOOP38k

Image Credit – Thinkstock