The posties of Australia could be in for a bit of a shock.
Rather than delivering conventional postcards, they could soon be dropping off high-tech digital postcards - ones with built-in flat screens that can play a slide show of photos taken by the sender.
That's the vision of Stuart Calvey, a 22-year-old industrial design student at the University of NSW whose invention could mark the most significant upheaval for the postcard since it made its debut in an Austrian letterbox in 1869.
Calvey's Snap+Send Postcard, a disposable digital camera, is so light and inexpensive it can be sent in the mail. All it needs is a stamp. "You would buy it at a newsagent or photo developer, take a few shots and, once it's full, you stick a stamp on it, address it and put it in the postbox," Calvey says.
"Then grandma, or your girlfriend, gets it. They tear open the perforations, fold out a little kick stand on the back and sit it on a bench top. Then it's as simple as pressing a button and it will go through a slide show of images."
Snap+Send Postcard is still just a concept, but the young inventor says the technology exists to turn the idea into a commercial reality. It's justthat he, as a full-time student and casual library assistant, doesn't have the money to finance it.
The palm-sized camera-cum-postcard, housed in a cardboard shell with a two-megapixel lens, a 10-centimetre screen, digital memory and an internal battery, would cost about $25.
There would be no delete or zoom functions and it would be one-use only. "You can't get too precious about certain features," he says. However, the slide show could be watched a few hundred times and the camera could be taken to a developer to get the photos printed.
Calvey acknowledges disposable digital camera postcards will never compete for quality with more expensive digital cameras but says his concept could be an alternative to mobile phone cameras.
He envisages the Snap+Send Postcard being particularly popular with tourists and backpackers looking for novel ways to share their memories with friends and relatives back home. "A picture tells a thousand words - as corny as it is, it just rings true," he says.
Calvey has come up with many clever concepts during his four years at university, including a wrapper designed to take the messiness out of eating a kebab. The packaging, with tapered sides and tearaway sections, won the young inventor a Packaging Council of Australia award in 2003.
He could have sold the rights to the clean-face kebab wrapper and the Snap+Send Postcard to keen companies, but prefers to just share his ideas while he's a student.
"I'd rather use them to show potential employers my ideas."
Stuart Calvey with his Snap+Send Postcard digital camera.
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Image courtesy : Theage
Rather than delivering conventional postcards, they could soon be dropping off high-tech digital postcards - ones with built-in flat screens that can play a slide show of photos taken by the sender.
That's the vision of Stuart Calvey, a 22-year-old industrial design student at the University of NSW whose invention could mark the most significant upheaval for the postcard since it made its debut in an Austrian letterbox in 1869.
Calvey's Snap+Send Postcard, a disposable digital camera, is so light and inexpensive it can be sent in the mail. All it needs is a stamp. "You would buy it at a newsagent or photo developer, take a few shots and, once it's full, you stick a stamp on it, address it and put it in the postbox," Calvey says.
"Then grandma, or your girlfriend, gets it. They tear open the perforations, fold out a little kick stand on the back and sit it on a bench top. Then it's as simple as pressing a button and it will go through a slide show of images."
Snap+Send Postcard is still just a concept, but the young inventor says the technology exists to turn the idea into a commercial reality. It's justthat he, as a full-time student and casual library assistant, doesn't have the money to finance it.
The palm-sized camera-cum-postcard, housed in a cardboard shell with a two-megapixel lens, a 10-centimetre screen, digital memory and an internal battery, would cost about $25.
There would be no delete or zoom functions and it would be one-use only. "You can't get too precious about certain features," he says. However, the slide show could be watched a few hundred times and the camera could be taken to a developer to get the photos printed.
Calvey acknowledges disposable digital camera postcards will never compete for quality with more expensive digital cameras but says his concept could be an alternative to mobile phone cameras.
He envisages the Snap+Send Postcard being particularly popular with tourists and backpackers looking for novel ways to share their memories with friends and relatives back home. "A picture tells a thousand words - as corny as it is, it just rings true," he says.
Calvey has come up with many clever concepts during his four years at university, including a wrapper designed to take the messiness out of eating a kebab. The packaging, with tapered sides and tearaway sections, won the young inventor a Packaging Council of Australia award in 2003.
He could have sold the rights to the clean-face kebab wrapper and the Snap+Send Postcard to keen companies, but prefers to just share his ideas while he's a student.
"I'd rather use them to show potential employers my ideas."
Stuart Calvey with his Snap+Send Postcard digital camera.
_______________________
Image courtesy : Theage
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