Saturday, August 11, 2007

My Newest Internet-Based Diversion (August 2007 edition)



[Yes, there's still time to vote for your favorite modern novels! Go here for that sort of thing!]

From modern novels, to college football, and now to todays topic: sending postcards to strangers. [Note to Self: Is it possible blog lacks thematic cohesion? Nah....]



It all started with a comment from renowned book artist, indomitable scourge of garden pests, and frequent L&TM5K commenter fingerstothebone:

I can't believe I didn't remember to tell you this, but I just received a pretty boring postcard from Finland which reminded me -- you should sign up for postcrossing.com to spread boring postcards all over the world, and to receive boring postcards from all over the world.

And she's so damn right! I should sign up! PostCrossing.com is tailor-made for me, combining as it does so many of my key enthusiasms:

  1. Postcards.

  2. Learning about new places.

  3. Meeting new people.

  4. Wasting time online.

  5. Meticulously keeping track of things that aren't really very important.

  6. Shamelessly trying to get people to read this blog.


The idea is, you sign up as a member and start sending postcards to other members. As they receive your postcards, you go to the top of the queue and other members send postcards to you. How cool is that? [Don't answer that. The proper answer is "very cool."]



Although the well-designed members map (above) shows a pretty global group of people, with predictable clusters where internet use is prevalent (check out Malaysia!), my first five postcards are all going to Europe: Sweden, Finland, England, the Netherlands, and Portugal.



Anyway, I think that this is a very cool (albeit somewhat ridiculous, which never bothers me) concept, and will be participating enthusiastically. And that's all I have to say about that.

6 comments:

Jenny! said...

The blogger Fever Dog does that postcard thing...It actually seems kind of cool!

Anonymous said...

Holy crap! That's great procrastination fodder.

Rex Parker said...

Are you trying to ensure that I never get any real work done again? Come on! I'm going to take a drug that makes me forget the last five minutes of my life now.

rp

Michael5000 said...

@Jenny!: I guessed that you would find this incredibly lame. I had you all wrong. What a relief. Now I can relax and enjoy my birthday.

@MDIC & Rex: I KNOW!! I KNOW!! I spent 45 minutes today just rounding up the $.90 stamps....

Rebel said...

Oh man... that's totally something I could get into! I collected a bunch of postcards from friends on another board - got some from as far away as Japan, Australia and Seattle. ;) Very fun.

Epistemz Dialektix said...

why must postcards be boring? is it to see if something that bores one nation turns out to thrill another? is this how they decide what shows to syndicate in Japan?