The holiday season is now officially over. No more gifts
to buy and send. No more photocopied newsletters about everything you
and your family have done this year. No more overpriced Hallmark cards.
Yep. That's all over. But we are about to enter the season of thank-you
notes. And what a season that is!
I have a confession to make.
I'm terrible about writing snail mail and always have been. My
penmanship deteriorated when I learned how to type, and so handwritten
notes veer into the illegible very quickly. I never seem to have the
right postage. And the horror of waiting in line at the Post Office
seems like Black Friday all over again, but without the bargains.
That's why I have technology tricks up my sleeve to take the pain
out of writing thank-yous and getting them in the mail. Each of these
tricks has a legitimate business application...I just cheat and use them
at home.
Cheating at thank-you notes
Want to
do thank-you notes in your own handwriting...but using mail merge? Well,
you can. All you need is a spreadsheet, a word processor, access to a
Tablet PC and a little free program from Microsoft called My Font
Tool.
First thing to do is download My Font Tool, a Microsoft
program you can download by following the PowerToy. With the pen on a Tablet PC, you enter
the alphabet and the usual numbers and punctuation marks, and the
program compiles a TrueType font in your handwriting that you can
transfer to any computer.
Once you have the handwriting down, you
need to create a spreadsheet with columns identifying the gift, the
giver, and maybe a couple of conversation pieces--such as things you
like about it and what you'll use it for.
In your word processor,
you then create a mail merge document with fields for the donor, the
gift, and the conversation pieces. The initial document will
begin
Dear ,
Thank you for the you
gave. I really like and I'm sure I'll
.
...and end up as "Dear Auntie Mabel, Thank you for
the crocheted toilet roll cover. I really like the color, and I'm sure
I'll enjoy storing my toilet rolls under it" and also "Dear Dad, Thank
you for the iPod. I really like listening to music when I jog, and I'm
sure I'll be the envy of everyone I leave in the dust as I rev up my
pace to the strains of Green Day."
There's no limit to the
creativity and personalization here...all you're doing is cutting out
the tedious and illegible business of scraping words onto paper using a
pen.
Stamps can be fun
To really bump up the
personal touch, you can't knock the idea of slapping your own pictures
onto a stamp. It beats Young Elvis stamps into a cocked hat. And you
don't need to achieve great fame to get your pictures on a stamp anymore
either. You just need to pay a premium to Stamps.com.
This online
postage company has weathered six years of boom-and-bust on the Internet
and is still going strong with its core product--a metered postage
system that bypasses Pitney-Bowes-style hardware meters and uses an
Internet-based computer and regular printer to print postage.
I've favored this $15.99-per-month service since it debuted in
1999, and I still do. Especially since they throw in a USB postal scale
gratis, and let you print envelopes for your mailing list complete with
postage. How can you go wrong there?
But the fun product that
Stamps.com provides lets you upload your own pictures, lay out a stamp,
and order up sheets of them in multiples of 20. This is a pricey way to
do postage: If you buy one sheet of 37-cent stamps, you pay $16.99, or
85 cents per stamp. Buy between two and nine sheets, and the per-stamp
cost goes down slightly--to 75 cents.
But for a special occasion,
it's a sweet way to personalize your post. And if you mail merge your
messages as I do, that's a good way to shrieve your conscience.
And a happy new year to all!
Contributing Editor
Matt Lake writes SOHO Advisor monthly for ComputerUser.
