Filed under: Software, Odds and ends, iPhone, Apple History, App Store
Everything old is new again; frog design does an iPhone app
History is repeating itself now, with frog design recently releasing a new iPhone app, Postcard Express [App Store]. The $3.99 app definitely doesn't break new ground in terms of functionality -- it creates and sends digital postcards from your iPhone photos.
As with Postman, SodaSnap Postcards, and other apps of this type, Postcard Express lets you either take a new picture or use an existing gallery photo to send an electronic postcard to your friends via email. Unfortunately, frog design's savvy doesn't appear to extend to iPhone apps, as Postcard Express is not only more expensive than any of the other apps, but version 1.0 has some serious shortcomings.
Rather than creating a full-sized front side of a postcard, Postcard Express gives you half of an iPhone screen for your picture and the other half for your message. That layout tends to both squeeze your photo into a very small space and deprive you of being able to write much on the cards. The app runs in landscape mode, but awkwardly switches to a portrait orientation for writing the message. The much-touted ability to geotag photos (the location allegedly shows up in the "stamp" on the postcard) never worked for me. Unlike some of the other apps, it doesn't send a real postcard. Finally, even the app's icon changed to that of an app that I had removed from my iPhone last week!
Fortunately, the Postcard Express team is listening to feedback. After leaving them a hate-o-gram this morning, they responded quickly. Most of the issues were due to limitations of the iPhone 2.2.1 OS and SDK. The next version is designed for OS 3.0 only and will provide full-size postcards and data entry in landscape mode, and geotagging from gallery photos will work. The icon issue seems to be a bug, and I'm sending them a screenshot for troubleshooting purposes.
Having spent $4 on this app, I'm glad that frog design is listening to user feedback and that the next version should fix all of the problems. Several screenshots of the app occupy the gallery below.
Gallery: frog design's Postcard Express
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mikeyusc said 3:12PM on 7-08-2009
The Icon bug is a bug in iPhone OS 3.0 itself, not the app.. It's a known issue that should be addressed in 3.1
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kc! said 5:23AM on 7-09-2009
The current Frog Design is not necessarily old Frog Design. They were bought by Flextronics awhile back and the teams merged. Now, that's not to say they aren't just as capable... but it's not like Hartmut Esslinger is up in there whipping out some iPhone app code or anything.
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194roc said 3:43PM on 7-08-2009
And what about Postino ?
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radicaldreamer99 said 4:27PM on 7-08-2009
I haven't tried Postcard Express, but definitely Postage should be on anyone's list when considering an app like this.
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Chan Karunamuni said 4:36PM on 7-08-2009
Frogdesign still very much has a presence at apple. They frequently hire straight out of frog and some very prominent members of the iPod UI design team to be specific came directly from frog.
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KarlW said 7:16AM on 7-09-2009
Frog Design hired Tjeerd Hoeck, who was Microsoft's director of UX for Windows Vista and all the horrible versions of Office.
http://www.frogdesign.com/press-release/frog-appoints-executive-creative-director-of-software-and-hardware-convergence-04262007.html
'nuff said.
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Peter Kirn said 3:34PM on 7-09-2009
Fascinating how frog are now the "original" industrial designers for Apple. Jerry Manock, the original designer of the Apple II, ought to have that honor. In fact, it was Manock's idea to reach out to frog and to found the IDG -- and Manock (with Terry Oyama) designed the Mac.
They were the first to use the color white... before they were later fired.
Speaking of history, KarlW, you might recall folks like Susan Kare went on to do design work for Microsoft. Hoeck's a talented guy. UX on a product like Windows isn't an easy thing. Often UX in general with large teams can produce results that aren't perfect. That's the gig.
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G said 1:20AM on 7-10-2009
The green "Send" button in that screenshot makes me sad in so many design ways.
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