Photos: Royal Mail stamps get smart with mobile image recognition

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Digital communication meets snail mail

The mail service may epitomise "old world" communications but the Royal Mail thinks it has found a way to bring the humble paper stamp into the internet age.

Royal Mail has launched what it calls "intelligent stamps": stamps that, when viewed by a smartphone camera, will take the device's browser to a particular website.

The stamps work with the Junaio app, one of the latest in a growing number of augmented reality apps for smartphones, where the app uses the phone's built-in camera to recognise real world objects or places and then retrieve related digital information.

Published: September 6, 2010 -- 09:50 GMT (02:50 PDT)
Photo by: Royal Mail

Caption by: Nick Heath
The first stamps to work with the app will be the Great British Railways series, one of which is seen on a letter here.

Published: September 6, 2010 -- 09:50 GMT (02:50 PDT)
Photo by: Royal Mail

Caption by: Nick Heath
Smartphone owners who use the app to view the stamps from the series will be taken to a video of Bernard Cribbins, star of the classic 1970s production of The Railway Children, reading W H Auden's poem The Night Mail.

Published: September 6, 2010 -- 09:50 GMT (02:50 PDT)
Photo by: Royal Mail

Caption by: Nick Heath
Royal Mail claims that it is the first time that a national postal service has used image recognition technology to add this kind of digital interactivity to stamps.

The Junaio app which works with the stamps is currently available for Google Android and Apple iPhone handsets.

Published: September 6, 2010 -- 09:50 GMT (02:50 PDT)
Photo by: Royal Mail

Caption by: Nick Heath
A spokeswoman for Royal Mail said that it intends to release more stamps that will work with the app, in addition to the Great British Railways stamps, but that it is not yet revealing any further details.

Published: September 6, 2010 -- 09:50 GMT (02:50 PDT)
Photo by: Royal Mail

Caption by: Nick Heath