The development and consulting company RogueSheep has developed Postage an iPhone/iPod Touch application which allows you to send a digital postcard to friends and family.

It looks to be a fairly well produced app with more than 50 postcard designs, and the ability to compose your own personal message. You can even send a postcard to multiple recipients at once. Judging by the video on their website the UI creates an easy workflow as well.

Doesn’t this lack something? There is one feature that I feel this is lacking, the postmark, the actually traveling through the mail system. Call me old fashioned but I think the time to stop, pickup a postcard and write a personal message then find a mailbox you could drop it in adds a bit of a personal touch. Yeah it requires more effort, but I think there is something to be said for that. I remember when I was younger and on vacation we would mail out postcards, and an occasional message in a bottle souvenir. We would then fly home and I would wait for it in the mail. In the fast past world of e-mail and constant connection through cell phones I still find the classic postcard to be more appealing. Do you really need your postcards to be instant as well.

Last week I had lunch with Hardy, a Get Rich Slowly reader here in Portland. We chatted about life (and personal finance) over burgers and fries. He generously offered to pay the bill. When the waitress returned with the credit card slip, she asked to see his driver license.

‘What was that all about?’ I asked.

‘Asking for my ID?’ said Hardy. I nodded. He flipped over his credit card and showed it to me. He’d written SEE ID where his signature ought to be.

‘Does that work?’ I asked.

‘Some of the time,’ he said. ‘It gives you an idea of which places are paying attention. But not every place will accept it. It’s technically against the rules because the card has to be signed. Plus, businesses aren’t really allowed to ask to see your ID.’

‘What do you do if they refuse to take your card?’ I asked.

‘I carry a backup,’ said Hardy. ‘This is my main card. My back-up card has my signature, but I rarely have to use it. The only place that I know will refuse the main card every time is the post office. I have to use a signed card there.’

I was intrigued by this attempt to thwart identity theft, so when I got home I asked my Twitter followers:

My lunch companion doesn’t sign credit cards, but writes ‘SEE ID’ on the back instead. Have you ever seen this?

I was shocked by the number of replies. Apparently, I’ve been living under a rock. Over 100 Twitter users replied to share their experiences with this tactic. Here’s what I learned:

• Though many people write some form of ‘SEE ID’ on their cards, it doesn’t seem to matter. @khaibit2763 writes that only about a quarter of merchants actually check ID. Others write that almost nobody checks.
• Many tweeters correctly noted that most credit cards clearly state that they are ‘not valid unless signed’. Technically, writing ‘SEE ID’ invalidates the card and voids the contract with the issuer. Still, not all issuers seem to be aware of this. I found this ID-theft awareness brochure [PDF] from Capital One which notes that one way to protect your cards is to ‘write that the merchant must check ID on the back of the card’.
• @lildebbie77 made me laugh with her reply: ‘When I waited tables I saw it once or twice a month. The craziness? Some people get mad when you ask to see their ID.’ If you choose to do this, don’t get upset when people comply with your request!
• @katekashman uses a slightly different tactic. She leaves the ‘call to activate’ sticker on the card. ‘Maybe a thief will think it isn’t activated,’ she writes. ‘It isn’t much, but it’s something.’
• @lizweston noted that this is one of her 9 big credit card myths at MSN Money. In her article, she writes, ‘You’ll certainly deter use of your card, because merchants aren’t supposed to accept one that’s not signed on the back, and that could affect you as much as any thief.’ (Sidenote: Liz will be our guest on The Personal Finance Hour in two weeks!)
• If you want to cover your bases, consider the advice from @aslaughter: sign the card and write SEE ID. And thank the people who actually ask to see your identification.

So, is writing ‘SEE ID’ instead of signing your credit cards a good idea? It’s hard to say. Technically, it’s against the rules, and few merchants seem to notice, but it gives many folks a warm, fuzzy feeling. Plus, if you’re worried about your card being rejected, you can always do what Hardy does: carry a back-up to use at the Post Office.

Here’s a final word of caution: Jake Billo notes that if you present both your credit card and driver license to a skilled criminal, you’re just giving them more ammunition to destroy your life. He warns that this practice may actually increase your risk of identity theft.

For more tips on protecting your ID, check out my post on how to prevent identity theft. You might also be entertained by the credit-card prank over at Zug. Photo by szlea. If you’d like to help with future GRS posts, follow me on Twitter!

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Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Co-Signing a Mortgage: Its Effects?
• Credit Card Index
• I Do Not Use Credit Cards
• A Credit Card is Not an Emergency Fund
• Daily Links: Deal or No Deal Edition

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(Via Get Rich Slowly.)

So here’s a post that I figured would fall right in-line SomethingKnew.com

Firstly, BitTorrent is a protocol for sharing files, particularly those large in size over a network. The beauty lies in how efficiently the protocol works. One computer on a network shares the initial file, and this is called the “Seed.”. From there leechers can begin to download the file(s). As each leecher downloads a piece of the file they too can then share that part of the file with other leechers. At this point the number of hosts which have the files becomes exponential. By exponentially extending the possible sources from which you can receive the download from, you greatly decrease the load on any one particular machine, and because one machine (or even a small cluster of machines) is not burdened with the simultaneous load downloads can be very fast. 

Furthermore the technology handles the parsing of large files. Therefore you do not have to download the entire file in one shot. If your download is interrupted, or a source signs off, you can continue with the rest of your download and fill in the pieces later – further increasing speed. 

So why the big fuss? 

The technology works very well in terms of large files, coincidentally, movies, software, and music are also large files, and can be pirated through this same method. But that doesn’t mean that BitTorrent is innately evil. 

Linux, a free open-source operating system can be thought of as an equivalent of Microsoft’s Windows or Apple’s Leopard. Because of their versatility, Operating Systems tend to be very large software packages. BitTorrent is an ideal way to distribute such files to the masses, and because Linux is free for distribution, its legal. It fits even more so because free distributions lack the profit to have such large hosting to support the demand making BitTorrent ideal. 

Granted, BitTorrent may be one of the larger sources of piracy and has earned its self a negative connotation, but that shouldn’t ruin the technology as a whole. 

To start off, you may have noticed the title of this post, “Hello world!”.  If you’ve had any sort of coding experience, you’ve probably created some program or web page when you were first starting that printed these words. Generally it stands as a message implying, “I’m here. I’ve made my mark. I’ve managed to get some sort of output”. What could be a more appropriate  title for SK’s initial post?

On a broader scale, in a sense it pays homage to Brian W. Kernighan who published Programming in C: A Tutorial. The first programming example printed the text “hello, world” and has since endured a cult-like following appearing as a first example in numerous programming books.

So thats a taste of things to come…