(WHAS11) - E-mail and Facebook are great ways for families to stay in touch, especially when it comes to tasks like getting pictures of the kids to grandma or grandpa; but what about people who don’t have access to a computer?
Those e-mails can be delivered right to the person without a computer’s mailbox.
Jennifer McMoran has her hands full, keeping up with her son William; leaving her very little time to keep up with letters and photos to grandparents in California.
“We don’t have time to go to Walgreens, or even time to print them out ourselves and stick them in an envelope,” she said.
And while she is wired-in with internet and e-mail, the grandparents are not. Meaning, they could miss out on all the latest photos and news, even in this high-tech age.
“Kids grow up so quickly and change so quickly; and they move so quickly you don’t have time to even sit down and write a letter,” said McMoran.
And in Tempe, AZ, Earle Cox could easily miss out on the latest news as well, with his family spread out across the country and around the world.
But it turns out Jennifer and Earle have something in common; a company called Sunnygram, which sets up an e-mail account for those with no computer access.
Wired-in friends and family send an e-mail to Sunnygram, and then once a week Sunnygram compiles all the e-mails that were sent to a recipient, prints them out and then sends them to the recipient; by what, in today’s standards, is called snail-mail, the U.S. Postal Service.
So people like McMoran’s grandmother, Helen, get a newsletter with all those e-mails and attached photos once a week.
The grandmothers love that they get weekly updates, not just on one family, but on several; from their great grandchildren and people strung all over the country that they don’t get to see regularly.
Earle Cox said the pictures were the first thing he noticed.
“Oh, I think the quality on the pictures is as good as anything I’ve ever seen.”
And his son, Chuck, agrees it’s a much-needed niche.
“It is a lot easier for me, being in Australia, to ship him photos this way. I know he is going to get them and they are going to be very clear, as opposed to me printing them out, putting them in an envelope and paying a lot of postage to get them to him.”
The Sunnygram recipient can then reply by telephone, with a toll-free number, or send a handwritten reply with enclosed stationary and postage paid envelope.
Sunnygram makes sure the whole family stays connected, even when their computers are not. We don’t get to see our families as much as we would like, and this is a great little way to keep in touch.
