easypost.ca – Quick and easy mailing in Canada

Alright, here is one I am not sure what to think about. Easypost.ca is a dead-easy way to send letters anywhere in Canada. Type in an address, type in a letter and they print it and send it.

Seems silly right?

Well, there could be a lot more to this service, which is in a free-beta right now, that could make them more than just a letter sending website. Right now there are API‘s for everything you can imagine. When a programmer wants to add a service to their web-app, they use an API to tell another site to do the work for them. You might, for example, tell Google to draw you a fancy GoogleMap, or you might tell YouTube to tell you what the most popular 10 videos are.

Freshbooks is one of the few sites doing ground-mailing services right now, but I can think of a few other places I would like to have the service. For example, I wouldn’t mind being able to upload an Word Document, Email or Powerpoint Doc and have it mailed on occasion.

So, theoretically (and I haven’t asked them), easypost.ca could become a sort of API to connect websites to the real world and make ground mailing super easy.

Even if they don’t go that route, I think there will be a suprising amount of people who would like a really, really, simple way of sending ground mail, without having to get up from their office chair.

We will follow up with Easypost later on and see how things are coming along.

Contact Andrew Kinnear.

Work Hack – To Do List

Are you a GTD Junkie? Work Hack might be the To Do List you?ve been looking for? Rami Nasser, of Halifax Nova Scotia, had simplicity in mind when he designed this web based To Do List, which has the look and feel of a whiteboard.

Recently launched, the site already has a number of potentially useful features: RSS feed, drag and drop arrangement of to do items, and best of all no registration is required to create and access your to do list.

I have a feeling the already simple site (a plus) will become even simpler as Rami iterates on the design. All in all, the site is well on its way to accomplishing what it sets out to do, and already counts over 10,000 users from around the world.

esy – local price comparison – early stage and ambitious

Esy Shopping is an early stage startup, based in Vancouver that is aiming to consolidate local shopping inventory information online.

Esy plans to launch next month, and we haven’t been able to see any screenshots, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt on how they are going to build their database of locally available products. If they can get that right, they are going to do well.

Esy will generate revenue through advertising alongside the local shopping search results. While they may get some national advertisers, this model may require them to sell ads on a local level. Selling localized ads for the internet has always been tough and my guess is that it still is today. I’m looking forward to seeing how they handle this at launch.

Just as interesting as Esy itself is it’s 19 year old co-founder Theo Tonca. Theo founded his first company at age 15 and has been hacking away at the web startup thing ever since. Suffice to say, even if Esy doesn’t fly, Theo will be back and swinging for the fences again soon after.

We will follow up with Esy after their launch to see how things are going.