The US and France's postal services are now in direct competition with the Bermuda General Post Office. Call it harmful postage competition! Great! Well not quite. I cannot send a letter or postcard via my computer to the US online service and have it printed and delivered unless I have a credit card with a US address.

They are not offering a way to send international post, that is, mailed through the US Post, from a computer, but an online guide promises that they are working on it.

For now, as I live in France I can at least upload a photograph at the US Postal site and send it as a postcard to a friend I know in New York, as I get the first one free. I would love to see what it looks like.

I was unable to test the La Poste site in France, because the link to subscribe currently does not work. I've sent them a note. However these two sites indicate that once they and others open up to international users, we may be soon able to use any post office in the world and send a letter, or a marketing blurb, to one or a 1000 addresses at the same time to any country.

The advantage is we will look for the best service and price for sending letters or marketing blurbs to one or a thousand people. How does it work? The US Postal Service offers a selection of ways to send mail from your computer.

Users would first log on to the site (http://www.usps.com/netpost) then create an address book online. Addresses can be mass uploaded on to the site from a variety of file formats stored on your computer.

You then can choose to send postcards, letters, booklets, flyers and business greeting cards for good prices. To send a one-page letter to a US address costs 54 cents. A postcard costs 79 cents. The price includes printing and posting through the mail.

To send a letter you would first write it in on your computer, say on Word, then upload it to the site. The order is then shown as to where it is going and when. You can preview the letter in a PDF file created automatically online for review.

The US Post then prints the document or letter out on a printer closest to where it is going, stuffs it in an envelope, and sends it out to the address indicated. Signatures can be included by scanning a copy into a digital file and inserting in the document. But of course it is not the real thing.

Still the possibilities for businesses are there. Users have the option of adding logos on the envelopes to make it look really smart. Call it reverse spam. And the convenience for propeller heads is unbounded, giving them fewer reasons to leave the front of their computers.

I like the service the US Post offers for postcards. I can create a good photograph I want to send someone, upload it to their site and it is printed and sent the next day.

They promise it will be on full-colour, full-gloss finish paper on 110lb paper and coated on both sides.

"Our postcard paper is a special Sapphire treated stock, which makes it ink proof and scuff resistant," the site states. "Since the paper is coated, the ink remains on the surface to create better solids and more vibrant colours."

Your postcard is printed on a state-of-the-art process-colour digital printing press with real ink. The print resolution is 600 dpi (dots per inch) and we use four layers of ink to create solid fields and vibrant colours.

I am all for it. However as a stamp collector this method spells another means of slow death for the hobby. However I can now order stamps online from most places in the world online so that is a plus, though I must admit when I tried to order what was claimed to be chocolate-scented stamps from the Swiss Post Office, the online order system gave up when it encountered a mailing address in France. They claim they're working on it.

Tech Tattle deals with issues in technology. Contact Ahmed at editoroffshoreon.com.