Norfello, a software development and public web-based services company, has launched Postita.fi service (website currently in Finnish only, though the actual service offers English also), which allows the users to automate sending company letters.

After a simple registration one can start uploading PDF’s to the service. After transferring some money into the account with a credit card (instant) or bank transfer, uploaded letters can be confirmed to be sent. Postita.fi automatically prints and mails the letters in a standard envelope to the recipients, by the following day if the material is uploaded before 11am the day before. The total price for 1-page letter is quite affordable 1.02€ incl. VAT. I tested the service and it seems to work quick and smooth - seems like an easy way to get rid of printing and mailing letters, if you are fine with standard envelopes.

Norfello was founded in 2005, and according to the company’s web site they are privately held, have 13 employees, and are growing rapidly. The firm was recently part of the Finnish web 2.0 company group who made a field trip to San Francisco.

The company has previously introduced Laskulle.fi, which allows one to create PDF invoices by filling the simple form on the web site, free of charge and without registration in the basic version. It isn’t too hard to see the automatic mailing feature of Postita.fi being introduced to Laskulle.fi quite soon.

Norfello seems to sit somewhere middle in what comes to e-invoice services. E-invoices have gained a lot of attention lately, and there’s a lot of competition rising up in the SME segment. Verkkolaskut.fi is other Finnish-focused quite comprehensive service already (though the site brand is pretty poorly selected I’d say), among quite a big bunch of other small and bigger players. Might be Norfello tries a bit different approach to avoid the masses.

Army of Ghosts is the newest and largest release of Scred since it opened to the public. In the new release, just released today, the largest feature is called direct screding.

Direct screding is when you share your costs with people who aren’t yet registered on scred. You can direct the costs to an e-mail address and once the person registers on scred she is able to see the the amount she owns to the other people who split costs. Kristoffer Lawson, one of the founders of Scred, states that this has been one of the major differences in their service to foreign rivals and with this release they are catching up on their development. Other updates on the release can be seen in their blog.

Kristoffer also told us that Scred has been seperated from Fishpool into its own corporation. This of course means they will be able to focus on the development of Scred more thoroughly. Fishpool and founders of Scred have funded the company so far.

Kristoffer will also be on our panel, so come down to Dubrovnik on the 8th of May to see what they are up to.

Combine marketing people with a possibility to launch a product online and you get a service where you have to pay to see advertising - News to Screen. In short, News to Screen is a seperate program you have purchase for 29 euros a year to get the news you can get online for free.

In the program you have your normal news headlines, the area where you read the news and a video banner where you will be targeted with advertisements. They company has also had a very hungry start in terms of PR. During the doping scandal of the Finnish Biathlon Association, they were the only company that actually started a sponsorship deal with the skiers left in the association.

There’s enough competition out there in the market with regards to free RSS newsreaders that you really don’t need to build barriers of adoption to your product, like putting a price on it. The company has 13 employees at the moment, of whom 4 to 5 are technically oriented. I wish them all the best, but somehow I just don’t see this product taking off.