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.

VentureBeat finds Juhani and his party list for San Francisco in a post titled Web 2.0 - The ultimate party.

If you haven’t checked out Juhani’s post yet on the parties do read it, lot’s of interesting events if you’re in San Francisco :)

Are you aware that sailing enthusiasts earn annually almost double the income compared to amateur golfers in the US? That was news to me when I chatted with the co-founder of sailingregister.com (later abbreviated as SR), Vesa Lindqvist. They have tackled a tightly defined, but potentially lucrative, niche of sailing races.

SR offers something for all parties that include spectators, sailors and race officials. SR’s key service is a secure sign-up system for sailors and race organizers. Sailing event organizers also lack proper services for providing race coverage for sailing spectators ashore and home. SR proposes to provide a reliable, secure and feature-rich alternative.

Their initial business model is to charge a premium from fees collected from race participants. However, the founders have a strong background of mobile business and we can expect the service to offer a range of premium rate mobile services for spectators in the future. Furthermore, they plan to offer social network driven marketing services to advertisers targeting this high-networth customer segment.

With many vertical social networks currently popping up this space is also contested with players such as Regatta Network and Compete-at-sailing. However, I believe SR is on the right track as they target enterprise customers as well with their marketing services. One has to bear in mind that according to Mr. Lindqvist, the total size of the sports industry internet spending in the US alone is circa $239 million.

SR is currently self-funded. They continue their negotiations with lead customers so that they will be ready for sailing season 2008.

I wish the SR guys all the best and good sailing.