Ooh la la: French town to deliver daily newspapers by drone
Ooh la la: French town to deliver daily newspapers by drone
Christina Farr, VentureBeat
19 hours ago
Residents of Auvergne, a province in south central France, may soon receive their daily paper by drone.
According to a blog post, local postal service La Poste Groupe has been working for several years to modernize its delivery processes. The plan is to implement paper delivery by drone in early May with the help of local volunteers, and tests are already underway.
The drone is a quadricopter, which can be controlled by iPod touch, iPhone, iPad and Android devices, and costs over $300. It is manufactured by Parrot.com, a French wireless devices maker that announced a partnership with La Poste this morning.
French Internet personalities will draw national attention to the experiment, including Olivier Bernasson, founder and CEO of online store Pecheur.com.
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I think it's a stunt. We had two of these exact drones at my last job and it's senseless to use them to deliver on paper at a time.
The batteries are of limited capacity, they would likely have to change them out with almost every delivery and flying one paper at a time between home base and customer is just silly.
Also, at the destination, who is going to untie the paper from the drone?
Instead, take a young boy or girl with a backpack and 30 papers and deliver them personally.
I know, it's brilliant!
Happy Easter!
I'd eagerly wrestle the donuts free, though!
I think delivering newspapers is a wonderful experience for kids. My brother used to have a paper route and as a result knew neighbors and families he wouldn't have otherwise. Me, too -- he'd let me tag along -- and send me to the houses where you had to climb the stairs. 
My brother and his wife still had the paper delivered before they moved. Our only remaining major paper is now delivered in the mornings (used to be the afternoon when there was a different, competing, morning paper). The "paper boy" was a close-to-middle aged man, who drove up in his car.
I feel so old.
Happy Easter to you, NYC_SKP 
