Jay Goldman

There was a time when the fax machine was the greatest invention in the history of sending things from here to there. We even had a fax machine at home. We used to fax for fun! Oh, the fun we had.

One time, at Radiant Core camp, a client printed out a whole bunch of colour photos and then faxed them to us! They came through as sheet after sheet of pure black, which would have sucked if we didn’t use an electronic fax service that converted them into a very somber PDF. The best part: it was a PowerPoint presentation! She didn’t think to email it. Where was her mind? Where, indeed.

I was entering a whole bunch of business cards into Address Book today (hint hint), and I discovered a trend of companies with local phone numbers but toll free fax numbers. This got me thinking: do they get so many faxes that they had to institute that policy? Was there a promotion from the phone company I didn’t know about? And, really, when was the last time I faxed something? I switched over to digitally signing contracts in Acrobat a long time ago so I could email them back. Next time we run business cards, I might even drop the fax number entirely to discourage the analog-digital-analog conversion and sending of dead trees.

When was the last time you faxed?