Via Andrew G. on the Facebook Machine, a smartphone app called PaperKarma that claims it can let you opt out of “junk mail” by taking a picture of it. Says Lifehacker:

PaperKarma works on magazines, catalogs, coupons, fliers, credit card offers, and even the Yellow Pages. To sign up for the service, you need to hand over a bit of your own information, including your address and email. Once you do, all you need to do is snap a picture of the junk mail in your mailbox and PaperKarma unsubscribes you from the list. The nice thing is that you can pick and choose what you unsubscribe from.

I downloaded the app to see if I could get rid of the one thing I really hate getting: the weekly sheaf of inserts, coupons, etc., from the Albany Times-Union. Getting it is not a so much a “green issue,” just an “I have to deal with this every week” issue. So I downloaded this app to see if I could get it to stop. As instructed, I let it find my address, then I took a photo of the offending mail, and uploaded it. Two days later, it is still “pending.” Perhaps I’ll experiment with the app again, but even the so-called junk mail I still get doesn’t bother me so much. I can’t remember the last time I got a credit card offer (such that I don’t even remember what I did with my paper shredder), and most of the few print catalogs I do get I find actually useful. Of course, back in the day, I recall inveighing against the mountains of unwanted junk mail that came daily. Now, there’s so little of it that I don’t really mind it so much. And that’s really the key, as a wise man once said: “everything in moderation.”