Fun things to do with faxes

Most articles or posts about faxing (including mine, I’m afraid) tend to look at serious business issues. They talk about increasing productivity, complying with HIPAA or SOX regulations, saving the planet and other heavy-duty topics.

Perhaps I’m just in a whimsical mood today, but I can’t help thinking of the immortal words of the latest iteration of the Joker: “Why so serious?” Faxing isn’t just for business. There are a lot of uses that would fall into the category of fun, too. Here are a few examples.

You can fax recipes from mother to daughter or son instead of having to re-type them. Either recipes out of an old cookbook that’s on a shelf in the kitchen, or perhaps a handwritten recipe that’s been in the family for generations. The nice thing is, if they’re received on MyFax the recipient can store and organize them for quick future reference.

You can participate in office or personal pools more easily. Whether it’s what day Sarah will have the baby or a sports pool (such as the Super Bowl or the NCAA’s March Madness), faxing makes it easy to get your hand-generated picks in.

You can amuse your co-workers. Remember that scene in The Office where Jim sends a fax to Dwight, pretending it’s Dwight from the future telling himself to leave the office immediately or something bad will happen? Odds are you won’t actually get anyone to react like that. But you can break up the day a little and illicit a few laughs.

You can draw an explanation of how something works and send it to the person who’s just not getting it as you explain it over the phone. Sure, you could draw it on the computer and email it too, but unless you do it a lot it’s hard to draw something freehand on a computer. Most of the time it looks like you had too much coffee.

You can fax the floor plans to your new house to an out-of-state friend or relative, either to keep them informed or so you can show how much better you’re doing than he/she is. Everybody has different motivations.

What are your thoughts? How else can you use faxing for fun?