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Just because Outbox didn't succeed at digital mail doesn't mean other companies haven't. Companies like Earth Class Mail have been providing digital mail services since long before Outbox was around.

I just scanned everything to PDF and then just use nested folders.

bills/bank/
bills/credit/
bills/utilities/
expenses/abc inc/
expenses/xyz inc/
house/123 mayberry street/purchase documents/
house/123 mayberry street/rental expenses/
taxes/2011/
taxes/2012/

For incoming mail, I use Earth Class Mail. They scan the mail for me and turn it into a PDF. It's not particularly cheap (although it used to be), but then again I never have to touch the scanner again, and I have access to my snail mail from anywhere.

The post office should just offer a service like Earth Class Mail for a similar price and an extra bonus - no "resident" mail.

It's too bad the post office is still stuck in the 19th century; if they offered mail->digital at a reasonable premium, that alone could pay their bills and subsidize the letter carriers until we no longer need them.

There was a Seinfeld episode where Kramer went into the post office to stop sending him mail - got me thinking. Why do we have to receive all this crap in a box in our front yard? I pay my bills online or schedule checks from my bank each month. There are few items that I actually open up every month, most go straight into the trash. The items I do open I end up scanning into PDF anyway as invoices or paystubs.

I actually pay for a service like this: Earth Class Mail, there are few others like this too. They receive your mail and scan the envelope which you access online just like your e-mail, then you can pick it up (inconvenient) or scanned, forwarded or shredded/recycled. It's a bit expensive and I've only been doing it for a couple months but so far so good.

I have a real street address (no PO Box) which so far no one has balked at: the DMV, my insurance company, voter registration.

Of course, the reason I am doing this is so that I can live anywhere I want without having to change my address every time I move -- except for magazine subscription (which with the new iPad/eReader devices will hopefully not be needed anymore). I work remote and can take my phone number anywhere I go (skype, vonage, etc) and make or receive calls from my laptop.

It's actually like Earth Class Mail, which scans your mail, and has a government postal service outsource program. Notably, they do this for Swiss Post.

After reading Zumbox's site, I'm still trying to figure out why I would open an account there. It seems not only do I have to sign up for it, all my service providers do too. If my electric company is too dumb to offer e-bills, why would they offer this?

Well first off Skype sucks. Not trolling, I promise. It just really sucks for quality and that is my own experience and that of several others.

I use Skype as my home phone, and dial in to conference calls for work. The quality is as good as my cell phone - it's not CD quality, but it's perfectly fine.

One big problem is most people have crappy audio on their computers, for example trying to use built-in laptop speakers and microphone. A decent microphone and headphones (not speakers) does wonders. I use a Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 and some random iPod headphones.

I've tried Skype on my iPhone as well and the people I called couldn't tell the difference between calling using my cell minutes and using Skype.

A nice landlane-to-landline call is of course better quality - but how often does that happen any more? Many providers now use VoIP for backhaul, and even my desk phone at work is VoIP.

Skype also does require you to "pony up" more money to connect to "regular" phones. So it's not as free of a solution as one might think and I believe the person in the article wants to connect to the regular or traditional phone systems.

Indeed, it's $2.99/month for unlimited outbound calls to the US: http://www.skype.com/allfeatures/subscriptions/uscanada/

If you pay per minute, it's $0.021/minute, so if you use more than 142 minutes a month (about two and a half hours) then the subscription is better.

If you get an incoming number, it's $60/year ($5/month), but it's half off if you also get the unlimited outbound calling, so winds up being $60/2/12 = $2.50/month for inbound plus $2.99 month for outbound = $5.49/month for in and outbound. Plus they threw in free voicemail.

So for $5.49/month I get a phone that works anywhere in the world I have internet. I'm quite happy with Skype.

Slightly related, I'm going to plug my other favorite virtual service - http://www.earthclassmail.com/ They receive your snail mail, scan it via robots (frickin robots!), and give you SSL website access to the PDFs. $10/month for the basic plan, which is plenty for me since I have e-bills for most things, and basically only the government sends me dead trees. For physical things that make it to your mailbox (like replacement credit cards) they'll store it until you're ready to ship it to yourself. They're awesome.

I've been a paying customer of both Skype and ECM for about a year a and half now, and I'm very happy with both services.

This would be illegal in several jurisdictions. Just hope you never get caught doing that.

While it may be illegal (fraud?) to claim an address where you don't receive mail, it's certainly not illegal to have an out-of-state billing address.

Sort of off-topic.. I replaced my local-to-my-town USPS post office box with http://www.earthclassmail.com/ - they scan all your mail and you download it as PDFs. They're based out of Beaverton, Oregon - but they can also give you a Portland address (among other cities across the US). I'm very happy with them BTW, costs about $100 a year and I don't have to scan my bills myself, go the the post office, or worry about missing important mail while I'm traveling. Did I mention I'm very happy with them? :)

Anyways, AT&T was happy to change my (non-Oregon) billing address to Oregon, since that was actually my new billing address. I don't remember if it changed my taxes; I don't recall any drop in my bill, but then again I wasn't looking for any.