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US Wants To Build 'Internet of Postal Things'
dcblogs writes: The U.S. Postal Service plans to spend up to $100,000 to investigate how it can utilize low cost sensors and related wireless technologies to improve the efficiency of its operations. The postal service already scans letters and parcels up to 11 times during processing, representing 1.7 trillion scans a year. It uses supercomputers to process that data. In theory, the postal service believes that everything it uses — mailboxes, vehicles, machines, or a letter carrier — could be equipped with a sensor to create what it terms the Internet of Postal Things. The Internet has not been kind to the postal service. Electronic delivery has upended the postal services business model. In 2003, it processed 49 billion pieces of single-piece first-class mail, but by 2013, that figured dropped to 22.6 billion pieces.
In other high-tech postal service news, Digital Post Australia has shut down. It was an attempt to digitize snail mail, but they didn't manage to convince enough senders that it was worth trying.
2) Want to send something physical, such as a key. This also includes any letter you think your great grandchildren might want to read some day.
3) Want to send something that you don't want copied/replied/forwarded/subpoenaed in a law suit (A lot more important than you might think).
4) You don't know the recipient's email address.
5) The law says you must (important for financial papers, etc.)
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The final news about Australia is a nice epilog to the thin future of US Postal Service.
I've never understood this term. It makes no sense as an informative expression, because everyone attempting to use the internet needs a thing to do so. There can be no internet without things. In fact, the internet exists in the connections between things. The "internet of things" is like "the story of words" or "the forest of trees". It means nothing.
Increase efficiency by shutting down your operation and letting private companies take over.
For some reason, too many people instantly lose the abillity to care about what they're sending out (like the dreaded top-post), or even spell. In contrast, most of us have learned in school how to write a passable letter and there's something about having the thing in your hands, looking it over before stuffing it into an envelope, that makes people think again and perhaps even correct errors and such.
Because of that it'd be a shame to no longer be able to send letters. Then again, plenty of postal volume was in fact junk mail and much of that moved to email too. So they were shipping a lot of noise already, and taking that out would've been a blow anyway. So a smaller postal service is probably inevitable every which way. But losing it entirely would be... unwise.
So it's not surprising they want to improve and why not use modern technology for that? "Everybody" is doing it, and anyway, they're already taking and keeping pictures of everything sent, "for your safety from terrorism" and such malarky. I'm not at all happy with that.
In the end it's probably yet another "because we can" thing that may help a bit but the drawbacks will be systematically ignored, and that's bad.
the fix for the postal service is simple... dont send trucks to the middle of nowhere every day. in the cities, they are actually making a profit... but because they send a truck out every day to the middle of nowhere for one letter, they lose tons of money.
They would collectively go "DOESN'T ANYBODY SPEAK A DECENT LANGUAGE AROUND HERE?!?"
Oh, got caught in the fascist caps filter.
Most people hate using the cellular network with a passion. Just hook up NFC boxes to all your big blue mailboxes, and people will hilariously be getting their email by checking a physical mailbox.
21.6 billion of that was junk mail
Mentioning the decline in first-class mail without mentioning the increase in package volume is highly misleading... but then again, ever since the pre-funding mandate nonsense in Congress there has been a rather obvious attempt to dismantle and/or privatize the USPS.
The USPS *does* need to be reformed, however. The workplace environment created by management is extremely toxic. Safety rules and labor laws are routinely violated and quality of serivce is constantly compromised in order to increase management bonuses. The various postal unions are fighting a losing battle against the abuses and the Hollywood accounting, and the increasing number of "temp" employees is going to weaken the unions' position even more.
Efficiency in operations should not just be a euphemism for barbarism in the workplace. If you want to see the war against the middle class up close and personal, just sign up to be a CCA at the Post Office.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
As a former rural carrier, I can tell you those blasted scanners the USPS gives the carriers are a total pain. They can't scan barcodes in full sunlight, which is absolutely crazy considering we're either outside or in a truck that has full windows. So next time watch your poor mail carrier try to scan your next package, especially if there isn't a cloud in the sky. You'll see us try to hide the thing in the shade, move the scanner around, and generally get aggravated at it. Something like NFC would be a godsend if its implemented correctly. Of course, however, how much of a chance is it that the USPS would actually implement it correctly?
I receive more parcels now than ever before. Most of my shopping is done online. How is that not good for the postal service?
Maybe this will help the USPS catch up their tracking system to somewhere around the the turn of the millennium.
solved using this. You might want to look at https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
In a nutshell, the Post Office has a customer base of only about 400 companies. The actual American public is lost in the noise as far as the Post Office is concerned.
$100k is like two guys and a handful of gadgets for 3 months. Hardly news worthy. For something as large and complex as USPS I would bid that for less than $1M. Invest $10M and you might get a return on the investment.
So... A "postal network" of sorts..
That make me go postal
George Bush was in office. It takes a democrat to allow monopolies, but it takes a commie to lose money while doing it..
I would post AC, but the flames get fanned faster this way.
The USPS lost on letters but it gained in package shipments. The actual numbers show they've only grown as a result; plus netflix helped a bunch with letter mailings.
Thing is they are under attack by the GOP who is ideologically against them in addition to corps funding the attack upon them. Like the 2006 scam to fund their pension out 75 years in advance which put them into debt and forced all these budget solving ideas we hear about to save them money. They are required to not lose money; by fools in congress, but the constitution defines their existence because they are THAT important to the nation. They are prevented from trying new things like more package friendly trucks or a massive electric fleet... or pricing things based upon distance traveled instead of merely doing it by weight. I can ship in state for 1/3 as much using a local private company because they don't subsidize airmail cross country (think about how such a change would shake up the economy. good? maybe.)
Just think what will happen when they ruin the middle class jobs at the USPS.... the USPS is the 2nd largest employer in the USA! (and largely self funded, but it is congress's duty to fund them at a loss if need be--- and they really should be. Like for example, how they used to deliver newspapers for free.)
Me I wouldn't think they should compete with internet; I think modern packages should also include data packets and the USPS should be our packet delivery ISP too (don't give me crap about privacy, nothing stopped the NSA and I don't like comcast spying on me so they can threaten me if somebody downloads something they police on my open wifi. There is also no reason they couldn't still have private ISPs run just run the lower level network.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
First, lose the Unions.
..all what I can think of is "what a great game".
Before cheap computers were available, how did any country on Earth manage to run an affordable postal service? We had a better service back then, and no computers - how was this possible? What has changed since then?
The USPS is not qualified to build an internet of anything. They have already built an internet of people, and yet it is not very good. For example, they can easily create routing loops by misentering a zip. There's a bulletin taped up in my local post office (the hub for my county) which addresses this issue, which is how I became aware of it to begin with. If they enter the wrong zip when they take in a package, then the package will bounce back and forth between the desired destination and the real destination, but never actually get delivered until a human notices the routing loop and pulls the package out of circulation for correction. But every single article is scanned and OCR'd. They have the opportunity to throw an exception when the zip is off by one digit. They're not using their existing technology to catch common mistakes. Instead of fixing it at the technological level, they sent out a memo to make sure postal workers don't screw up, because they're just not going to fix it. Let's let them figure out how to make their existing network robust against human error before they go on and try to do something even more complicated.
As an aside, my local postmaster was dumb enough to tell me that after your mail is scanned, the data is just thrown away. This was less than a month before the "revelation" (for the stupid, anyway) that the USPS was handing that data straight to the feds. You pretty much had to be a massive idiot not to assume that was happening already though, if you were aware that the mail was being scanned. I am not shocked that my postmaster is a massive idiot. He is also lazy and will stand around and jaw-jack when there are long lines. Hooray for unions.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And it's these 400 customers who demand delivery tracking. USPS performance is inconsistent across facilities and they are always pulling tricks like "unload incoming bulk mail and let sit for 2 days before doing an inbound scan". Those 400 customers want to know why a percentage of their multi-million-dollar bulk mailing arrived in the mailbox after the sale was over. That's what drives the tracking initiatives.
I had to laugh when they screamed about ending Saturday service. I haven't had reliable Saturday service in over a decade. Maybe one Saturday a month maybe less. And the rest of the week is even worse. On a good week we get mail 4 of the 5 days and when it comes, if it comes it's after 7pm. We stopped leaving mail for pickup years ago because if it didn't get lost, it would add 2 days to delivery. As it is, it take 5 days to send a 1st class letter to an address in the same zipcode. The USPS is Welfare for fat drunk diabetics.
What if everyone had a machine at their house, that would copy and digitize paper, then send it to the receiver where it was printed out? /oh nevermind
Hard to have any love for the postal service when they fill my mailbox with junk mail addressed to current resident. At least email has a spam filter. I tried to opt out but they get really upset and tell you there is no way to opt out. The mailman said the junk mail pays the bills at the USPS these days.