The facts are that the critical mass of letter delivery has gone. It isn't coming back. Yes, I know your grandad likes receiving his bank statements in the post, and it's occasionally nice to receive a postcard from your mum when she's on holiday, but email and IM have comprehensively won. Sure, vinyl sales are up, but stamp collectors aren't going to sustain this industry.

Royal Mail should embrace this. The US Postal Service offers something called Informed Delivery. They email you a scan of the front of any envelopes they're due to deliver. That - hopefully - tells you if your Very Important Letter is going to arrive today.

The USPS already scans envelopes for internal tracking, so adding a customer facing service probably wasn't the hardest thing to do.

Royal Mail could do that. And possibly even go a step further. Why can't I pay RM to open my main, scan it, then email it to me? If I'm away from home, I get the information I want. If I need the hard copy I can ask for a physical delivery. If I don't, they can shred it.

There are services which do this - but they're mostly focussed on businesses and require you to change your primary address.

Speaking of changing address, why can't RM sell me a virtual address? I know they have a PO Box service (for £400 per year!) but with the rise in Internet shopping, privacy conscious citizens, and fears of identity theft wouldn't it make sense to offer a "PO Box light" option? Or sell one-time disposable addresses? Or let people post your things using only an email address?

Most people don't need deliveries every single day - although I'm old enough to remember the "second post" each day. Perhaps people want to specify when they want their postal mail? I work from home on Mondays and Fridays, so there's no point delivering to me outside those days. Why not let people opt-out of Saturday delivery? Or opt-in to only Saturday delivery?

Hell, combined with envelope scanning, I could tell my postie not to deliver certain items. Let them shred the junk for me! Or let me automatically "return to sender" anything for the people who used to live here.

Ultimately, Royal Mail is right - their only future is in parcel delivery. With, perhaps, a small legacy business for people who can't or won't use email. Any investment they make into innovation for letters is money down the drain.

The saddest thing is; this was inevitable. Even if they'd embraced innovation 20 years ago, that wouldn't have stopped or slowed the decline in their core business. They are selling a steam-powered product in a solar powered world.

If you've ever moved house, you'll know how annoying it is to receive mail for the previous occupants. When those letters have a big red BAILIFFS ARE COMING warning on them - it is especially distressing.

The relevant section of the law is:

A person commits an offence if, intending to act to a person’s detriment and without reasonable excuse, he opens a postal packet which he knows or reasonably suspects has been incorrectly delivered to him.

Postal Services Act 2000 - Offences in relation to Postal Services - 84 (3)

You've just received a credit card through the post for the last tenant.

If you open it intending to steal money - that would be an offence.

If you open it because you're nosey - that is not a reasonable excuse.

If you open it so that you can call the company and let them know that their customer has moved - that would not be to someone's detriment, and would be a reasonable excuse.

That's what I do - several years after moving in and we're still getting post for the previous lot! A quick phone call is enough to stop most offenders. Occasionally a financial firm will be a bit sniffy about me not being able to confirm the recipient's account details - but most are happy to be informed.

It would be sensible to securely dispose of any mail afterwards - or mark it "return to sender - not at this address". But, yes, you can open misaddressed mail if you want to let the sender know their mistake.

I am not a lawyer - this is not legal advice!

I've opted-out of receiving unaddressed mail and I've signed up to stop junk mail.

Mostly, I'm pleased to say, it has worked. The only things dropping through my letterbox are small packages from Amazon, the occasional random takeaway leaflet, and letters from organisations too stuck in their ways to make the shift to digital.

But that's causing me an unexpected problem. I'm not talking about "Inbox Zero" - a term popularised by Merlin Mann to discuss how to control one's email, but now used to mean "everything has been read". The problem I'm having is in response times.

I have a full time job, I teach coding to kids, I take a martial arts class 3 times a week, I like to read, watch movies, cook, play video games, drink beer, take photos of the moon, and work on some open-source projects.

I also have to respond to your email.

The advantage of email over postal mail is that it is free and it is quick. Right now, my response rate for email is such that you would get a faster reply if you send me a letter via second class snail mail and I replied in the same manner!

I evidently need a better system for organising my email, working out what can be differed, what needs immediate action, etc.

What tips tricks, systems, and apps do you use?

Twitter allows you to mark certain posts as favourites.  You may do this for a number of reasons - because you thought it was funny or interesting, because you want to reply to it later, or as a general bookmark feature

They're Private, Right?

Wrong. You can see any Twitter user's favourites - even if they've protected their tweets. You can't see the tweets of protected users.  Here are my favourites http://twitter.com/edent/favorites

You can also see who has marked your tweets as their favourites.

What Do Your Twitter Favourites Say About You?

Let's take a "random" example - The Royal Mail.  They only have one favourite.

🎧 phantomile poro 🎧

@CardCaptorKaren

It is written into the CWU constitution that Royal Mail must go on strike once every 4 months. Whiny fucks.

---

Nice.

If you're advising on social media policy - be sure to tell your clients that what they mark as a favourite are open for all to see.  What they bookmark may not create a favourable impression.

Now, there may be perfectly legitimate reasons for clicking "favourite" on an obnoxious or offensive tweet. You may want to mark it so you can show your lawyers, blog about nasty people on the Internet or even a simple mis-click with the mouse.  But in the highly fraught world of social media - it pays to think twice about how your actions may be perceived by others.

A few days ago, the Post Office - in their infinite wisdom - set their legal dogs on those running Ernest Marples.

The Post Office charges for the file that they generated which converts post codes to location.  It can cost anywhere from £1,000 to £4,000 per year to get accurate data.  That's a price that I can't afford - neither can many non-profits, startups or innovators.

"I take the position that the postcode file and the data set of physical coordinates that go with it are a national asset that should be freely available to any UK citizen"  - Tom Watson MP

The Guardian has shown that there is more economic benefit to the UK by setting this data free.

So, what can be done about it?

• Sign the petition to the Prime Minister
• Write a blog post, send a tweet, and tell your friends what’s happening!
• Call, email or fax your MP

The Royal Mail is in its death-throes. It is vital that data created and supported by public money is returned to the public before it is sold off to the highest bidder... only to be sold back to us.