"In April 2009, we sent a personal, handwritten letter to each of the 467 households in the small Irish village of Cushendall." Now, Michael Crowe and Lenka Clayton (previously on MeFi) intend to send a letter to everyone on the planet.
posted by creeky on Oct 30, 2009 - 63 comments

Lea Redmond is Postmaster of 'The World's Smallest Postal Service'. In CA she sets up her tiny shop and sends miniature versions of transcribed letters, complete with little wax seals.
posted by cashman on Sep 10, 2009 - 22 comments

Shoot It! Create and mail a real [paper!] postcard from anywhere and to anyone around the world.
posted by ColdChef on Aug 12, 2009 - 34 comments

John J Marley (Gloria's husband) is Northern Ireland's answer to Lazlo Toth -- writing actual posted mail from his home at Comfydown Cottage, Carryduff, Belfast, to correspond with a variety of corporations and heads-of-state. Whether it's asking Irwin's Bakery to employ his wife Gloria (he's her husband), asking Virgin Atlantic if Gloria could take one of their 747's for a spin, or petitioning Kellogg's for adult-themed cereals, he always (well, almost always) receives an appreciative reply to his polite yet bizarre correspondence. [via cjorgensen; previously]
posted by not_on_display on Mar 10, 2009 - 21 comments

Shrinking the United States Postal Service: What happens to Netflix? [more inside]
posted by Secret Life of Gravy on Feb 2, 2009 - 117 comments

Galactic Mail In the future, UPS & FedEx will race and fight in space. via
posted by jontyjago on Dec 6, 2008 - 10 comments

What happens if you post a letter using coins instead of stamps?
posted by divabat on Nov 12, 2008 - 49 comments

Mailbox Art: 20 Cool and Creative Postboxes
posted by An Infinity Of Monkeys on Oct 10, 2008 - 5 comments

Return to sender: Artist puts Royal Mail to the test - "To put them to the test, Harriet Russell concealed the addresses of 130 letters to herself in a series of increasingly complex puzzles and ciphers. Among the disguises she employed were dot-to-dot drawings, anagrams and cartoons. The answer, it seems, was very far indeed. Amazingly, only 10 failed to complete their journey back to her." Be sure to click the "more pictures" link to the right for more samples. Via one.point.zero.
posted by nthdegx on Oct 9, 2008 - 56 comments

Spammers helping with the New Orleans recovery efforts. [more inside]
posted by jourman2 on Aug 20, 2008 - 13 comments

you've got new postcrossed mail You have heard of geocaching. You have heard of Bookcrossing. Here comes Postcrossing. The main idea is that: if you send a postcard, you'll receive at least one back, from a random Postcrosser from somewhere in the world. [more inside]
posted by Baud on Jun 8, 2008 - 19 comments

A few examples of high-quality re-creations of medieval armor. Much of this is created using historical techniques (youtube,) by men (slightly NSFW) who can only be called masters. But it ain't cheap. [more inside]
posted by agentofselection on Dec 7, 2007 - 11 comments

Oops: UK tax collection agency loses discs containing personal details of 25 million Britons in the mail.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Nov 20, 2007 - 50 comments

More fun from the Daily Mail. Apparently Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones has decided to post bits from his upcoming autobiography. 1| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster on Oct 7, 2007 - 29 comments

"Tammy Wynette was quite wrong when she sang 'Sometimes it's hard to be a woman'. It's not. It's always hard to be a woman. Especially if you're a man." Hard-hitting journalism from The Daily Mail. [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster on Sep 20, 2007 - 55 comments

"WANTED: Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily." The Pony Express Home Station, The Pony Express Museum and The St. Joseph Museum all have interesting histories of America's short-lived, but legendary, "fastest mail service across the west." For more extensive reading, there's the National Park Service's Pony Express: Historic Resource Study. (Second link via The Presurfer)
posted by amyms on Apr 15, 2007 - 21 comments

How's the weather? Is it polluted? Do you have plenty of rainforests? Send someone a Geography Information Postcard and tell them about where you live by filling out infographics. (via)
posted by divabat on Jan 31, 2007 - 1 comment

Arago: People, Postage & the Post is the online database of the National Postal Museum. It has lots and lots of lovely things. Some examples are a high quality scan of an 18th Century envelope, a sampling of comic strips featuring mail carriers, a collection of stamps on the theme of map projection and a Swedish post horn.
posted by Kattullus on Jan 11, 2007 - 10 comments

Christmas card delivered without address, town or postcode. Great little story! via
posted by ObscureReferenceMan on Jan 4, 2007 - 21 comments

Someone might be reading your mail.
posted by EarBucket on Jan 4, 2007 - 73 comments

US Census Bureau Facts & Figures: Holiday Edition says that more than 20 billion letters, packages and cards will be delivered this holiday season and 12 million packages a day through to Christmas Eve. Also check out the Special Edition for comparison data from 1915, 1967 and 2006, the African-American History Month Facts & Features and more data going back to 2000.
posted by fenriq on Dec 15, 2006 - 4 comments

When you really, really want your email to arrive at its destination: now you gotta pay postage. Another brilliant, forward-looking idea for monetizing-the-Internet^TM from the wizards at AOL and Yahoo.
posted by digaman on Feb 4, 2006 - 46 comments

Private Mail--Not. ...Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal. ...the agency can, will and does open mail coming to U.S. citizens that originates from a foreign country whenever it’s deemed necessary. ...
posted by amberglow on Jan 6, 2006 - 54 comments

Fed up with navigating badly set up voice mail systems, Paul English has posted a voice mail cheat sheet to help you cut through to a real human. Which is just as well because most companies seem to set up their voice mail systems like this.
posted by Zinger on Nov 25, 2005 - 19 comments

Send a Spam-a-Gram to a lucky corporate whore! Tired of receiving mounds of unsolicited letters and offers in the mail? Want to fight back? Want to get rid of that old tire in your garage that the garbage man won't take? Then read on...
posted by Mr Bluesky on Sep 24, 2005 - 28 comments

Microsoft Mail is designed to replace Hotmail - and looks a lot like "Outlook Online". It will have to compete with Gmail's simplicity and Yahoo's (beta) functionality. Are desktop clients doomed?
posted by bobbyelliott on Sep 16, 2005 - 52 comments

Tristan da Cunha has just been assigned its first postcode by the Royal Mail. This makes it easier for the inhabitants of these remote chunks of rock to receive mail. Easier, but still not easy - to get there, packages must first make their way to Cape Town and then travel 2,800 miles by fishing boat.
posted by kcds on Aug 7, 2005 - 17 comments

Daily Mail Watch keeps an eye on some of Britain's more right wing newspapers.
posted by handee on Jul 28, 2005 - 66 comments

This game rated JC for eternal salvation, curing of the sick, and excessive scourging at the pillar. Ok, this is getting ridiculous...a Christian videogame about the rapture and the tribulations? WTF? I guess I know which side I'd be on. Seriously, though, do these people realize that every single new Christian-centric product is nothing more than a honeypot for harvesting names, addresses, and email addresses? Just like the GOP, people realize there's money to be made in marketing to Christians. But, the second you sign up, I'm sure you get added to one of the GOP's spam farms direct mail providers and sold to the appropriate politicrit or ideological demagogue. Just to show you I'm not full of it, look at who's in the databases of the Omega List and Response Unlimited...Advance Ticket Buyers for the Passion of the Christ, Peace Frogs (what?), Y2K Preparedness Buyers, the current (68k) and former (19m) subscribers to the Washington Times (aka Moonie Times), and of course, the Terri Schiavo Donor List. Take a look at who else is in there - Limbaugh, Newsmax, Fortune Magazine, Human Events, Guns and Ammo Magazine, Oliver North, the Heritage Foundation, Linda Tripp donors, G. Gordon Liddy's Toughguy Database, and the buyers of the Left Behind Video Series. No wonder we always lose...every single rightwing entity is in there! Via BoingBoing.
posted by rzklkng on Jun 30, 2005 - 53 comments

Why can't Robert Lansberry get mail?
posted by Lusy P Hur on May 27, 2005 - 7 comments

How to mail a fresh brain
posted by ColdChef on Feb 26, 2005 - 25 comments

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, but they will stop and take a picture if you ask nicely. Cameramail shows that the USPS has a sense of humour and are good sports.
posted by riffola on Jan 6, 2005 - 14 comments

RSS Mailer emails the contents of RSS feeds to mailing list users. You can manage your users and RSS feeds through a web interface and send a selected number of items from your RSS feeds (individually or all together) to the email addresses on your mail list. Users can subscribe/unsubscribe themselves through forms, or the administrator can subscribe/unsubscribe them through the web interface. You probably won't need Bloglet anymore.
posted by hoder on Oct 6, 2004 - 5 comments

Man short on funds, mails himself home. Judge not amused, fines him $1,500. More background info here. Robbed of the Darwin Award.
posted by Civil_Disobedient on Feb 5, 2004 - 28 comments

Apparently genuine reply to a letter sent to the Inland Revenue. "I must take issue with your description of our last as a "begging letter". It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a "tax demand". This is how we, at the Inland Revenue have always, for reasons of accuracy, traditionally referred to such documents." [via Orbyn, via Cal]
posted by feelinglistless on Nov 28, 2003 - 9 comments

They'll put anything on a postage stamp. Or will they? Some Friday quiz fun from mental_floss magazine.
posted by Oriole Adams on Jul 11, 2003 - 4 comments

Comic Strip Classics Stamps. (via Dublog).
Related :- A nice collection of exhibits at the National Postal Museum, part of the Smithsonian (such as this exhibit of Cuban stamps and this one on FDR's stamp collecting); the Bath Postal Museum of British postal history; stamps of Greenland; stamps of Tibet.
posted by plep on May 23, 2003 - 2 comments

Object Not Found. Lost and found photographs, postcards and letters.'The collection of postcards, photographs and letters collected here allows me to peek into a however small part of other peoples lives. '
Found via Countries of the Mind, a page about an imaginary world, and its postage stamps and postcards.
Related interest :- P22 Mail Art, and gallery.
posted by plep on May 22, 2003 - 5 comments

It's in the mail. Dylon Whyte's Art of Chainmail site features beautiful, clear renderings showing, step-by-step, how to join chain links to form different mail patterns, including European, Japanese, and (probably-not-)Persian designs. This is actually fascinating stuff even if you're not a medievalist or a Renaissance-faire type. Also, from the same source, a brief history of armour and the the secret behind the chain bra!
posted by taz on Apr 14, 2003 - 13 comments

Ever Try Getting Wine Shipped in the U.S.? Looks like Montana had set up a "wine connoisseur" rule that allowed for some shipping into the state if you filled out some paperwork, blah blah blah. PAIN! As someone who enjoys a good wine and wanted to order a bunch of it earlier in '02 when I was in Sonoma, CA and have it shipped home, only to be crushed when I couldn't have it done, I'm looking for a way to get this to work. Anyone else come across these various laws? Anyone else live in a state where they CAN get wine shipped in to them? 13 states allow reciprocal shipping from other partner states, and 14 others have some strict rules about it. Will opening these rules up allow minors an easy way to get alcohol? Some great links at the bottom of the article, too.
posted by djspicerack on Nov 26, 2002 - 30 comments

I find it hard to believe that the bio-chemical weapons specialist, and expert Steven Hatfill, was responsible for the tragically amateurish Anthrax attacks, responsible for senselessly killing mainly postal employees. Greenpeace Germany unsurprisingly supports the 'inside job' conspiracy, and whatreallyhappened.com decides to blame it on the Jews again, among other things.
Hatfill: suspect or pawn?
posted by hama7 on Aug 13, 2002 - 21 comments

Here's a piece from NPR for all those people who, even during these crazy times, have a love of getting/receiving mail (need Real Player to hear)...
posted by Miyagi on Nov 23, 2001 - 2 comments

In the house of anthrax. "AMERICAN officials increasingly believe the anthrax attacks since September 11th were not carried out by people connected to al-Qaeda, but may have been the work of a lone American madman. To avert future attacks, though, perhaps they should look harder."
posted by Zool on Nov 22, 2001 - 22 comments

do u mail or Do you email? Hyphenless email drops the e as Josh Davis retreats to his virtual cave.
posted by rory on Nov 19, 2001 - 31 comments

Thinking of shipping valuable stuff by UPS? Think different! Every time I forget exactly why I never, ever want to ship anything at all by UPS ground, a story like this one pops up that reminds me. The last time I had something sent to me using that "service" (and I use the term loosely) my Athlon desktop system showed up at my door with the case dented and the CPU & heatsink loose inside the case as the box was jolted so violently that it broke the notch (on the ZIF socket) which usually keeps the assembly in place. Use FedEx if it positively, absolutely has to be there in one piece, I guess.
posted by clevershark on Nov 15, 2001 - 20 comments

With the FBI advising how to handle suspicious mail [pdf], the fine people who send you junk snail mail are changing their methods. The Canadian and American Direct Marketing Associations are recommending that their members ''consider notifying consumers by phone or e-mail that a direct-mail piece is on its way so they are not alarmed when it arrives." One cancelled campaign involved mailing marbles to some prospective clients.
posted by tranquileye on Oct 24, 2001 - 2 comments

Paranoid? Then iron your mail if you're that scared of getting Anthrax.
posted by kingmissile on Oct 17, 2001 - 13 comments

USPS advice on the Anthrax treat. You've read through the hype. Now read about what you really must know.
posted by betobeto on Oct 16, 2001 - 9 comments

What to do... if you get a letter full of somethng nasty.
posted by terrymiles on Oct 15, 2001 - 13 comments

5 more Anthrax cases in Fla. Five more people in South Florida have been found to be exposed to anthrax, according to officials of American Media, the company where three other people had been exposed to the disease. • Anthrax Test Positive in Nevada. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced today that a second letter sent from Trenton, N.J., contained the anthrax that infected an NBC employee
posted by semmi on Oct 13, 2001 - 21 comments