Can the Post Office Survive the Digital Age?

n an article earlier this year, we asked, “Is email killing the post office?” Well, the post office is not dead yet, but it’s not helping from the looks of it. The U.S. Postal Service doesn’t have the money it needs to pay its bills, and email and the web are clearly major factors.

Can the post office survive the digital age? Tell us what you think.
A report from the New York Times is all but predicting the U.S. Postal Service’s demise. “The agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances,” the report says.
“If Congress doesn’t act, we will default,” Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe is quoted as saying.
Whew we discussed the subject before, Bloomberg BusinessWeek had put out a lengthy report looking at the decline of the USPS and its contributing factors. While touching on email, it looked more at comparison of USPS performance versus that of FedEx, UPS and DHL, as well as their international counterparts.
Despite talk that social media might one day kill email, email has proven time and time again that it is still a vital part of the Internet. A report from Pew Internet recently found that email (along with search) is the top activity online adults engage in on the web – way more than social media (though that’s growing significantly).
Unfortunately for the USPS, that conversation is irrelevant, because social media and email go hand in hand when it comes to less communication by “snail mail” – a phrase that the post office no doubt despises.
One can only imagine how mobile has contributed to even more communication by web over mail. Now the Internet is in your pocket at all times, not to mention the phone – another classic non-mail form of communication. Last week, Nielsen put out a report finding that 40% of mobile users in the U.S. use smartphones.
Of course email isn’t the only part of the web that is hurting the post office. Online bill pay is a big contributor as well – also now handily available from your pocket.
It’s just easier, cheaper and more efficient to communicate digitally.
Total mail volume decreased by 20% from 2006 to 2010, according to that Bloomberg report. The numbers can only be getting worse for the post office.
There will always be packages, but the digital age certainly continues to leave its mark on those as well. Movies, music and books are all digital now. Earlier this year, Amazon announced that Kindle books were outselling print books. Tablet (namely iPad) sales are on fire. The USPS also has to compete with those other parcel services too.
The Postal Service’s payment is due on September 30. From the sound of it, consumers wouldn’t likely feel the effects so much until early next year. At least the post office should remain open for the holidays.
Is the USPS in serious trouble or is this just a temporary set-back? Let us know what you think in the comments.
About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter: @CCrum237 Google: +Chris Crum
  source: http://www.webpronews.com/post-office-email-web-2011-09

“TSA Rape” Blog Post A Matter of First Amendment Rights?

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, many will take the time to not only reflect upon the day itself, but also the decade following the WTC attacks. American life has changed dramatically since that day, but it’s not always easy to cite tangible examples of how it has changed.
But sometimes it is. And the TSA is one entity that has gained quite a bit of attention since then. As airports have continued to implement stronger safety measures over the last decade, many have put the Transportation Security Administration into the crosshairs, railing against random searches and pat-downs – which they say violate some of their basic human rights. One thing on which we can all agree – getting patted down in a airport isn’t a whole lot of fun.
One woman had a particularly nasty experience during a TSA pat-down. According to columnist and blogger Amy Alkon, her experience with a particular TSA agent went way past uncomfortable.
In a blog post, Alkon details a March 31st incident where she accuses TSA agent Thedala Magee of “raping” her with her hand during a public pat-down in Los Angeles.
Alkon writes about her disapproval of the whole procedure, saying that the pat-downs are both a physical violation as well as a constitutional one. One that day, she admits that she decided to make a scene on purpose, to bring attention to what she thinks is an unfair act, “to make it uncomfortable for them to violate us and our rights,” she said. So she began sobbing, loudly. According to Alkon, this was the response from the female TSA agent –

Nearing the end of this violation, I sobbed even louder as the woman, FOUR TIMES, stuck the side of her gloved hand INTO my vagina, through my pants. Between my labia. She really got up there. Four times. Back right and left, and front right and left. In my vagina. Between my labia. I was shocked — utterly unprepared for how she got the side of her hand up there. It was government-sanctioned sexual assault.
Upon leaving, still sobbing, I yelled to the woman, “YOU RAPED ME.” And I took her name to see if I could file sexual assault charges on my return. This woman, and all of those who support this system deserve no less than this sort of unpleasant experience, and from all of us.

Apparently, the lawsuit idea fell through as her lawyer told her she had an unwinnable case.
But now, the TSA agent in question is threatening to sue Alkon for her blog post, claiming defamation. Magee has asked for $500,000 as well as the removal of the blog post.
it doesn’t look like Alkon is going to comply with that request, as she writes today on her blog –

Magee is looking for me to pay her $500K, apologize to her, and take down my blog item about her — because I had the nerve to exercise my First Amendment rights and complain after she jammed her hand sideways into my vagina four times. (Unfortunately for Ms. Magee, I’ve always made a pretty crappy victim.)

She has also gained the services of a First Amendment lawyer named Marc Randazza who is working the case pro bono.
The letter that Magee sent Alkon requesting the monetary damages and the retraction of the “rape” allegations says that the “outbursts in public and writings on the internet” have subjected Magee to “hatred, contempt, and ridicule” and caused her “severe emotional distress, fear, and problems doing her duty.”
Alkon’s lawyer Randazza sent a letter back, saying –

Your client aggressively pushed her fingers into my client’s vulva. I am certain that she did not expect to find a bomb there. She did this to humiliate my client, to punish her for exercising her rights, and to send a message to others who might do the same. It was absolutely a sexual assault, perpetrated in order to exercise power over the victim. We agree with Ms. Alkon’s characterization of this crime as “rape,” and so would any reasonable juror.

He then quotes precedent defending the use of the word “rape” as hyperbolic language. So even if Magee didn’t “rape” Alkon in some meaning of the word, she has the right to characterize it as such.
TSAAlkonThedalaMageeLtr

Response to TSA Agent legal threat

TSA pat-downs have remained a hot button issue for years. Recently, the Texas legislature was forced to pull their “Groping Bill” when the U.S. Attorney for Texas warned that the passing of said bill would most definitely result in flight shutdowns. The “Groping Bill” would have made any TSA pat-down that involved the anus, buttocks or sexual organs a crime.
If everything actually happened as Alkon reports, then you have to agree that this TSA agent’s actions crossed the line – no matter where you stand on the larger issue. Still, some would argue that penalizing the agent for enforcing policies under the instruction of the federal government is the wrong approach. Although it’s highly unlikely that a superior has ever told an agent to go as far as Magee supposedly went.
Should Alkon have the right to make these statements about her experience on her blog? Does a blog post like that fall into the realm of defamation of character? Let us know what you think.

About Josh Wolford
Josh Wolford is a staff writer for WebProNews. He likes beer, Sriracha and Cormac McCarthy. Twitter: @joshgwolf Google: Google+ 

source:http://www.webpronews.com/tsa-rape-blog-post-a-matter-of-first-amendment-rights-2011-09

iPhone 5 Rumor: First Photo From The New Device?

A wild iPhone 5 photo appears! More specifically, a photo supposedly taken from an iPhone 5. If accurate, this would be the first pic ever taken from the upcoming device to make its way to the internet – as well as the most famous uni and salmon sushi pic of all time.
Pocketnow thinks that they’ve stumbled upon the first known photo taken with an iPhone 5, cleverly labeled as “taken with an iPhone 4.” Not so fast, they say -

This (very attractive) photo claims to have been taken by an iPhone 4, but the rest of its EXIF data tells a different story: although the image has been cropped to 2235×2291 (5.12 megapixels), the original picture was a much larger 3264×2448 — or just shy of eight megapixels. What’s more, the lens was recorded as a 4.3mm f/2.4, which is closer to that of a point-and-shoot than the iPhone 4′s actual 3.85mm f/2.8. (Remember that the upcoming HTC Runnymede is said to have an aperture of f/2.2.)

Basically, this photo was taken with a much better camera than exists in any current iPhone model. Once of the earliest and most persistent iPhone 5 rumors has been the addition of an 8 megapixel camera. Here’s the sushi pic in question -

Not only that, but the geotagged location of the photo is 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, sticking this plate of sushi smack dab in the middle of Apple’s campus. Perhaps an eager staffer documenting his lunch with a brand new iPhone?
Or a manipulated photo? Of course the EXIF data could have been misrepresented and the geo data could have been faked. But the evidence as is suggests that we might be looking at what photos will look like when taken by the iPhone 5.
And it looks pretty good, am I right?

About Josh Wolford
Josh Wolford is a staff writer for WebProNews. He likes beer, Sriracha and Cormac McCarthy. Twitter: @joshgwolf Google: Google+ 
source:http://www.webpronews.com/iphone-5-rumor-first-photo-from-the-new-device-2011-09