Paperless postal system anyone? Zumbox to the rescue.

Now that's what I call a good idea: a paperless postal system. Zumbox, a private start-up aimed at creating no-paper mail has received nearly $10m funding and is planning to go world wide with the idea. As I understand from this article in TechCrunch, Zumbox is a free service that provides a combined digital mailbox and filing system based on your postal address. Apparently the company works with commercial companies to  deliver automatically digital versions of your mail once you have opted into the system. Presumably, commercial mailings lists are checked against Zumbox data and if you're on the list you get a digital copy instead of an envelope through the letterbox. Not only is this likely to save organisations millions, it will be a further nail in the coffin of the traditional postal services. Let's hope, though, that it is adopted mainly by organisations from which we want to receive mail and not monopolised by the junk-mail brigade.