back to article Australia Post launches inbox and cloud storage for all

Australia Post has announced it will create a “Digital MailBox” for every Australian, as of April 2012. Australia Post Chairman, David Mortimer. Said the service “ … will allow businesses, government entities and customers to communicate through a secure online portal that can be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, …

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  1. Khaptain Silver badge

    One good idea, one bad

    Bad Idea:

    Since these Email boxes are run by the postal service does that mean that the Government have access when they please ? Yeah , yeah tell me that there is no backdoor built into the system...

    Good Idea:

    Since most adult people in a household are obliged to work and the fact that the postman always rings when you are out working, I think that this is a good idea to allow people to choose the time and place. It saves times for all involved.... Where I live we have almost the same choice of having your parcels dropped of at local newsagents, small supermarkets etc which are usually open until at least 20:00.

  2. Steve Brooks

    This is an extended april fools day joke right? I used to work for australia post not many years ago, they were still using hardware with magentic core memory, they have as much chance of getting this right as the labor has of winning the QLD election......oh right

  3. frank ly

    I'm getting a nervous tic ....

    ... thinking about all the ways it could go wrong, and I don't even live in Australia.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Needs a bit of rebranding...

    ...ASIOpost.

  5. Captain Mainwaring
    Go

    Royal Mail please note

    “Australians have told us they want to be able to collect their parcels at a time and place that suits them,”

    I'm sure there are millions of Brits who would wish the Royal Mail to do the same here in the UK.

    A lot of people are out working during post office delivery hours and end up going to the local post office, usually the following saturday morning, to pick up their parcels anyway. Even if this service was only available to say, ten o'clock at night, for five days a week, it would make life a lot easier for the legions of internet shoppers out there who just want to get their hands on their ordered goods as soon as possible.

    Perhaps under this system, the purchaser could have the facility of marking the parcel as to be picked up at the post office only, to save the postman the time in not having to deliver it to the home address. The recepient could be advised by SMS text and/or email that the parcel is available for collection at their nominated local post office.

    1. Mark 65

      Re: Royal Mail please note

      You might want to note that the AUS Post CEO mentions "parcel locker trials". This is how they envisage providing your "convenient, when you want it" deliveries i.e. you go to a centralised post office (local postal depot in UK terms) and collect the parcel from a secure locker you have signed up for. The trial involves 4 post offices in the (very large) country...

      http://auspost.com.au/personal/trial-information.html

      Given the space that such lockers take up - you can't just cater for small parcels, or half a dozen lockers - I think it unlikely to be rolled out universally. You can only use the facility once the original delivery has failed i.e. once it would be eligible to be collected from the local post office. They won't allow you to mark parcels for locker collection only as they won't have the facilities to cater for it. There's one small room of lockers in the Brisbane GPO and that's unlikely to be able to cater for "locker only" delivery for 2 million people.

      1. LaeMing
        Thumb Up

        Re: Royal Mail please note

        A better approach would be: You recieve a letter with the locker number and access code for your parcel. Once your parcel is removed, the access code for the locker changes, and the locker goes back into a common pool. Then lockers are only used when there are actual parcels in them and different-sized lockers can be allocated according to needs.

  6. dephormation.org.uk

    “encrypted so that only the intended recipient can view them”

    And the Australia Post. And the Government.

    And anyone they share they content of your email with.

    And oh look, their pages are bugged with 'addthis', Omniture (2o7), and Google Analytics.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My local post office already allows parcel pick-up from 7AM, without having to hire a locker.

    As for cloud storage, Google Docs works fine for me, and I don't have to worry about ASIO, IT incompetence, etc.

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