In theory, we all know what happens when something goes through the mail: it is picked up, put in crates and boxes, gets sorted more or less automatically, and is finally delivered by the hands of the local postman. If you've ever seen a mail sorting center before, you know that there are hundreds of meters of conveyor belts involved, and all sorts of complicated sorting machines... but what does it look like from a "parcel's perspective"? How many people touch it? How long does it sit around just... waiting?

Designer Ruben van der Vleuten wondered about these things, and instead of sitting still, he came up with a simple solution to solve this mistery: a camera, hidden inside a parcel!

Inside the parcel there's also a small Arduino circuit, with a timer which tells the camera to film more when the package is moving, and less when it is stopped. The result is the amazing video below:

Pretty neat, huh? Check out Ruben's page, to see what the parcel looked like from the inside! :)

The Olympic Games start in a couple of days in London, and you can almost feel the global rush of excitement! Who will crowned the best of the best? And how many medals will each country get?

Great Britain is now immersed in preparations for the games, and Royal Mail is not an exception! They've come up with a couple of interesting initiatives to honour Great Britain's gold medalists.

To begin with, for each gold medal earned by Team GB, they plan to paint one of their famous red post boxes... gold! That's right - for the first time ever, their iconic post boxes will be dressed in a different color. And the mailboxes will be picked according to the home town of the winners, so if you're cheering for your town's local athlete, keep an eye on your post box!

But that is not all! Royal Mail is also engaging in a race against time to have a commemorative stamp and their respective mini-sheet printed for each golden medalist the day after their medals are won - shortening the stamp making process to 24 hours or less!

Mr. Andrew Hammond, Royal Mail's director of stamps and collectables explains how they plan to achieve this remarkable feat:

They will work around the clock to accomplish this operation (including weekends!), delivering the special stamps overnight to 500 post offices around the UK.

If you live in Great Britain, and see one of these special post boxes or stamps, do post a comment below with a link to a photo! We'd love to see how they look in real life! :)

Have you ever wondered how postcards get to you? I mean, we all know how to send them and we know it's our postman who delivers them - but what about the rest?

Wonder no more - we have found a great video that shows how the magic happens between the sender and the receiver. It documents a sample delivery through the UK Royal Mail but the process worldwide doesn't differ that much. Enjoy!

Quite impressive, isn't it?

If you follow the news, you probably have heard about the Icelandic volcano that recently caused a major disruption on Europe's air traffic. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano (don't worry, we don't know how to properly pronounce that either) caused huge delays on passengers hoping to fly on the days after its eruption on April 14th.

But why is this relevant here? Because not only passengers got grounded - cargo flights too, and this obviously included mail delivery services; any mail arriving or leaving the affected parts of Europe got delayed. But how much did this really affect the postal services? We couldn't find any hard data on it, so we decided to measure it ourselves and share it with you.

Below you can see a graph of number of Postcrossing postcards received per week of 2010.

Postcards received per week (2010)

It's easy to spot when the Eyjafjallajökull did its thing, isn't it? We estimate a 26% hiccup on mail delivery because of the volcano. Quite amazing how powerful nature can be.

However, the good news is: mail delivery is back again to its normal speed, judging by last week's numbers. It's quite possible that postcards traveling to more far away places might still be affected by this, but the worse part seems to be over, so keep posting! :)

A small town in Oregon (U.S.A.) is asking for postcards from all over the world. In return, they will send back their recently created postcards about their town. What else could we ask?

Here are the details:

I just wanted to invite all Postcrossers to contribute a postcard to an upcoming event:

Celebrating the Art of the Postcard

Help the Cornelius Post Office celebrate the joy of small works of art and personal communication. Cornelius is a small town in Western Oregon, known for hazelnuts, blueberries and vineyards. Here at the local post office we noticed that for visitors there was no way of sending a local postcard to share the cool things about this unique little town. We’re working on that! Share your postcard with us and get one of the ones we are producing!

Exhibition: Begins January 11, 2010 in the lobby of the Cornelius, OR Post Office.

Make sure to include your return address to receive one of our postcards in return and to be included in the list of participants.

Send your postcards to:

Postmaster
1639 Baseline Street
Cornelius, OR 97113
USA

Follow us at: http://postcardmailart.blogspot.com/

Have you sent yours?