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	<title>Always Use Zipcode</title>
	<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com</link>
	<description>Experiments with the postal system</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 10 Aug 2010 17:15:32 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<item>
		<title>Flat Rate Box Full of Lead</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Someone emailed me and asked if they could send this package. I&#8217;m glad I said &#8220;yes&#8221; because I have had a blast passing it around and showing it to people. The package is a Flat Rate Priority Mail box the size of a VHS tape. Inside is a block of milled lead cut to fit [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=69</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Mailing a Camera</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Someone mailed a camera to Burning Man, asking the post office to take pictures along the way. It was entirely successful. Check out the photos here&#8230;]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=49</link>
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		<title>Clear box and rubber ball</title>
		<description><![CDATA[While it&#8217;s not my goal to solicit weird articles to post on this site (there&#8217;s already Wired&#8217;s Return to Sender Contest and Post Secret), someone sent this odd piece of mail and I decided to share it. I&#8217;m not exactly sure who sent it, but I suspect someone from Jelly. The box is a clear [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=45</link>
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		<title>Mailing Eggs</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m happy to announce we&#8217;ve successfully mailed uncooked eggs. Actually, we drilled a small hole in both ends and used compressed air to remove the insides. Not only did this remove the concern that the eggs might smell bad, but the hollow shells are even more fragile. The egg was sandwiched between two ziplock bags [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=33</link>
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		<title>Another Mail Hacker</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Independent is carrying a great article about another mail hacker who sends strangely addressed envelopes. Here&#8217;s my favorite quote: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/return-to-sender-artist-puts-royal-mail-to-the-test-955499.html She has a book coming out soon as well, already listed on Amazon: Envelopes: A Puzzling Journey Through the Royal Mail .]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=32</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>HOPE Videos</title>
		<description><![CDATA[While the videos are out on torrent sites, I have two copies right here for download. This is a 350MB version MP4 and this is a more compressed, but almost as readable 70MB Version that is faster to download and/or takes up less iPod space.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=30</link>
			</item>
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		<title>HOPE Talks On-line</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Audio versions of the HOPE presentations are now on-line at http://www.thelasthope.org/talks.html, including my presentation. Thanks again for HOPE putting these on-line! I&#8217;m already getting comments from people who missed HOPE, but heard the presentation on-line.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=29</link>
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		<title>Notes from The Last H.O.P.E.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A big thank you to everyone who came to my presentation, and special thanks to all the people who help make H.O.P.E. happen. Here are the links promised. http://pe.usps.com http://ribbs.usps.com http://letterfu.com http://mppclub.org http://postcrossing.com And here is a copy of my presentation in PDF and Powerpoint. This is &#8220;last week&#8217;s version&#8221; so it is slightly different [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=27</link>
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		<title>Matching Wits with the Post Office, Circa 1957</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ModernMechanix.com is publishing a reprint from a 1957 issue of Popular Science. It shows how mail was delivered, including underground pneumatic tubes in New York City. The article even mentions people like me who mess around with the system: Then there are wags who like to match wits with the post office. Some address letters [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=21</link>
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		<title>Packages With Only One Side</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My friend, James Dean, gave me this Wal-Mart promotional piggy bank. It&#8217;s about 30cm round and has been my favorite package to send. It&#8217;s roundness causes lots of fun. When I mailed it to my parents, the clerk put it on the scale to weigh it. It promptly rolled off and made a nice WHAM [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=20</link>
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		<title>Address Not Required</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If you&#8217;ve ever had a post office box, you&#8217;ve probably noticed that those &#8220;extra&#8221; four digits of a zipcode are the last four digits of your box number. Street addresses have those as well, but there can be many addresses that have the same 9 digit zip code. They are useful for doing things like [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=18</link>
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		<title>More Image Addresses</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Here are two envelopes that were addressed with images. You can find lots of on-line programs to make these kind of images at generatorblog.blogspot.com. In testing many of these images, we have had some postcards that were lost in the mailstream, but cannot reproduce the problem consistently. Upon resending lost cards, they always get delivered. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=15</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Bad, Barcode, Bad!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This envelope has the wrong POSTNET barcode.  It was sent from Baltimore to Atlanta, but we coded it for Hilo, Hawaii.  
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=13</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Holy Envelope</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Here we sent an envelope with a hole in it.  Since windowed envelopes pass through the mail stream without any problems, we weren't sure if this "holy" envelope would cause a problem or not.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=11</link>
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		<title>Church Sign Addressing</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Here, we made a postcard using the image from <a href="http://churchsigngenerator.com/">http://churchsigngenerator.com/</a>.  The postcard took an additional 4 days for delivery compared to a normally addressed postcard mailed at the same time.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=9</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Meet the Flintstones</title>
		<description><![CDATA[One day, I read somewhere that the postmaster of Bedrock, Colorado grew so tired of processing mail addressed to Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble that they had a stamp made especially for rejecting such mail. I had to see this, so I mailed a letter to the the 850 person town of Bedrock. The results [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=7</link>
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		<title>Getting a letter in the mail</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This cartoon reminds me of one of the first postal pranks I can remember. Maybe in 6th or 7th grade, my Boy Scout leader sent himself a &#8220;letter&#8221; while we were at summer camp. Each day he would run up the mail call asking if his letter had arrived. After four or five days, his [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.alwaysusezipcode.com/?p=5</link>
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