Press release: 

San Antonio, Texas. December 6, 2006 – BroadRamp Inc. today announced they have been awarded a contract with the United States Postal Service (USPS) to provide encoding, hosting, and streaming services on the USPS.com website utilizing BroadRamp’s innovative CDS™ content delivery platform. The effort is part of a comprehensive strategy intended to attract a larger audience to USPS’s increasing number of online services and engage a demographic that may not be familiar with Postal Service products and services.

The intent of providing richer multimedia offerings on USPS.com is to attract more users and engage a younger demographic that may not be familiar with postal services due to the advances of electronic communication.

The project will initially focus on utilizing CDS™ video for instructional and marketing purposes in support of services particular to the holiday season that include packing and mailing tips for holiday packages, online mailing and delivery options and do-it-yourself greeting card services.

BroadRamp’s CDS platform converts existing content into online interactive multimedia and delivers it online without the use of a media player. Their CDS-V (Content Delivery System Video Module), the application behind the USPS project, was developed to service companies with a large video presence. It is a database-driven, instantly updateable, secured server that allows virtually millions of video clips to be categorized, indexed, stored and distributed in seconds while maintaining simplicity and ease for administrators.

BroadRamp’s ability to deliver rich, large-format, high-quality video with quick launch has significantly enhanced the online experience of many of their clients’ customers. Additionally, the efficiencies of the CDS™ compression algorithms and automated encoding/provisioning solution can significantly reduce infrastructure costs, a critical factor in enabling many companies to enrich their online presence with streaming video offerings.

“We are very excited about the opportunity to assist USPS in enriching their online presence with our CDS™ video offerings,” said BroadRamp’s President and CEO Greg Nakagawa. “We look forward to facilitating their visionary designs with the use of our CDS™ technology, and we feel privileged to be selected to do so,” he added.

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“Join PostCom President Gene Del Polito and PostCom General Counsel Ian Volner in a discussion of some of the key provisions of the new Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (H.R. 6407).”

Click here to download the file to your PC, or use the player to listen online.

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The man who first allowed letter carriers to wear shorts passed away December 7. Anthony Louis Mondello was general counsel of the U.S. Civil Service Commission from 1968 to 1975, and according to his obituary in the Washington Post, he “helped to make federal workplace rules more compatible with a changing society”.

It was Mr. Mondello who made the decision to permit Postal Service employees to wear short pants in hot weather. He also eliminated McCarthy-era loyalty oaths as a condition of employment and worked to discourage discrimination based on sexual orientation.

And there’s a lot more- Mondello was one of those unsung bureaucrats who in fact made a difference- the Post quotes a colleague who described him as “one of the most honorable guys I’ve met in my life”.

Anthony Mondello; Worked for Rights of Federal Employees

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I’ve been a Netflix customer for about two years, and I’ve been pretty happy with their service. Most movies arrive overnight, in both directions. But today they went one step beyond overnight- I got an email this morning informing me that a DVD they said they had sent me yesterday had been received back today! Now that’s fast! Unfortunately, of course, it left out the part where the DVD stops at my house, and I get to watch it. I brought this to their attention (no easy task, since their web site requires you to go through a multiple choice menu to file a service request, and this particular problem wasn’t on any of the menus), but haven’t heard back yet.

The second DVD they had told me was coming did arrive in today’s mail, and brought its own surprise. It felt a bit heavier and thicker than normal, so at first I thought maybe the other DVD was in there, but no, when I went to tear the tab seal, two Christmas cards, addressed to two people I’ve never heard of, dropped out.

Busy day at my local PO I guess…

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