Swedish e-postal service delivers wherever you want

Stockholm, Sweden Forget paper invoices, junk circulars and credit card statements that pile up in the mailbox.

That’s what Posten, Sweden’s national post office, and Margareta Chowra, above, spokeswoman for the Swedish Posten online delivery service, are encouraging with an Internet mail delivery service that aims to make most physical mail go the way of the typewriter.

Posten’s ePostbox is cheap, environmentally friendly and lets recipients pick up mail at any Internet-connected computer, anywhere in the world.

To send mail through ePostbox, companies pay about 2 kronor (19 cents) per item, some 25 percent less than it would cost to have the mail delivered by carriers.

Columnist finds some treasures on the ‘Net

This week Spinning the Web columnist Michael Newman, right, discusses the secrets of the “Whois” database and other hidden treasures on the Web.

For this week’s column and an archive of past columns, visit www.ljworld.com/section/spinningtheweb.

Cannes festival gets into the digital trend

Cannes, France Filmmakers at the Cannes Film Festival are showing how digital cameras give new freedom to directors, whether they want to create dazzling asteroid showers or more intimate settings.

Four of the movies in the festival’s main competition from China, Russia, Britain and Iran were shot digitally.

And then, of course, there’s the latest “Star Wars” movie, which was shot on digital cameras and on a digital projector, which uses tiny mirrors, prisms and digitally stored images instead of celluloid reels.

Cyberspace cops accused of suppressing expression

Cairo, Egypt A Web site devoted to homosexual issues in Egypt includes this warning: “Guess who’s watching? Egyptian State Security!”

Egypt’s gays, an ongoing police target, aren’t the only Web surfers who should beware. In recent months, Egyptian police also arrested a Web designer who posted a poem deemed politically suspect and a student who used the Internet to spread what officials said were false rumors.

Human rights advocates say Egypt is using new technology in an old campaign against freedoms.