Ministers prepare to launch Royal Mail floatFinancial TimesMinisters are close to giving the go-ahead for a stock market flotation of Royal Mail, which could value the company at up to £3bn in the most ambitious privatisation since John Major sold off the railways in the 1990s. A formal announcement of …

Royal Mail recruiting 400 seasonal staffU.TVThe seasonal positions will support Royal Mail's permanent 124,000 postmen and women who sort and deliver the mail all year round, including Christmas which is the busiest time of the year for the postal service. The recruits will help to sort … More: continued here

msnNOW You won't believe how much this Pokemon card is selling formsnNOWHave you ever had a collection you cared so much about, you'd do anything to complete it? One eBay seller is hoping someone feels that way about Pokemon trading cards. This Pikachu Illustrator Card is the rarest of them …

Town Hall The Deepest, Scariest Secrets of the Post Office Scandal RevealedTown HallFirst of all, the USPS is NOT a government organization, but a private business. (sigh). Second, the USPS does NOT photograph every piece of mail. (sigh) It does run it thru multiple scanners. One is a bio scanner …

Northampton Chronicle & Echo Royal Mail recruiting hundreds of Christmas staff in NorthamptonNorthampton Chronicle & EchoRoyal Mail is set to recruit 720 seasonal staff to work at the South Midlands Mail Centre at Northampton's Swan Valley this Christmas. As in previous years, seasonal workers are being sought by Royal Mail …

EBay buys shopping research site Decide.comVentureBeatEBay has acquired price forecasting and shopping research company Decide, the company confirmed today. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Decide provides consumers with a set of analytics that can help predict whether they should buy a …eBay acquires Decide.com, shopping research site will …

Google Shopping Express will add pressure to companies like eBay that are growing their own same-day delivery programs in what has become a fierce race between tech giants. More: continued here

PolicyMic Elizabeth Hovde: Cut back on food stamps to stop feeding the not so needyOregonLive.comA misguided someone is leaving fliers in upper-scale Portland neighborhoods, trying to out community members who are on various forms of public assistance — most recently, food stamps. The fliers are signed "Artemis of the Wildland," …

Stamp Collecting: US stamps a good way to start collectionState-Journal.comLast month we looked at some approaches local stamp collectors have to our enjoyable and educational hobby. If we focus on stamps of the United States, the various areas of collecting are almost limitless. One advantage of collecting U. S. stamps …

The Guardian Livechat: Should the Royal Mail be privatised?The GuardianThe government and Royal Mail management argue that the organisation needs access to private capital in order to grow and compete with its rivals – such as UK Mail and TNT, who have capitalised on the rise in online shopping – …