Stamp Column Archives

The Glassine Surfer Column Archive

This column originally appeared in the American Philatelic Society's monthly magazine, "The American Philatelist." Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

January 2001

There are several sites around that can fill you in on the details, but the most helpful to me has been Shields Up.  It can diagnose your current susceptibility by probing your ports, and you'll also find reviews of personal firewall software, one of which is ZoneAlarm.

This program is free for personal home use and is very easy to work with, while some other programs require some level of in depth understanding of Internet connectivity and the like.

When set up a firewall like ZoneAlarm, it basically will hide your ports from the rest of the WWW.  You'll be able to access and send data you want, but all other intrusions will be stopped before they occur.

ZoneAlarm is easy-to-use and lets you select from three security levels for both local and 'Net traffic.  IT also allows you to set what programs can access the 'Net, and anytime a blocked-event happens you'll get the details in a pop-up window.

You ought to look into setting up your own firewall on your computer, especially if you use a DSL line or cable modem, whereby you computer is essentially online 24/7 which makes you more or a target.

Shields Up!
http://grc.com/
and under "News & Events" click "Shields Up!"

ZoneAlarm
http://www.zonealarm.com/

Black Ice Defender
http://www.networkice.com/

Sygate Personal Firewall
http://www.sygate.com/products/shield_ov.htm

Net Security
http://netsecurity.about.com

E-Quill

I don't know how I heard about it and at first I didn't know what to make of it.  E-Quill said it was something like "sticky notes" for the Web, which I then imagined as a notepad clipped to my browser.  It wasn't clear, but feeling adventurous I took a chance and am glad I did.

Here's how it works.  First you download and install the E-Quill toolbar to your Internet Explorer browser.  Then, say, you find a Web site or an eBay auction listing that you know would interest a philatelic friend in Chile or Cocoa Beach, but you want to point a few things out to him about the lot or the page.

Open the E-Quill toolbar, click on the notepad and write your opinion.  Then drop the note onto the Web page.  Then click on the E-Quill marking pen and draw an arrow to the suspicious scan and circle it and for good measure use the E-Quill highlighter and highlight the small print at the bottom of the page.  (Oh yes, it has an eraser.)  Next, click send and a copy of the original web page along with all the notes and marks you made on it will be stored on the E-Quill server.  

At the same time, your e-mail program will open with a message for you to address to your friend in Chile or Cocoa Beach.  When your friend clicks the link to your annotated Webpage message, the page with your notes and doodling will open in his browser, and of course, the content of the original Webpage will be live, functional and unchanged.  Only your notes have been added.

Though this has limitless humorous uses and "I-told-ya-so" messages, it's very practical for people crafting a stamp Website or debating the course of some online stamp auction, and the addressee does not have to have the E-Quill toolbar set up in his browser to read what you've sent to him.

Officially, you can write, circle, underline, draw, highlight text and jot comments on "sticky notes," then send them to any e-mail address.

E-Quill
http://www.e-quill.com

Be sure to read everything on the program at the Website before you install the program.  This is for IE browsers only.

Texas T

"Petroleum: The Black Gold" is an online thematic stamp exhibition that covers many aspects of petroleum oil --- origin, prospecting, drilling, refining, petrochemical plants, oil terminals, pipelines, famous people and of course companys.

The site has some 79 pages of exhibition pages, which are essentially good scans of the pages that have appeared in stamp show exhibition competitions.  Curiously, though the site itself is in Portugese, the exhibition text is in English.

"Amostragem" leads to the exhibition pages.  

Petroleum: The Black Gold
http://www.professorsoares.adv.br/petros.html