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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.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 2002

News Tickers

Tickers have been around since the telegraph and were staples of high finance long before they were cliche in the 1930's. Teletype was a nice improvement for newsrooms, but today news tickers and similar desktop solutions are everywhere.

In fact, every portal and instant messaging service has seen fit to stick in a ticker because it's good business and brings people back to the Web site once they click on the story, stock quote, or game score.

But here are two standalone news ticker applications for your desktop that offer more choice and selection.

The BBC runs a ticker called Newsline that can drop anywhere onto your desktop. The BBC is of course non-commercial and British, but non-UK users can unselected UK News. It's a quick installation and easy to manipulate.

Newsline
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/services/ticker/default.stm

WorldFlash is beefier, and has many more options for the news junkie, like headlines streaming from 125 different news organizations, online, broadcast, and print. Instead of one ticker, users can have four separate tickers, each devoted to a speciality such as US news, sports, or business.

WorldFlash
http://www.worldflash.com/

Danish Philately

Steen Hartman's Web site covers more than stamps, but his section of geographical and historical information about Denmark only enhances his site.

You'll find stamps under "Hobbies" along with coins and railroads, plus some others. Under "Stamps" there's a section for Denmark, Greenland, the Faroes, and the Danish West Indies.

If you'd like a tour of Danish philately, start here. It's a hypnotic presentation wonderfully produced and carefully laid out.

Steen Hartman's Danish Stamps
http://www.residence.dk

Web Site Awards.

This is probably old news to you, but the Fédération Internationale de Philatélie's list of award-winning Web sites for 2001 is online.

And it's no surprise that "Post Office in Paradise," the site covering the issues of the Kingdom and Republic of Hawaii, was voted Best Philatelic Web Site of 2001.

Post Office in Paradise
http://www.hawaiianstamps.com

And the FIP's "Top 5%" award was given to these sites.

Dakshina Kannada Philatelic Association
http://www.geocities.com/dakshina_kan_pa/

Federation of the Italian Philatelic Societies
http://www.fsfi.it/

Robert A Siegel Auction Galleries
http://www.siegelauctions.com/

The Philatelic Computing Study Group
http://www.pcsg.org/

Vaccari
http://www.vaccari.it/

Ron Rice's "Princely States Report," focused on Indian philately, won a special "Top 5%" prize, and Roland Klinger's "The Virtual Stamp Album New Hebrides" won a "Top 5%" with felicitations.

Princely States Report (Special Prize)
http://princelystates.com/

The Virtual Stamp Album New Hebrides (Felicitations)
http://www.ro-klinger.de/nh/

In all 71 web sites entered the competition and were judged by independent teams of reviewers.

Fédération Internationale de Philatélie
http://www.f-i-p.ch/

Mr. Tomlinson, I want you.

It wasn't as portentous as "Mr Watson, come here. I want you.", but the world's very first e-mail message was just as important. Ray Tomlinson was working on an electronic message program for a defense contractor involved in ARPANET, the progenitor of the Internet.

By 1971, ARPANET could already send files from one defense installation to another, but Tomlinson wanted to attach messages to the files. And in late 1971 Ray Tomlinson sent the first e-mail to a computer set up on the other end of his workbench via an ARPANET virtual connection.

It was Ray Tomlinson who chose the @ symbol to indicate that a user was "at" some other host computer, and though the exact text of the first message has been forgotten, Tomplinson says it was something like "QWERTYUIOP."

That, of course, may also give Tomlinson a strong claim to the world's first e-mail spam.

Tolerance

Tolerance.org is a Web project of the Southern Poverty Law Center set up to encourage people to fight hate and promote tolerance. It's an online education center with many free publications, on- and offline, and a news center. As we've seen, the only good people can stop others from perpetrating evil.

Tolerance.org
http://www.tolerance.org/

In the curl.

Previous columns of the Glassine Surfer are archived online at the Glassine Surfer Web site. If you don't know what previous issue of AP something was mentioned in this column, use the site's search box.

You're welcome to bring your keyboard to the Sociable Stamp Society, online Sundays and Wednesdays at 8pm. Just click on "chat".

The Glassine Surfer
http://www.glassinesurfer.com

Here's hoping January is a pleasant and prosperous month for all. Thanks for reading the "Glassine Surfer" and don't forget to get out and support your local stamp club.