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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

February 2001

Users can press keys to run Opera 5.0 and surf the web, rather than push and click your mouse around for everything, but one of the best things about Opera is multiple windows.  Each window remains within the parent program window and pops up a selection task bar at the bottom so you can zip from auction to auction, site to site, smoothly.  I've found it helpful when comparing online auction listings to online reference material.

Opera's emphasis is decidedly pro-user, rather than pro-commercial webmaster.  Users can toggle images on and off with a keystroke, and there's an advanced cookie filtering option that will appeal to many.  US browsers offer an all or none choice for cookies and with many sites needing cookies to get from page to page these days, we're open for tracking from all Web sites.

Right now I have Bill Gates' browser and the Netscape browser on my hard drive.  I use one of them regularly because of habit and the other to check how different browsers show the same pages differently.  I use Opera when I go around the WWW looking at site after site and don't want to waste time.

Get Opera and take it out for a spin sometime.  It's a great experience and it's safe.

Opera
http://www.opera.com

Club eLetters

The Irish Philatelic Newsletter is emailed to interested members of four Irish stamp clubs: the Éire Philatelic Association, the Irish Airmail Society, the Irish Philatelic Circle and the Forschungs-und Arbeitsgemeinschaft Irland e.V.

The newsletter is the work of Mike Connolly who'll share his experience with other stamp clubs who'd like to learn how they can use email newsletter to communicate effectively with their club's membership.

The IPN started in late '98 and is a lightly edited all email supplement.  There are several advantages to a club to use a e-letter like the IPN.

As Connolly points out, it can help attract new members.  There's no printing or postage costs.  It can be read by members everywhere within a few hours.  It's easily archived online for new and potential members, and can be sent out according to the necessary of the content --- no more waiting for content to fill up pages, or worrying about production deadlines.

If you'd like to propose such a tool to your club, check out Connolly's site.

The Irish Philatelic Newsletter
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Corridor/1290/IPNnotice.html

Two fonts walk into a bar. The barman says to them, "Get out. We don't serve your type here."

Gomez Sez

According to Gomez, Amazon was the best online auction site for hobbyists and collectors, though eBay was a very close second.  Gomez is a web site about web sites and online services, sort of a consumer's report site, with the tag line of "your guide to buying online."

For the summer of 2000, Gomez ranks the sites with Amazon and eBay one and two, scoring 7.98 and 7.93.  Yahoo! is a step below at 7.09, followed by Boxlot, Fairmarket and eDeal from 6.19 to 6.14.  Three others score in the four's.

Gomez covers a lot more than stamps, featuring banking and online financial service reports, as well as offering discounts from online booksellers.  In addition there are rating for many business groups such as airlines, hotels and a host of other consumer shopping product lines.

And by now, you may have heard that "Consumer Reports," the granddaddy of independent product reviews, can be accessed online at Amazon.com.  As of this writing, it'll be offered on a pay-for-view basis, which seeing as they don't sell ads at CR, is the only way they can remain trustworthy.

Gomez
http://www.gomez.com

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com