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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.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 2003

MyWay

Somehow, this doesn’t seem to be the best time to debut a new Web portal site, much less one that promises no banners, no pop-ups, but that helps explain why this new free service is called MyWay.com.

MyWay offers all of the standard portal informational components with an easy to use free user page. Logged in users can create customized news and information pages, as well as an e-mail account.

MyWay has fine tuned their site to compete directly with Yahoo, and MyWay users can even import their old Yahoo! or MSN portfolios, bookmarks and email address book with a few clicks.

The underlying design philosophy seems to be retro-Web and harkens back to circa 1995. The focus is to load banner-free pages of the user’s customizable information as fast as possible.

There are loading times in the upper-right hand corner, and as most webpages are now as bloated as couch potatoes, it’s nice to see some fundamental, lean Web design, rather than ohh-ahh graphics design for a change.

And even the privacy policy is human. It’s two paragraphs and not in legal mumbo jumbo.

Without banners and pop-ups, MyWay pays its bills with sponsored listings placed on their Google search results page.

Beta was back around Thanksgiving, and roll out came in December with the initial launch ads claiming Yahoo! is Toast.” And as MyWay’s founder was one of the prime movers of iWon.com, there’s a chance that a website pushing quick, clean information can make it.

Information is what the Web is about, and what MyWay.com delivers. If you want quick results, no pop ups, no banners, then do it MyWay.

I guess the only thing left unanswered is which musical version of “My Way” the people at the site prefer. Frank Sinatra’s, or Johnny Rotten’s? For myself, MyWay’s “My Way” would best be a duet.

MyWay.com
http://www.myway.com

###

Mis Estampillas

William Castillo’s “Venezuelan Philately” is in Spanish, but that won’t top anyone eager to know more about the issues of this South American giant.

If your high school Spanish is rusty, Castillo has a “translate” link on his top navigation bar which will take you through the whole site in Google-English.

The site now has a catalog of pre-stamp postal history and an online stamp album. Pages are shown as thumbnails, and lead to a much larger pictures of album pages that are shown within smaller frames. Users then move a magnifying glass icon over an adjacent thumbnail to reveal the large stamp on the page within the viewing frame. It’s actually very neat, and the effect is perfect for a site about stamp collecting.

Another indepth look at Venezuelan stamps is Castillo’s pages on forgeries. He offers side-by-side graphic comparisons along with copious notes, and an online catalog of Venezuelan stamps is in the works from first locals to 1959.

This is a great site for Venezuelan and South American collectors, and for philatelic webmasters looking for the next best thing.

My Stamps: Venezuelan Philately
http://www.mystamps.net

###

Modern British

British Decimal Stamps Study Circle is the specialist group for the study of all aspects of modern GB, with 300 members worldwide, some beginners and some dyed in the wool Machin fly speckers.

The BDSSC regularly publishes newsletters, detailed specialist charts, lists, and details of upcoming stamp issues, not to mention articles, and a questions and answers pages. Members can also participate in the Circle’s auctions.

The site is well-illustrated and informative, and easy to get around. Fortuneately, the Circle’s housekeeping is kept light, so that the majority of space is allotted to the news and views of the stamps.