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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

March 2000

Hello again Stampfans and welcome to the March edition of the Glassine Surfer, where we try to plot the course of stamps on the Web.  This month we have stamp art, a new Eudora, a plug-in wish, vacation hopes and an invitation.  

All we really know about the Web is that it's an immense metamorphasizing cyberhybrid of the communications media and the world's largest sales conduit.  It works like a magazine, though it's as instantaneous as Tv or radio.  It can be as in depth as a large daily newspaper, or as pithy and spurious as an overheard conversation.  

The Web's erasing political, financial and cultural boundries and changing everything as fast as technology with allow.  And we're all part of it, and your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to explore new URLs, seek out new sites and new stamps, to bravely go where no browser has gone before and... share them with us.  Read on for details.

Morocco Post

Here's another country's post office making itself at home on the Web.  The site proclaims "Stamps: Our Ambassador to the World" in French.

This is the Postal Administration of Morocco where you can see the issues of Morocco by year dating back to 1956 and by themes such as flora and fauna and costumes.

http://www.baridalmaghrib.net.ma/philat.htm

Your Best Sites

Good stamp collecting sites are hard to make.  The person has to have a solid background in his subject, be somewhat adept with web matters, have a scanner and the time to put it all together.  And increasingly it seems harder and harder to find philatelic web sites once they go "live."

I spend a lot of time snooping around the web for stamp sites, and I seem to turn up the same sites over and over again.  Some because they are very good sites, some because search engines like them.

But I just know that I am not "seeing" some of the gems you must be familiar with, so I am asking for your help.

E-mail me three to five of the best web sites that you have seen and regularly visit.  This isn't a contest, but a chance for us to share what we know.

I'll put them all in a list on the Web and review some of them here in this column.  I have to believe that we are better judges of stamp sites than a machine

Please help out by e-mailing the best three to five sites to me at the address at the end of this column.

Eudora

Mississippian Eudora Welty wrote the short story "Why I Live at the P.O.," and in 1989 Steven Dorner named his e-mail program in her honor.  A few years later in '93 Dorner and Eudora joined Quaalcom.

Until now Eudora has been available in a light-freeware version and a pro-payable version, but starting with the release of 4.3, Eudora will release one version capable of being set to three different modes.

Officially Eudora will be available in Sponsored mode, Paid mode or Light mode.

Paid mode features a wide array of filters, sorting and mailbox options, along with spell checking, stationery and multiple online e-mail personality set-ups that has made Eudora an extremely popular and reliable e-mail program.  

Sponsored mode will have all the features of the pro version and will be free to use.  The company will recoup costs by running a small static ad window on the left-hand side with the program navigation tree.  

The window is only a 156 x 180 box and seems like a small trade-off for the features of the full-bodied Eudora program.  As of this writing the program is in beta release, but ought to be ready for general consumption by April.  

Light mode is the freeware version that lack the powerful enhancements of the other two modes, but the nice thing about the 4.3 is that since you will be able to change modes on-the-fly, you can see which version best suits your tastes (Though you'll have to pay to use the payable mode.)

4.3 can easily import settings, mail and address books from Microsoft Outlook Express 5.0 (or older) or Netscape Communicator 4.0.

And the 4.3 bundle comes with Qualcomm's PureVoice Voice Player/Recorder application that records and sends voice messages with e-mail.  Recipients then play back voice-mail messages on their Windows or Macintosh computer with the click of a mouse.

Eudora
http://www.eudora.com/