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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.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

A Question of Balance

Back in December a Web commentator named John C. Dvorak wrote about Web entropy, claiming that commercial conformity, spam and other factors will make the Web less and less useful and less and less used. In this context Merriam-Webster says entropy is "a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder," which seems to mean some think the Web is destined to become mulch.

More likely, the Web will be looking for a new balance between the profitable, but vanilla-flavored AOL, and the-sky's-the-limit, but speculative Web.

Though it seems that more and more of the Web is run by media conglomerates, to whom the Web is a "point of sale" display and a credit card checkout, I'll go along for the ride, just as long as I can chat with my friends, find some good stamps to buy, and visit some stamp sites.

Let commerce develop Net technology to its fullest, as long as they remember the Web is really about people.

"A question of Web entropy"
http://www.zdnet.com
Then type "A question of Web entropy" in the search box.

Merriam Webster Dictionary
http://www.m-w.com/

Parrots on Stamps

If your a bird on stamps thematic collector, or just a plain avian aficionado, you'll like "Parrots on Stamps..."

As the site says, it is now available in English, and it covers other parrot collectibles beside stamps. Each specie and each country has its own section, and users can browse by specie or country, such as Agapornis canus or Agapornis fischeri, or Fiji or French Guiana.

Each page contains abundant scans of a certain specie of parrots or a country's parrot stamps. The site has hundreds of scans and is truly proof of the passionate nature of the dedicated collector.

Parrots on Stamps & Phonecards, Banknotes & Coins.
http://papugi.emernet.pl/ang/

India

Collectors of India have a rich philatelic history to study and collect, as well as a growing number of Indian stamp Web sites, one of which is "Vision of India."

"Visions of India" is a rich, visual site filled with information, articles to help promote India through her postage stamps and interest in collecting Indian issues.

The site is arranged by topics such as "Little known facts," "Festivals of India," and "Guards of Motherland" with each page showing Indian stamps and annotations about that topic.

Vision of India
http://www.geocities.com/visionofindiaonnet

Another site for Indian collectors is the Dakshina Kannada Philatelic Association. I mentioned it here in 2000, and it continues to grow. The articles section now has material such as a tutorial on designing a philatelic Web site, cancellations from 2000, a review of CD's on Indian philately, "Indian Light Combat Aircraft," and "Jainism and Philately," among others.

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

And for the dyed in the wool collector of India, the Philatelic Congress of India is now in the making and online.

Philatelic Congress of India
http://pci-india.org/nav.htm

Memories

The Internet Archive is a digital library of sites with free access for researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public. It has several sections, one of which is the "Wayback Machine," a simple date sensitive Net search engine.

If you want to see what a certain site looked like back in 1998, then put in the URL and see what turns up. Yes, the APS site it there with a listing going back to 1997.

There are also sections for the September 11th attacks (a collaborative effort of the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive, and webArchivist.org), Web Pioneers, and Election 2000.

The Internet Archive
http://www.archive.org/index.html

Part I :: Part II :: Part III