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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.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 1999

NZ CD

New Zealand Post and Wanganui Polytechnic put together "New Zealand Stamps - A Virtual Album" and won Interactive New Zealand's Icon Awards in November '98 for this CD-ROM.

"A Virtual Album" has over 1800 big illustrations with details on all NZ stamps issued since 1855.  It has a search engine and glossary plus an inventory and annotation system for users to catalog their own collections at home.

The CD-ROM is available from the Philatelic Bureau of New Zealand Post and shows the history of New Zealand depicted through stamps.  It also has a few interactive games tossed in to challenge the youngsters, too.  There are some screen shots at the site, and maybe they'll put up a little online demo for all us non-kiwi collectors.

NZ Virtual Stamp Album at
http://www.nzstamps.co.nz/nzstamps/recent/98_cdrom.htm

Interactve NZ at
http://www.inz.org.nz/

The Road Ahead by Bill Gates

Three years ago Bill Gates of Microsoft, released "The Road Ahead," a book with a companion CD disk.  It was 276 pages of the vision-thing that top-rank billionaires use to pilot their juggernauts through dark storms and troubling times, a collection of summaries, views and anecdotes followed by projections and sophistry on a variety of PC and 'Net topics.  Sort of a businessman's travel guide to the future.

If you haven't, read it.  It's easy to digest and very non-techy because part of that vision-thing is educating us, the casual readers.  Go to your local public library and borrow the book for a couple of weeks.  Then check out the web site for the completly revised and up-to-date version of "The Road Ahead," which is 20,000 words longer and 35% newer than '96.

You may not agree with Gates, but this is the vision of an influential person who like to make things happen.  I think Tom Edison would have liked to go fishing with him and chew the fat.

"The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates at
http://www.roadahead.com/

History of the Internet at
http://www.isoc.org/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html

Take a memo

Window's little Notepad program seems to be a pothole in the road ahead intentionally left behind for others to fill in.  It's functional but limited, and if you need something better here are two worth getting.

NotePad was written by Jan Goyvaerts over in Flanders, Belgium, and as the instructions say, "You may try out EditPad for a short while, but if you wish to keep on using it, you are kindly requested to say "thank you" to the author by sending him a nice postcard. If everyone would say "thank you" when someone else said or did something nice, this world would be a much better place."

Call it postcard-ware and call it possibly the best of the breed.  It is very user-friendly, powerful and easy, and it comes in several different languages.  So, get Jan's program and send him a nice philatelic card in the mail.

NotePad at
http://www.ping.be/jg/

NoteTab Software has an entire NoteTab family of text/html editors.  They're simple Notepad replacements or lickity-split html markup programs, depending on what you write.  There are Pro and Standard versions that you can download for free trials, or grab the freeware giveaway to keep.  These programs have a great look and feel and do their jobs exceedingly well.  If you're tinkering with a stamp web site, try out this program.

NoteTab
http://www.notetab.com/