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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

April 2001

Topicals

The Web site named Topical Philately simply states that it has general resources and reference material for topical philatelists, but what makes this site work is the scope of the material and the obvious knowledge of the subject by the site's owner and Webmaster, Dr. R.V. Rajan.

The site is divided into pages for topical checklists, literature, societies and clubs, study units and exhibits, as well as philatelic bureaus and agencies, and online resources, and thankfully all you'll find there is good information about topicals.

Topical Philately
http://www.topicalphilately.com/

Volcanoes on Stamps

Here's a marriage between earth science and stamps. Click on the name of a volcano on the site's list for a stamp showing that volcano, as well as a bit of background and a few links to other volcano related sites.  

I have to confess a fascination with volcanoes that comes from three semesters of earth science and Spencer Tracy in "The Devil at Four O'Clock."  Though the old movie doesn't hold up today, on 1961's big screens in NY it more than held its own.

Volcanoes created the Earth as we know it and will always be Nature's paramount display of power.  Drop in and enjoy the site.

Volcanoes on Stamps
http://www.iomoon.com/

CrystalPort

CrystalPort Browser is an ad supported browser that uses a tab system to open two or more Web sites simultaneously, which can come in handy when you need to compare and contrast stamps, auctions or prices.  While tabs have been used in Opera and in Simulbrowse, which morfed into NetCaptor, Netscape and Explorer actually load another copy of the browser to do the same job, slowing down most systems.

But this company has added something they call AppCapture to the tabs in their CrystalPost Browser.  AppCapture enables users to launch their own PC applications within the tabs in the Browser, and though most of us don't have a problem going from Explorer to Word on the desktop, this option allows for a little more automation to our online work.

Any program can be set up in AppCapture, though the best use would be for those that make us of drag and drop operations, and users can set them up either as tabs or on a sidebar.  It's free if you don't mind the banner ads embedded in the task bar or you can pay to register it for use without the ads.

CrystalPort
http://www.crystalport.com/

Winkey

We all know that the Windows operating system comes packed with certain keyboard shortcuts such as Ctl+X, which deletes highlighted text, and Ctl+P, which usually sends a document to the printer, and many of us, who are shackled to the keyboard for the better part of our working day, often regard a needed mouse click as a serious design flaw.

Myself, I'd much rather use the keyboard than the mouse, and one of the tiny applets I use to help me breeze through my day is called Winkey, a small program that let's me assign programs, operations or folders to my own shortcut keys.  Thus, with a WIN+1 I open up my desktop folder of stamp information, and other shortcut minimizes all the open files and programs on my desktop.

The program needs a keyboard that has a "Windows" key, usually a square key on the right-hand side next to Alt down by the spacebar.  With it you have space for about 200 shortcut key combinations.  Winkey is meant for Windows 95 and 98, though those with ME say it works for them too.