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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.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

Iceland

Now that we're safely on the other side of winter, I can mention Iceland without getting grumpy cabin fever e-mails. As we know, Iceland was named by Viking real estate agents trying to pawn off the Greenland glaciers while keeping Iceland, which  is actually a very hospitable North Atlantic island, for themselves.

Icelandic stamps have always had a certain cachet of quality design and long term value, and the Scandinavian Collectors Club has done a tremendous job of expanding Iceland's philatelic frontiers in the USA, along with those of the other Scandinavian nations.

The SCC Web site now hosts a photo essay by Alfred A. Gruber called "Iceland Post Offices: Photos and Postmarks." This is an SCC online publication that shows each post office and their respective postmarks, something which might not have been ideally suited to a typical quarterly printed publication.

Posthorn editor Paul Albright and SCC President and webmaster John Dubois both had a hand in turning Gruber's original material into digital form, which will also allow any future research to be easily added to the work.

Iceland Post Offices: Photos and Postmarks
http://www.scc-online.org/iceland_pos.htm

And speaking of Icelandic works. Cornell University in NY and the National and University Library of Iceland have launched Saganet, whose goal is to present thousands of pages of Icelandic literature on the Web. The site's in both English and Icelandic, but the core text is only in the latter.

Saganet
http://saga.library.cornell.edu

Stamp Newsgroups

Usenet is a very large collection of "newsgroups," which are something close to bulletin boards. Users can read and post messages to a newsgroup just as they do to WWW bulletin board discussion forums. What makes Usenet different is how it is distributed on the Internet.

Usenet is not part of a particular Web site. Usenet is another communication system on the Internet, just as the WWW is a single system riding on the Internet. In order to read and post a Usenet newsgroup, you need to download a newsreader program and configure its settings to your personal ISP, for you see, Usenet access is done through the company that connects you to the Internet.

There must be over 60,000 newsgroups, and it's probable that your ISP only carries 32,000, which is only a problem if they're not carrying the one newsgroup you want to participate in.

Currently, there are two widely available newsreaders. Free Agent and Gravity are both freeware. In addition Microsoft has their own integrated newsreader, which is probably lurking somewhere on your PC.

Forte's Free Agent
http://www.forteinc.com/main/homepage.php

Anawave's Gravity Newsreader
http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/lpad/gravity.html

Microsoft Reader
http://www.microsoft.com/reader/newsgroup.asp

If you're not familiar with Usenet, you'll be happy to know that you can participate in a newsgroup through the Google Web site if you visit their "Groups" section.

If you type in "rec.collecting.stamps" into the search form, you'll get a list of messages, plus two subgroups listed at the top of the results "rec.collecting.stamps.discuss" and "rec.collecting.stamps.marketplace"  It's a good way to sample what Usenet is all about.

Needless to say, there are newsgroups for thousands of topics and interests.

Google Groups
http://www.google.com/grphp?hl=en