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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

May 2001

WWW Rautatie Asema

I grew up near the Erie Lackawana railroad yards, collect Finnish Saarinens, and live in northern Vermont, where I think I still see some snow under the hemlocks on the north side of the hill outside the house, so a Web site for Finnish Railway Philately is a natural like sugar on snow (maple syrup dripped over a bowl of snow).

This site isn't a topical site just about trains on Finnish stamps, though that's covered well also.  It's how the postal system and the rail network in Finland have worked together through the years.

It's a specialist site that covers stamps, maxim cards, state and private railway stamps, postal stationery, railway cancels, booklets, parcel stamps, special cancellations, postcards and literature, and probably a few other things in between.

Many topics are covered in depth, some are under constuction. It's more of an online research project than anything else, along the lines of "Post Office in Paradise."  You'll also find information about the actual railways themselves, and you won't have to try and pronounce "rautatie asema" (railroad station) because the site is in English.

Finnish Railway Philately
http://www.netti.fi/~kpaanane/kari63.htm

If you're a railroad topicalist, be sure to follow the links to the Pannanen site, and I hope you have already filled in your APS ballot.  That was what you were supposed to do.

Palms At the Show

If you use a PDA with the PalmOS you can now add a stamp collecting database manager to it.  Extended Technology Systems offers "Pocket Stamp 1.0" for a free 30-day shareware trail.

Pocket Stamp is meant to help you track large want lists while you're out at stamp shows or meetings and lets you record the data of your new purchases.  Drop down menus let you catergorize your stamp quickly and record retrieval is done through a scrollable index.

Extended Technology Systems
http://www.exts.com
(click through the menu to the Pocket Stamp page.)

Palmtops (for general PDA info)
http://palmtops.about.com

Ad-ware

Adware is a variety of funding for software developers that relies on providing Web surfing habits to marketing companies, who use the data to construct more efficient sites to reach their online customer's needs.  On the other hand, many people don't like the idea of unknowingly providing this information to god-knows-who.

Previously, I mentioned a site that offered Optout.  It located and deleted adware installed on hard drives.  That program is no longer available, but a recommended alternative is Ad-ware put out by a German company called Lavasoft.  

It's a free adware, spyware, removal tool that finds detects and safely removes advertising spyware from your system.

Ad-ware 4.55
http://www.lavasoft.de/