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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

July 2003

Meet up

I live in a rural state, and I heard that our former governor was using a website to network and meet face-to-face with potential supporters of his presidential aspirations. That's how I came across meetup.com, a simple Web tool that has some potential for stamp clubs and philatelists in general.

The site's raison d'etre is to help people meet locally with others who share the same interests. It's interest- and geographic-based and not Web-dependent. Click through the menus for your area and interest to see if someone is trying to meet up with others like you. If they are, you'll see a time and a place for the meeting, usually some well-known public place. If there's no listing, you can start one.

When I went over the site, there were a hodge-podge of common interests that people  were meeting up about, ranging from presidential politics to quilting, from Brooklyn, NY, to Pocatello, ID. The functionality depends on the Webmaster, but the content depends on the users.

If you're a stamp club secretary, this might be an avenue to let non-member stamp collectors in your neighborhood know you're ready to welcome them. Just create a logon ID and you're set.

Meetup.com
http://www.meetup.com

Though Web bulletin boards give us a chance to participate when our personal schedule permits it, nothing can replace old fashioned get togethers.

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GPS Innovates

Necessity is the mother of invention, and the Web has helped solve a number of problems. So when the Germany Philatelic Society wanted to economize on their journal's production costs, the Web offered a simple method.

Stamp color is important, sometimes crucial, but expensive to print, so the GPS began experimenting with their April-May issue of "German Postal Specialist," and printed the illustrations in economical black and white, while posting large color scans of the images to the club website.

Their journal article on the Volkswagen ran 40 pages with 67 images, illustrating over 50 years of postal markings related to the German car. The feature was adapted from Daniel C. Olsen's Grand Award-winning 8-frame exhibit at National Topical Stamp Show last year, and members got to see the important illustrations in vivid color without breaking the GPS bank.

The webmaster simply added a page of thumbnail images, "Specialist Color Images," linked to the target scans. The same GPS issue also showed a rare 10-billion mark Inflation cover discovered for $7.50 in a dealer's box.

Germany Philatelic Society
http://www.gps.nu

If a group uses both Web and print to reach readers and members, choosing the most cost effective method for the task at hand should be one of the first decisions in the communications process, and GPS shows just how easy it can be implemented.

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Trillian

You might use AOL's IM with most people you know, but your friend in LA might prefer Yahoo! Messenger. Then you're asked to start using MSN with another group of people, and before long you have too many chat messenger applications in your systems tray. It's happened to me, and at times I've had two or more instant messengers running at once, which was a strain on my machine and connection.

And that's what Trillian is supposed to solve. It allows users to connect to mIRC, AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo Messenger at the same time, through the same desktop program, and log on to the same client with two or more avatars at the same time. So, a user could be logged on to AIM as both "crazy8" and "ginRummy" while also using his MSN and Yahoo ID's.