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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

September 2000

The Internet is a system of hardware that we use to send information through software programs, such as the Berners-Lee's WWW, e-mail or FTP, and it seems as if we're about to see new systems shake up the 'Net in the near future, such as Freenet developed by another Brit.

For stamp collectors past innovations have made it easier to learn about stamps and made it easier to find stamps to buy.  Barring a commercial meltdown on the WWW, it'll only get easier for us.

Over the last year of we've covered quite a few stamp sites, WWW tools and useful programs and now it's time again to retrace our steps and review where we've been before we hoist our sails and set our course by the brightest star.

The Crown and Eagle

Jerry Jensen tells the story of Germany's Crown and Eagle definitives of 1889-90 with a complete eight-frame, 128-page, stamp exhibit online, supplimented with other pages of material.  Each page of the online exhibition is a scan of the original stamp show entry that loaded quickly over my 56k dial-up.

The exhibit won silvers at the GPS's convention in '92 and '95, a gold at NOJEX and an International Vermeil at PACIFIC '97.  Since then it was shown at IRBA '99 and awarded several National Gold awards and one "Reserve Grand."

The "Crown and Eagle" online-exhibition is a definite must-see, offering tremendous scope, depth and content.      

Jensen's "Crown and Eagle" Exhibit
http://www.philatelist.nu/exhibit/start.html

Stamps A-Z

Bill Senkus' "Alpabetilately" offers 26 glimpses of different aspects of stamp collecting, arranged alphabetically of course.  For example, "B" is for bisect, and is a page with 11 detailed illustrations and accompanying text, while "Z" is for Zeppelin and gets the same treatment.

Bill says his stamp site is for beginners and non-collectors, but there's something here for every hoarder, philatelist and armchair dreamer and is an excellent introduction to the hobby for any non-collector.

Alphabetilately
http://home.att.net/~alphabetilately/index.html

Babylon.com

Babylon is an all-in-one 12 language translater and time, currency and measurement converter that works.  When installed it retrieves translations via your Internet connection from the Babylon.com Web site.

Babylon works with any program on your computer in which you can enter words or numbers.  Highlight the word to be translated and then key in your Babylon translation keystrokes, and the translation is made.

Time, money and measures are converterd in the same way.  Babylon updates rates from the Bank of Canada and handles a wide array of currencies.

You can surf sites, access Babylon and get translations and conversions on the fly.  Currently it offers language support for Chinese (simplified and traditional), Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish.  

Babylon
http://www.babylon.com

Another service, FreeTranslation.com, renders translations of eight common European languages, and provides a good outline of what exactly machine translations are.

FreeTranslation
http://www.freetranslation.com/

The other well-known service is Bablefish, which now has a browser plug-in for Explorer or Navigator that may well become one of your essential tools.  

Bablefish
http://babelfish.altavista.com