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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.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 1999

Stamps from the Kingdom of Hawaii

These legendary classic issues are illustrated with good copies and accompanying text with layout and color evoking both Hawaii and its stamps.  Collector Rodney Moura covers the Missionary issues, the numeral issue, free inter-island mail, the Kahului Railroad Company, as well as revenues, postcards and envelopes.

Stamps from the Kingdom of Hawaii at
http://www.aloha.net/~rodney/

Currency Rate Convertor

Type in the amount of the source currency, then select the target currency and you're up-to-date answer is returned.  That's all there is to it.

Rate Convertor at
http://www.xe.net/ucc/

Babelfish

Babelfish is Systransoft's free online language translation service hosted by Alta Vista.  Just put in the words, select the languages and hit "enter."  It's perfect for straightforward prose, but rough rendering nuances though it will convey the gist of what may otherwise be gibberish to you.

One helpful feature is that Bablefish can display a web page's text in the language you select, revealing links and contents online and browseable.

Bablefish at
http://babelfish.altavista.com

Copernic 99

This freeware search program for your PC searches 10 search engines at once.  After searching, it intergrates the results and displays them in a table that you can sort and edit.  Searches then can be saved, updated, refined or deleted.  The results can be viewed by URL, page title or relevancy score, etc., and many features are just mouse clicks.  Copernic 99 has the look and feel of an Explorer-Word hybrid, and database work is fast.  

Copernic 99 at
http://www.copernic.com

Virtual Stamp Album of New Hebridies

Martin Treadwell of New Zealand and Roland Klinger of Germany have put together a somewhat astounding site on the philately of these islands.
A typical entry shows the enlarged stamp,catalog numbers, print quantities and appropriate notes and annotations.  Liekwise, the postal history displayed is rich and varied with detailed write-ups.

The Postage Stamps and Postal History of the New Hebrides at
http://members.tripod.de/NewHebrides/

Old Berg's Waterfalls.

Another high quality topical collection of high, cool waters that grace some of the world's classic designs, rendered in startling clarity and richness.  

http://members.aol.com/oldbeeg/H2Ofalls.html

The Danish West Indies

This Danish West Indies online reference site is hosted by Torben Mel  Jørgensen and covers the Bicolored and Provisional issues, featuring stamps, die proofs, plate proofs, reprints, etc. with a technical emphasis.

The Danish West Indies at
http://home0.inet.tele.dk/mehl/

Free Agent

Free Agent is a workhorse free program that lets you read Usenet newsgroups offline on your PC.  It's well-designed, easy to use and miraculously powerful in its simplicity.

Forte Free Agent at
http://www.forteinc.com

Google

The Google search engine is now the big-league brains behind AOL's Netscape Search service.  Google applies the query word or phrase to all the pages in the index and ranks them by popularity, which they measure by how many other sites are linked to a site and the identity of the linked-site.  The top results are thus skewed to sites to which other prominent sites are linked.

Google at
http://www.google.com

Scanning

If a picture is worth a thousand words, and a scanned picture can reach millions every day, then a scan is worth --- well, you can do the math.  As more and more material migrates to the 'Net, scanning is a skill that can't stressed enough, and Wayne Fulton Scan Tips is a site loaded with over 100 pages of in depth information.

Wayne Fulton Scan Tips at
http://www.scantips.com/

The World Wide Web Consortium

The Internet is the 'Net and the World Wide Web is the Web, the latter part of the former.  It was Tim Berners-Lee who invented the Net's Web and then he gave it away. Imagine if Gutenberg had been able to enforce patents on his little press.  Read about the Web here.  

The World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org

"The Road Ahead"

Bill Gates didn't so much invent anything as apply solutions and give people the tools that they wanted.  "The Road Ahead" is the Chairman's little red book, and though you may not agree in principle it's smart to know what a 200 ton elephant intends to do next.

"The Road Ahead" at
http://www.roadahead.com/

Beginner's Central

This is a practical and helpful online Net tutorial from Northern Webs, an Idaho web design studio, covering how to FTP, download, save file as, and much more.  It explains everything that your PC maker takes for granted.

Beginner's Central
http://northernwebs.com/bc/