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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

October 1999

Stamp Month

October has always been shortchanged.  July has the summer, Fourth of July fireworks and parades.  December has Christmas, and even frigid February has the love feast of Valentine's Day.  All October got was Halloween when the dead are undead again.  

Maybe that's why October is "National Stamp Collecting Month:" The United States Postal Service wanted to brighten up an otherwise dreary spot on the calendar.  

This month the USPS expects over three million school children from eight to 12 to enjoy thier monthlong series of stamp collecting activites.  The Postal Service sent out more than 134,000 kits to help educate kids about stamp collecting and are also releasing the "Insects and Spiders" on 1 October to kick-off the event.  

Geez, what kid doesn't like creepy, crawling things, especially on nights when ghosts stalk the dark places in their backyard.  

This year hand out some glassines of stamps at Halloween.  Stiffen it with a baseball card and a slip of paper with the APS' URL for more information.  Maybe the ghosts come alive again in some youngster's stamp album.

If you'd like to read more about helping to bring the world of stamps to children during Stamp Collecting Month, you should check out "Teaching With Stamps."  Meant for teachers, it has many good ideas for everyone.

Teaching With Stamps at
http://www.richmond.edu/~educate/stohr/stamps/

Of course October brings us Columbus Day and even United Nations Day on Sunday the 24th, but October's rains are cold, the days are short and the memories of summer too recent to celebrate with any gusto when all we can hope for is an Indian Summer.

United Nations Postal Administration at
http://www.un.org/Depts/UNPA/

United Nations Day at
http://www.unausa.org/programs/unday.htm

Machin-Nuts

About once a month another stamp collector unveils a treasure trove on the Web.  Usually, it is the philatelist's knowledge fueled by a stamp collector's passion and coupled with their homegrown Net-tech ability that brings sparkle and luster to the site.  

I was glued to my mouse for several days exploring Robin Harris' "Great Britain Machins," a site for and about used Machins, those modern definitive classics from the UK.  

Harris got hooked on Machin varieties, but before he made his customized album pages, he needed a through understanding of his subject.  The result of his study was this site, which I'm sure all "Machin-Nuts" will enjoy as much as I did.

The depth of information is impressive and the clarity of presentation a joy.  You'll find a virtually complete list of all major varieties, somewhere in the order of 1,333 of them covering regionals, denomination, colour, value size, perf changes, printing method, etc.  

Harris was President of the Winnipeg Philatelic Society and a self-employed computer consultant before taking a position at a large stamp firm in Saskatoon.  He is also a stamp writer of some note.
And one of the nice things to mull over is that that it's probably only the beginning for as we know Web publications grow and grow and grow.  

"Machin-Nuts" at
http://www.adminware.ca/machin.htm

Rumors of War

MediaMetrix is the Net's most widely used audience rating and e-commerce measurement service.  Just as radio and TV have ratings, and newspapers and magazines boast about audited cirulation figures, 'Net sites use their MediaMetrix numbers to impress their friends and families.

You too can check out the nascent mass medium's rating war at the MediaMetrix site, where they list the top 50 web sites each month.  Check out the Amazon.com vs. BarnesandNoble.com tussle or see who's ahead in the search engine portal battle royale.  And note that AOL not a "Web Site."  It's a proprietary service under "Digital Media/Web Properties."

MediaMetrix at
http://www.mediametrix.com/
(click on "Top 50")

Security

Admit it, you have lost three Web passwords in the last year.  You signed up for a slew of mailing lists, bulletin boards, free email, web site services and you can't find those passwords.  And wasn't that your e-mail password scrawled on the company memo that circulated for two weeks before you knew about it.

If you have trouble with passwords, try out this free and perfect little program called Passkeeper.  It's a simple download and install.  It's a small password protected applet. Just keep a shortcut on your taskbar and all your passwords are easy to access and safe when stored.  And it's freeware.

Passkeeper at
http://www.isys.hu/staff/brad/passkeeper.html

One hint: if you forget your "Passkeeper password" you're flat out of luck. There's no backdoor or workaround, so try to remember that one at least.  And you can always write that one on the back of your hand.

Second Front

Instant Messenging (IM) is one of the Web's potentially most lucarative fields.  Simply put, a small IM program on the user's hard drive keeps in touch with a host server when the user is online.  Through the host server users can chat with each other whenever they are online at the same time, and users can track each other through a virtual Roladex on their desktop.

At the moment America Online's  "Instant Messenger" and their free non-AOL ICQ (I-seek-you) are the big players in this field, but the instant messenging field is considered such a viable moneymaker that both Microsoft and Yahoo! are pushing their own free services onto the field.

War began when Microsoft made it possible for their IM service to work with the AOL/ICQ user list.  AOL blocked it. Then Microsoft unblocked it, but AOL blocked it again.  Each has valid arguements and good legal departments, so court is inevitable.

In addition to online chat each company has a wide variety of other communication enhancers such as interest groups, email, contact web pages and rings to help link people together through their services, but these are the easy and fun things.

The future and big money will come from conference calling, stock, security and emergency alerts, paging, emergency notifications and Intercom services. hooked up to cell phones, PDAs and laptops.

If you try out ICQ, you can say hi to me.  My ICQ is #28233150.  Then after that all you gotta do is get your friends and family to use the same program as yourself because for the time being there's a war on.

The best thing about all of the major services is that the software is free, easy to install and easy to use.  

ICQ at
http://www.icq.com/

Micosoft Network Instant Messenger
http://messenger.msn.com/

Yahoo Instant Messenger
http://messenger.yahoo.com/

Free Net Access

A reader wrote to remind me that we don't have to spend a fortune to get on the Web.  In the last few years many public libraries have installed PC's with Internet access.  

If you haven't surfed or visited your local library, call them on the phone and find out if they have free public Internet access.  If they do, bring a copy of this magazine with you and have a librarian assist you in getting to the sites you want.  

Even if you don't have your own PC/Mac, you can find the things you want on the Web, and libraries are the perfect places to learn about it.

Israeli Philately

Networks worked for TV in the late '40's and worked for AOL in the '90's.  There's strength in numbers, and the Israel Philatelic Federation has 25 stamp collecting clubs and youth groups banded together at their site serving as a gateway to the world of collecting Israel.

When you visit you will also find new issue information as well as news of the Federation's activities.

The Israel Philatelic Federation
http://www.israelphilately.org.il/

The Society of Israel Philatelists here in the US also has a website to assist you in building your collection and expanding your knowledge of the stamps of Israel. The many chapters and study groups around the country are represented along with news, announcements and magazine excerpts.  A "Kid's Room" is open and there's also a bulletin board, helping to make this a very well-rounded website.

The Society of Israel Philatelists at
http://www.israelstamps.com/

Random Searches

In February '99 there were 800 million pages and 180 million images for search engines to index on the Web.  The most any one engine had indexed was 16%, leaving 672,000,000 pages virtually lost in cyberspace.  

These were the findings by the NEC Research Institute, a firm that conducts long-term, fundamental research in computer and physical sciences.

Northern Light indexed 16%. The other big engines lined up as follows: AltaVista, 15.5%; Inktomi (Snap), 15.5%; Inktomi (HotBot), 11.3%; Inktomi (MSN Search), 8.5%; Infoseek, 8.0%; Google, 7.8%; Inktomi (Yahoo), 7.4%; Excite, 5.6%; Lycos, 2.5%, Euroseek, 2.2%.

Information Solution

AZZ Cardfile is a small shareware database program that looks and acts like its title says, a "cardfile."  It is an easy and convenient way to organize and retrieve those snippets of information you cull from around the web.

It is a PIM (personal information manager) with open-ended possibilities since the cards come completely empty without predefined fields you may not like.

When I am looking at a web page and there's somthing worth remembering, I copy the text and save it to an AZZ card.  One of my cards says "Christmas Ideas" and it's filled with site URLs of neat gift ideas.  Another is "Sites2Check" which is self-explanatory.

After you've solved your password problem, you might want to solve your "where'd I put that address, quote, letter, reminder" problem with this AZZ.

AZZ Cardfile at
http://www2.omnitel.net/zdramys/azzcardfile/

Solutions are where you find them and not where you expect them.  The AZZ programmer is in Lithuania and the Passkeeper's in Hungary.

Spamdexed to Death

Speaking of search engines, after researchers revealed that the largest engine covers only 16% of the Web, several engines said they would go out and index all of the web to the dismay of many who feel that the engines are outmoded technology.  The trouble is that people are smarter than machines and the search engines are loaded with so much useless spam that new jargon has come into being.

"Spamdexing" is the practice of submitting endless streams of span to search engine loaded with popular keywords and other tricks to improve site ranking and load up search results pages with spammed pages.  It goes way beyond repetition.  

Some e-commerce bandits just load up page after page of popular search words, then redirect the user to the bandit's site.  The engines are under seige on a zillion fronts.

At MediaMetrix many of the high-flying sites are search engine portals, where the CEO's are trying to keep the castle walls from crashing down on them, but search engines will soon be the last century's technology.  The business system that worked for TV seems to be working for AOL and MSN.  

Come Back in 2000

This is the last mention of Y2K in this column until March 2000 at which time no one will care or no one will be online anyway.

By now, we all know the fears and jokes, but if you haven't paid close attention please do so now.  Your PC needs you so go back to the old AP issues and visit those Y2K diagnosis and treatment sites.  If you can't locate your back issues, then use our online links.