Electronic Stamps (e-stamps)

We can all use a bit of whimsy from time to time. How about free electronic stamps (e-stamps) from Leafcutter Designs for your e-mail?

Isn’t it sad that emails don’t have postage stamps? Well here’s something to brighten up an email with a bit of color and whimsy. Lick and stick one of these e-stamps onto an email by saving it to your computer and attaching it to the email.

World’s First Multimedia Stamp Spins Business Fairytale

Exclusive interview with Aigo’s Yao Wei - World’s First Multimedia Stamp Spins Business Fairytale.

Touching the stamps with a special pen-shaped device, called the aigo pen, allows a chip in the pen to recite some of the greatest poems from the Tang Dynasty, including work by Li Bai, Du Fu and Bai Juyi. Receiving a letter in the post will never be the same again.

Should I Twitter

Don Chafetz, Israel Philatelist

Should I Twitter? Does this picture belong on Facebook? Does this video belong on YouTube? What is Cloud computing?

The computer world has many new technology options which I am just now trying to understand. Since my children and granddaughters are not nearby to explain and show me how to use this new technology, I am struggling.

Besides learning the mechanisms of each new application, my mind is always trying to figure out how philately can use the technology to spread the word. I have taken my first steps due to the encouragement of my daughter, Gwyn, and am now on Facebook.

No, I have not posted an extensive profile. Instead, I use the site as a way to share pictures with my family and a few friends. For philatelists, I can visualize the site as a tool to exchange images of stamps or covers that might be of interest. The advantage of using Facebook is that the images are on the web and you can invite fellow collectors anywhere in the world to view them. There is no need to send the images to everyone. Also, you can add comments about the images and again everyone can view the comments and comment on the comments!

YouTube is a good site for posting videos that anyone can see. I have not formally arrived at the point where I have a video to post, but I have made a very crude one. I took some still images of one of my side collections, The Morris Canal, and placed them in Apple’s iMovie program. While crude, I was able to create and play the movie, but with no audio track.

Actually, there was another effort a friend, Fran Adams, and I made that was all audio, but had no video! It could have been posted to YouTube, but with no video it would not have been well received. The audio recording was created during the 2009 SANDICAL stamp exhibition in San Diego. I did an audio description of a Judacia exhibit that was in the show while Fran handled the audio and editing portion.

The bottom line is that with very simple and inexpensive technology philately has the means to show and demonstrate the beauty and joy of our hobby.

Twitter registration screen

While President Obama is a Twitterer, I am not. I have not found a need to be in continuous contact with anyone, letting them know my every move. But, I can see where it can come in handy when you are at a stamp show with a friend. For instance, as you and your friend are visiting dealer booths and doing your never ending search for the right items, I can visualize you Tweeting your results back and forth. In fact, you might have found some elusive items that he/she has been searching for and you can hurriedly inform him of its location.

As far as cloud computing is concerned, I am not exactly sure how it will work and the advantages it offers now to philately.

Nevertheless, as I understand it, you basically keep all your information on an internet computer (server) thus eliminating the need for your information on your home computer. I assume the advantage is that whatever records, images, etc. you have on your home computer would be available to you literally anywhere in the world via the internet and the cloud. At this point I am not sure about the value of the technology when you can use an iPod Touch to do the same thing now.

The main point of this discussion is that new technology and computer programs are becoming common place and we in philately need to be aware of them and try to harness their capability and power. “Why?” you might ask. Well for one thing they can make our philatelic life easier and more fun by helping us maintain our inventories, create a visual record of our collections and most importantly facilitate communication with other collections.

But for me, the most important long term reason is that these tools are really marketing tools that we must use to spread the word about our hobby. A video on philately posted on YouTube or pictures posted on Facebook can be seen by millions of potential collectors. Of course, both of these methods would have links to our web sites and information about our societies.

Remember, new members are the life blood of any growing society. It is now time to more fully embrace the new technology and turn it to our advantage.

Commenting on DPW Articles

Fran Adams

The Digital Philatelic Workshop is a place for learning and information exchange. As such, ‘public commenting’ is a valuable tool in our learning toolbox.

Knowledgeable collectors may wish to share their expertise, but, they may not wish to write an entire article. Other collectors may wish to clarify various points in our articles by asking questions. Both of those opportunities would be of great benefit to our readers.

Therefore, we’re introducing a moderated commenting function for selected articles on a trial basis.

This is a two edged sword; beneficial on one hand, but a feature which opens the blog to spam by web-based advertising ‘bots’, off-topic messages or even the occasional inflamatory message with no constructive purpose.

You may wish to register for an account but it’s not required (currently) to submit your comment for review. Once registered, you’ll be free to comment on any article allowing comments. To keep the information fresh, comments will be added for a short period (30 days). The article and comments will be frozen thereafter.

So – What are the guidelines on commenting?

• Please stay on topic.
• Contribute your knowledge and assistance freely.
• Remain civil – derogatory personal references will be deleted.
• Comments promoting sales of a product or service will be deleted.
• By commenting you accept these terms.

We hope this new addition to the blog is of value to you and encourage those with questions or comments on the articles to please post them.

Thanks for following the blog and please comment on this post (link is under the article title).

Roll Your Own Blogging

Allen Bohart, Compulatelist

A second approach to setting up a blog is to “roll your own.” Basically, this means that you start with a barebones web server installation and you set up some sort of blogging software to begin building a blog. Blog software can be obtained by purchase, by free download, or by programming it yourself. The first and third options should not be explored by the average blogger unless he/ she has some way to recoup the investment they put into obtaining the software.

It should be noted that the “roll your own” approach to blogging should not be attempted by those who do not possess at least some technical skills. All blogging software requires that you set up some sort of database as a backend to the software. Additionally, you need to know your way around a Unix filestructure and ftp software to use these software packages efficiently and effectively.

I chose the middle ground on this by using a web hosting service with a MySQL database already installed. This simplified things a bit in that I did not have to install and configure a web server and database software. As an IT Manager and long time IT professional, I know my way around this stuff pretty well, but it still took me several hours to get it set up and working properly.

Once the software is setup properly, however, blogging is a breeze. All blogging software packages come with a control panel that lets you type in clear text and create links and image uploads with little or no html knowledge. I use a software called WordPress www.wordpress.com to update and maintain my blog. It is probably the most popular software for blogging on the Internet. Figure 2 shows the screen for writing a new post to the blog.

Adding text to your blog is easy as creating an e-mail.

As can be seen above, it is very easy to just jump in and start publishing to your blog. There are even buttons to allow formatting of text and create links to other pages without knowing any html. With a simple click on the “Publish” button, the post is written to the home page and is viewable by the entire world.

There are other steps to be taken if you would like to have a completely personalized and customized blog. The first step is to register your own domain name and have your ISP point to the correct DNS servers. If you don’t know what this means, don’t worry because your ISP will know and will be able to handle it for you.

The second step is to customize the web pages and configuration files to fit your needs. This allows for things like pictures in the header and varying the size of each section on the front page. With my setup, the amount of customization is unlimited, because I have access to the source code of the software. Again, your ability to customize will be limited by the amount of technical skills you possess. In particular, for customizing blogging software, one should know html, CSS, and PHP.

In summary, there are a lot of options and approaches to setting up a blog of your own. The options available cater to nearly every level of technical expertise, so if you wish to set up a blog, this should not be a limiting factor.

Anyone who wishes to set up a blog and would like some assistance or advice should feel free to contact me at allen.bohart@gmail.com.

Philatelic Blogging

Allen Bohart, Compulatelist

Blogging is a phenomenon that has taken the Internet by storm in the last couple of years. Blogs have had an effect on traditional news media, the business world, and even governmental organizations. Now, we stamp collectors have an opportunity to affect the world of philately through this new medium called the blog.

What is a blog, you may wonder? The word blog is short for web log, and basically describes an online journal. The person who maintains the journal is a blogger and when he is adding to the journal he is blogging.

Philatelic blogging, therefore, would be maintaining an online journal about philately or philatelic activities. As some of you may already know, and the rest of you are about to find out, I maintain a philatelic blog at www.philatelictidbits.com.

Author’s Philatelic Tidbits blog.

Usually, I submit new material to the blog every weekday and sometimes on the weekend if the mood strikes me. The focus of my blog is philatelic news in the mainstream media and new issues stories. Occasionally, I will voice an opinion or two about some hot topic in the philatelic world as well.

That is the beauty of a blog: The blogger has the ultimate control of what content to put on the site. There are several philatelic blogs around the Internet and each has a slightly different approach in it’s content. Some blogs are focused on the blogger’s personal philatelic endeavors, some are focused on a particular specialty, and some just report news. In all instances, however, a blog is a creative outlet for the person who maintains it, and is usually a labor of love.

The primary purpose of this article is to explain how one goes about setting up a blog, if one so wishes. There are a couple of approaches to creating a blog, and the choice is largely dependent on the individual’s technical skills and level of desire to control the content and feel of the blog. Another consideration is the amount of money one wishes to dedicate to this blogging endeavor.

The first approach to building a blog is to use one of the free sites available out there on the Internet. Some examples of these sites are blogspot.com, blogger.com, and blogwise.com.

All of these sites offer template-based site builder’s that can literally get you set up and running in a matter of minutes. These sites require no web design skills whatsoever, and allows the user to concentrate on putting out content without worrying about the technical details.

There are limitations, however, to the cookie-cutter (as I call them) blog sites. One major limitation is the URL you are forced to use when utilizing one of these sites. A prime example of this type of blog can be found at parkinlot.blogspot.com. This is a site set up and maintained by Bob Parkin. Now wouldn’t it be much easier to locate and remember if it had a URL like www.parkinlot.com?

Another limitation to these types of blogs is that the user is forced to use the color schemes and layouts offered by the blogging site. There is usually some customization allowed, but it is very limited, and, in my opinion, very limiting.

I originally set up Philatelic Tidbits on blogspot.com. Adding text to your blog is easy as creating an e-mail but within a couple of days I became very frustrated with it and moved on to bigger and better things.

Anyone who wishes to set up a blog and would like some assistance or advice should feel free to contact me at allen.bohart@gmail.com