That Killer App

I have done the very same; offered free of charge to build web sites ad have had the same response. Frankly this is not simply due to Luddites; it goes back to the point about philately's history of building walls around and limiting access to information. It is the traditional way that, for example, APS makes money and offers value for membership. Join up and get a magazine each month and better access to APRL.

So when talking about a web site; they are a bit clueless as to how to offer content. What information should be freely distributed and what information should they hold back and require membership to access? The internet is seen as "information wanting to be free" and there is some truth in this. Young people want, no expect, to be able to quickly find information online.

The scary truth about APS is that it was late to the party and still has not made a full commitment to offering online, digitized content. It feels more like they have been dragged into the digital world as opposed to embracing it. In fairness there are many legal hurdles to overcome and APRL has made some progress digitizing books and articles. They joined a group of other online philatelic libraries and tried to build a cross-index among the members. This group includes the Royal Philatelic Society London, Collectors Club (NY), Greene Foundation, The Smithsonian Libraries - National Postal Museum, and the Wineburgh Philatelic Research Library. A great idea but its implementation is a bit err strained. First they had to decide upon a common specification for the indexing. The objective was to allow the 'merging' of each of the libraries offerings into a single, searchable interface. Challenges included differing databases, differing definitions and terminology, and establishing a scheduled merger routine. Some they succeed with, some they are still struggling on.

The fact that few people even know about this online resource, and use it, seems significant. For example, I have never seen it mention here in this forum. There have been plenty of threads that discuss digging up reference books and articles yet no one has ever given the link to be able to search across these great libraries. (The link is to Philatelic Union Catalog is http://catalog.stamplibrary.org/Inm...ie/opac.aspx )

Unfortunately many of the search results are only available for a fee and this is not something that younger people expect. They want to be able to search for and find answers to questions; they are not interested in placing an order to get the information. This is a good example of the 'conflict' that faces old school decision makers when considering their web sites. They simply do not know how to move beyond the tradition of limiting access to make a killer site/app.
Don

One idea I've toyed with is having an app that can look at a stamp and come up with a centering measurement. Getting something that could duplicate a PSE grade is probably not realistic, but some indication of F/VF/XF/Superb or some numbering scheme should be doable. You would need a database of average distances between stamp design and perfs, but otherwise the algorithm should be possible I'd think.

Hi Don,

Also there is Numbering of stamps and Genuine stamp Issued by
Country Images. at www.wnsstamps.post or simply visiting
Universal Postal Union Main site and finding stamps. These are
though participating Countries. and Numbering started in 2000 .

Sorry not 2000 but 2002. There is list of Participating Countries too.

tikithindi

Edited:tikithindi

Yes and their number system is way more advance than Scott you have the country and the year in the number

just make ir ca2021.02 and you can use it starting in 1840

Anybody's numbering system is better that Scott's.

A killer app would support the use of any numbering system. The user should be able to define a custom numbering system or select one from a list. The import/export of data is also an important feature.

But the biggest technology decision is whether or not this is strictly an online app. The advantages of being strictly online are vast and far outweigh trying to run a local app. Consider the images, installing and storing the huge amount of images is a real challenge for a local app. Do you assume that users have a few gigabytes available to hold them (on a mobile device)? How long will it take to install (copy) a few GBs of images? And then you have updates. Updating an online only app is child's play (in terms of support) compared to a local app.

But many users do not like online only apps. They want to run the app whether or not they have internet access. Using the app at a stamp show, for example, may be problematic if internet access is spotty.

IMO this is a much bigger issue than the numbering system implementation.
Don

My Ezstamps can do it.

Legions of collectors have published journal articles & assembled exhibits; are we to say that, because they did so with no immediate revenue stream in sight, all of their efforts count for nothing? Or, that were they not philately?

Historically, catalog publishers & album publishers have had no revenue model available to support their work other than 'bind & sell'. It seems like a cheap shot to ask why they have not already found a new revenue model when so many others have not.

For example, I have not heard that the American Psychiatric Association plans to publish the DSM-5 as an information-wants-to-be-free advertising-supported app. Nor have I heard that the SAE, IEEE, etc, will be publishing their standards that way. Why should Scott?

Until we have more of a plan for Amos than 'hey, man, catch-up with the net', perhaps we could do them a real favor by finding information-compiling companies that have successfully moved on from bind'n'sell?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Sorry in advance for all my crazy ideas below. You asked, so here you go!

If you are talking about the "TKA" stamp app, for me it would go much broader then just something to identify a stamp.

If part of the goal is to make stamp collecting more accessible and appealing to younger people then any app should have a social component to it. A way for people to connect to other collectors if they choose. That could be based on areas of interest, trading possibilities, proximity, etc. Maybe even connecting buyers and sellers. This can help the hobby immensely, think of it as the modern day version of a stamp club without any borders, for those who choose to participate in that way. Include some elements that encourage collectors, new and existing - may ways to do this.

To me the "TKA" stamp app would have it's own numbering system, something similar to what area66 gave as his example. I find existing catalogues kind of frustrating and just use this:

https://www.stampworld.com/en/

I have a hard time justifying buying a bunch of books with an expiry date, to be thrown out in a few years, that really is not all that nice to look at for multiple countries, that contains valuations that aren't realistic. Not to mention the unnecessary slaughter of trees. It seems like an outdated business model, whose hope of survival depends on a lack of innovation.

I think the idea of 'crowdsourcing' images for the app would be the way to go. Trusted users/community members could help curate these by stamp condition. I would not stop there with crowdsourcing, I would have a way for people to share album pages and other resources, because to me the TKA would have it all.

I would also include an inventory option for people who want to inventory their collections so they can trade and get a 'need' list.

If you incorporated buying and selling and the app was widely adopted, or you partnered with another organization with that data, you could use those numbers in place of catalogue values. That would sure keep things real and transparent once a solid baseline was established.

Basically the TKA would build the ultimate stamp collecting community by consolidating what collectors want and need in one place in a fun and engaging way. Who ever does this wins! It would be a huge game changer for the industry.

In terms of funding it, or different business models, there are lots of opportunities from crowdsourcing, subscription fees for certain functionalities, advertising, sponsorship, private donations, corporate or foundation support. All depends on which direction you would want to go ;-) Not sure why one of the existing organizations does not do this, but I can see why it might be controversial if they accept industry support.

While you're waiting, there are some genuine (as opposed to stampworld) online catalogues, eg Yvert

http://www.yvert.com/CT-1571-biblio...n-ligne.aspx

There are also tools for cataloguing your own collection.

Oh trust me, I am not waiting. It would be nice, but I recognize it probably is not realistic.

Is the online catalogue for yvert in English too? My french is rusty and the translation button on their website did not translate most of the text. Reading the google translate was fun though!

May I ask what the difference is between stamp world and yvert? And all the other stamp catalogues I have heard of like scott, stanley gibbons and michel? What makes yvert more 'genuine'?

I have done some research on some of the cataloguing/inventory tools, and I find it somewhat overwhelming. It would be nice to put a system like that in place as I am just starting out, but I may need to learn more first. I don't want to have to do it twice.

Sorry, I thought you were all bilingual!

By "genuine", which isn't quite the right word, I mean a detailed, comprehensive and coherent stamp catalogue constructed by one organisation. As I understand stampworld, it's a more ad hoc piece of work without the extensive supporting information that a traditional catalogue would provide. Useful as a free source to help identify stamps, though.

Are you suggesting a geosocial networking application?

Perhaps we could license the Grindr platform, and create our own space.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I used Linux for many years, and still miss it in a lot of ways. The open-source model (I know you said crowdsourcing, but there's something of an overlap between the two) has a lot going for it, and I'd strongly consider contributing some money - say, the equivalent of what I'd expect to pay for print catalogs over the next handful of years - to a TKA organization whose goals, methods, and group personality I could understand.

Knowledgeable people can correct me if I'm wrong, but one problem I've seen with large projects like this is that the impetus wears out and inertia sets in. The technological problems are daunting, but many of them are finite. The subsequent work will be mind-numbing:
- Chasing down changes in iOS that break everything.
- Keeping the databases populated with new issues.
- Filling the databases with accurate information in extremely specialized niche collecting fields.
- Restoring, for instance, the Israel database because some helpful soul decided it shouldn't be there.
- Deciding whether the gatekeepers you have are the gatekeepers you should have.
- Deciding whether the lawyer from {insert name of old-school publisher here} really meant what he said in that last letter.

About that last point: would TKA and/or its resident expert(s) have any liability if an established publisher decided to prove that a particular rare variety only has a certain amount of information available about it - because not that many people have ever seen that variety, never mind written or published anything about it - and therefore the information provided within TKA must have been stolen from somewhere? I really have no idea how that works.

Sorry if this sounds pessimistic. As a concept, I'm all for it, and I would be glad to help as I can (which doesn't include coding, because I can't). I was hoping that stampworld.com would be it, but unless I'm missing something really big, they're opaque about who they are and where they get their information or their backing.

Crowd Source = tackling large efforts by soliciting the services of many people, typically through the internet
Open Source = is intellectual property which people can openly contribute, modify, and use because the ownership rights are shared

Crowd sourcing is already in wide use in philately; Stamp Smarter has had several community projects for the last few years in which groups of people contribute to the greater good. In fact this forum, and several others, can also be considered crowd source efforts. Many people all contributing to a community effort for the betterment of our hobby.

But a critical part of the open source concept is ownership. So if someone writes a long, informative post in this forum others can read it for free. But they cannot assume ownership or intellectual rights of the post and republish it as their own work. So most forums can be considered crowd sourced but are not considered open source.

Open source efforts share the same challenges;
- There is often a substantial issue with diffusion of responsibility; folks stand around waiting for others to get something done
- There are often wasteful competing tasks and efforts
- People often do not want to jump into a task that has been started by someone else; they want their contribution to be their own from the ground up
- There are popular tasks and unpopular tasks; so projects often have uneven resource application. Some tasks get a lot of attention while others go unattended. Many times the unpopular tasks, such as review, testing and support, are critical ones to success.
- Many people say they want to contribute but when it comes down to actually putting in the work things change. Often there is a big push at the start and then it tapers way off.

You can see one of the biggest problems in many non-profit or volunteer organizations. When the organization is very small, there is tremendous spirit of support, togetherness, and excitement. But then comes growth; and with growth comes value. Following the growth and value are people seeking power over it. It is like starting a small grassroots stamp club, everything is great when it is still small. But when it grows to the point of owning property and building multi-million dollar world headquarters, things are no longer the same. Linux was great when it was young; we all wrote code for the community and everyone benefitted. Now, with the various distributions, it is more like Microsoft.

As a person who has a fair amount of experience with philatelic technology projects under both the crowd source and open source umbrellas I am here to say that it is very, very difficult to pull off. The stamp killer app is much more likely to come from a commercial entity then be grown from a grassroots effort for these reasons.
Don