Amos Publications Is Completely, Utterly Useless.

I tried to connect to my online edition of LInns Stamp News this morning and couldn't. The LInn's Home page comes up, but there is only a link to a free copy of the digital Linn's not the current issue.

Yes, Linn's is not available. I read it via the Olive software on an iPad. Olive is working fine but will not download today's new issue.

Don, valid points in reply to me. Just exploring a possible excuse for them.

I just got my regular Saturday email with the Olive connection to the latest issue of Linn's. Everything seems to work fine on my desktop.

Dumb question: for anyone else accessing the Linns issues online, are the save and share icons at the upper right working for you? They aren't for me, but I want to make sure it's not a browser issue.

I used to be able to save issues as PDF to my computer for long-term retention, but cannot do so any more.

Technical glitch or yet another case of Amos being rabidly paranoid about their content?

They appear to be working for me (using IE 11).

Works for me in IE, but not Firefox (my default browser). Interesting.

I'm now downloading all the back issues I've forgotten to download, as I don't trust that the content will remain available...

I am unable to get onto their publication website. I get a 'not found'

I get the idea this is not a priority for these folks and that everyone went home for the weekend with this unfixed. Maybe everyone that depends on them for supplements and supplies as well as other things needs to start bombarding them with calls tomorrow morning.

Perhaps, Amos "Media" needs to go back to being Amos "Press." I just do not know if this online situation is another symptom of the long, slow decline of the Linn's publications or the outright fear of new technology for a paper-based hobby. Linn's is a shadow of its former self. The U.S. Stamp Yearbooks are no longer. Scott Stamp Monthly has been subsumed into what is left of Linn's.

I use the Gibbons Ireland catalog. it's an iPad app. Whole thing is there, offline. You can search it. You can pinch and zoom. You can swipe right and left to turn pages.

I like it.

Since the topic of relational databases has come up again, I would like to point out that Scott's catalog is already in a relational database. That database is the StampManage application. Stanpmanage is a wrapper around a bunch of Access Databases. I have MS Access to open the mdb files and have even exported some of the data to MS Excel. mdb files can be easily ported in MS SQL. I'm sure there are ways to port that data to Oracle, MySQL or another database.

And, yes, you are correct. Amos is very paranoid about piracy. They were kind of ahead of the curve when they released the Scott Catalog on CD-ROM. I have exchanged emails with the gentleman who used to log into ebay daily and get sales of copied CDs taken down.

Thing is, there are lots of websites out there now that have a good offering for onine catalogs. AMOS could easily partner with someplace like Stampworld.com and let them use their catalog numbers in exchage for access to their SQL database.

I can't believe they are still using FrameMaker. Sigh... That software has been discontinued for a number of years.

I have emailed Amos a number of times, explaining how the Role Playing Game industry deals with copy protection. Websites like RPGnow allow you to buy a PDF and they watermark it on the fly with the order number and your name in small print on the bottom right corner of the page.

PDFs are very handy because:

1. You can print them.
2. You can use them offline.
3. You can pinch and zoom.
4. They can be annotated.
5. They're universal.
6. You can search them.
7. You don't need to provide the reader for them. It's up to the user to do that.

All you need to do is export to PDF. You hand over the PDF to the distributor, and their distribution software does the watermarking on the fly.

Umm.... what? Methinks you have Frame confused with something else. FrameMaker 2015 just came out about 4 months ago. It is most certainly a current Adobe application, both standalone and as part of the Adobe Technical Communication Suite.

It is actively used in the typesetting of textbooks and reference manuals, as well as those creating online help systems, ebooks, and document-based mobile apps.

Frame is very much alive. I use it daily at my workplace.

Now several years back Adobe ceased offering Frame on the Macintosh platform, so perhaps that is what you are thinking of. Or perhaps PageMaker, the predecessor to InDesign? It sounds similar.

Regardless, not obsolete in the least.

Also under the pros for PDF you forgot at least one:

8. If the PDF is generated from a DTP application as opposed to a raster image, the text will be vector based, meaning that there is no quality degradation as you zoom in, which is critical for publications with tiny font sizes like the Scott catalog. The current eBook version text starts breaking up almost immediately because it is all rasterized.

Additionally, vector data takes up a lot less storage space (file size) than raster data.

The StampManage database would be a horrid place for Amos to start; the database design would not be suitable. Amos should start from scratch and design a SQL database that will carry them forward without the kinds of performance issues that the StampManage DB has. (Read as there are too few StampManage relational tables and too many expensive queries.)

I would also question the use of PDF to publish the content. Years ago, when PDF format was young and the number of browsers in the marketplace were few, the concept of a universal PDF was vastly different than it is today. Both browser and the PDF specifications grew and evolved over the years into a very complex and difficult to support platforms. PDF is still a viable platform in companies where a single reader and browser can be controlled, but trying to develop a PDF solution that works across most of today's marketplace is not for technically incompetent companies. And Amos is about as far from a technically proficient company as one can get.

What are the chances that a company like Amos can pull off a decent universal PDF solution today? I think at best Amos would deploy a PDF catalog with features which would only work properly in only a smaller percentage of PDF engines, only work properly in certain environments and devices. Surely no one here thinks that Amos would make the kind of financial commitment to develop and support a PDF catalog which would be more universal. And on this more narrow product, they STILL have to answer the bigger question of the PDF content source. Where does the content for the PDFs come from? Amos still has to respond to this more basic technology challenge. (Would not surprise me if Amos would try to generate a PDF solution from the existing FrameMaker content. LOL)

The key to any next generation solution is to first get the content into a high performance SQL database. This has to be done no matter what solution is used to publish the content. Once they had this foundational technology in place, they would be positioned to decide how to publish the content. But even this over-simplifies the scope of the changes they are facing. Transitioning from a hard copy publishing company into a digital one has taken down much better companies than Amos. There are no simple or easy ways to make this transition. There is no 'sneaking up' on this kind of transition. It is no longer possible to simply hire a few tech gurus and pull off this kind of product. It requires huge and risky financial commitments with a strong, forward looking management team. I am not sure that anyone would argue that Amos has demonstrated that they are willing to make this kind of digital commitment. The reason this thread exists is because Amos has technically stumbled so badly over the years.

As each year passes, more and more of the information found in their catalogs is made freely available online and in real time. And the quality of this freely available real time content is improving over time. Say you are interested in learning more about US revenues, traditionally we might run to a catalog. But look at Dan's or Eric Jackson sites; every year their content quality and scope have improved. Or folks can come into forums like this one and get a custom answer usually within minutes. Can Amos compete with this level of free online content with the business model they use today? Amos would have had to begin capturing philatelic traffic on their site 10-15 years ago to set themselves up for viable alternate profit centers today.

I simply do not see how Amos will be able to survive in the digital age. They will hang on to their hard copy products and squeeze some more money from them over the next 5-10 years. They will continue to offer half-baked digital products without making the required resource commitments. But ultimately I feel that Amos will one day sell their rights off to a company which has a management team that is better positioned to produce, and support, a decent digital product. Amos has simply missed the window of opportunity to change.
Don

The sooner this happens, the better. I've wondered before if they might already be looking into this as it would help explain their seeming unwillingness to do much of anything digitally. If they're going to sell in a few years, anyway, why spend wads of money on big capital improvements?

"But look at Dan's or Eric Jackson sites; every year their content quality and scope have improved".

Although I completely agree with your overall statement, the above is really not true in the case of Eric Jackson's site. While it is easier to search now, there was far more information available on his site 5 years ago then there is now. It used to be possible to look up any stamp in his auctions and see when or if it sold and for what. Now one can only look up lot numbers and prices; if you don't know what item the lot number was you are stuck. In my opinion it is for a similar reason as Amos; too much free info about market values, particularly for items not currently for sale on his site.

Actually, I am meeting with Eric at Chicagopex to discuss this very issue. Not to give too much away, but I am working on an auction result research tool for U.S. revenues. Still in the early stages...

P.S. Eric's auction archive wasn't removed because he didn't want that information to be publicly available any longer, but with his site redesign (a step BACKWARDS in performance and usability, in my opinion, but that's a discussion for another time) that feature didn't migrate and hasn't been high on his priority list. I hope to be able to work something out to make that information available to collectors.

P.P.S. My intention is for this tool, in whatever form it eventually takes, to be free for public use.