What Kind Of Features Do You Expect From Digital (Philatelic) Publications?

Yep, it is genuinely hard to understand what catalog publishers (all are doing the same) think they can win with this approach since it doesn't provide any real protection against piratism. More likely it will push people to go after the illegal copies, because that way they can get the offline copy they want first place.

-k-

I do disagree with you on quality. I think the quality is fine. The challenge is content that is applicable to me and my collection interests and unique content.




This has been one of the biggest issues when it comes to the philatelic press. Their inability to remain current in the realm of multi-platform - online and offline - is kind of surprising. The result is they cannot take advantage - from a business perspective - opportunities right in front of them.

The Scott Catalog for instance could be more than a catalog. It could be a dealer inventory system. It could be a collector inventory system. Creating searchable databases, purchase out right, subscription-based services, and the list goes on.

Even some of the magazine lack the basic ability to search. The end result is forums are, in my mind, more useful to me as a collector.

I agree with ecmorgan's "end result": forums are more useful to me as a collector. And not only in terms of content, but also as a virtual stamp club. This is my 3rd go-round with stamp collecting and one of the things that makes it much more enjoyable than the previous go-rounds is the on-line community. The help (and even free stamps from some hoopie frood) that I have received on SCO has been incredible. And I am more than happy to once a year fork over the equivalent of 3 lunches and afternoon coffee at Starbucks for the it.

I subscribe to Linn's for the advertising as much as anything else, and I might be more likely to frequent a paid website if there was a marketplace and/or trading post there. This could also be an additional source of revenue for the site. Any subscribers to such a site would likely be fairly serious collectors and would thus be an attractive target for dealers and other collectors. Note that I'm not talking about floating advertisements on each page, but rather a separate marketplace page that subscribers could click on.

@TheArtfullHinger... I get your point about the importance of digital marketplace, but the question is why even bother trying to complement or compete against the might of eBay/Delcampe? Both list thousands of new lots every hour and just about anything and everything can be found from these two sites. Or would it be because of 'more club-like enviroment where deals can be had with less of browsing/time spent'?

-k-

They are not all doing this. The Stanley Gibbons app on the iPad offers offline access. You buy the catalog and it downloads to your device.

The problem for me right now is that there is no Stanley Gibbons Android app.

Beyond security issues there are actually other very good reasons to not go with a distributed (off line) apps model. For example, upgrades. Every time you release an upgrade or new version you are faced with logistical (and costly) nightmare of upgrading everyone's devices.

Additionally, support is a much larger issue since every device can be configured differently. It is not uncommon for distributed app to have 3-4 times more support costs then a centralized app.

But I agree with scb, the major philatelic players are mostly concerned with their IP (intellectual property) being stolen. This is silly reasoning since any app can be reversed engineered. For many, reverse engineering an app can be done in an evening.
Don

I should have clarified, I'm not necessarily talking about the click-and-buy type of marketplace of ebay or Delcampe, I'm thinking more along the lines of classified ads for things like collector-to-collector sales, trades, dealer offers, etc. Basically, in addition to things already mentioned by others, I'm talking about a place to make new connections and to find new sources of material. You could charge a fee of some sort for allowing people to post a classified ad, or a display ad such as you'd see in a magazine, etc.

Ah, that's the kind of things I'm rolling out this year.

-k-

@51studeBaker/Don...




After giving some deep thoughts on this, I decided to bite the bullet (for better or worse) and follow your advice. So starting today SCB is using speech synthesis to serve a 'speech version' of all articles on those browsers/devices supporting the required technology, basically making the entire knowledgebase (aka. blog) a huge podcast repository. Needless to say it will be just the beginning of things to come ;)



-k-

That's why catalogs need to go from being a bunch of printed pages to being a database. Then you can easily push a delta of the changes without needing to push all the data again. If the value of only one stamp on page changes, you need to push a new page. if it's in a database, you just push a few bytes of data.

The delta on a catalog update from 2016 to 2017 will be much smaller with a database than it will be with a PDF or the current scanned pages approach that Amos uses.