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Custom stickers from stikers.co.uk

October 16th, 2010
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Custom window stickers have been traditionally used in cars, and even store front windows. Most car dealers, place their business sticker, with logo and contact details on it to the rear window of every car they sell. This is a way of identifying themselves as the seller of that particular vehicle. This also acts as a form of advertising and brand awareness for the company. All window stickers like this are placed on the inside of the window so the image or graphics are facing out. Therefore in order to achieve this, the printing company have to print the sticker backwards, so it appears the correct way when it is placed in the window. There are many different types of window stickers on the market, some better than others.

Types of Window Sticker

There are various types of window stickers, so when considering purchasing a sticker, it is always best to find out which type is going to be more suitable for you. Vinyl stickers are the most popular type of window sticker; however there are also different options when i

t comes to vinyl window stickers.

Removable Rear Window Stickers

Removable rear window stickers are exactly that, they can be removed. Some stickers when removed leave behind remnants of the sticker, which can look unsightly and can be very difficult to remove. However with removable stickers the adhesive is strong enough to stick firmly but it can also be removed easily without leaving anything behind.

These stickers don’t actually have any adhesive at all; therefore just like the removable stickers they can easily be removed.

Permanent Custom Window Stickers

These stickers are applied with very strong adhesive; therefore they cannot be removed without using quite a lot of force.  These are good for shop windows and for signs that need to stay there for a long period of time without being removed.

High Tack Custom Window Stickers

Again these are good for shop windows and for stickers that need to stay there for a very long time. Window stickers can be seen on shop windows, inside car windows, they can also be used for parking permits, for advertising purposes and for various other reasons. Some people use window stickers in the home for safety reasons.  For example, if you have floor to ceiling windows or large patio doors, putting stickers on them is a way of making them visible to young energetic children.  These kind of stickers are normally not custom and you can just purchase them at any toy store or supermarket.

Custom stickers are slightly more expensive than off the shelf window stickers, however you can decide exactly what you want your sticker to look like, and for companies, you can use them to create brand awareness as well as use it is as a form of low scale advertising.

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PCGS Changes “Plus” (kind of) | Coin Update News

October 6th, 2010
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Coin Update News complained, and PCGS listened … kind of.

Beginning August 1, 2010, PCGS “Plus” (+) designations will be awarded at no additional charge “for all qualified coins submitted in the Regular, Express and Walkthrough service levels,” according to a news release this week.

For many PCGS members, this truly qualifies as “The Big One” rather than the “Secure Plus” announcement made earlier this spring, in which submitters had to pay for the plus designation.

Now you can get the “plus” without the “secure,” which will still cost $65 for the scanning process meant to discourage coin doctors and identify counterfeits and stolen coins.

News of the PCGS policy change was understated and, in my view, undermined somewhat from a numismatic perspective, as the plus designation will not be awarded for Economy and Modern submissions to PCGS.

In April, Michael Zielinski published a brilliant article advising NGC on its Plus Program. NGC eventually adopted all but one of his recommendations, excluding Modern coins (1955-present) from its Plus Program. That was a mistake, again as Zielinski notes, because modern coins can be graded with plus numismatically and because those coins eventually won’t be modern in the future.

Rather than doing unto NGC as NGC did unto PCGS, the latter not only excluded Modern submissions but threw in Economy ones, too.

NGC awards the plus designation for non-modern Economy submissions because, like PCGS, it can take its monthly sweet time returning those coins. That’s why Economy is cheaper than Regular, because of time, not numismatics. Moreover, NGC “Economy” level is more economic than PCGS’s, at $16 vs. $18, with no $8 PCGS handling fee (although you have to submit a minimum of five coins to NGC).

True, you can only send coins to the Economy level of both services if each is valued under $300. But uncirculated 1882-85 Carson City Silver Dollars fall into that category, for example, and certainly deserve to be evaluated economically and numismatically for “plus.” PCGS made that point this spring when noting that some coins are half-way between grades, better than an MS64, say, but really not an MS65, justifying the plus designation in the first place.

Once again, PCGS has practiced bad public relations, failing to take advantage of NGC’s oversight on Modern coins and doing the mistake one better by excluding Economy submissions.

I can see NGC’s next PR move: We will now include the plus designation on Modern submissions up to MS69 and PF69!

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Yellowstone National Park Quarter Bags and Rolls Launch June 1, 2010

May 16th, 2010
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The United States Mint will begin selling bags and rolls of Yellowstone National Park Quarters

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A Tale of Two Museums

April 3rd, 2010
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The sheer magnitude of the numbers is staggering. The London-based British Museum (BM) bears the reputation of being the world’s most prominent museum because of the more than 7 million objects in its holdings, while the Taipei-based National Palace Museum (NPM) has earned fame because its collection of some 655,000 items constitutes the finest accumulation of Chinese artworks and artifacts in the world.

Although such massive, comprehensive collections have brought renown to the NPM and BM, they have also caused a number of difficulties, one of which is the problem of simply keeping track of the many objects. An equally pressing issue for the museums is finding a way to share their priceless treasures with distant art lovers and researchers who are unable to visit in person. Furthermore, given the limited availability of display space, the NPM and BM, like most other traditional museums, are only able to display a very small fraction of their holdings. Although more than 6 million visitors from all over the world visit the BM every year, most of them can only view approximately 42,000 objects on display at any given time, or a mere 0.006 percent of its entire collection. This problem of limited public access to overall holdings can also be seen at the NPM, where only around 0.7 percent of the museum’s ever-expanding collection can be displayed at any time.

To address all of these issues, the two museums have capitalized on recent developments in the world of cutting-edge digital technology, and, as a result, find themselves leading the reinvention of the global museum industry. In the view of Chen Hsueh-hua, a professor in the Library and Information Science Department at National Taiwan University in Taipei, the trend that sees museums employing and incorporating digital technology has not only become universal and irreversible, but also benefits visitors and the museums themselves. “Implementing such technologies doesn’t only create greater access, but also contributes to enlarging an institution’s core audience and bringing more attention to the institution itself,” Chen says.

Digital Holdings

As many items in the museums’ holdings are quite old and fragile, creating digital records of them has taken on additional importance, Chen says. “In order to better utilize and preserve these priceless treasures, ‘digitizing’ the museum industry, or providing access in appropriate electronic formats to information and objects that previously could only be viewed in person, is of great significance and urgency,” she says.

According to Chen, while the two museums’ digitization projects are designed to create a computer record of existing collections, they will have the effect of helping them transform their internal practices and improve communication with their audiences in aspects such as online marketing, access to collections, exhibitions and public services.

The British Museum, established in 1753, bears the reputation of being the world’s foremost museum documenting the story of human society and culture. (Photo by Chiayi Ho)

As Chen wrote in a 2006 academic paper entitled Digital Library Projects in Taiwan

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