Departing users, removal requests

We haven't discussed this as far as i know, and it is an interesting question.

The letters we wrote, the responses we got, all of those are significant for people who enjoy corresponding with pen pal friends.

And then, sometimes things happen. Your friend decides to leave, for various reasons. A common one being to reduce 'distractions', being busy and needing to fully focus in something important.

They decide to depart. And press the button on their Slowly client, the one that talks back and asks, Are you Sure?

And likely they confirm.

Slowly staff say that user's data will be removed as requested. But they wisely keep it around – for 30 days, giving users an opportunity to change their minds. If they do, they can resume, and nothing gets lost.

But in many cases, users turn their backs and move on. They cannot access their data, and assume that after 30 days it is gone for sure.

Or is it?

Turns out the recipient of their letters get to keep them. I can verify this as I had dear friends depart and I still keep many folders with lots of letters we exchanged.

I think we all assume this is how it should be? In the real world, if you wrote and mailed a letter, it is gone and you cannot edit it, delete it, or claim ownership of it as a physical object.

You wrote, addressed and paid postage to get that object to someone, somewhere. They get to keep it, as personal property.

I imagine the original writer has copyright on the letter content, as its creator. But they could not reasonably request that all of their mailed letters be destroyed without trace by the recipients, could they?

I asked Microsoft's Copilot and got a nice answer.

In Slowly, how are these questions dealt with?

We had some serious discussions about Slowly and Privacy concerns in the past. I made a Guest Author blog post with an excellent document posted here on Reddit, with the author's permission, and it is one of the most popular pages on my blog.

All of our Slowly data is stored in 'cloud servers', rented online servers currently provided by Amazon Web Services, aka AWS.

We have two users in contact in a pen pal relationship. Person A, who writes a letter, and person B who is the intended recipient of that letter,

If person A decides to leave, pushes the kill button and confirms, their data is assumed to be deleted (after the 30 days grace period). Person A loses access to the service, and to their sent and received letters.

But what about the letter's recipient?

As far as I know, they get to keep it. As I mentioned above, it happened to me, people left and I still have our letters in full, sent and received.

Is this a problem? or do we consider the electronic messages/letters to be similar to the written pages we receive in the mail – and were we surely have an ownership?

What do you think?

This is a new discussion, and I decided to make a new topic so it gets to be seen, and maybe more people participate.

In your opinion, is the current situation as it should be?

Or no, a user requesting deletion should assume their sent letters will disappear as well?

I look forward to reading your comments and thoughts. Thank you!

Famous Last Words

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@friends-near-and-afar-letters-we-share@wordsmith.social

This page created in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment, via a direct message to my Twitter account – or the Reddit one.

You can also post a public comment in the Reddit thread for it here.

yann2@bsky.social Top ▲

An original suggestion was posted on Reddit

...by our reddit user ahhhhhhhchhoooooo in this topic.

Puzzle sets could be by region/theme, a mix of popular stamps, or customized to your personal SLOWLY stamp collection!

Avatars of your penpals could also appear next to the stamps you received from them.

And it is a good idea, as we have many nice stamp designs.

Slowly itself tried doing some merchandise before

...and it did not go too well. They had custom coffee mugs, which had to be shipped, were somewhat heavy and fragile. Eventually they closed that operation.

A pen pal friend did it better – her daughter created a custom printed mug, with mom's favourite Slowly stamps, and gave it to her as a Christmas gift. It was much nicer and more personal than the company article, and no shipping was required – just a trip to a local print shop which offered mug photo printing.

A nice idea?

Similarly, the idea of puzzles with favourite Slowly stamps is a good one, but the company is not likely to take it on. Never fear, there are companies that offer puzzle printing services.

A quick search and I found Vistaprint here in Canada does it. A medium size puzzle has 500 pieces, which is challenging already, and costs 42 Canadian dollars, or about 30 USD. (and a larger 1000 pieces one is not much more at 47 CAD)

Not exactly cheap, but it is a custom, one of a kind item. Other companies closer to people might offer similar services as well.

Large custom puzzle

The 500 piece puzzle is 21 in x 15.5 in, or 53 cm x 39 cm – a nice size. An example template from their catalog is attached.

The 1,000 pieces puzzles are harder to put together but have a larger size – 30.25 x 20.5 inches, or about 76 x 51 cm. And they only cost about 5 CAD more than the 500 pieces ones.

If people created and shared their designs, others could even pick up the finished artwork piece and have it printed at whichever service they chose.

Large stamp images for designs?

We have access to 1,000 pixel images for many (not all) Slowly stamps. These would be ideal for use in creating a high quality design for printing. In our Slowly Stamps Wiki pages, there are direct links to the larger 1,000 pixels images of each. ( Commemoratives, Regional Premium, Regional Stamp Sets)

Example : Lake Titicaca Reserve, Peru's new Premium stamp, is HERE.

(some earlier designs are only available at 320 pixels max).

Design ideas, notes

I would suggest creating a design with stamps sized at at least two different final, printed sizes, which would allow a more dynamic design result. Or go for 3 sizes. You need to work out a mosaic layout so they fit together in a rectangular shape for printing.

The image I am using as banner in this page is from an actual Dogs puzzle set, and I think it is very dynamic – we need that mix of sizes as all Slowly stamps are one single format/proportion.

They also have a lovely AirMail stamps set which illustrates well a dynamic design with different stamp sizes.

Some additional notes:

a. Stamp image sources: my Slowly API tracking spreadsheet has one tab showing the latest 300 stamps and links to their 1,000 pixel images – here.

b. The image server storage path is this : https://static.slowly.app/stamp/ plus the stamp_filename and the .png extension.

c. Stamp filenames can be found for all 2,000 Slowly stamps in this shared spreadsheet. See the filenames in Column B and use it with the format shown above, plus .png for extension.

example :

https://static.slowly.app/stamp/ + pe_titicaca + .png = https://static.slowly.app/stamp/pe_titicaca.png

d. For people considering a design of their own – maybe we could define 3 modules of stamp size, which allows for some dynamic placement.

Size 1 being the 1000 pixels images; size 2 we shrink it down to 666 pixels, and size 3 is 333 pixels.

Now we can compose them – size 2 + size 3 matches one size 1.

3 times size 3 also equals size 1.

2 size 3 equals dimension for a size 2. Example with these sizes:

(Click on image for larger size version.)

Each stamp has some white space around them, we could trim it down before we start composing puzzle.

Hope someone takes this idea and runs with it... ??

Famous Last Words

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@friends-near-and-afar-letters-we-share@wordsmith.social

This page created in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment, via a direct message to my Twitter account – or the Reddit one.

You can also post a public comment in the Reddit thread for it here.

yann2@bsky.social Top ▲

Recently, the Terms of Service have been revised

And as previously, they remain a one sided document intended to solely protect the company and award it any rights they seem fit to claim.

I think it is interesting to read them. It is a long, legalese, mind boggling read, but a careful analysis can give you insights on important points. You can see the current, latest version (revised as of Sept 13, 2024) HERE.

And I did read it briefly, and noticed some worthy points.

Company HQ moved to United Kingdom?

Kevin Wong, Slowly's creator and CEO, has moved to London UK about a year ago. I had not looked at the ToS but now it shows the company no longer being Hong Kong based, but located in the address shown above.

This has good points, there were some concerns from users over Slowly's ability to deny user data access requests in Hong Kong, as Chinese mainland laws clearly state all companies operating in the PRC must comply promptly with any official requests.

So, this is a good thing?

Well, they apparently are no longer under PRC's jurisdiction. BUT their data is stored in Amazon Web Services machines, physically located in the USA, which brings them under a jurisdiction where intelligence agencies DO act to get access to data they feel is needed. Not ideal, clearly, but convenient for Slowly as AWS is a major Cloud provider.

Make the ToS easier to digest, try our AI friends?

I used Microsoft's Copilot, and would encourage you to read the document and even experiment with it. My request:

I use a software called Slowly. Could you review the Terms of Service for it, and give me some notes regarding noticeable impositions it places on its users? The Terms of Service page is at https://slowly.app/terms/

Here is Copilot's response:

Sure, I reviewed the Terms of Service for Slowly. Here are some key points and noticeable impositions:

1. Eligibility: Users must be at least 12 years old. If you’re a minor, your parent or guardian must agree to the terms on your behalf. ^(1).
2. Account Restrictions: You can only have one account. If you’ve been previously removed from the service, you cannot create a new account without explicit permission. ^(1).
3. Content and Conduct: Users must not engage in illegal activities, harassment, or any behavior that could harm others. Violations can lead to account termination without prior notice. ^(1).
4. Modifications to Terms: Slowly reserves the right to change the terms at any time. Users are responsible for reviewing the terms periodically to stay informed of updates. ^(1).
5. Termination of Service: Slowly can terminate or suspend your account at their discretion, without liability or prior notice. ^(1).
6. User Content: By posting content, you grant Slowly a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, and distribute your content. ^(1).

These points highlight some of the more restrictive aspects of the Terms of Service. If you have any specific concerns or need further clarification, feel free to ask!

Source: Conversation with Copilot, 03/10/2024

(1) Terms of Service – Slowly. https://slowly.app/terms/. (2) Privacy Policy – Slowly. https://slowly.app/privacy/. (3) Slowly's home page. https://slowly.app/.

Any follow-up questions?

is there any mention of their obligation under GDPR user data protection act ?

Yes, the Slowly Terms of Service do mention their obligations under the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Here are some key points related to GDPR compliance:

1. Data Collection and Use: Slowly outlines the types of personal data they collect and how they use it. This includes information provided by users during registration and data collected through the use of their services. [ 4 ].
2. User Rights: Users have rights under GDPR, such as the right to access their data, the right to rectify incorrect data, the right to erasure (right to be forgotten), and the right to restrict or object to processing. [ 4 ].
3. Data Security: Slowly commits to implementing appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing personal data. [ 4 ].
4. Data Transfers: If personal data is transferred outside the European Economic Area (EEA), Slowly ensures that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect the data. [ 4 ].
5. Data Retention: Personal data is retained only for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, or as required by law. [ 4 ].

[ 4 ] : The Data Protection Act, at gov.uk

These points highlight Slowly’s commitment to complying with GDPR and protecting user data. If you have specific concerns or need more detailed information, you might want to review their full Terms of Service or contact their support team directly.

Requesting copies of user data under GDPR?

Can I request a copy of my user data (letters and responses) for backup under GDPR ?

Yes, under GDPR, you have the right to request a copy of your personal data, which includes your letters and responses on Slowly. This is known as a data subject access request (DSAR). You can contact Slowly’s support team to make this request. They are obligated to provide you with a copy of your data within one month of your request. [ 4 ].

If you need help with how to phrase your request or any other details, feel free to ask!

How to request your user data?

How do I initiate a DSAR on Slowly?

To initiate a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) on Slowly, follow these steps:

1. Contact Support: Reach out to Slowly’s support team via their official contact methods. This is usually done through their website or app. Look for a “Contact Us” or “Support” section.
2. Specify Your Request: Clearly state that you are making a DSAR under GDPR. Mention that you are requesting a copy of your personal data, including your letters and responses.
3. Provide Necessary Details: Include any relevant information that might help them locate your data, such as your username, email address, and any specific data you are requesting.
4. Verification: Be prepared to verify your identity. Slowly may ask for additional information to confirm that the request is coming from the account owner.
5. Wait for Response: Slowly is required to respond to your request within one month. They may extend this period by an additional two months if the request is complex or if they have received numerous requests. [ 5 ].

Here’s a sample template for your request:

Subject: Data Subject Access Request (DSAR)

Dear Slowly Support Team,

I am writing to formally request access to my personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Specifically, I am requesting a copy of all my letters and responses stored on your platform.

For verification purposes, my account details are as follows:

• Username: [Your Username]
• Email: [Your Email Address]

Please let me know if you require any further information to process this request. I look forward to your response within the statutory timeframe.

Thank you, [Your Name]

If you need further assistance, feel free to ask!

And there is a LOT more to explore

...in this latest revision of the Terms of Service. I enjoyed using Copilot and getting focused, simple answers to some of my questions. I think there is a lot more to read and investigate so we can better understand the document's meanings and implications.

I will stop here – getting backup copies of our user data was always a concern for me, and it seems there are ways we can act to request that, which Slowly is legally obligated to respond and fulfil.

Any other notable items in the page as you see it? (hint – there are notes regarding AI usage in the app, along with other meaningful paragraphs.

Famous Last Words

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@friends-near-and-afar-letters-we-share@wordsmith.social

This page created in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment, via a direct message to my Twitter account – or the Reddit one.

You can also post a public comment in the Reddit thread for it here.

yann2@bsky.social Top ▲

Kevin's annoyance with people doing 'mock locations'

It comes down to lost revenue – from the sale of the multitude of regional commemoratives (free for a limited time in some location) and Location stamps (always free in that location).

Both regional commemoratives and location stamps are available to people all over the globe – via the Time Machine and World Explorer 'sales counters'. Each try at the random sale mechanism costs the user 25 Coins, which at my local currency works out exactly to 50 cents CAD or half a Canadian Dollar.

Slowly has released an immense number of regional commemoratives – many being really obscure, with some portrait of a local person. In some cases even local users seem surprise at some of their choices.

The portrait stamps are generally not their best designs – not so attractive, but still desirable as the app has built a core of active stamp collectors, and many are complectionists; they want to have ALL the stamps, no matter how ugly or obscure it be.

What revenue is Kevin worrying about?

The one which could be had if the user bought these myriad commemoratives via Time Machine. Or even the location stamps, via the less popular World Explorer feature.

I am personally a big fan of Location stamps, and filed many ideas for new and interesting ones for countries which did not have ANY yet – some of them came to light and we were happy to see more African nations specially having some local stamps.

How come the Time Machine has SO MANY stamps

... compared to World Explorer?

My theory here is that Time Machine has a LOT more sales than W.E. – there is simply a lot more interesting stamps, nice designs there. The World Explorer suffers from the abundance of old, ugly location designs – the original, 'minimalist' design with a few lines and even fewer colours. Example: Brandenburg Gate in Germany, which is a great landmark and has an UGLY stamp.

Slowly could replace any designs easily, they simply replace the image file on their server and voilá, done – new design is what people will see. They done this a few times with quick revisions on small errors in new stamps as we have observed. But they won't revise the old ugly location stamps – the cost of that work in time and money does not benefit them much, they would rather design and issue some more new stamps.

Monetization – getting money in from the stamps

The sheer abundance of regional commemoratives would not make sense, if Slowly did not have a sales mechanism for these stamps. The Time Machine does capitalize on the almost 600 stamps it currently offers, and the number is still growing.

Although a bit slower now, as we have seen a major push for Premium Singles – stamps that have a higher sale value, 50 Coins being a full Dollar in my country.

A single stamp going for one Dollar, while a full 6 stamps set is 100 Coins, or 2 Dollars in my market. Stamp sets are clearly a BETTER deal for the users. But we don't get many new sets, either global or regional.

The New Premium Series stamps

We had Castles of Europe at first, and that was interesting, well accepted and quite collectable. At a full dollar per stamp, it could generate some funds. There are 52 Castle stamps in total.

After the Castles, an even better idea came out – something that was available in many more countries. Easier to find a local one and offer a stamp even in smaller countries. The Beautiful Lighthouses series was born. And it currently has 63 stamps, they just added 9 more for October 2024.

On the same idea, another series called Sound of the World started, and equally can offer ideas for stamps in many countries, as long as they have some original musical instrument developed locally. Ca-xing, voilá, and in a short time it grew to 54 stamps as of October 1, 2024.

Why management frowns on mock locations users?

They don't mind people who virtually 'travel' and use purchased coins to purchase regional premium stamps or stamp sets in remote places. This is money the company would not see otherwise.

Kevin's annoyance is with people collecting all of the location stamps, and any available regional commemoratives at the remote places. Either a location or comm stamp is worth Half a Dollar (Canadian) each via TM or WE sale features.

So, it's a dilemma – they win some cash on travelling collectors who just must have these foreign stamps. But they lose some on the forgone sales.

We have seen some countermeasures – it has been getting harder to do mock locations, some Slowly versions are hardened to block that. And, some users received stern warnings or even 3 day suspensions from the app once they triggered the mobile client's 'abuse detection'.

Be careful as your account CAN be terminated

....at the whim of the company, and you lose all the stamps, all the coins, and more importantly – all of the letters and pen pals you originally started up on Slowly for.

The Slowly Terms of Service is an extensive legal document, created by lawyers simply to protect the company and acting in their interests. A careful reading is recommended, and you could notice there is mention they could terminate ANY user's account for ANY or NO reason, at their sole discretion. (paraphrasing here, but this is the harsh truth).

A more detailed Reddit discussion on past incidents with user suspension is HERE.

Famous Last Words

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@friends-near-and-afar-letters-we-share@wordsmith.social

This page created in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment, via a direct message to my Twitter account – or the Reddit one.

You can also post a public comment in the Reddit thread for it here.

yann2@bsky.social Top ▲

An important topic — glad it is being discussed

Yesterday a new topic was created on our subReddit, which is shown in the image above. The theme of the topic is how is the current pen pal experience in SLOWLY app – and we have various other commentary in the sub recently about it.

It got views and comments, including an excellent one by ZT1604, which I supported, agreeing with all they wrote. Russian Cousin suggested it could be a good Guest Author post here, I asked for permission, which was granted. So, here it is. ? Thank you, ZT!

The topic's original poster asked:

I uninstalled Slowly last year, been there for a while but got burned out from introducing myself over and over. So how is Slowly these days? Can you share your experiences lately? Is it still a good app?

Guest post by ZT1604, original posted on Reddit here.

Hello! Let me preface my comment by saying that SLOWLY today isn't the same as it used to be, for many reasons.

I've been on the app since 2021 and as such I've seen it evolve and decay over the years. Over that time, I've had countless pen-pal stories, some of them super joyful, others very painful.

I got to say my highest usage period was late 2022 – early 2023, and back then, you could still get decent pen-pals and letter exchanges. The truth is that the userbase on this app has been dwindling for a while now.

The pandemic was certainly its golden age, but ever since then, ever since people returned to normalcy, this app has been on a steady downfall as far as its user pool is concerned.

The current experience

Now, in 2024, SLOWLY is a bit different. First off, you have the so-called Open Letter feature, which basically is a letter that you shoot into the app waiting for it to be replied by anyone who manages to stumble across it.

SLOWLY has been trying hard to make this otherwise niche feature into a staple in the app, and so more and more users are giving it a try. The feature is quite half-assed, though, so your mileage might vary. You might get a lot of replies or none at all. You might get a few quality letters or many spam or low-effort letters.

Either way, it's a feature that still requires some tuning to be truly effective and satisfying, but when the right conditions of the algorithm and the target audience are met, coupled with your letter being based around just the right topic, it does work.

The newer users

Then, there's the users. Most of the committed pen-pals in the app are long gone at this point, leaving behind a plethora of dead or paused profiles with very abysmal sent-received ratios.

Instead, the new fashion of SLOWLY user nowadays is increasingly low-effort compared to the users who used to take it more passionately, and the prevalence of AI-written letters is increasingly common. As such, finding actual long-term letter exchanges can be incredibly challenging nowadays.

It's still possible, but it requires a lot of luck, whether it's via Open Letter or good ole' manual search. As for my own recent experiences, I've had fewer and fewer of them, and right now, it's taking me more and more time to even find one profile with whom I can exchange letters with reliably.

I still have faith and love for the concept, so I'll stay for now, but it'd lie if I say the experience was still as exciting as it was during the pandemic years or even in late 2022.

Regarding SLOWLY's development and Support

Finally, a thing which hasn't changed at all is the app's atrocious level of support by its developing team.

I personally harbor no ill against the developers, but its direction has been half-assed and doesn't really take into account the users' long list of suggestions that might improve the user experience, as well as of course, the complaints about the gripes many users have, including technical problems, a very deficient and barebones desktop web browser client, an obsessive and almost religious focus on providing more and more stamps instead of adding another exciting twist to the formula, etc.

We all really hope things eventually improve, but if you read this subreddit's several posts about the matter, you'll find a mix of foolish idealism that things will get better, mixed with the dreadful frustration of realizing that it's not going to be anytime soon.

SLOWLY is still a unique concept and has a good chunk of remaining potential. It's just that the developing team's direction is not capable or willing to evolve things and keep it up with time.

Conclusion?

And so, this has been my overall experience with SLOWLY. Is it still a unique app? Yes, it is. Is it still the same as before? No, it is not. Is it still a good app? That's up to you to decide.

ZT1604

I enjoyed reading ZT's comment, and added a short comment of my own. It's spot on, and thanks to Russian Cousin's suggestion, it's now here as well. Thank you, both!

Famous Last Words

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@friends-near-and-afar-letters-we-share@wordsmith.social

This page created in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment, via a direct message to my Twitter account – or the Reddit one.

You can also post a public comment in the Reddit thread for it here.

yann2@bsky.social Top ▲

Thanks to a new post by Russian Cousin

...I discovered that Kevin's semi-secret blog is once again missing. The redirect link from StartupSlowly.com now goes to Kevin's Medium posts, and sadly that is very out of date. The latest post there is dated Dec 15 2021, so almost 3 years ago now. ??

I think a lot of our readers here are probably NOT familiar with Kevin's Mandarin language only startupslowly blog project.

For them, here is a brief introduction:

• the startupslowly blog authored by Kevin Wong, Slowly's founder and ceo, was an obscure, Chinese (Mandarin) language only with a few posts over its lifetime.
• it seemed to be dedicated to his friends in the Chinese Tech scene, explaining his views of Slowly and how it should develop, etc.
• this was taken offline at a certain point in time, although we DO have a mirror copy of it on Archive.org – in original language only.
• Since I found the articles sometimes gave us insight on the Slowly project, it's development and history, I decided to create an English language version of the posts – using machine translations to English, lightly manually edited for style and clarity.

Translation Notes and rationale:

These translation were prepared by Yann2, a user, fan and supporter of the SLOWLY project. And it is in no way authorized or condoned by the original author. Any translation errors contained herein are my own, and subject to revisions – please send comments if necessary. ?

This translator's view is that the inner workings of Kevin's mind are of interest to the passionate fans of the app he has created from scratch. Hence, we bring here an English language version which can be more widely read. Thank you, Kevin!

All 7 original posts, now in English

....are here, on Yann's personal Slowly themed blog.

post 1 : Two startups were not successful, what will happen this time

post 2 : How I found my first users

post 3 : 1345 free cups of coffee from around the world

post 4 : Write a personal introduction letter to the start-up

post 5 : An interview on the Clubhouse app

post 6 : Translating our Software – Crowdsourcing pros and cons?

post 7 : The Hard Truths About Business Development

Cheers and thanks to Russian Cousin for keeping track of the original site!

Famous Last Words

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@friends-near-and-afar-letters-we-share@wordsmith.social

This page created in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment, via a direct message to my Twitter account – or the Reddit one.

You can also post a public comment in the Reddit thread for it here.

yann2@bsky.social Top ▲

Brand new Release brings portability, ease of use, more

Dear friends, myself and Prince Bajaja have been working on a Better, Improved Slowly Stamps Comparison Tool.

This one is a GUI tool, running a PowerShell script, and can be run in any laptop or PC running Windows, or even Mac or Linux machines if the user installs PowerShell for them.

What is new and exciting ?

• not a Javascript tool anymore. We don't have the access permissions which affected our previous JS tool.
• This one offers a direct comparison of your own collection to the full SLOWLY API stamps list. So, a complete collection as can be, ideal for reference, and not invading anyone's privacy by sharing their collection URL.
• Any new, added stamps in API are included, even if we cannot get them until later date – we are in fact missing them for now.
• you can see the difference between your own collection and a friend's.
• and you can chose two modes: a quick listing showing only the 'slug' or stamp shortname. OR, get the stamp's Name and Description in full if desired.
• you can COPY the missing stamps list to the clipboard, to share with them, or to have a list handy of what stamps you could share.
• any interested user can read the source code and see that there is no harmful code.
• we encourage you to look at it, and maybe learn a bit of PowerShell programming to customize it to your needs.
• like adding a new function that you think would be handy.

We tested and all is working well.

I am calling it Beta 1 as it is the very first public release, but it's fully functional. (and has no bugs that I know of)

I posted it on Reddit, and here on the Blog later, with this info and more, screenshots, etc.

How to run it?

The code is plain text, and can be saved anywhere in your computer. You can download a copy and save in any folder you desire, on your machine.

The easiest way to start it, as it is a PowerShell script, is to:

• right click on the file;
• and select 'Run with PowerShell' from the context menu.

Right-click and Run with Powershell is easiest way

This is a native GUI tool

And as such, it's easier to run for Windows users (or Mac or Linux users who have PowerShell installed in their systems – a free software package offered by Microsoft itself).

While the code is basically a script, it invokes the GUI functions of PowerShell, and runs in that GUI environment natively.

This makes it a 'program' – you can keep it running, and do multiple comparisons, maybe between you and your closest penpal stamp collectors?

The program offers different 'Modes' as well

The first one is to compare one personal collection against a 'Reference Collection'. So you know what stamps your collection is missing.

In the past, we have hard-coded a failry large Slowly user collection into our JavaScript web based comparison tool. But that depends on how complete or updated that collection is, and it also has the problem we are kind of 'sharing' that user's name and personal collection with anyone who is curious and pokes around in the Javascript code.

Not ideal, right?

No, it wasn't. But we are now using a different method.

We are getting our 'Reference Collection' listing directly from the SLOWLY API itself. This is the motherload, and is up-to-date anytime they add any new stamp.

It also contains things like 'Hello, Macau' and 'Happy Birthday 2017' which are more Urban Legends that real, collectable stamps. (no one that I know off has the Macau issue, for example. And very very few have HB2017)

Our code does that, and queries the API anytime you start the programme. So it is always up-to-date.

We also allow you to select how you want the missing stamps listed :

• a short list, with only the 'slug', or stamp shortname, showing.
• or a detailed list with the full stamp name, plus its description.
• You control this choice with the Radio buttons. ?

A Short listing of a user's collection, compared to SLOWLY API

Save your personal collection to save pasting it in?

Yes, we thought that would be ideal – so it's always there, no need to find it, copy, paste.

At the very beginning of our source code, we define a variable called $UserHome, and if you edit one single line, you can make that your own desired collection address.

We included notes on the code to encourage people to do just that, as it is handy and ideal.

...just don't forget the “Quote Marks” around the URL, as noted... ?✔

See $UserHome ? it's right on line 6, and you should CHANGE IT to your desired URL

What about the Detailed mode ?

We have it showing in the screenshot at the top of this post. Since the screenshots are pretty long vertically, I will not add another one here, but you get the idea.

The second Mode of Operation – Compare 2 User collections

This is very handy and possibly the most used function in the programme. You want to know what is different between your collection and your pal's – so maybe you can send them some surprise, missing stamps. ??

This is great fun, and a delight for anyone who enjoys the Slowly stamps, when they open a new letter and get the message “You found a new Stamp!“

We make that as EASY as possible. You just need the two collection URLs.

If you took our hint and edit the source $USERHOME to point to your collection, you just need to enter the 2nd user's address.

And we included Error Checking

So, if you try to run the tool without entering the required data, it TELLS you, and does not error out.

Well, what could go wrong?

• someone tries to compare 2 collections, but leaves the 2nd address empty...
• or someone types 'mememmeme' or other gibberish in one of the input fields.

But we check for that, and tell you; the tool is ready to run if you correct the error, and enter proper data. (I am proud of that, as it was one of my personal contributions)

So, we think this is quite cool

And invite you to try it out.

Programming was a team effort, with Prince being the lead programmer, and Yann2 being the fine tooth, User Interface, Error Checking and Handling, etc. We work well together.

We acknowledge the participation of our friend Babacar in User Testing, and of Microsoft's CoPilot in assisting us on learning a new programming language.

We are releasing this under an MIT Open Source License, the terms are included in the Code itself as usual.

Get your new SLOWLY Stamp Comparison Tool HERE.

Feel free to share this tool with any penpal friends who are stamp collection fans.

Create a Custom Shortcut to start with ONE click

Time to explain how to create a local 'Shortcut' so the programme can be started in one click from your desktop... here it is:

You found our new PowerShell Slowly Stamps Comparison tool, and now what?

1. First, save the release code to a file on your computer
2. To make it easier to use, we will create a customized shortcut. You start it on the same folder where you saved the file.
3. Then, right-click the file and choose 'Create a new shortcut'.
4. A new 'shortcut' file will appear in the same directory.
5. Now you right-click the new shortcut file. We need to modify it a bit.
   
6. On the pop up window, edit the “Target” field, adding a special command before any shortcut existing text.
   
7. The text you need to add in is: powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass

The finished result should be : powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File "C:\path\to\your\script.ps1"

The c:\path ..... is the same text as was there before. You added the “powershell part” before the path (place where the file was saved). Then press 'OK' and it will be saved.

Now, you can move or copy the shortcut to your desktop, to make it easier to find.

Double-clicking it will fire up the comparison process. Voilá... ?

Any Comments or suggestions are welcome, thank you. ?

Famous Last Words

This post is dedicated to my friend Mapuo33, who has greatly contributed to both our subReddit and our WIKI project. Thanks, friend. ??

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@friends-near-and-afar-letters-we-share@wordsmith.social

This page created in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment, via a direct message to my Twitter account – or the Reddit one.

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We had seen it coming...

And it was included in our November new releases post, although we did not know yet which countries it would appear in.

This stamp is instantly identifiable as a 'multi-country' issue, as it does not have the usual two letter Country Code in it. Like other similar issues, we are left to speculate where it will appear...

In November's release, this is also the case with the 'Gustavus Adolphus Day' stamp – a Swedish king, but also commemorated in Finland and another country. Hence, no country code on it.

Where would Jollof Rice appear?

When we find the new stamps in the SLOWLY API database (nowadays, usually a single batch added near the end of one month, containing all of the following month's stamps), we get the images for posting on Reddit and for our own Slowly Stamps WIKI – a unique and volunteer-run source of the most detailed information on all the SLOWLY-issued stamps.

Research is de rigueur

As we need to place the stamps, and we do create individual new pages for ALL the new commemoratives.

One would imagine this is ADDED VALUE to the stamps, right? Most people would not know what many commemoratives, or even my favourite Location stamps are showing.

SLOWLY itself should be documenting the stamps, but they don't - their public social media pages are very quiet, sadly, a missed opportunity in my opinion. But the company's head seems to not give communications with the public or the user base the importance one would expect.

Since we have a 'Jollof Rice' page, we researched it, and my good friend Mapuo edited and made it complete.

The stamp appeared last night

Midnight local time is when new stamps are 'unlocked'. This happens usually 3 days before the commemorated date, and the Jollof Rice stamp came out, will be available until November 4 - as shown in the banner on this post, above.

The stamp appears to be available in 3 West African countries at the moment – Nigeria, Senegal and The Gambia.

But – what about the others we had read about?

Yes, we were surprised this did not appear in Ghana. Or other countries which the wonderful Wikipedia page identified so well.

Some partial quotes?

From the Wikipedia page:

West African countries typically have at least one variant form of the dish, with Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cameroon particularly competitive as to which country makes the best jollof.[4] In the mid-2010s this expanded into the “Jollof Wars”.

So, what happened?

What about the other missing countries? I decided to write a polite letter to my Slowly team contact, and inquire about it. And sent it via DM in X, previously known as Twitter, to their corporate account.

“Hello J.,

Good morning, hope all is well with you. I wanted to send a quick message, in regards to the newly issued 'Jollof Rice' stamp, which is a West African, multi country issue.

We had researched it when creating the Slowly Stamps Wiki page for it, and I was expecting to see it in a few countries. Now it is out, and I think it is availble in 3 of them – Nigeria, Senegal and possible The Gambia?

The wikipedia page for Jollof Rice is excellent, and it mentions Ghana as a prominent location with this dish in their cuisine, as well as others. The page is here : The page is here.

A couple of relevant quotes :

“West African countries typically have at least one variant form of the dish, with Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cameroon particularly competitive as to which country makes the best jollof. In the mid-2010s this expanded into the “Jollof Wars”.”

French language countries also have 'riz au grass' in their cuisines, which Wikipedia mentions as a variation of the dish :

“In French-speaking West Africa, including Beninese, Burkinabé, Guinean, Guinea-Bissauan, Ivorian, Nigerien, and Togolese cuisines, there is a variant called riz gras or riz au gras, which translates to “fat rice”, a reference to the short-grain rice usually used in the dish. Riz gras typically includes additional vegetables such as eggplant, carrots, and/or cabbage.”

Bringing this to your attention, maybe you can pass it on to the relevant person(s)? And maybe they could consider opening it to some other West African countries now as well.

Thank you, all the best...

Yann2.”

This post will be updated with any comments

...if I receive a reply. ?

I am glad this incident gave me the inspiration to write this, which is really a Blog post in development.

On the question of geo distribution of stamps

I have written in commentaries in various places, and even a complete Blog page, specifically about the number of stamp issues per country or per geographical area.

Many other Slowly users have mentioned this, and we have a dynamic page on the shared spreadsheet which tracks ALL the issues per country.

A number of countries have large number of stamps, and in comparison that can appear unfair. In terms of geographical area, the South Asia region is richly endowed, right? ??

The top location is currently the United Kingdom

And the stamp count unfortunately is even higher than the registered total – as the UK component areas include stamps with Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland country codes (as well as some of the small Channel Islands which got their own Castle issues).

Africa in general is very light on issues

And some of us have made efforts and proposed new stamps for the continent. Some worked, like the proposal for 'Car Rapide' in Senegal, and the issues for Democratic Republic of Congo and others.

A quick graph can convey a sense of how Slowly stamps distribution varies so widely. Light cream coloured areas are low numbers, and red ones are richer.

Source : our stamps tracking shared worksheet.

Hopefully, the Slowly team people will recognize that Jollof Rice is a cultural asset in more West African countries, and open the stamp for users in more of them.

Help Wanted in our subReddit!

My good friend Educational_Ad (aka Mapuo33) for a long time posted in our SLOWLYapp subReddit all the new issues as they were released. A thankless job, mostly, and turns out they will no longer perform this job; we are open to anyone who would like to volunteer for the task.

For many people who like the Slowly stamps and try to collect them, our release posts are likely the best source of information currently available. I was a bit surprised on finding posts in the Facebook Slowly Stamps collector's group, pointing directly to my own big, monthly release posts – on Reddit. ??

SLOWLY staff get on the action

Recently it appears Kevin Wong noticed them too – as the SLOWLY peeps themselves started doing a similar post in the 'Changelog' section of their Feedback site.

Russian Cousin pointed that out, and I had seen them – 3 or 4 months of releases crammed in their Changelog in mid October 2023. Screenshot of their 'August 2023' post:

A nice feature on these posts is their inclusion of links to the original user proposals – in case the stamps were developed based on user requests. Well done. ?

Famous Last Words

This post is dedicated to my friend Mapuo33, who has greatly contributed to both our subReddit and our WIKI project. Thanks, friend. ??

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@friends-near-and-afar-letters-we-share@wordsmith.social

This page created in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment, via a direct message to my Twitter account – or the Reddit one.

You can also post a public comment in the Reddit thread for it here.

yann2@bsky.social Top ▲

As a quick peak at this chart shows

I received some data from a friend, did a bit of editing to my shared Slowly Stamps API Tracking spreadsheet. Added a new worksheet to it, which tracks the total number of stamps issued, by Country Code as included in the SLOWLY API.

Got some interesting stats; one of them being that the UK currently has the largest number of all (GB, 32 issued), followed by some Asian countries which we had spoken about as receiving a lot of attention... ??

Made a couple of graphs, added to display this variation. Those are also included in the shared worksheet.

A world map chart shows Geographical distribution

The one on the page banner above, is a live graph in the worksheet. It will be updated any time new stamps are issued as usual (once a day, at 8 am GMT / 08:00 UTC)

The Globe distribution map shows quantity of stamps, by country, in a colour scale. If you click on the map in the spreadsheet, you can see a popup with the Country Code (2 letters) as well as the number of stamps they have in the slider in the bottom LEFT corner of the graph.

Example: Brazil has about 12 or so stamps?

If you click anywhere in Brazil's (or any other country's map), you can notice that slider updating. This happens for all the countries listed in the API database. It gives you a quick idea on how they stand in terms of release numbers.

The map also shows a few areas in light blue without any stamps yet.

There is also a bar graph:

And once again this is LIVE data. If you click on the graph in the spreadsheet, then in any of the bars, you will see a popup with the Country Code, as well as their current stamp total.

Brazil's accurate count is now 14 stamps issued. This info is available for all of the 190 countries on the list and graph.

Even more in future versions, maybe?

My friend's custom Excel workbook has even more advanced info, and it's lovely, but required Excel Professional to run and update the Data from their sources (Slowly API as well as World Population data, etc – 5 External connections).

This is an expensive package (439 USD for the Office Professional package) which I do not have access to, but hopefully I can learn and import some of his ideas into my own, free and shareable Google Sheets page.

Thank you to B. for sharing his own workbook and ideas! ???

Now live in our Google Sheets shareable version too

After some reading and studying, some more editing and testing, we now have a fully sorted listing of ALL Countries and their stamp counts . Thanks again to B. for suggestions and examples.

New functions added this morning, including:

• A sorted list of all the stamp counts for all countries.
• Lookup converts 2 letter Country Codes to full country names.
• Summary stats for stamp numbers as well.

Until now, getting the total count for any given country was a manual count, a tedious process.

Not any more – the worksheet makes this easy and readable, and the data is dynamic; will be updated as soon as any new Slowly stamps are issued and added to the API.

Back in October, my friend M. did that for many countries as we discussed the surprising number of issues appearing for certain countries. From now on, this is much easier and we can visualize the data as well with charts.

Comments about stamps geographical distribution?

Well, we had seen some patterns which repeated over and over; some countries received stamps very frequently in the past year, while many other nations did not have a single stamp at all.

This felt awkward, and when the Slowly Feedback site appeared, it seemed a good place to take some action and propose new Location stamps.

A topic on Reddit even indexed our proposals, with direct links to each; we saw some of them be accepted and become issued stamps, which was very rewarding for all involved. ??

Problems with the Slowly Feedback site

Some of the active users there had some negative experiences, and gradually faded from the site. Pity, as it has a lot of potential, but we felt that:

• Slowly Team quickly saw a lot of incoming proposals.
• Which would require time, attention from them -both limited resources.
• After a quick start, they seemed absent from the site for most part.
• Many proposals languished, and a few were adopted.
• Large number of excellent ones are “Under Review” for long times.
• Some other, popular yet controversial suggestions, got a fast track. ?

Examples? the recent issue of 16 personality stamps. Or the island flag issued for a territory which is not an independant nation yet. (while some legit nations didn't have theirs)

Another big issue was the fact we started seeing some tension between users, and the Slowly staff chose not to intervene in some cases – even after explicit requests with their usernames included.

It became clear they did not want to moderate the site, and this made active users wary as we had some friction and no recourse. These users left the site, myself included.

Nowadays, most topics are bare-bones

... 'suggestions' and not 'proposals' (documented, with illustrations, references and more info, etc). Most of the simple posts go unnoticed and unsupported.

It's pretty sad, actually. But... Life goes on. Maybe someday it can improve? Some users like Yolanda Vi$$er and ASRandASR are still active and posting excellent, complete proposals.

We wish them success! ???

Famous Last Words

This post is dedicated to my friend, Russian Cousin, who has kept in touch and incentivated my writing activities, supplying reports of new version releases, bugs, etc. Thanks, friend. ??

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@friends-near-and-afar-letters-we-share@wordsmith.social

This page created in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment, via a direct message to my Twitter account – or the Reddit one.

You can also post a public comment in the Reddit thread for it here.

yann2@bsky.social Top ▲

Software tools that could add power, flexibility, functions

I have written in the past on how we can use the outstanding DeepL translation software. The post first appeared on Reddit, and is currently one of the most viewed pages in my slowly and pen pals related blog.

Today I would like to write and suggest some other tools we can look at, consider and use if desired.

A list of possible 'helpers'

All of those are intended for desktop/laptop users, as I personally believe that is the most productive and natural platform for the work we intend to do. The process of reading and writing letters is Content Creation, and we need the best tools we can find to ease the task.

The Slowly team seems to be more focused on mobile clients, which I somewhat understand (possibly since these allow them place mobile ads via Google Advertising, etc).

Honestly, I find it weird the project being 'mobile first' focused, as the Web client is where we can best perform the tasks which the platform is all about.

There are various auxiliary tools we can use, all complement Slowly well.

1. An external editor?

This used to be de rigueur, as the slowly clients did not offer basic features we needed – for example, a Word Count function. In the past here in our subreddit we discussed people's favourite editors, and I have a post in the blog with a suggested list.

The screenshot in the post banner above shows FocusWriter, an excellent one.

The Slowly Web client has improved, and the word count was added, maybe after a year of us power users requesting and arguing for it. Before that, we resorted to using WordCounter.net or the counter in some external editor.

The addition of this feature fixed a major missing point in the web client's new letter editor. Since it has full integration with the stamp collection, adding image attachments, it is a productive tool by itself – and there are less reasons to use an external editor now.

2. A text translation tool?

I have used various ones, including Bing and Google Translators, plus the DeepL one. DeepL has a smaller list of 'target languages' available, it can work with less languages than Google, but the results are better, imo.

A blog post mentioned above is popular and details how DeepL can integrate really well with a browser plugin and the Slowly Web Client. Recommended reading for those who write in various languages.

3. A text checker tool?

This could be a simple spell checking, which most modern browsers handle natively. Despite using the Brave browser for most of my web activity, I recognize that Microsoft Edge works smoother with this – and can support multiple languages spell and correction for those who need them.

While both browsers are part of the Chromium family, they are not controlled by Google itself.

Some Slowly users employed Grammarly, a browser extension which connects to an external site, and can monitor, suggest spelling and grammar revisions to your draft text in real time. I looked at it, but do not to use it; the reason being there's some lag, as the text is sent to their site for processing.

Ideally this should be done in the web browser for minimum lag in text input, but that is not how Grammarly works. It also appears to have some Google investment , which for some users could be a red flag for privacy reasons.

New alternatives?

Recently I found a new alternative, the Microsoft Editor, which does spelling, grammar and optionally styling checks on any text you type in a website. It also uses external processing as disclosed :

Editor connects to a Microsoft online service that offers spelling, grammar and style suggestions for your writing on most websites.”

Details of the tool are here

While this is still using an external 3rd party site for processing, it is not a Google service, and for me that is attractive. (I do not use Grammarly for that reason)

WordTune is similar and also could be considered.

Famous Last Words

This post is dedicated to my friend, Russian Cousin, who has kept in touch and incentivated my writing activities, supplying reports of new version releases, bugs, etc. Thanks, friend. ??

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@friends-near-and-afar-letters-we-share@wordsmith.social

This page created in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment, via a direct message to my Twitter account – or the Reddit one.

You can also post a public comment in the Reddit thread for it here.

yann2@bsky.social Top ▲