Literature Review (1984): Christmas can seriously damage your health

Some of you may have seen the article in the Times Higher Education - What will poor Robin do then? Perforate your small bowel. It reminded me of an article I wrote for an in-house newsletter in 1984 when I was working for a pharmaceutical company and which addresses similar issues. Here  it is (reference number 3 is the one referred to in the THE headline):

Seated one day at the terminal
I was weary and ill at ease
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys (1)

So I decided to cheer myself up, type in a few Christmassy search terms into Medline and see what papers came up. Bingo! 354 hits. However, a glance at some of the titles revealed that the majority were articles on Christmas disease (a form of haemophilia); one was concerned with crystals in the eye called Christmas tree decorations because of their light refractive properties (2); and another was entitled "Small bowel perforation due to a Christmas cake decoration"(3). A broader scan of the literature merely confirmed my initial impression that Christmas merits a government health warning.

It seems that beer drinking is the only festive activity that does not give rise to some class of serious ADR (Adverse Drug Reaction). A group from the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle have shown that drinking six pints of McEwans Export "causes remarkably little metabolic disturbance"(4). Nevertheless, the volunteers did suffer from headache, nausea, dry mouth and malaise the following morning. It is also interesting to note that the eminent Professor KGMM Alberti was thanked for his "invaluable help".

Those of you who prefer a drop of uisgebeatha may be interested in a trial conducted to discover whether or not regular drinkers can distinguish single malts from blended whiskey (5). They could not, but the design of the trial has been criticised. A very select group of volunteers were used (surgeons from one unit) and the question "How blind were the volunteers?" was raised (6). Furthermore, were the 36 tastings by each volunteer carried out in one sitting as implied by the study? (6). If so, then LD50's, despite now being less favoured, may have yielded more useful information.

As for Rudolf, rumours that his red nose is due to excessive intake of Christmas cheer have finally been scotched by a report of two moose involved in motorcycle collisions (7). The crash investigators carefully point out that "One motorcyclist was intoxicated. No evidence of alcohol was found in either moose".

With respect to Santa Claus himself, it is not surprising that belief in Father Christmas has been found to decline markedly with age and is associated with a rise in "causal reasoning" (8). The poor economic climate has also meant that Santa has had to be given the sack by some department stores (9). It seems that they can no longer afford to provide the necessary "specialist working environment" - namely a grotto.

The shops may be able to get away with making Father Christmas redundant, but British Rail were not so lucky when they tried to economise on their "Santa Specials" (10). One angry customer demanded a refund when he found that although there were elves and pixies as advertised, the train was definitely deficient in fairies. A BR spokesman stated "The man has complained that there were no fairies. Indeed there were not but we did have four children dressed up as elves and pixies. I am reluctant to refund the man's £1.25 .......because he did have his mince pie and a glass of sherry".

Which neatly brings me to the nutritional aspect of the Yuletide celebration. This also presents problems. Apart from the cake decorations mentioned earlier, bay leaves may have to be surgically removed (11), and asparagus can give you pongy pee (12). However, you can rest assured that the DHSS has taken steps to ensure that gobbling your turkey does not give you the trots (13); and the EEC is very particular about the size of the crustaceans in your prawn cocktail (14).

In theory, you can always offset any overindulgence in plum pud by participating in some outdoor activity, but this too is beset with perils. The hazards of jogging have been well documented with syndromes such as jogger's nipple (15), jogger's liver (16), judo-jogger's itch (17) and penile frostbite (18) top of the list. If you think cycling is safer, be warned: the Victorians identified a similar catalogue of complaints associated with that pastime including Kyphosis bicyclistarum or cyclist's stoop, bicycle hernia, cyclist's neurosis and cyclist's sore throat (19). Bicycle face was characterised by a "peculiar strained set look, produced by the excessive tension involved in maintaining balance on a two wheeled machine". More recently a case of unicyclists sciatica has been reported (20).

Indoor pursuits are not much safer: addicts of Rubik's cube can be incapacitated by cuber's thumb (21); and prolonged sessions of video games can give rise to unilateral wrist pain referred to variously as Space Invader's wrist, Asteroids osteoarthritis and pinball palsy (22). But don't think that being a spectator is free from side-effects. The excitement of watching a football match has been known to cause Celtics fever or "play-off induced ventricular arrhythmias" (23).

If, like me, you are now thoroughly depressed then why not go to a party? There seem to be plenty going on especially in the NHS (24). Since the Chancellor of the Exchequer is intent on cutting NHS expenditure he should perhaps read a paper from the BMJ, which expresses concern at the extent of these unorganised jollifications (24). The situation is sufficiently serious to warrant the recommendation that an administrator be appointed to rationalise this area of hospital life. Strange that the post was not mentioned by Roy Griffiths in the NHS Management Inquiry.

Finally, just to make you feel even worse the morning after, here are a few European translations of the term "hangover": baksmälla - kickback, katzenjammer - cat misery, and gueule de bois - mouth of wood.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

References:

1. Adapted from A Lost Chord by Adelaide Ann Proctor


2. "Christmas Tree Decoration" crystals in the lens Klin Monatsbl Augenheilkd 1983;182(1):15


3. Small bowel perforation due to a Christmas cake decoration BMJ 1983;287:1923-1924


4. Acute biochemical responses to moderate beer drinking BMJ 1982;285:1770-1773


5. Can malt whisky be discriminated from blended whisky? The proof. A modification of Sir Ronald Fisher's hypothetical tea tasting experiment BMJ 1983;287:1912-1913


6. How blind were the volunteers? BMJ 1983;287:1914-1915


7. Moose-motorcyle collisions New Eng J Med 1981;305(10):590-591


8. Children's belief in Santa Claus. A developmental study of fantasy and causality J Amer Acad Child Psychiat 1979;18(4):658


9. Santa Claus gets the sack in three stores. The Times, Nov 24, 1980


10. Railway fairies unfit for elf fanatic. The Daily Telegraph Nov 22, 1979


11. Beware the bay leaf BMJ 1980;281:1682


12. Volatile organic components in human urine after ingestion of asparagus Clin Chem 1977;23:1941


13. Turkeys, safe preparation Health Notice (HN)1977:190


14. Long-awaited reform of the prawn laws The Times Aug 8, 1980


15. Jogger's nipples New Eng J Med 1977:297:1127


16. Jogger's liver New Eng J MEd 1980;303:589


17. Judo-jogger's itch New Eng J MEd 1979;300:866


18. Penile frostbite, an unforeseen hazard of jogging New Eng J MEd 1977;296:178


19. Are exercise ailments cyclical New Eng J MEd 1983;309:858-859


20. Unicyclists sciatica - a case report New Eng J MEd 1981;305:231-232


21. Cuber's thumb New Eng J MEd 1981;305:768


22. Space-invader's wrist New Eng J MEd 1981;304:1368


23. Celtics fever: playoff induced ventricular arrhythmia New Eng J MEd 1981;305:467-468


24. Hospital Christmas Parties BMJ 1980;281:1667-1668

Date originally written: 7th December 1984
Author: Karen Blakeman

Tracking changes to web page content

I've updated my list of  services and programs that track changes to web pages at http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/monitor.htm.  I've copied the list here partly for information but also because I'd be interested in hearing other people's experiences of using them and recommendations for  any services I have omitted.

Link checkers such as Xenu Link Sleuth (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html) can alert you to pages that have disappeared or that are redirecting users to another site, but changes to the content are equally if not more important. There are many services that track web page content for changes. Some are free whilst other priced services may offer limited facilities as a free taster.

This lists includes both web based services and software programs for PCs and Intranets.

Web based services

Change Detection

URL: http://www.changedetection.com/

This is a free service allowing you to track an unlimited number of pages. The frequency of the alerts can be daily, weekly or monthly and you can choose to only have alerts for "sizeable changes", when content has been added or removed, or for specific keywords. The email merely alerts you to the fact that there have been changes; you have to click on a link in the email to view them in the Change Detection web site. RSS as well as email alerts avialable.

ChangeDetect

URL: http://www.changedetect.com/

The home page gives the impression that this is a totally free service. It isn't. The free trial version of this service allows you to track a maximum of 5 pages and lasts for two weeks. You can receive web page change notifications via email, ICG or text message. The subscription services allow you to track more pages and password protected pages. ChangeDetect Personal costs USD 1.95 a month and tracks 10 web pages. ChangeDetect Plus costs USD 14.95 a month for 100 web pages and allows you to set up keyword and phrase notification triggers and colour coded notifications. ChangeDetect Professional costs USD 39.95 a month for 500 web pages with content checked twice-daily.

Femtoo

URL: http://femtoo.com/

This service allows you to have up to 10 "trackers" and a maximum of 5000 characters tracked for changes free of charge. There are a number of plans that allow more trackers and additional options which can be found at http://femtoo.com/plans/. You can select the content to be tracked and how it is to be treated (text or numerical). Alerts can be delivered by email, SMS and a personal Tracker RSS Feed. Content is checked every 30 minutes.

FollowThatPage

URL: http://www.followthatpage.com/

The free service provides 100 daily page checks and 1 hourly check. You can track additions, deletions, Google page rank, keywords, and sections of a page. Alerts are sent to you by email. The Pro account gives you 1000 daily checks, 20 hourly checks, 5 10-minute checks and 100 weekly checks.

Infominder

URL: http://www.infominder.com/

The free trial tracks up to 10 pages free of charge for 30 days and allows you to associate categories and descriptions with a "minder". Within the advanced options you can specify how often, in days, the page is to be checked. The most frequent check allowed for free is every 1 day. You can also specify the minimum number of changes that must occur before you are notified and any keywords or phrases that must appear in the changes.

Infominder Professional costs USD 30/yr to track 100 pages, USD 60/yr for 250 pages, USD 120/yr for 500 pages and USD 250 /yr for 1000 pages.

Infominder Premium allows you to monitor changes up to 4 times a day and costs USD 60/yr for 100 pages, USD 125/yr for 250 pages, USD 300/yr for 500 pages and USD 500/yr for 1000 pages.

[Note: The Infominder web pages do not appear to have been updated since 2007 which does not inspire confidence.]

Page2RSS

URL: http://page2rss.com

Page2RSS tracks web pages for changes and notifies you of those changes by RSS. Simply type in the URL of the page you wish to track and then add the feed URL to your favourite feed reader. Excellent tool for pages that do not offer their own RSS feeds.

Watch That Page

URL: http://www.watchthatpage.com/

This is a free service run by ATS Consulting, a Norwegian company that specialises in software development. You can track an unlimited number of pages, which can be grouped into folders and tracked on a daily or weekly basis. There is a keyword matching option that filters the changes that are relevant to you, for example if you are only looking for news where a certain term or phrase occurs such as a company or a product name. Channels enable you to divide your pages into groups based on importance or content type. Each channel can have different properties: some can have keyword matching and daily reports whilst others can be checked less frequently and report all changes. Email alerts can include the text that has changed on your pages or just list the URLs of pages that have changed. If you are a professional or heavy user, you are required to pay a fee. Watchthatpage will notify you by email if you fall into the heavy user category.

Websnitcher

URL: http://websnitcher.com/

Websnitcher is a free services that checks your pages every 3 hours and gives you a detailed list of changed textareas. Email notifications are sent once a day and it also generates RSS feeds from the collected data. It alerts you only to what it considers are relevant changes; the intelligent filter tries to ignore changes in date and what it thinks are irrelevant textareas such as how many users are online.

Desktop programs

Copernic Tracker

URL: http://www.copernic.com/en/products/tracker/

Copernic Tracker is a tracking program that costs US $49.95. Once installed on your PC it enables you to track any number of pages on external sites and intranets. You can track changed words, new links or images. There is a useful advanced query form for tracking specific words within pages, Boolean and other search operators (AND, OR, NEAR).

Copies of page revisions are stored locally so that you can compare changes that occurred in the past and add your own notes for tracked pages and each of their revisions. There are four pre-set tracking schedules: Multiple Times per Day, On a Daily Basis, On a Weekly Basis and On a Monthly Basis. Alerts can be a tray icon, desktop alert or notification message, SMS notification, email report with the tracked page contents and changes highlighted.

Internet Owl

URL:http://www.internetowl.com/

As well as general changes to a page you can track the page for the appearance or deletion of specified text, or track selected areas of the page. You can view changes from within the program or in your browser and be alerted via email, a pop-up on your desktop or a sound. The default checking frequency - minutes, hours or days - can be changed as can the frequency for individual pages. Price: 29.95 USD. 30 day free trial.

Update Patrol

URL: http://www.updatepatrol.com/

Update Patrol checks pages for changes as often as you like and you can monitor single pages or entire web sites. It costs US $69.95 for a standard license and US $129.95 for the pro version. See http://www.updatepatrol.com/editions.html for details of the features supported by each edition. A free trial is available.

Update Scannner for Firefox

URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3362
or http://updatescanner.mozdev.org/en/index.html

A free add-on for Firefox. To monitor a page, display it in Firefox and from the right click menu select Scan Page for Update. You can select how often each page is to be scanned (from 5 minutes to once a week), whether or not to ignore numbers, and if insignificant changes are to be ignored (specify the number of characters from less than 10 to less than 1000 characters). An alert will pop-up at the bottom of the screen when changes are detected. Click the blue up-arrow on the bottom status bar to display the Update Scanner sidebar and pages that have been updated are shown in bold. Click on a site in the sidebar to view the page with highlighted changes.

Website Watcher

URL: http://aignes.com/

The full version of this software is available on a 30 day free trial. It tracks an unlimited number of pages and you can choose to ignore HTML tags, images/banners, numbers and dates. You can enter user names and passwords for password protected pages that you wish to track. Pages can be checked once a day, once a week, or on a specified day or days of the week. You can even specify the checking frequency during a day either in hours or minutes.

You can track entire sites without having to specify each page individually (not available in the Basic Edition). As well as web pages you can track RSS and Atom feeds, but this feature is not really a replacement for a fully fledged RSS reader if you are a serious news junkie.

Prices are 29.95 Euros for the Basic Edition, 49.95 for the Personal Edition, 99 Euros for a single user Business licence, 1990 Euros for a site license and 9990 Euros for an enterprise licence.

Yahoo! bungles! it! yet! again!

Unbelievable! Just when I thought Yahoo could not do anything more stupid than they've done in the past we learn that Delicious (http://www.delicious.com/) is to be axed. The leaked information is on a slide shown at an all hands meeting at Yahoo following the latest staff cutbacks. More details and discussion can be found at Is Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us? [Update: Yes], R.I.P. Delicious: You Were So Beautiful to Me and Confirmed: Yahoo Closing Buzz, Traffic APIs – Maybe Delicious & AltaVista. Also for the chop are AltaVista and AlltheWeb.

I am not surprised that AltaVista and Alltheweb are to go. For a while they were used by Yahoo as test beds yet now they just sit out there on the web rotting away. But to get rid of one of the most widely known social bookmarking services is lunacy. Delicious has made its way on to millions of web pages with its 'bookmark with Delicious' buttons and inclusion in share bars. How hard can it be for Yahoo to make Delicious worth-while in hard-nosed business terms? Chris Keene has several excellent suggestions and comments in his blog posting Delicious. I doubt that any of his arguments would change Yahoo;s mind as Delicious is apparently "off strategy". This does make one wonder what Yahoo's strategy is or if it has really ever had one.

Yahoo started off life as a directory of web sites, and not any old web site was granted admittance. You had to apply to the editors with a description of your site and the categories under which you wanted to be listed. You then waited nervously for a couple of weeks for the yay or nay. I can remember the sound of champagne corks popping in my tiny little office at home when I heard the news that my site had been accepted. An entry in the Yahoo directory was the bees knees and worth far more than being picked up by the likes of Lycos (then a serious search engine) or Infoseek. My site is still there, although the directory is now difficult to find (go straight to http://dir.yahoo.com/) and has not been updated in years.

In the early days Yahoo was a serious contender for world search engine domination. For a while it used Google to power its web search before acquiring the technology to do its own thing, but it was ahead of the game in other areas. My Yahoo! offered customised start pages long before iGoogle was a twinkle in Page and Brin's eye. (I still use it for weather forecasts, monitoring my share portfolio and currency exchange rates). Yahoo Finance - again pre-dating Google's offering by several years - is  far superior in stock market coverage to Google Finance and more stable. The problem with both products is that not many people know about them and Yahoo has not done much with them since their inception. Google, on the other hand, constantly changes, updates and adds new features - sometimes to the great annoyance of users.

Remember AlltheWeb Live Search? This was a search engine that started to display results as soon as you started typing in your terms and the results changed as you entered more words. Sound familiar? Yes, Google Instant works in a similar way but AlltheWeb's version was far superior and easier to use. Yahoo dropped it.

Yahoo Mindset? Another test search engine in which you moved a slider bar to change the emphasis of the results to sites that had more to do with shopping or ones that were more research oriented. It was very popular with those who knew about it. Yahoo dropped it.

So what are users of Delicious to do? The good news is that you can export your bookmarks and then import to other services. The bad news is that some have reported that the tags go awry. I vaguely recollect having this problem a while back when I was testing out social bookmark sites and how well they coped with exports/imports.  For further information on alternatives see Search Engine Land's 10 Alternatives To Delicious.com Bookmarking. You may prefer to sit tight in the hope that Delicious is reprieved but at least export your bookmarks now so you have a backup, and start looking at the alternatives. Of course, those could  also disappear.

Yahoo seems to be on a downward spiral to the search engine graveyard. Which service is next on the Yahoo executioner's list, I wonder? I can't believe that it would drop Flickr but then I thought Delicious would be safe. Now, where do I sign up for Picasa?

x-Factor web pages are "advanced" says Google's reading level

Google has rolled out a new search option that assigns a reading level to the pages in your results list. Don't be surprised if you haven't spotted it yet; it is hidden on the advanced search screen. Under the "Need more tools?" section you can choose from the drop down menu to see all of the results with reading level annotations, basic results, intermediate results or advanced results.

Google does not give much away as to how it calculates the reading level and it has nothing to do with the reading age that publishers assign to books. It could involve sentence structure, grammar, the length of sentences on a web page, the length of the document, the terminology used and doubtless many other criteria. But Google isn't saying.

If you have opted to see the annotations, at the top of your results page you will see a graphic showing the percentages for each of the categories. Under the title of each entry in your results list is the reading level.

Click on the Basic, Intermediate or Advanced links next to the bar chart to see pages for that reading level. The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted that Google appears to be mathematically challenged because the numbers do not add up to 100%. In all of the searches I have done so far 1 or 2% are missing from the statistics. Looking through the lists of results some pages have no reading level assigned to them and they seem to be documents that contain very little information, have more numbers than text, and some are formatted files. Note, though, that most file formats do have a reading level so why some are not picked up remains a mystery to me. Some Daily Mail articles do not have a reading level either but many would argue that they fall into the 'very little information' category!

Once you have used the Reading Level in the advanced search screen you can change your search on the results page and it remains as part of your search strategy until you close down your browser or tab.

You can also check out an entire web by using the site command, for example site:rba.co.uk

And this is where you can start to have some fun comparing sites (WARNING - this is addictive!). Phil Bradley has done some in his blog posting Google adds reading level
(http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2010/12/google-adds-reading-level.html). He also highlights some potential problems with labelling pages in this way. For example 'basic' does not necessarily mean stupid, but some people may be deterred from selecting basic pages because of the tag.

Most of my pages are classed as intermediate and I am happy with that. Many of them are listings and analyses of business information sources. My husband's blog on the other hand is 71% advanced and 27% intermediate. This comes as no surprise to me as he has a habit of littering his postings with complex calculations on topics such as wind turbine energy generation and the EROEI of tar sands oil production. (Just the sort of thing not to read before you have had your second cup of coffee of the day.) That plus the industry specific jargon that he uses makes an advanced tag inevitable.

The evidence so far seems to be suggesting that using terms or jargon that are relatively uncommon in the whole of the Google database is a heavy factor in determining the reading level. Let's look at what one might consider to be an intellectually challenging topic: the use of zeolites in environmental remediation.

That seems to confirm it.

As a final test and for a bit of fun let's look at what Google makes of a search on the recent x Factor final.

Noooooo! Surely some mistake? The X factor home page is rated as basic but 93% of the results are advanced. There is indeed a mistake but it was my sloppy search strategy. Changing the x factor part of the search to a phrase gives what I would expect and a switch to 53% basic, 40% intermediate and 6% advanced.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the content of the advanced pages and am now totally bemused. I cannot see how they could ever have been classified as such, but then this is Google we're talking about. Perhaps Google cannot comprehend the scoring system, why so many people watch it or why the programme exists at all?

I have experimented with several other searches. Some came up with results as bizarre as those for the x Factor search but it is interesting how the breakdown can be changed by slightly modifying your search strategy, for example by using phrases when appropriate or a plus sign before a term to force an exact match search. Google's Reading Level could be useful as a training tool to show how small alterations to a search strategy can radically change the results. But as with all things Google, we do not know how it works and the results can sometimes be very strange. Use with caution.

Cost of True Love's christmas gifts increases by 9.2% according to PNC

PNC Wealth Management's annual  review of their Christmas Price Index (CPI) has revealed that this year True Love will have to pay USD 23,439 for his gifts, an increase of USD 1,974 on last year's prices.

The CPI was started in 1984 and surveys the cost of the gifts given by True Love in the song "Twelve days of Christmas". In 1984 the cost was USD 12,673.56.

James Dunigan, managing executive of investments for PNC Wealth Management said:

"This year's jump in the PNC CPI can be attributed to rising gold commodity prices, represented by the Five Gold Rings which went up by 30 percent, in addition to higher costs for wages and benefits impacting some entertainers"

PNC goes on to say:

"The PNC CPI's surge is in marked contrast to the [US] government's CPI, which grew a mere 1.1 percent, illustrating the difference in size of the two baskets of goods and services."

Whilst the milkmaid's minimum wage did not increase "the prices for birds flew higher in this year's index, in part due to the costs of feed as well as the availability and demand for certain feathered friends that amplified several prices. The Two Turtle Doves increased 78.6 percent to $100 and the Three French hens surged 233 percent to $150. The Partridge in a Pear Tree is up 1.3 percent to $161. But the partridge alone was up 20 percent to $12 and the pear tree is identical to a year ago at $149."

The full tab for True Love who gifts all of the 364 items according to the song's verses is USD 96,824. Shopping on the internet only makes matters worse. True Love will have to pay USD 34,336 compared with USD 23,439 for just one purchase of the items - USD 11,000 more than this year's traditional index:

"In general, Internet prices are higher than their non-Internet counterparts because of shipping costs for birds and the convenience factor of shopping online" Dunigan said.

But that is mere pennies compared to the items that True Love has to buy in an updated version of the song composed and presented by the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre (The 12 Days Of Christmas - Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre - YouTube
https://youtu.be/uPMDoKpgKGA)

This is a difficult calculation to make as there are regional differences, for example house prices. Also, what car is True Love prepared to buy? A rock bottom of the market second hand banger or a Lamborghini? How much would assorted bling cost, assuming that True Love did not aim a brick at a jeweller's windows? And it's probably best not to enquire too deeply as to how much the lap dancers or a knighthood would cost. Nevertheless, after lengthy discussions with colleagues, who wish to remain anonymous, we have come up with the cost of the modern True Love's Christmas:

One gifting of the items listed in the 'Socks' video: GBP 258,132 or USD 407,920

Gifting of all the items according to all of the verses: GBP 1,055,646 or  USD 1,668,214

My Online Information 2010 presentations

If you have not already spotted the links on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc  to the various presentations I gave at "Online" in London earlier this month here they are all in one place. I gave two talks as part of the free seminar programme that was part of the exhibition, a conference presentation and a pre-conference workshop. They all have a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial license assigned to them  (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ for further information on the license).

Google's New Search Features: has it gone too far?
1st December 2010

This presentation was given in the exhibition area as part of the free seminar and masterclass programme. I have added comments to some of the screen shots so that they make a little more sense to those who were not there.

authorSTREAM
Slideshare

Challenges of Finding Quality Business Information
1st December 2010

A second presentation I gave as part of the exhibition free seminar programme. Again, I have annotated some of the screen shots.

authorSTREAM
Slideshare

Search Engine Wars: let battle commence
30th November 2010

This is a presentation I gave as part of the Online Information conference. It is quite different from the one I gave  with the same title to INFORUM in Prague earlier this year. I wish I could say it was because so much has changed since then: unfortunately very little has changed.

authorSTREAM
Slideshare

Guide to Using Social Media to Promote Your Organisation and Services
29th November 2010

This was a one day workshop pre-conference workshop. The slides merely formed a framework for the day.  There were more services and issues discussed within the group than are shown in the presentation.  The link given below, which is a direct link to a ppt file on the RBA Information Services web site, will not be available indefinitely.  The presentations on my social media page are updated every time I run a workshop or give a seminar on the topic.

PowerPoint Presentation (9.5 MB)

Facebook trying to take over our browsers?

I have just logged on to Facebook and saw at the top of the page the following:



So Facebook now wants to take over our browsers. When I want to see what my Facebook friends are doing I will decide how and when to do it - not Facebook. Needless to say I have not done as it suggests. 15 minutes later... The above screen shot was taken from within Firefox. Neither Chrome nor Opera displayed the message when I logged in to Facebook. IE8, though, makes it quite clear that Facebook wants to make itself your home page when you start up your browser:

 

 I did wonder why the Firefox message is not so explicit. I initially thought that it might be an add-on, but dragging something to your home button is, obviously, going to make it your home page. I have a sacrificial laptop in the corner of the office; I shall experiment tomorrow morning unless someone alerts me before then about dire, irreversible consequences.

UPDATE 5th December 2010 7.17 am:  (Yes, I know I shouldn't be awake at such an ungodly hour on a Sunday- blame the cat!).  Just tested the Facebook home page button and it does seem to just make your Facebook page your  browser's home page. It is easily undone. An interesting move, though, by Facebook to encourage users to go straight to Facebook when they wake up. Don't many of them do that anyway?

Removing information about yourself from Google

A question that I am often asked during my workshops is how can one persuade Google to remove a page or information from the web. Sometimes the person wants personal photos or videos to be removed or they are asking on behalf of a company who wants less than flattering comments and opinions deleted. In most cases Google does not control the content put up on web sites or social media, it merely indexes it. So the short answer is that you cannot make Google remove information you do not like except in very specific circumstances, for example copyrighted material on YouTube, images of you or your house on Street View.

"Removing Your Personal Information From Google"
http://searchengineland.com/removing-your-personal-information-from-google-55014 is an excellent overview from Search Engine Land of how you should go about having sensitive information removed (if possible) and dealing with negative publicity. Your first move is to contact the web site owner yourself but unless the information is libellous, breaches copyright or data protection laws you might not have much luck. Suing the web site owner is an option but you could end up generating even more bad publicity for you and your organisation. Swamping out the negative information with your own positive responses is by far the best approach and one that requires you to know how to use social media.

The oft cited example of  how not to tackle bad publicity is that of Nestle. (Just Google Nestle social media fail or Nestle social media disaster.) "Nestle fails at social media - Attempts to censor Facebook" from TechEye http://www.techeye.net/internet/nestle-fails-at-social-media is a neat summary of the events. There are also umpteen Slideshare presentations on how Nestle "did it wrong". Many people have forgotten or never knew what the original argument was about, but after the social media debacle the perception of Nestle as corporate bad boys was reinforced.

The Search Engine Land posting has links to other articles offering sound advice on the topic including:

The Real Lesson In the Yelp User Review Lawsuit
http://www.ninebyblue.com/blog/social-media/the-real-lesson-in-the-yelp-user-review-lawsuit/

and

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Managing your reputation through search results
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/managing-your-reputation-through-search.html (I love the bit ".. don't assume that just because your mom doesn't read your blog, she'll never see that post about the new tattoo you're hiding from her.")

Workshop: social media strategies

I am running a pre-Online Information conference workshop about social media strategies on Monday, 29th November 2010 at the Olympia Conference Centre, London -  "The real-life guide to using social media to promote your organisation and services".

In essence it will cover:

• how the major search tools are incorporating social media and real time information in their search results and how you can use this to increase awareness of your organisation and its services
• the importance of identifying relevant platforms and applications for your organisation and tailoring content for them
• ways in which you can generate and re-use content to reach more potential users
• engaging with existing and potential customers and users
• how you can monitor the effectiveness of social media
• technical and human resource issues and the skills needed to implement a social media strategy

Further details are at Online Information 2010, http://www.online-information.co.uk/online2010/conference/conference-programme/workshop_presentation.html?presentation_id=1266

If you wish to book a place but are not attending the conference you need to click on the "Book Conference Place" link. Fill in the your details on the first page and on the next you can select the workshop only option.

If you have already booked a conference place then you need to call Jo Letts (Joanna.letts@incisivemediacom and +44 (0) 207 316 9361).

Prices are  £195 + VAT if you are attending the conference and for the workshop only £399 + VAT

Google previews web pages in results

Google are offering previews of web pages in your results. People have been reporting this feature for many days now but today is the first time I've seen it in action. Run your search as normal and next to each result in your list you should see a magnifying glass. Click on it and Google gives you a preview of the page with the areas containing your text outlined and the text in boxes superimposed on top of the preview. Although it is a useful tool for assessing the relevance of a page I do find it irritating that Google then automatically previews every result as I move my mouse around the results page. You have to click on the magnifying glass again to switch it off.

Five tips on going freelance

Earlier this year I was asked by a magazine for five tips for people considering setting up business and becoming self-employed. As is so often the case the deadline was along the lines of "the next half hour". What I came up with was off the top of my head. (I don't know if they were ever used in the final article as I do not subscribe to the publication). I've recently had a few people ask me about going freelance so I thought I'd reproduce the tips here. I might have changed a couple of them if I'd had more time to think about it but I've left the five as I originally wrote them.

1. It's feast or famine. Clients don't spread their custom neatly throughout the year. They are like buses: you wait for one for ages and then half a dozen come at once! There will be "quiet" periods when you will not be earning (for me they are August, end of December and beginning of January) and times when you have to be here, there and everywhere. Make sure you have a cash buffer or reserves to cover the quiet times so that you can continue to pay the bills.


2. You can say no. It is tempting to say yes to everything especially as you never really know when the next job or project will be, but be realistic. Can you really travel from Reading to Cardiff to Edinburgh to Huddersfield to Canterbury and then on to Aberystwyth in one week? And if something is outside your main area of expertise think twice about taking it on. It is good to stretch yourself and expand your knowledge and the services that you can offer, but if it is going to be a one-off and take you a week or two to get up to speed - DON'T DO IT!


3. Be realistic in your estimates of billable work and time and fix your fees accordingly. If you are lucky, you will be working for six months of the year. The rest of the time will be taken up by the "quiet" periods ( see 1 above), travelling, marketing, social media, preparing proposals, keeping yourself up to date, admin, invoicing, chasing payments... you get the idea. Holidays? No holiday pay. Not feeling too good? No sick pay.


4. Use social media to the full. Get yourself on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Flickr etc. Write a blog. It all takes time to set up and establish a presence but it really is worth it. Google, Bing and Yahoo all include social media in their search results so it makes sense to exploit every opportunity to reach as many people as possible. As well as a marketing tool it is a great way to keep in contact with other self employed people, share experiences and - sometimes - clients.


5. Don't be afraid to admit it is not for you. Being self employed does not suit everyone. It can be difficult keeping yourself motivated if you are working on your own and some find it difficult to cope with the uncertain cash flow. If it becomes too stressful, walk away. At least you will have a better idea of what is involved in running a business and, hopefully, appreciate freelancers a little more.

StatsWales: free statistics on Wales

When looking for UK official statistics many of us immediately think of http://www.statistics.gov.uk/. If you are looking for data on Wales, though, you really should be heading for the Welsh Assembly's StatsWales at http://statswales.wales.gov.uk/. This is a free-to-use service that allows you to "view, manipulate, create and download tables from the most detailed official data on Wales". You can run a keyword search on the data or simply browse the Reports folders.

The built in search option may be your best bet (Note: Google 'site:' search does not work on this data collection). Most of the tables, charts and reports are clearly labelled but there are some sections where all you are told is that the data is "Indicator 9a" or "Indicator 12c", for example.  It is only when you click on the file that you discover it's contents.

You can also select subsets of the data and produce your own tables and charts. If you register you can create your own profile, design and save your reports.

There are many options for viewing and manipulating the data on the web site itself and it can seem overwhelming at times. You may prefer to just download the data sets and work on them offline, but if you think you might be a regular user of the this site it is worth working through the tutorials and getting to grips with the StatsWales tools. You can register for e-mail notifications of changes to specific datasets and RSS feeds are also available to alert you to new sets that have been added to the site.

Paper.li: useful Twitter summary or major irritation?

Paper.li (http://paper.li) organizes links and tweets into a newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for your own Twitter network, a list or #tag. It is run by SmallRivers, a privately held Swiss startup co-founded by Edouard Lambelet and Iskander Pols and located at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL campus.

To create a newspaper simply sign up with your Twitter account and decide whether you want a newspaper generated from your own Twitter network, a hashtag or a Twitter list. Paper.li then extracts all tweets that include URLs, the content found at these URLs (text, blog post, photo, video), analyses the content to identify the topic (for example Politics, Technology ) and then constructs a newspaper for you.

The front page gives you what Paper.li thinks are the most important stories for each topic. How it chooses those is not clear: the FAQ merely says that it uses semantic analysis and "paper.li magic"! You can view more stories on a topic by clicking on one of the tabs at the top of the page.

The paper is updated daily but you can change the update frequency to morning and evening or weekly editions and also alter the time at which the edition is created. Email alerts can be set up to tell you when a new edition is available.

I was initially sceptical about the value of Paper.li. I use Tweetdeck to manage my Twitterstream with searches, lists and groups to help me keep up with subjects and people that are important to me. I also have RSS feeds of some of my searches. After a few days of using it, though, I found that it did bring to the fore important or interesting stories that I might otherwise have missed, especially when I am travelling and do not have time to catch up with all of my Twitterstream. It has also highlighted Twitter users - mostly publishers- who I follow but who rarely report on anything that is relevant to my areas of interest. (A frenzy of unfollowing ensued after I viewed my first few editions). I can also see it as being a useful way of presenting Tweets and information from a conference. Simply set up a Paper.li for the hashtag. It is by no means perfect and I would not rely on it as the sole means of keeping up to date. It does miss and exclude stories that are important to me, but the paper that is produced is easy and quick to scan and as long as you are aware of its limitations it can be a useful addition to your information management toolbox.

So why the possible "major irritation"? You can promote a paper automatically on Twitter using the "Promote it" option. The default is set to ON - or certainly was when I signed up - with the result that some of us were being bombarded with notifications that someone's latest Paper.li was out. Frankly, I don't care and neither do a lot of other people. It created a backlash against the service for a while so if you do decide to set your own daily paper please go into your settings and set 'Promote on Twitter' to OFF. If you have set up a conference or hashtag Paper.li, simply mention the link on an appropriate blog or web page, or in the occasional tweet. People can them decide for themselves whether or not to subscribe to it.

If you want to keep up with developments at Paper.li they have a blog at http://blog.paper.li/, are on Twitter at @SmallRivers and Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/smallrivers/274789310110

Update: Just tried to change the update frequency and title for two hashtag newspapers. You can't! The settings can only be changed for a newspaper generated for your Twitter username. #FAIL

Top Business Search Tips - 27th October 2010

October 27th saw me back in Wales running another business information workshop. This built on the session I ran in July (see Top Business Search Tips at http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/08/10/top-business-search-tips/). We looked at more advanced search techniques for business research with an emphasis on industry/market sectors and covering both official data, market research and what can be gleaned from social media. As usual I asked them to come up with a group Top 10 Tips at the end of the day. There were two tips that were common to both sessions: my own business sources listings (well, they were influenced slightly in that some of my pages were mentioned during the session) and StatsWales, which is the place to go for statistics if you are doing business in Wales. They were also at liberty to suggest sites and tips that I did not mention in the workshop but which they, their users and clients find useful.

1. British Library's Business Essentials on the Web http://bl-business-essentials.wikispaces.com/

"Our wiki is a one-stop shop listings site of essential websites for small businesses and entrepreneurs. The aim of the site is to save you time trawling the web, by bringing together useful sites for small businesses in one place."

Recommended for the Industries section that gives useful sites and starting points for SMEs and start-ups who may be researching industry sectors.

2. Business Information on the Internet (http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/) Business resources organised by type for example statistics, market research, company registers.

3. Slidefinder http://www.slidefinder.net/
Google's filetype ppt search looks for your terms anywhere in a presentation. Slidefinder's default search finds single slides that contain all of your terms. Two of the participants gave this one a thorough road test and were seriously impressed!

4. Repeat one or more of your search terms once, twice, thrice... to change what appears in your results page. Useful if you are fed up with the same old pages coming up again and again. You can enter up to 32 search terms in Google before Google starts dropping terms.

5. Filetype search. Use the Advanced Search file format or the filetype: command to focus your search on PDF (market/industry reports, government documents), XLS (for data and statistics in spreadsheets), PPT (expert presentations, conference talks or overviews on a topic from independent experts, academics, government bodies). If your file extension is not listed in the advanced search screen menu enter your search terms in the standard search box followed by command filetype: and the file extension. For example

wind turbines energy generation UK filetype:pptx

Use Docjax (http://www.docjax.com/) as a quick way of searching both Yahoo and Google for PDF, XLS, DOC and PPT files.

6. StatsWales http://statswales.wales.gov.uk/ The place to go for official statistics on Wales. “StatsWales is a free-to-use service that allows visitors to view, manipulate, create and download tables from the most detailed official data on Wales.” Email alerts and RSS feeds are available.

7. Getting British Business Online ( http://www.gbbo.co.uk/)  A collaboration between Enterprise UK, Google, BT, and e-skills UK with the support of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. This site provides a simple and quick way to for small business to create their first website. Recommended by several of the workshop participants in conjunction with...

8. Business IT Guides (http://wales.businessitguide.com/) E-business support from the Welsh Assembly.

9. Realise the importance of social networks. Yes, it is biased and it can be difficult or impossible to find out who is behind the rant and the extreme negative comments but a lot of people read and forward these to their followers or friends. What started out as an isolated complaint can snowball to a major hate campaign. Companies ignore social media at their peril. Get in there quick if a customer is making a lot of noise about a bad experience and turn it to your advantage.

10. Time! The internet, search engines, business resources and social media are ever changing.  Try and find time to keep up to date and try out new "stuff".

Scottish Business Information Service (SCOTBIS)

The  Scottish Business Information Service ( http://www.scotbis.com/) is a national information service for Scottish businesses based on the resources  held at the National Library of Scotland. SCOTBIS provides users with a free enquiry service and also offers fee-based research and other charged services. Further information of their services is available on their web site and details of their charges are at http://www.scotbis.com/index.cfm?section_id=01.05. The Web Resources section lists useful sites and key starting points for business including market research, statistics, company information and starting a business. Some of the information  concentrates on Scottish markets and companies but most of the information is of value and interest to businesses based elsewhere.

As well as browsing through the list of resources you can search the site using keywords and limit your search to title, industry or country/region. There is also an option to restrict your search to specific databases, for example companies, market research reports.

The What's New section lists the latest resources added to the listings and databases. Although there are RSS feed icons on some of the What's New pages they do not seem to be working at the moment. Apart from this glitch SCOTBIS is an excellent starting point for anyone wishing to search for and purchase business information and for reliable, good quality business resources.

Google thinks I'm male

I have always suspected that there was something different about me. Am I slightly eccentric, totally bonkers, or perhaps I am an alien from another planet? Google has the answer. After believing for the whole of my life that I am female Google tells me I am male!

I am giving a presentation this week in Edinburgh to the Scottish Financial Crime Group about what Google knows about us as individuals. For the purposes of accurate research I enabled Google’s web search history, suspended my usual advert and cookie management, and disabled my browsers' ad blocking plugins. The ads drove me mad and my Google search results began to go all over the place. It was a ghastly experience. I was not, though, expecting my Google's ad preferences page to tell me that based on the pages I had viewed it had deduced I was male (stop sniggering at the back). Here is the screen shot of my ads preferences:

Google obviously thinks that we ladies are not interested in business, computers, internet or social media. So what would classify me as female? Viewing recipes perhaps? Shopping for clothes online? Or visiting  pages about embroidery?

Normality has now been restored to my computer and I have regained my sanity. I have disabled web history, opted out of targeted advertising, re-implemented my cookie management procedures and re-enabled my ad blocking plugins.

If you want to see what Google thinks about you, go to http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/

Social Media in a Corporate Context

I've just returned from one conference and now about to go off to another. Last week it was Internet Librarian International which looked at  how internet technologies, and social media in particular, are being used  by libraries and information centres as tools for research, to provide better services and support users. It was a well attended and very interactive conference with social media being put to good use to share the event within and outside of the conference. On Friday the hashtag #ili2010 was trending on Twitter in the UK. If you would like to catch up with tweets, presentations, photos etc. the links below should give you a head start:

Twapperkeeper #ili2010 tweet archive  http://www.twapperkeeper.com/
Socialmention http://socialmention.com/ Search on ili2010
Addictomatic http://addictomatic.com/topic/ili2010
Twazzup http://www.twazzup.com/ Search on ili2010
Flickr http://flickr.com/ Search on ili2010

This week's conference is Social Media in a Corporate Context and starts tomorrow (Tuesday, 19th October 2010) in Manchester. Organised by Communicate magazine this event is very different from Internet Librarian in its emphasis and concentrates on corporate communications and reputation monitoring/management:

• How can you keep your company’s integrity and reputation intact when control is harder to manage?
• How can you effectively use the information gained from social media evaluation?
• How do you catch the attention of the tech savvy internet generation?
• How do you ensure you have the planning, expertise and resource to manage communications during a crisis?
• How can companies reach out to dispersed employees and keep them engaged?

The full programme and list of speakers is available at http://communicatemagazine.co.uk/events-mainmenu-29/107-smcc/1670-agenda . I am particularly looking forward to Karl Brookes, head of NHS Salford communications and marketing, presenting "The NHS - Reaching disparate audiences: a case study". They may well be using social media to reach their audiences but for most of those working within the NHS social media is usually blocked!

I understand that there are still a few places available so get in quick if you'd like to attend. If you are attending the main part of the conference on Tuesday there is an option to attend a free half day workshop on Wednesday on "Reaching and engaging journalists through social media". Details are at http://communicatemagazine.co.uk/events-mainmenu-29/115-workshop-reaching-journalists-through-social-media

The hashtag for the event is #smcc10

A tweet archive has been set up on Twapperkeeper at http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/smcc10 and there is a Lanyrd at http://lanyrd.com/ctbh

ILI2010 - social search presentation

My presentation on using social media search tools as part of research, which I gave at Internet Librarian International on 15th October 2010, is now available on the sites listed below. I have uploaded it to several different sites and services as I know some of you are not able to access one or more of them at work.

PowerPoint Presentation (6.3 MB) (download from rba.co.uk site)
authorSTREAM
Slideboom
Slideshare

If you want to catch up with #iili2010 tweets there is a Twapperkeeper at http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/ili2010

Zuula - new interface and de-duplication

Zuula (http://www.zuula.com/) has a new interface and a new feature. Zuula provides an interface to many different search engines organised by type. Simply enter your search strategy, click on the type of information you want (web, image, news etc) and then click on the tabs of the search engines one by one to see their results. It is a quick and easy way to run a basic search through several tools in succession.

Zuula's new interface is slicker and now automatically de-duplicates web search results. The first in the list is Google and you will notice that the results are numbered. Click on your next choice and you may notice that the numbered results do not start at number one.  At the top of the results list there is a plus sign and the text "Why minimized?" Zuula compares the results with your previous choice and "minimizes" duplicates under the plus sign. To see those results, click on the plus sign.

The other search types do not seem to support de-duplication but some are pulling in additional search features on the results page. For example images offers size, content (face, photo, illustration, line drawing) and colour. Some of the blog options offer restrictions by date (anytime, last day, last week, last month, last year).

You can change the order of the search engines under Preferences and also increase the number of results per page to a maximum of 60.

If you haven't tried it out already give Zuula a go now.

Adding value - the business of independent information professionals

The October/November issue of the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (http://www.asist.org/bulletin.html) has a special section of articles contributed by AIIP members, including myself. The articles address the topic of bringing value to client projects in a range of areas. I collaborated with Scott Brown on Social Media: Essential for Research, Marketing and Branding (http://www.asist.org/Bulletin/Oct-10/OctNov10_Blakeman_Brown.html). A PDF of the whole edition is available at http://www.asist.org/Bulletin/Oct-10/Bulletin_OctNov10_Final.pdf

The individual articles are:

Adding Value: The Business of Independent Information Professionals
by Crystal Sharp, Guest Editor Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 74k)

Looking Back, Looking Forward
by Susanne Bjorner Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 93k)

PART I - Research: Much More Than Search and Retrieval
by Crystal Sharp, Guest Editor Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size:60k)

The Unexpected Value of Research in Biomedical Business
by Liga Greenfield and Cindy Shamel Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 118k)

Patents in the Realm of Independent Information Professionals
by Tom Wolff and Stephen Adams Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 121k)

The IIP and the Small Business High Tech Client
by Jane John, Jocelyn Sheppard and Jan Knight Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 139k)

Government Information: Adding Value as an Expert Guide
by Peggy Garvin Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 84k)

The Independent Information Professional as Government Contractor
by Phyllis Smith Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 72k)

Competitive Intelligence: How Independent Information Professionals Contribute to Organizational Success
by Arthur Weiss and Ellen Naylor Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 149k)

Business Research Beyond Borders
by Eiko Shaul Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 71k)

Today's Genealogist: Providing Value-Added History
by Missy Corley Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 87k)

Part II - Services: Marketing, New Media, Writing, Consulting and Information Management
by Crystal Sharp, Guest Editor Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 58k)

Information Professionals and the Nonprofit Sectors
by Margaret King Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 77k)

Enhance Your Marketing Productivity: Hire an IIP
by Marjorie Desgrosseilliers Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 93k)

Consulting: Helping Clients Plan, Adapt, Choose...and Much More
by Ulla de Stricker Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 87k)

Social Media: Essential for Research, Marketing and Branding
by Karen Blakeman and Scott Brown Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 577k)

From Reference Interview to Project, Proposal: Defining Client Needs to Ensure Research Success
by Sarah Hager Johnston Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 78k)

The Accidental Knowledge Manager: Another Role for Independent Information Professionals
by Deb Hunt Full Text:  HTML | PDF (Size: 94k)

Advanced search tips and tricks

An interesting list of search tips came from the participants of the search workshops I recently ran in-house for a well known academic institution. (My Twitter followers will be able to work out who it was). As well as being experienced, savvy searchers they are fortunate in that they can choose which browser to use for searching. Attempts to demonstrate Google Instant failed, however. I was not able to show Google's latest "enhanced search experience" in action, even when using the latest versions of the browsers and being signed in to a Google account. This was probably due to their firewall. Personally, I think that is a plus for the institution. Some of you may disagree.

Here is their combined top search tips list.

1. Keep it Simple!

There is a plethora of advanced search options and Google alternatives but starting off with a simple search string is often the best approach. Looking for data on the UK rat population? You might be tempted to include a file format limitation in your search and/or a site:gov.uk command but simply typing in a search for uk rat population statistics was quicker and came up with the relevant information. Note: the simple approach worked at the time with this example because it was a "hot topic" in the UK news. It might not work now, which brings us to number 2...

2. Be aware of personalisation and hot topics

The major search engines monitor what you search for and the links you click on, and use this to "personalise" your results and sponsored links/ads accordingly. This information is stored in cookies on the computer you used for the search. They also try and work out your location from your IP address so that they can deliver local content (this sometimes goes horribly wrong!). What is currently hitting the headlines will also be a factor in determining the results that are displayed on the first page (increase your displayed results per page to more than the default 10 and ideally to at least 50). This means that you will see different results from one day to the next and if you use a computer other than your usual machine.


3. Google isn't infallible

We covered a range of search techniques that you can try to bring Google to heel but if you are not getting anywhere try another search tool. Google does not cover everything and your best result may be number 1,200,675 in the results list. Try Yahoo or Bing as alternatives and also think about using specialist search tools for real time and social media, images, and subjects/industries.

4. Get to know the Google alternatives

There is no easy way to do this but visiting Zuula (http://www.zuula.com/) or Browsys Finder (http://www.browsys.com/finder/) once very couple of weeks will remind you of the alternatives and alert you to new kids on the block.

5. Google additional search options

Open up and explore the additional Google search options on the left hand side of your results page. You can restrict your search to news, videos, blogs, images etc and to a time period. There are also options for related searches, less or more shopping sites and....

8. The Wonderwheel

Use this to extract phrases and concepts from the top results and to change the direction of your search. Worth investigating if you are stuck in a rut and fed up with seeing the same results again and again.

9. Google Public Data Explorer

This is currently a Google Labs project at http://www.google.com/publicdata/home “..makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand.” There is a list of sources at http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory but the data available is more varied than the list suggests at first glance. The World Development Indicators and OECD Factbook are worth looking at in more detail to see if they have data that can help with frequently asked questions.

10. Creative Commons and public domain images


If you are looking for an image for a presentation or promotional literature, search for images that have the appropriate Creative Commons license. There are several licenses with varying degrees of restrictions. Details are on the Creative Commons web site at http://www.creative.commons.org/.  You can search Flickr photos that have a specific creative commons license at http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ or use Compfight (http://www.compfight.com/). There are several other sites you can use for Creative Commons images but Geograph (http://www.geograph.org.uk/) was mentioned several times by the workshop participants. Geograph “aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland” and all photos have a CC 2 license, which means that they can be used commercially with attribution.

11. TinEye Reverse Image Search
http://www.tineye.com/

Type in the URL of an image or upload one of your own and TinEye will find similar images, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there is a higher resolution version. Provided by Idée Inc who also offer..

12. Multicolr Search Lab
http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/

Search 10 million Creative commons Flickr images by colour. You can specify more than one colour and click on a colour several times to increase its prominence within the image. You can easily click through to the original Flickr image to double check the license.

13 . Slidefinder

http://www.slidefinder.net/

Ideal for locating individual presentation slides that contain your search terms. There is an Advanced Search that enables you to search specific areas of a slide for example title, text, notes. You can also limit your search to a university. There are browsable lists at the bottom of the page but they do not list every institution: there are only 47 for the UK. One workshop participant had been given a paper copy of a complex slide and it had taken her "ages" to find an electronic version. She had had to wade through hundreds of slides in presentations that had been identified by using the advanced filetype: ppt search. Slidefinder found it straight away.

14. Twitter search tools

Do not expect Google, Yahoo or Bing to carry out a reliable Twitter search. Use specialist search tools such as Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com/), Twazzup (http://www.twazzup.com/), BackTweets (http://www.backtweets.com/) for tweets that refer to your content, Tweepz (http://www.tweepz.com/) for finding people and organisations on Twitter, and TwapperKeeper (http://www.twapperkeeper.com/) for archives of tweets on a conference hashtag or keyword.

15. Google custom search engine

http://www.google.com/cse/

Ideal for groups or collections of sites that you regularly search and use. Google CSE is very quick and easy to set up and can be hosted on Google. Two that had been set up by a workshop participant were a list of library associations worldwide and selected UK higher and further education web sites.

16. Watchthatpage

Tracking changes to web pages that do not themselves offer RSS or email alerts was not covered by the main part of the workshop but the question arose during one of the practical sessions. There is a list of some web based and downloadable programs and their features at Tracking Web Page Changes http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/monitor.htm . Watchthatpage (http://www.watchthatpage.com/) won the vote because it is free, web based and offers email alerts.

17. Evernote

http://www.evernote.com/

"Capture anything... Type a text note. Clip a web page. Snap a photo. Grab a screenshot. Evernote will keep it all safe.". I don't use this myself but it had several fans in this organisation. ( I use Firefox add-on Scrapbook to do a similar thing).

18. Add-ons for Firefox

If you are a Firefox user explore the many add-ons that are available to make searching and managing information easier. For example Feedly (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8538/) to organize your favourite sources into a magazine-like start page;  Scrapbook (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/427/) to save and organize web pages; and Optimize Google (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/52498/) for customizing your Google searches and results.

19. Don't re-invent the wheel - re-use and share


As well as images, many presentations have Creative Commons licenses and their authors are often happy for you to re-use slides from them as long as you acknowledge the source and do not incorporate them into a product or service that you then sell. Slideshare.net is a good starting point but do check the license to confirm what you can and cannot do with the content - not all are CC. Also, consider assigning a CC license to your own photos and presentations. The Creative Commons web site (http://creativecommons.org/choose/) can help you decide which one to use.

20. Time to explore

There was time to explore new techniques and tools during the workshop but it is not so easy to try out, for example, a new option on Google when you are back in the office and an enquirer wants that result NOW! Try and incorporate some "play time" into your schedule so you can keep up with new developments, even if it is just 10 minutes a week.