Alacra Store, who provide pay as you go access to company and industry data, have added EIU content. You can now find all types of EIU Country Data in the store including Country Profiles, Country Reports, Country Forecasts, ViewsWire articles, and Risk Briefings. They have also included all of the content from recent issues of The Economist magazine.
A new feature currently being tested on the EIU files is "Search This Document". It enables you to see the keyword in context for each place it appears in a given report. I find that this is the only way to confirm that the information you want is in a document. Tables of contents can not always do this. I note, though, that any figures in the text surrounding the keywords are replaced by ###. Drat, drat and triple drat! But not surprising as it would be a sneaky way to get free market share information:-). But the reports are reasonably priced and in dollars, which at the moment is good news for those of us in the UK.
Wednesday 21 December 2005
Tuesday 20 December 2005
Marketscan - Mailing Lists and Direct Mail Services
Marketscan offer direct mail services to businesses and individuals. The lists appear on first glance to be heavily UK biased but there are also International and European lists. You can browse and build lists via a number of different routes: business, consumer, company directors, market sectors, SIC codes, geographical planner. The business lists, for example, include New Connections, Job Function, Medical Data Set, IT Data Set and email lists. I found the market sectors approach far more flexible than SIC codes, which is the usual option offered by most other services. Building a list is straightforward and prices start at GBP 115 per 1000 records.
There is also a guide to direct mail marketing (http://www.marketscan.co.uk/direct_marketing_guide.asp) that can be viewed on site or downloaded as a PDF. The points and issues raised should be common sense to anyone experienced in direct marketing but it is all too easy to lose track of where you are in a campaign. For newcomers to direct marketing, this is an essential primer: for seasoned veterans it is a useful checklist and reminder.
There is also a guide to direct mail marketing (http://www.marketscan.co.uk/direct_marketing_guide.asp) that can be viewed on site or downloaded as a PDF. The points and issues raised should be common sense to anyone experienced in direct marketing but it is all too easy to lose track of where you are in a campaign. For newcomers to direct marketing, this is an essential primer: for seasoned veterans it is a useful checklist and reminder.
Cost of True Love's Christmas up by 6 per cent
The 21st annual PNC Christmas Price Index shows that the cost of Christmas for True Love - made famous by the song 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' - has gone up by 6 per cent. Avian flu and energy prices are major contributory factors the report claims.
Every year, PNC Advisors calculate the cost of goods and services gifted by True Love in the song and this year it totalled USD 18,348. That figure represents the cost of the individual items, not the total cost of presents gifted by a True Love who repeats all of the song's verses. That comes t0 a whopping USD 72,608 for all 364 items, up 9.5 per cent from USD 66,334 in 2004.
Jeff Kleintop, chief investment strategist for PNC Advisors said "Not only are avian flu fears and fuel costs driving prices higher, but gold prices are also on the rise. Meanwhile, wages for skilled laborers are struggling to keep up with rising expenses." The biggest hurdle for True Loves will be obtaining imported birds. The threat of avian flu has restricted the international shipment of birds, thus preventing the purchase of three French hens from France. However, there are US domestic breeders of French hens, as well as the other feathered friends mentioned in the song. Since the large birds are bought from national suppliers, total costs are higher due to the shipping and related increases in fuel prices. The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens reports the cost of geese almost doubled this year while the cost of swans increased by 20 percent.
For online shoppers, PNC tabulates the cost of The Twelve Days gifts purchased on the web and the figures show that it can be considerably more expensive to go Internet shopping. The true cost of Christmas via the web this year is USD 123,846.62. The greatest differential was for Ten Lords a Leaping: USD 10,947 online compared with USD 4039.02 paid for their services using more traditional means of recruitment.
Every year, PNC Advisors calculate the cost of goods and services gifted by True Love in the song and this year it totalled USD 18,348. That figure represents the cost of the individual items, not the total cost of presents gifted by a True Love who repeats all of the song's verses. That comes t0 a whopping USD 72,608 for all 364 items, up 9.5 per cent from USD 66,334 in 2004.
Jeff Kleintop, chief investment strategist for PNC Advisors said "Not only are avian flu fears and fuel costs driving prices higher, but gold prices are also on the rise. Meanwhile, wages for skilled laborers are struggling to keep up with rising expenses." The biggest hurdle for True Loves will be obtaining imported birds. The threat of avian flu has restricted the international shipment of birds, thus preventing the purchase of three French hens from France. However, there are US domestic breeders of French hens, as well as the other feathered friends mentioned in the song. Since the large birds are bought from national suppliers, total costs are higher due to the shipping and related increases in fuel prices. The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens reports the cost of geese almost doubled this year while the cost of swans increased by 20 percent.
For online shoppers, PNC tabulates the cost of The Twelve Days gifts purchased on the web and the figures show that it can be considerably more expensive to go Internet shopping. The true cost of Christmas via the web this year is USD 123,846.62. The greatest differential was for Ten Lords a Leaping: USD 10,947 online compared with USD 4039.02 paid for their services using more traditional means of recruitment.
First Issue of Google Librarian News
The first issue of Google's Librarian News has appeared. Conceived at the 2005 ALA conference in Chicago this will be a quarterly newsletter. The first issue has a feature article on how Google indexes the web and ranks search results. For many experienced searchers there is nothing new in the article and it does not go into any great detail. Nevertheless, a useful primer for students and those who are curious as to how Google works.
Saturday 10 December 2005
Jux2 is back
Jux2 (http://wwwjux2.com/) is back having been sold by its previous owner on eBay for over USD 100,000.
Jux2 is a meta search tool that runs your strategy through Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves and presents you with a combined list. Nothing unusual or innovative in that, but you can also look at just the unique results found by each of the three engines. The closest alternative that I have seen is Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com/), which enables you to view the lists of results from the "big four" side by side and highlight the unique pages. For Firefox fans there is a plugin for the search box that adds Jux2 to your list of favourite tools.
Jux2 is a meta search tool that runs your strategy through Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves and presents you with a combined list. Nothing unusual or innovative in that, but you can also look at just the unique results found by each of the three engines. The closest alternative that I have seen is Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com/), which enables you to view the lists of results from the "big four" side by side and highlight the unique pages. For Firefox fans there is a plugin for the search box that adds Jux2 to your list of favourite tools.
Wednesday 7 December 2005
Advanced Internet Search Strategies - Top Tips and Sites
We have been running our Advanced Search Strategies workshop again, this time in Sheffield. As usual, we asked the participants at the end of the day to come up with their top tips and sites. This is the list.
1. Use evaluated subject listings to filter out the rubbish, for example OMNI (http://www.omni.ac.uk/) in the health and medical area. Use Pinakes (http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html) or RDN (http://www.rdn.ac.uk/) to help identify them.
2. Ranking.thumbshots.com to demonstrate the overlap - or lack of it - between search engines, and to convince colleagues and users that Google is not always the best or only tools for an enquiry.
3. Use the filetype format available on all the main search engines' advanced search screens to narrow down your search. For example spreadsheets for statistics, Powerpoint to find information on or from experts on a subject, PDF and Word files for "meaty" market and industry reports, or government reports.
4. Try Kartoo (http://www.kartoo.com/ for a different approach to presenting results and for suggestions on additional or alternative search terms.
5. Trovando.it to run your search quickly in several different search tools, and as a reminder of the different resource types and tools that are available, for example reference.
6. RDN Virtual Training Suite (http://www.vts.rdn.ac.uk/) to bring you up to speed on key, reputable resources in an unfamiliar subject or industry sector.
7. Google numeric range search to look for anything involving a range of numbers. For example, "top" banks may be top 10, 15, 20, 100 (top 10..100 banks), or for identifying forecasts (TV advertising spend forecasts 2005..2012).
8. Pattern search in Exalead (http://www.exalead.com/). For example /psych.*ist/ finds pages containing psychologist, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst etc.
9. Image specific search tools are often better than the image options of the general search engines. For example Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/), Morguefile (http://www.morguefile.com/), Picsearch (http://www.picsearch.com/).
10. Visit Google Labs (http://labs.google.com/) to keep up to date with what is new and experimental at Google, for example Google Suggests, Google Sets, Personalized Home Page, Search History.
11. Use the Google synonym search to include synonyms in your strategy. Precede your term with a tilde (~), for example ~bank will also find banks bankers, banking, financial, commerce.
12. Use the site search option on the advanced search screens of the main search engines to limit by type of organisation, for example government or academic, or to search a specific site. Particularly useful for searching massive sites whose navigation and internal search engine are dire.
1. Use evaluated subject listings to filter out the rubbish, for example OMNI (http://www.omni.ac.uk/) in the health and medical area. Use Pinakes (http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html) or RDN (http://www.rdn.ac.uk/) to help identify them.
2. Ranking.thumbshots.com to demonstrate the overlap - or lack of it - between search engines, and to convince colleagues and users that Google is not always the best or only tools for an enquiry.
3. Use the filetype format available on all the main search engines' advanced search screens to narrow down your search. For example spreadsheets for statistics, Powerpoint to find information on or from experts on a subject, PDF and Word files for "meaty" market and industry reports, or government reports.
4. Try Kartoo (http://www.kartoo.com/ for a different approach to presenting results and for suggestions on additional or alternative search terms.
5. Trovando.it to run your search quickly in several different search tools, and as a reminder of the different resource types and tools that are available, for example reference.
6. RDN Virtual Training Suite (http://www.vts.rdn.ac.uk/) to bring you up to speed on key, reputable resources in an unfamiliar subject or industry sector.
7. Google numeric range search to look for anything involving a range of numbers. For example, "top" banks may be top 10, 15, 20, 100 (top 10..100 banks), or for identifying forecasts (TV advertising spend forecasts 2005..2012).
8. Pattern search in Exalead (http://www.exalead.com/). For example /psych.*ist/ finds pages containing psychologist, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst etc.
9. Image specific search tools are often better than the image options of the general search engines. For example Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/), Morguefile (http://www.morguefile.com/), Picsearch (http://www.picsearch.com/).
10. Visit Google Labs (http://labs.google.com/) to keep up to date with what is new and experimental at Google, for example Google Suggests, Google Sets, Personalized Home Page, Search History.
11. Use the Google synonym search to include synonyms in your strategy. Precede your term with a tilde (~), for example ~bank will also find banks bankers, banking, financial, commerce.
12. Use the site search option on the advanced search screens of the main search engines to limit by type of organisation, for example government or academic, or to search a specific site. Particularly useful for searching massive sites whose navigation and internal search engine are dire.
Saturday 3 December 2005
EBRD Directory 2006
The new 2006 EBRD Directory of business information sources on central and eastern Europe and the CIS is now in press.
Available from February 2006, the directory has been completely revised and extended to provide a comprehensive guide to business information resources on the region. The sites are is from the world's leading publishers, banks, commercial and investment agencies. These are sources used daily by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Business Information Centre. As well as the printed directory, you receive an Internet password that gives you access to updated information. I do quite a bit of research on central and eastern Europe and I find this an invaluable resource on these regions. Yes, I could probably locate much of the information via a Google/Yahoo/Exalead search but the directory is much quicker and I know that their resources have been quality assessed and evaluated.
The price is GBP 165, EUR 250, USD 320 but if you place your order before December 31st you save 15% (GBP 140, Eur 213 or usd 272).
Email your order to sales@dataresources.co.uk, stating your name, organisation, postal and email addresses together with any applicable order number and Dataresources will send you a pro-forma invoice by return.
Available from February 2006, the directory has been completely revised and extended to provide a comprehensive guide to business information resources on the region. The sites are is from the world's leading publishers, banks, commercial and investment agencies. These are sources used daily by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Business Information Centre. As well as the printed directory, you receive an Internet password that gives you access to updated information. I do quite a bit of research on central and eastern Europe and I find this an invaluable resource on these regions. Yes, I could probably locate much of the information via a Google/Yahoo/Exalead search but the directory is much quicker and I know that their resources have been quality assessed and evaluated.
The price is GBP 165, EUR 250, USD 320 but if you place your order before December 31st you save 15% (GBP 140, Eur 213 or usd 272).
Email your order to sales@dataresources.co.uk, stating your name, organisation, postal and email addresses together with any applicable order number and Dataresources will send you a pro-forma invoice by return.
Fast Search & Transfer to develop new desktop search tool
An interesting story from Information World Review on the Norwegian enterprise search vendor Fast Search & Transfer, and their plans for their "Personal Search Platform" (PSP). This will not be just desktop search. The plans are to involve information providers such as Reed Elsevier so that PSP can provide users with a one-stop-shop for peer reviewed articles, web and desktop search. The article implies that PSP will not be limited to scientific and biomedical publications. Fast, it says, has strong relationships with Reuters, Lexis-Nexis, Factiva and CNET.
blinkx and Times Online launch Times Smart Search
Blinkx and the Times Online have launched a co-branded toolbar called Times Online Smart Search. This is a variation on the Blinkx desktop search with content from the Times being delivered via the blinkx News channel. It works in the same way as the standard Blinkx desktop search in that it analyses what the user is viewing at the time and delivers related content. Blinkx and Times Online have also customised the Smart Folders that update themselves automatically with content relevant to a topic specified by you. I have to confess that in the past I have been very confused as to how to get this to work but I think I've finally cracked it.
There are two versions of Times Smart Search: a light version that does not search your own PC but gives you access to Smart Folders and some custom-made Times Online services, and the full "advanced" version that includes desktop search. They are only available for PCs running "later versions" of Windows - there is no Mac version at present - and the toolbar works with both IE and Firefox.
It is not obvious on the Times home page where one can download the Smart Search but I think the starting point is the invitation to try Smart Search beta.
There are two versions of Times Smart Search: a light version that does not search your own PC but gives you access to Smart Folders and some custom-made Times Online services, and the full "advanced" version that includes desktop search. They are only available for PCs running "later versions" of Windows - there is no Mac version at present - and the toolbar works with both IE and Firefox.
It is not obvious on the Times home page where one can download the Smart Search but I think the starting point is the invitation to try Smart Search beta.
Dot-eu domain about to go live
Expect to start seeing sites in the .eu domain within the next few days. The new top-level domain goes live on December 7th but only trademark holders and public bodies will be able to register during the so-called "sunrise period". Registrations for the domain, which will be handled by Eurid, will be open to the rest of us on 7 April 2006.
Firefox 1.5 released
The latest version of Firefox, 1.5, has been released. New and improved features include:
* "drag and drop" feature for tabbed browsing so that you can re-arrange the tabs
* Improved pop-up blocker
*Addition of Answers.com now included in the integrated Search box.
* Improved Live Bookmarks feature for RSS feeds.
* New Automatic Update system
* New Clear Private Data tool so that you can clear all private information, such as history and form entries, via one settings window.
I have also noticed that it displays pages significantly faster.
You may find that some of your extensions may be disabled because Firefox thinks that they are not compatible with this latest version. I initially had a problem with Flashblock, Googlebar, TinyUrl creator and Pagerank. Checking for updates will sort out most of the "incomptibilities". For the rest, try the Nightly Tester Tools extension. Primarily intended to check for new nightly builds of Firefox, it also has an option that tells Firefox your existing plug-ins can work with the latest download. There is a chance that an extension could cause problems but it worked OK with my collection.
* "drag and drop" feature for tabbed browsing so that you can re-arrange the tabs
* Improved pop-up blocker
*Addition of Answers.com now included in the integrated Search box.
* Improved Live Bookmarks feature for RSS feeds.
* New Automatic Update system
* New Clear Private Data tool so that you can clear all private information, such as history and form entries, via one settings window.
I have also noticed that it displays pages significantly faster.
You may find that some of your extensions may be disabled because Firefox thinks that they are not compatible with this latest version. I initially had a problem with Flashblock, Googlebar, TinyUrl creator and Pagerank. Checking for updates will sort out most of the "incomptibilities". For the rest, try the Nightly Tester Tools extension. Primarily intended to check for new nightly builds of Firefox, it also has an option that tells Firefox your existing plug-ins can work with the latest download. There is a chance that an extension could cause problems but it worked OK with my collection.
Friday 18 November 2005
See the Cheapest UK Petrol Prices for Free - PetrolPrices.com
See the Cheapest UK Petrol Prices for Free - PetrolPrices.com
This site is maintained by Fubra who are the people behind OurProperty.co.uk. To find the lowest petrol price in your area you just type in a town or postcode. By default it looks for unleaded prices within 5 miles of your area. You can change the fuel type to Super Unleaded, LPG, LRP, or Premium Diesel and the distance to 2 miles (inner metropolitan areas only), 10, 15 or 20 miles. As well as listing the 5 cheapest stations and the price, you can see their location on a map from Google Local.
The data covers over 10,000 stations and there are about 8000 daily updates. Data is provided by Catalist in asssociation with Arval and collected from fuel card transactions that are processed at petrol stations across the country each day.
You can search 20 unique areas or postcodes per week and are allowed to search for each unique postcode as many times as you like. It is a free service but you do have to register to view the detailed information.
This site is maintained by Fubra who are the people behind OurProperty.co.uk. To find the lowest petrol price in your area you just type in a town or postcode. By default it looks for unleaded prices within 5 miles of your area. You can change the fuel type to Super Unleaded, LPG, LRP, or Premium Diesel and the distance to 2 miles (inner metropolitan areas only), 10, 15 or 20 miles. As well as listing the 5 cheapest stations and the price, you can see their location on a map from Google Local.
The data covers over 10,000 stations and there are about 8000 daily updates. Data is provided by Catalist in asssociation with Arval and collected from fuel card transactions that are processed at petrol stations across the country each day.
You can search 20 unique areas or postcodes per week and are allowed to search for each unique postcode as many times as you like. It is a free service but you do have to register to view the detailed information.
Google Print Becomes Google Book Search
Google Print has become Google Book Search with a new URL at http://books.google.com/.
Google say that "This change reflects the ongoing growth of the product and our continuing effort to make the search service more user-friendly... Additionally, users and publishers told us the name Print was confusing: some thought the product existed to help them print web pages."
As well as a name change, there are additions to the Advanced Search screen including options for searching by title, author, publisher, year or years of publication, and ISBN.
Google say that "This change reflects the ongoing growth of the product and our continuing effort to make the search service more user-friendly... Additionally, users and publishers told us the name Print was confusing: some thought the product existed to help them print web pages."
As well as a name change, there are additions to the Advanced Search screen including options for searching by title, author, publisher, year or years of publication, and ISBN.
Saturday 29 October 2005
Top 10 Search Tips
At the end of every advanced search workshop that we run, the delegates vote on their 10 top search tips. The latest course was run for UKeiG (UK eInformation Group) on Friday, October 28th and was held at CILIP in London. A summary of the tips is given below but a more detailed explanation will appear in the UKeiG members newsletter eLucidate, and in the members area on the UKeiG web site.
1. Use domain/site search to limit by type of site and to search individual sites that are difficult to navigate.
2. Trovando.it for a quick way to run your search in different search tools one by one.
3. Use Yahoo for complex nested Boolean searches.
4. Think about the format that the information might be in and use the filetype options to narrow down your search.
5. "Disappearing" pages: use the search engines' cached pages for recently disappeared pages or the Wayback Machine for older pages and sites.
6. Use the Google numeric range when searching for ranges of prices, distances, weights, temperatures, years etc.
7. Don't give up! If your favourite search engine is not working, try another one or a different type of resource.
8. Graball for comparing the results from 2 search engines side by side.
9. Copernic Desktop for desktop search.
10. Yahoo Mindset to adjust the ranking of results ("shopping" versus "research")
1. Use domain/site search to limit by type of site and to search individual sites that are difficult to navigate.
2. Trovando.it for a quick way to run your search in different search tools one by one.
3. Use Yahoo for complex nested Boolean searches.
4. Think about the format that the information might be in and use the filetype options to narrow down your search.
5. "Disappearing" pages: use the search engines' cached pages for recently disappeared pages or the Wayback Machine for older pages and sites.
6. Use the Google numeric range when searching for ranges of prices, distances, weights, temperatures, years etc.
7. Don't give up! If your favourite search engine is not working, try another one or a different type of resource.
8. Graball for comparing the results from 2 search engines side by side.
9. Copernic Desktop for desktop search.
10. Yahoo Mindset to adjust the ranking of results ("shopping" versus "research")
Monday 17 October 2005
Business Week Top 100 Global Brands Scoreboard
Business Week have released their 2005 league table of top 100 global brands. The table ranks 100 global brands that have a value greater than $1 billion. The brands are selected according to two criteria: they have to be global in nature, deriving 20% or more of sales from outside their home country, and there also has to be publicly available marketing and financial data on which to base the valuation. The table also gives rankings for the years 2001 to 2004.
There is no change in the top 5: Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, GE and Intel. Google makes a first appearance at number 38 sandwiched between Goldman Sachs and Kellogg's, and Yahoo is up two places at 58. Apple has also gone up two places to number 41. Amazon has gone down slightly from last year's 66 to 68 this year while eBay has risen 5 places to number 55.
There is no change in the top 5: Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, GE and Intel. Google makes a first appearance at number 38 sandwiched between Goldman Sachs and Kellogg's, and Yahoo is up two places at 58. Apple has also gone up two places to number 41. Amazon has gone down slightly from last year's 66 to 68 this year while eBay has risen 5 places to number 55.
Monday 10 October 2005
Email must die!
Email must die! That was the battle cry that rang out this morning at Internet Librarian International in London, with Brian Kelly leading the attack. Quote as posted on the ILI wiki by rakerman:
"Poor metadata - bad subject lines, subject lines not changed..."
"Viruses, spam, flame wars..."
"Email is where knowledge goes to die"It was an excellent presentation and I wholeheartedly agree with Brian. I'm already using RSS, blogs, Wikis and Skype which were all mentioned by him as alternatives but I have been wary of IM, one of the other options he covered. But I am now going to give it a go, especially as May Chang gave some useful pointers to multi-protocol systems in her talk before lunch.
Friday 7 October 2005
Top 10 Business Sites
At the end of each of our Business Information on the Internet workshops we ask the delegates to compile a "Top 10 Business Sites" list. The list from the course held on 6th October is now at http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/top10/index.htm.
Yet again we failed to to narrow it down to just 10 sites so we actually have a round dozen! The new Alacrawiki site came straight in at number one with agreement from all delegates that this is an excellent starting point for industry specific information. Europages and Kompass made yet another appearance and have been joined by Kellysearch in the directories category.
Search tool Trovando is also a new entrant, enabling you to quickly run your search in several web, blog, image and reference search tools one by one.
Yet again we failed to to narrow it down to just 10 sites so we actually have a round dozen! The new Alacrawiki site came straight in at number one with agreement from all delegates that this is an excellent starting point for industry specific information. Europages and Kompass made yet another appearance and have been joined by Kellysearch in the directories category.
Search tool Trovando is also a new entrant, enabling you to quickly run your search in several web, blog, image and reference search tools one by one.
Thursday 22 September 2005
AlacraWiki launched
Alacra has launched AlacraWiki, a guide to business information companies, publishers and databases. The Alacra Industry Spotlights in particular are extremely useful in providing reviews and commentary on industry specific web sites and the Types of Content section lists resources under headings such as mergers and acquisitions, news, people and corporate governance. There is also information on content aggregators, databases and the best business information blogs. Anyone can contribute and edit the pages, apart from the Industry Spotlights which are locked, but you have to create an account in order to do so. If you want to keep up with what's new at Alacra, they also have a blog and news feed.
Monday 19 September 2005
Exalead one:desktop
Exalead is the latest to join the desktop search club, with its preview launch of exalead one:desktop. This has been tested for several months by a selected group of users (I was one of them), but the non-disclosure agreement forbade us to mention that the software even existed! I can't say that I have tested it exhaustively; I rarely need to use a desktop search program and Exalead's does not yet index Thunderbird email or Star/Open Office documents. Support for these applications is promised for later in the year.
If your documents are mostly Microsoft, Adobe, html or Wordperfect then exalead one:desktop is worth considering for its unique advanced search options. As well as the standard phrase searching, OR and NOT commands there is a NEAR command which searches for words within 16 words of one another, a phonetic search, approximate spelling and pattern matching. You can also have word stemming switched on by default.
When you install the program, you can specify which directories and areas of your hard disk you want it to index and you can also control when it indexes. The results are displayed with preview thumbnails for some of the formats, but you can switch this off if you prefer to view the results as text only. On the left had side of the screen, there are options that enable you to narrow down your search by folder, author, date, size and document type. This will all be very familiar to users of the Exalead's web search. For web search Exalead is the default but you can set up shortcuts to other tools.
Overall, definitely worth a try - especially for the advanced search features.
Link: http://www.exalead.com/
If your documents are mostly Microsoft, Adobe, html or Wordperfect then exalead one:desktop is worth considering for its unique advanced search options. As well as the standard phrase searching, OR and NOT commands there is a NEAR command which searches for words within 16 words of one another, a phonetic search, approximate spelling and pattern matching. You can also have word stemming switched on by default.
When you install the program, you can specify which directories and areas of your hard disk you want it to index and you can also control when it indexes. The results are displayed with preview thumbnails for some of the formats, but you can switch this off if you prefer to view the results as text only. On the left had side of the screen, there are options that enable you to narrow down your search by folder, author, date, size and document type. This will all be very familiar to users of the Exalead's web search. For web search Exalead is the default but you can set up shortcuts to other tools.
Overall, definitely worth a try - especially for the advanced search features.
Link: http://www.exalead.com/
Wednesday 14 September 2005
Google Blog Search
Google is the first of the major web search tools to launch a dedicated Blog Search - in beta of course. It does not search the full text of the postings, only the RSS and Atom feeds generated by the blog. Older posts that were generated before Blog Search started crawling or are not in a current feed are not included. Google says that it covers "every blog that publishes a site feed (either RSS or Atom)." When I ran my test searches, it picked up several pages that are not blogs but do have RSS or Atom feeds. For many of us this is not an issue. I am often looking for feeds on a topic or industry sector and do not care whether they are generated by a blog or by some other means. There may be times, though, when one does want to limit a search to blogs so one needs to bear this in mind.
The indexing is fast. Blog Search picked up one of my postings just 22 minutes after I had published it. Results can be sorted by date or relevance.
The Advanced Search has the usual 'all the words', phrase, 'at least one of the words', and 'without the words'. Additional options include 'words in the post title', 'words in the blog title', 'at this URL', 'blogs and posts written by', limit by date and language.
You can also set up alerts. Go to the bottom of your results page and you can ask to have 10 or 100 results as an Atom or an RSS feed.
You can access Google Blog Search at http://www.google.com/blogsearch for the Google style interface, or at http://search.blogger.com/ if you prefer the Blogger style.
The indexing is fast. Blog Search picked up one of my postings just 22 minutes after I had published it. Results can be sorted by date or relevance.
The Advanced Search has the usual 'all the words', phrase, 'at least one of the words', and 'without the words'. Additional options include 'words in the post title', 'words in the blog title', 'at this URL', 'blogs and posts written by', limit by date and language.
You can also set up alerts. Go to the bottom of your results page and you can ask to have 10 or 100 results as an Atom or an RSS feed.
You can access Google Blog Search at http://www.google.com/blogsearch for the Google style interface, or at http://search.blogger.com/ if you prefer the Blogger style.
Business Week Online - Best of the Web Poll
Business Week's Best of the Web Poll has now entered its second round. There are now 8 search tools under the Work-Search category: Google, Yahoo, Snap, A9, DogPile, Technorati, Clusty and Exalead. All are excellent tools in their own way. I was thinking of voting for Yahoo but eventually went for Exalead, mainly because of the proximity search option and the Advanced Search features of phonetic, approximate spelling and pattern matching. The last is particularly useful for cheating at - ahem, I mean solving crossword puzzles!
Friday 9 September 2005
Internet Librarian International 2005
A reminder that there is still time to register for Internet Librarian International at the discounted rate (up until September 23rd) and that CILIP members receive a 20% discount off the full two day conference fee.
The event is being held at the Copthorne Tara Hotel in London between October 10th and the 11th. Tracks and topics include Blogs, Wikis, E-Learning and Training, Global Best Practices, Digital Libraries & Resources, Web Research Skills and Resources, Technology for Libraries, Information Literacy, Practical Technology Tips and Tools, and Managing Corporate Libraries.
I have to admit that I have a vested interest in this event as I am co-presenting a session on search engines with Yahoo expert Ran Hock. We've already had to submit outlines of our presentations to the organisers, but we both suspect that what we finally present will be very different. With so many innovations and product launches happening every week we shall be working on our talks up to the last minute, as I am sure will the other speakers. It promises to be an interesting conference.
The event is being held at the Copthorne Tara Hotel in London between October 10th and the 11th. Tracks and topics include Blogs, Wikis, E-Learning and Training, Global Best Practices, Digital Libraries & Resources, Web Research Skills and Resources, Technology for Libraries, Information Literacy, Practical Technology Tips and Tools, and Managing Corporate Libraries.
I have to admit that I have a vested interest in this event as I am co-presenting a session on search engines with Yahoo expert Ran Hock. We've already had to submit outlines of our presentations to the organisers, but we both suspect that what we finally present will be very different. With so many innovations and product launches happening every week we shall be working on our talks up to the last minute, as I am sure will the other speakers. It promises to be an interesting conference.
Monday 5 September 2005
Enterprise Quest
Enterprise Quest - Ideas and know-how for small business.
Although this site is new to me, it has been around for about two years. This is the home of a free weekly bulletin called EnterQuest, published by Cobweb Information and aimed at UK small businesses. As well as tips and ideas on running a small business EnterQuest also keeps you up to date with legal issues, offers IT tips (for example keyboard shortcuts for Windows and Word), and reviews web sites of interest to SMEs. You can read the bulletin on the web site or have it delivered to your email box. A pity there is no RSS feed at present but I'll make do with the email.
Although this site is new to me, it has been around for about two years. This is the home of a free weekly bulletin called EnterQuest, published by Cobweb Information and aimed at UK small businesses. As well as tips and ideas on running a small business EnterQuest also keeps you up to date with legal issues, offers IT tips (for example keyboard shortcuts for Windows and Word), and reviews web sites of interest to SMEs. You can read the bulletin on the web site or have it delivered to your email box. A pity there is no RSS feed at present but I'll make do with the email.
Tuesday 30 August 2005
Tales from the Terminal Room, July/August 2005 - Issue No. 64
Tales from the Terminal Room, July/August 2005 - Issue No. 64
The latest issue of Tales from the Terminal Room is now available. This month we look at whether the Yahoo database really is larger than Google's, try out Google Desktop 2 and there is a review of the new Alacra Store. I'm afraid that Google gets yet another bashing in "These things are sent to try us"; this time it is over the My Search History.
The latest issue of Tales from the Terminal Room is now available. This month we look at whether the Yahoo database really is larger than Google's, try out Google Desktop 2 and there is a review of the new Alacra Store. I'm afraid that Google gets yet another bashing in "These things are sent to try us"; this time it is over the My Search History.
Thursday 25 August 2005
Google Desktop 2 and Sidebar Launched
Google Desktop 2 has been launched with a new sidebar. I am not a great fan of Google Desktop - I actually use Yahoo Desktop - but decided to give this latest version a try. The good news is that indexing of secure web pages such as bank statements and of password protected documents is switched off by default. You can even encrypt the cache that Google creates on your PC. The sidebar also looked promising with news, options for RSS feeds, a scratchpad, share price monitor, weather, and a panel where you can have a sort of slide show of your favourite photos.
Now for the bad news. My enthusiasm quickly waned as I discovered that the share prices and weather are US only, and that the news is from Google.com. I would have preferred news.google.co.uk but there seems to be no way to change this. You can 'train' it by telling it not to show any more articles "like this", and if you have the advanced features switched on it is supposed to be able to work out the type of content you prefer to read. After three days, I gave up and removed that panel, as well as the Web Clips/RSS one; I find it much easier to use a proper RSS reader. I also found the Quick View of recently viewed files and doucments irritating.
It did, though, list new emails that appeared in my Thunderbird inbox but I wanted it to alert me to just new Gmail messages. The only way to do that is to create filters to stop the Thunderbird mail being listed. Far too time consuming and tedious to do, so that panel went as well. Which just left me with the scratchpad (actually, quite useful) and my photo slide show. I then occupied the empty spaces with an Adsense plug-in to display how much my web pages are earning and a to-do list. There is a list of plug-ins at http://desktop.google.com/plugins/.
As far as searching my hard drive, it still lags way behind Yahoo Desktop in terms of accuracy, number of documents found, and indexing procedure. Google Desktop works continually in the background. I found it to be a serious resource hog, even when I forced it to pause indexing, and it significantly slowed down the performance of my computer.
I have now uninstalled it :-( A pity, because I rather like the sidebar. It has real potential, and I am sure that there will be plenty more useful panel plug-ins along soon.
Now for the bad news. My enthusiasm quickly waned as I discovered that the share prices and weather are US only, and that the news is from Google.com. I would have preferred news.google.co.uk but there seems to be no way to change this. You can 'train' it by telling it not to show any more articles "like this", and if you have the advanced features switched on it is supposed to be able to work out the type of content you prefer to read. After three days, I gave up and removed that panel, as well as the Web Clips/RSS one; I find it much easier to use a proper RSS reader. I also found the Quick View of recently viewed files and doucments irritating.
It did, though, list new emails that appeared in my Thunderbird inbox but I wanted it to alert me to just new Gmail messages. The only way to do that is to create filters to stop the Thunderbird mail being listed. Far too time consuming and tedious to do, so that panel went as well. Which just left me with the scratchpad (actually, quite useful) and my photo slide show. I then occupied the empty spaces with an Adsense plug-in to display how much my web pages are earning and a to-do list. There is a list of plug-ins at http://desktop.google.com/plugins/.
As far as searching my hard drive, it still lags way behind Yahoo Desktop in terms of accuracy, number of documents found, and indexing procedure. Google Desktop works continually in the background. I found it to be a serious resource hog, even when I forced it to pause indexing, and it significantly slowed down the performance of my computer.
I have now uninstalled it :-( A pity, because I rather like the sidebar. It has real potential, and I am sure that there will be plenty more useful panel plug-ins along soon.
trovando - search different
trovando - search different
trovando.it
I picked this one up from Phil Bradley's blog. Think of it as Turbscout with lots more search engines and lots more types of search. The search tools are organised under tabs such as Web, Images, Reference, News, Blogs etc. Click on a tab, enter your terms and click on each tool in turn to run your search. I particulalry like the URL tab which, amongst other things, finds pages that link to your known URL (backlinks), runs a Whois on the domain name, and finds archived copies of the page. And there is a custom tab where you can build your own collection of search tools.
trovando.it
I picked this one up from Phil Bradley's blog. Think of it as Turbscout with lots more search engines and lots more types of search. The search tools are organised under tabs such as Web, Images, Reference, News, Blogs etc. Click on a tab, enter your terms and click on each tool in turn to run your search. I particulalry like the URL tab which, amongst other things, finds pages that link to your known URL (backlinks), runs a Whois on the domain name, and finds archived copies of the page. And there is a custom tab where you can build your own collection of search tools.
Alacra Store - The Premium Business Information Source ™
Alacra Store - The Premium Business Information Source ™
Alacra have launched a pay-per-view version of their priced service. Still in beta, it covers just 30 of the 100 or more databases available via the subscription service. Any half competent researcher should be able to find much of the company information in Alacra free on the net (certainly for publicly traded companies) and the news articles from Business and Industry are a bit pricey compared with the per article pricing of LexisNexis. But there are some good market research sources here and - Oh Joy! - they have Tablebase, one of my favourite databases. It is the quickest way I know of tracking down rankings and market shares in a particular industry/country. I've tried accessing it via Dialog's Open Access and Skyminder but have always had mixed and sometimes rather odd results. Dialog, in particular, I find clunky and slow. In contrast, the Alacra Store interface is much 'smoother' and faster, and I seem to get far more sensible results.
I shall be doing a more detailed review in the next Tales from the Terminal Room.
Alacra have launched a pay-per-view version of their priced service. Still in beta, it covers just 30 of the 100 or more databases available via the subscription service. Any half competent researcher should be able to find much of the company information in Alacra free on the net (certainly for publicly traded companies) and the news articles from Business and Industry are a bit pricey compared with the per article pricing of LexisNexis. But there are some good market research sources here and - Oh Joy! - they have Tablebase, one of my favourite databases. It is the quickest way I know of tracking down rankings and market shares in a particular industry/country. I've tried accessing it via Dialog's Open Access and Skyminder but have always had mixed and sometimes rather odd results. Dialog, in particular, I find clunky and slow. In contrast, the Alacra Store interface is much 'smoother' and faster, and I seem to get far more sensible results.
I shall be doing a more detailed review in the next Tales from the Terminal Room.
Thursday 18 August 2005
Our Property Offers Sales Alerts
Our Property repackages Land Registry data and data from the Registrars of Scotland. It enables you to search for properties that have been sold since 2000 by street, town and postcode and displays the price that the property or properties were sold for.
They now offer free sales alerts. You can monitor new sales at up to 10 different locations around the UK. Enter the postcodes that you are interested in, and if a new sale is registered in the database within 500 metres of that postcode you receive an email alert. Very useful if you are buying or selling a house and want to compare prices, or if you are just plain nosey and want to know how much your neighbour paid for their property!
They now offer free sales alerts. You can monitor new sales at up to 10 different locations around the UK. Enter the postcodes that you are interested in, and if a new sale is registered in the database within 500 metres of that postcode you receive an email alert. Very useful if you are buying or selling a house and want to compare prices, or if you are just plain nosey and want to know how much your neighbour paid for their property!
Thursday 4 August 2005
Dogpile Adds MSN
Dogpile Adds MSN
Meta search tool Dogpile had added MSN to its collection of search engine. It now searches Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and MSN all at the same time. You can compare three search tools at a time using Dogpile's new Search Comparison and see how much overlap there is between them in the first 20 results.
When you run a web search, as well as combining and removing the duplicates from the results Dogpile automatically shows you the Top 12 from Google and Yahoo side by side on the right hand side of the screen. Unique results are highlighted. You can close these boxes or add columns for MSN and Ask Jeeves by clicking on the relevant icons.
In addition to web meta search Dogpile has an images search (Yahoo and Ditto), audio (Yahoo and Singingfish), video (Yahoo and Singingfish) and a News option (Yahoo, Topix News, Fox News, ABCNews). Interestingly, Google and MSN are omitted from the images and news meta search.
The Yellow and White Pages search covers the US only.
Meta search tool Dogpile had added MSN to its collection of search engine. It now searches Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and MSN all at the same time. You can compare three search tools at a time using Dogpile's new Search Comparison and see how much overlap there is between them in the first 20 results.
When you run a web search, as well as combining and removing the duplicates from the results Dogpile automatically shows you the Top 12 from Google and Yahoo side by side on the right hand side of the screen. Unique results are highlighted. You can close these boxes or add columns for MSN and Ask Jeeves by clicking on the relevant icons.
In addition to web meta search Dogpile has an images search (Yahoo and Ditto), audio (Yahoo and Singingfish), video (Yahoo and Singingfish) and a News option (Yahoo, Topix News, Fox News, ABCNews). Interestingly, Google and MSN are omitted from the images and news meta search.
The Yellow and White Pages search covers the US only.
Tuesday 2 August 2005
Aroq - Industry and Market Research
Aroq
This is a gateway to Aroq's four industry specific sites: just-drinks.com, just-food.com, just- auto.com and just-style.com. All four pull together news and market research in their particular sector. The market research comes from a wide range of suppliers and can be purchased online. The news is free and each of the sites have excellent blogs commenting on events in their sector. RSS feeds of the news headlines and the blogs are available.
This is a gateway to Aroq's four industry specific sites: just-drinks.com, just-food.com, just- auto.com and just-style.com. All four pull together news and market research in their particular sector. The market research comes from a wide range of suppliers and can be purchased online. The news is free and each of the sites have excellent blogs commenting on events in their sector. RSS feeds of the news headlines and the blogs are available.
Friday 22 July 2005
Tales from the Terminal Room, June 2005 - Issue No. 63
Tales from the Terminal Room, June 2005 - Issue No. 63
The latest issue of Tales from the Terminal Room is now available. If you are a Google Desktop Search fan, you might be interested in the article "That darn Google Desktop cache"
The latest issue of Tales from the Terminal Room is now available. If you are a Google Desktop Search fan, you might be interested in the article "That darn Google Desktop cache"
Wednesday 20 July 2005
EUROPA site - VAT number validation
Update 20 April 2011: This service has now moved to http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/vieshome.do
If you are VAT registered and trading with companies based in the EU, this site enables you to verify the validity of a company's VAT number. Select the Member State from the drop-down menu and enter the number to be validated.
If you are VAT registered and trading with companies based in the EU, this site enables you to verify the validity of a company's VAT number. Select the Member State from the drop-down menu and enter the number to be validated.
Search Strategies for the Internet: Search Tools Summary and Comparison
Search Strategies for the Internet: Search Tools Summary and Comparison
The summary and comparison table has been updated with corrections and additions to the column on Exalead.
The summary and comparison table has been updated with corrections and additions to the column on Exalead.
Thursday 14 July 2005
Yahoo! Desktop Search Beta
Yahoo! Desktop Search Beta
Yahoo has updated its Desktop Search and now supports Thunderbird email. Although previous versions of YDS did index and search Thunderbird files you had to search them under the "All files" category. Now you can chose just "Email". The number of file types supported in the main program has been considerably reduced, though. If you want the full range of 300+ file types you have to install the expansion pack.
For me, Yahoo Desktop is still by far the best with Copernic's offering coming second.
Yahoo has updated its Desktop Search and now supports Thunderbird email. Although previous versions of YDS did index and search Thunderbird files you had to search them under the "All files" category. Now you can chose just "Email". The number of file types supported in the main program has been considerably reduced, though. If you want the full range of 300+ file types you have to install the expansion pack.
For me, Yahoo Desktop is still by far the best with Copernic's offering coming second.
Tuesday 12 July 2005
Google Toolbar for Firefox
Google Toolbar for Firefox
Google has at last launched a version of its toolbar for Firefox. It seems to have all the features of the IE version but appears to be missing several of the "special" searches that are incorporated into the separately developed Googlebar, such as Scholar, Print, Video, Dictionary and Glossary Search. Googlebar is also experimenting with adding Google Labs "Google Suggests" into the toolbar, although the version I tried froze on occasion.
I shall stay with Googlebar for the time being.
Google has at last launched a version of its toolbar for Firefox. It seems to have all the features of the IE version but appears to be missing several of the "special" searches that are incorporated into the separately developed Googlebar, such as Scholar, Print, Video, Dictionary and Glossary Search. Googlebar is also experimenting with adding Google Labs "Google Suggests" into the toolbar, although the version I tried froze on occasion.
I shall stay with Googlebar for the time being.
Gigablast Launches Blog Search
Gigablast Launches Blog Search
Gigablast has added a blog search to its home page covering nearly 16.5 million pages. I have not had time to test it thoroughly and compare results with tools such as Feedster and Technorati, but it seems worth adding to my blog search toolkit. There are the same advanced search features as in the web search and the usual Giga Bits that suggest related terms and searches to add to your strategy. For example, I typed in 'climate change peak oil' and it came up with quite a lengthy list including 'oil production peak', 'oil depletion', 'action on climate change'. You click on a suggestion and it adds it to your existing search string. I find this a very quick and easy way of coming up with different pages of results on a topic.
Gigablast has added a blog search to its home page covering nearly 16.5 million pages. I have not had time to test it thoroughly and compare results with tools such as Feedster and Technorati, but it seems worth adding to my blog search toolkit. There are the same advanced search features as in the web search and the usual Giga Bits that suggest related terms and searches to add to your strategy. For example, I typed in 'climate change peak oil' and it came up with quite a lengthy list including 'oil production peak', 'oil depletion', 'action on climate change'. You click on a suggestion and it adds it to your existing search string. I find this a very quick and easy way of coming up with different pages of results on a topic.
Sunday 10 July 2005
Search Strategies for the Internet: Search Tools Summary and Comparison
Search Strategies for the Internet: Search Tools Summary and Comparison
An updated version of the comparison chart covering Yahoo, Google, Exalead, MSN, Giigablast and Teoma is now available as an HTML file and as a PDF.
I've given up trying to restrict it to just one page. There are so many search engine features that are worth mentioning that it now fills two pages.
An updated version of the comparison chart covering Yahoo, Google, Exalead, MSN, Giigablast and Teoma is now available as an HTML file and as a PDF.
I've given up trying to restrict it to just one page. There are so many search engine features that are worth mentioning that it now fills two pages.
Wednesday 6 July 2005
SPG Media RSS Feeds and Industry Web Sites
SPG Media RSS Feeds
This is a really neat site from UK based SPG Media. RSS news feeds, compiled from news sources world-wide, are organised by sector for example energy, telecoms, transportation. The emphasis is on technologies and the companies that supply them. Feeds are available as both ATOM and RSS.
In addition to the news feeds, there are 28 sector specific technology web sites. Each site provides information on industry projects in production or under development, an A-Z company index of contractors and suppliers, a catalogue of companies by product or service, a diary of relevant exhibitions and conferences, and a list of industry organisations.
This is a really neat site from UK based SPG Media. RSS news feeds, compiled from news sources world-wide, are organised by sector for example energy, telecoms, transportation. The emphasis is on technologies and the companies that supply them. Feeds are available as both ATOM and RSS.
In addition to the news feeds, there are 28 sector specific technology web sites. Each site provides information on industry projects in production or under development, an A-Z company index of contractors and suppliers, a catalogue of companies by product or service, a diary of relevant exhibitions and conferences, and a list of industry organisations.
FeedJumbler
lazytom's FeedJumbler is a web-based application that allows you to merge several RSS or Atom-based feeds into a single RSS and/or Atom feed. You can also convert an RSS or Atom-based feed into RSS, Atom and/or HTML and JavaScript. You enter the URLs of your source feeds and it generates a link to your merged feeds, which you can put into your feed reader. Alternatively you can register with FeedJumbler to get a personalized page where you can keep track of your merged feeds.
It is similar to RSSMix but there does not seem to be any limit to the number of headlines in your merged feed - with RSSMix it is 20 - and no limit to the number of feeds that you can combine. Any more than 4 or 5, though, and I think the resulting mega-feed would become rather unwieldy to scan.
It is similar to RSSMix but there does not seem to be any limit to the number of headlines in your merged feed - with RSSMix it is 20 - and no limit to the number of feeds that you can combine. Any more than 4 or 5, though, and I think the resulting mega-feed would become rather unwieldy to scan.
Google Video Search
Google launched its new Video Search just over a week ago. Its collection includes videos from news channels and web sites. Searching is relatively straightforward but it is quite difficult to find a video that is freely available for playing. Those that are, have a triangle icon next to their entry in the results list. Google suggests a number of terms you could use, including greenpeace, AdWords and breakdancing to find free videos. One searcher also managed to find William Shatner's version of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
In order to play the videos, you have to first download and install Google's Video Viewer. It is supposed to be compatible with IE and Firefox but there have been problems reported with both. I cannot get it to do anything at all in IE. In Firefox (version 1.0.4) it is very temperamental. One minute it plays and in the next goes into a sulk, even with the same video. I have yet to see and hear Captain Kirk's rendition of the Beatles classic, but perhaps that is just as well!
In order to play the videos, you have to first download and install Google's Video Viewer. It is supposed to be compatible with IE and Firefox but there have been problems reported with both. I cannot get it to do anything at all in IE. In Firefox (version 1.0.4) it is very temperamental. One minute it plays and in the next goes into a sulk, even with the same video. I have yet to see and hear Captain Kirk's rendition of the Beatles classic, but perhaps that is just as well!
Monday 27 June 2005
Free RSS News Feeds, Free Custom RSS News Feeds - Moreover Technologies
Free RSS News Feeds, Free Custom RSS News Feeds - Moreover Technologies
Moreover now allows you to set up your own feed and alerts. Previously, only pre-defined RSS feeds were available free of charge.
Moreover now allows you to set up your own feed and alerts. Previously, only pre-defined RSS feeds were available free of charge.
Acronyma
Acronyma
Claims to be the largest database of acronyms and abbreviations on the web with over 471000 acronyms. Acronymfinder.com appears to have more definitions (it claims to have 2,020,000) and sorts the definitions into categories, for example Science and Medicine, Slang and Chat. Acronyma returned fewer results with my test searches but as well as English, it also offers definitions of Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Italian and Portuguese acronyms.
Claims to be the largest database of acronyms and abbreviations on the web with over 471000 acronyms. Acronymfinder.com appears to have more definitions (it claims to have 2,020,000) and sorts the definitions into categories, for example Science and Medicine, Slang and Chat. Acronyma returned fewer results with my test searches but as well as English, it also offers definitions of Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Italian and Portuguese acronyms.
Yahoo to the Max
Yahoo to the Max is a new book from Ran Hock that tells you all there is to know about Yahoo together with recommended strategies for getting the best out of the service. I sometimes suspect that Ran knows more about Yahoo than Yahoo themselves!
Friday 24 June 2005
AskOxford: Collective Terms for Animals
AskOxford: Collective Terms for Animals
A useful section of the Oxford Dictionaries site for settling arguments and checking your pub quiz Q&A. We were having a heated discussion regarding the correct collective noun for a group of hippopotamuses. Yes, sad, isn't it? We had a laptop and mobile coms but a Google search came up with all sorts of terms, some of them hotly disputed. Where do we Brits go to in situations such as this? Answer - the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Unfortunately, we were not in a venue where I could access my own multi volume hard copy but AskOxford came up with the answer, or rather answers. For the record, a group of hippos can be a pod, a bloat, a herd or a school. Now you know!
A useful section of the Oxford Dictionaries site for settling arguments and checking your pub quiz Q&A. We were having a heated discussion regarding the correct collective noun for a group of hippopotamuses. Yes, sad, isn't it? We had a laptop and mobile coms but a Google search came up with all sorts of terms, some of them hotly disputed. Where do we Brits go to in situations such as this? Answer - the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Unfortunately, we were not in a venue where I could access my own multi volume hard copy but AskOxford came up with the answer, or rather answers. For the record, a group of hippos can be a pod, a bloat, a herd or a school. Now you know!
Thursday 9 June 2005
Zephyr M&A coverage increased
Zephyr M&A coverage increased
Bureau van Dijk's M&A database, Zephyr, has been increased to more than 300,000 deals. Zephyr contains information on M&A, IPO and private equity deals and includes company financials. In addition to current deal information, historical deal information has been added for Asia and other regions. There is now five years of global coverage. Deals involving US or European companies go back to the beginning of 1997. More information on Zephyr can be found at http://www.bvdep.com/, or by calling +44 20 7549 5000.
Bureau van Dijk's M&A database, Zephyr, has been increased to more than 300,000 deals. Zephyr contains information on M&A, IPO and private equity deals and includes company financials. In addition to current deal information, historical deal information has been added for Asia and other regions. There is now five years of global coverage. Deals involving US or European companies go back to the beginning of 1997. More information on Zephyr can be found at http://www.bvdep.com/, or by calling +44 20 7549 5000.
Sunday 5 June 2005
Yagoohoogle becomes Twingine
Yagoohoogle, mentioned in a posting on April 7th, has becomeTwingine. Same features (compares Google and Yahoo side by side) but the title and URL are much easier to remember!
EEVL Xtra
EEVL Xtra
A new service from EEVL that helps you find articles, key websites, books, the latest industry news, job announcements, ejournals, eprints, technical reports, and the latest research in engineering, mathematics, and computing. EEVL Xtra searches databases and resources that most search engines miss.
A new service from EEVL that helps you find articles, key websites, books, the latest industry news, job announcements, ejournals, eprints, technical reports, and the latest research in engineering, mathematics, and computing. EEVL Xtra searches databases and resources that most search engines miss.
Subject Finder - Search for educational Subjects & Information
Subject Finder.
I found this site via the Internet Resources Newsletter: Issue 129
http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/irn129/irn129.html
"Subject Finder is developed by Teum Teklehaimanot to help students, teachers and lecturers find educational websites easily without being overwhelmed with a huge number of search results. It is designed to search only educational websites which contain tutorials, learning and teaching materials such as Accounting, Arts and Design, Biology, Business, Chemistry, Computing, Construction, Counselling, Economics, Electronics, Engineering, Geography, Health, History, Law, Languages, Mathematics, Physics, Psychology, Reference, Science, Social Science, Sociology, Travel, etc."
You can browse by subject or carry out a keyword search. Although the site says that it searches only educational web sites, that does not mean it is restricted to academic pages. I found some good quality resources on a number of topics from organisations such as trade and professional associations. I am definitely adding this service to my collection of "specialty" search tools.
I found this site via the Internet Resources Newsletter: Issue 129
http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/irn129/irn129.html
"Subject Finder is developed by Teum Teklehaimanot to help students, teachers and lecturers find educational websites easily without being overwhelmed with a huge number of search results. It is designed to search only educational websites which contain tutorials, learning and teaching materials such as Accounting, Arts and Design, Biology, Business, Chemistry, Computing, Construction, Counselling, Economics, Electronics, Engineering, Geography, Health, History, Law, Languages, Mathematics, Physics, Psychology, Reference, Science, Social Science, Sociology, Travel, etc."
You can browse by subject or carry out a keyword search. Although the site says that it searches only educational web sites, that does not mean it is restricted to academic pages. I found some good quality resources on a number of topics from organisations such as trade and professional associations. I am definitely adding this service to my collection of "specialty" search tools.
Official Find - The Official-Site Searcher
Official Find - The Official-Site Searcher
This site claims to make it easier to find the official web sites of top brands and companies. Type in your brand name or company into the search box and you should find the official site at the top or in the top 5-10 search results. For major brands it seems to work well, except that you still have to watch out for advertisements at the top of the results. I had problems, though, with some UK and European brand names and in particular with household cleaning products.
I was on the point of being moderately impressed, but when I ran the same searches in Google most of the results looked identical except for the UK and European brand names. Google managed to find most of those and placed them in the top 3. I then realised that I use Google.co.uk as my default and when I used Google.com the results looked very similar to Official Find's.
I am not sure what is so special about Official Find. The "About" file refers to their InstaNav which instantly searches for Official Sites with each keystroke and presents results in a drop down menu in the actual search box. You should then be able to select and click on the site without going to a search results page first. They go on to say that "InstaNav tm will make searching at Google and other search engines feel old fashioned!" None of the claimed features worked in Firefox and in IE I kept getting warnings about Active-X.
Verdict: I'll stick with the boring old fashioned search engines.
This site claims to make it easier to find the official web sites of top brands and companies. Type in your brand name or company into the search box and you should find the official site at the top or in the top 5-10 search results. For major brands it seems to work well, except that you still have to watch out for advertisements at the top of the results. I had problems, though, with some UK and European brand names and in particular with household cleaning products.
I was on the point of being moderately impressed, but when I ran the same searches in Google most of the results looked identical except for the UK and European brand names. Google managed to find most of those and placed them in the top 3. I then realised that I use Google.co.uk as my default and when I used Google.com the results looked very similar to Official Find's.
I am not sure what is so special about Official Find. The "About" file refers to their InstaNav which instantly searches for Official Sites with each keystroke and presents results in a drop down menu in the actual search box. You should then be able to select and click on the site without going to a search results page first. They go on to say that "InstaNav tm will make searching at Google and other search engines feel old fashioned!" None of the claimed features worked in Firefox and in IE I kept getting warnings about Active-X.
Verdict: I'll stick with the boring old fashioned search engines.
Monday 30 May 2005
Ask Jeeves Introduces Zoom and Web Answers
Ask Jeeves Investor Relations: "Ask Jeeves Introduces Zoom and Web Answers"
I've been playing around with both of these for about an hour this afternoon trying to get a feel for how and if these work.
Zoom (subtitled Concept Navigation) "offers suggestions to narrow and refine your search ("zooming in"), or expand your search ("zooming out") to explore new ideas." The Zoom suggestions should appear on the right hand side of your results page. I found that if you carry out a fairly precise search such as my 'gin vodka sales UK' test search, nothing appears in the Zoom section. A search on 'climate change', though, suggests that I might like to narrow my search to global warming, global warming causes, global warming impact etc. Alternatively, it suggests I could expand my search using strategies such as Kyoto Protocol, Ice Age theory.
The new Web Answers claims to extend "Ask Jeeves' direct-answering abilities by mining unstructured data in real time." This part of Ask Jeeves is apparently triggered by questions, phrases or keywords for example "how....". "what.....". I tried what I thought was a straightforward question - how fast can a hippopotamus swim?
It did not help that the top five results were sponsored web results for swimwear and swimsuits at M&S (Marks and Spencers - a UK based retailer). 10 minutes later and when I had stopped laughing I found that none of the "real" links gave me an answer and the Zoom option to narrow my search suggested two queries: how many bones does a hippopotamus have and how fast can a hippopotamus run. Wikipedia comes up with a possible and credible answer straight away.
"Why is the grass green", a test search suggested to me by Neil Infield, did not do much better until I had worked through two levels of the Zoom searches. The first results were offering me lawn care services, grass seed and astro turf.
In conclusion, I found Zoom to be a useful additional tool. If it does not appear next to your results list then that suggests you are already running quite a precise search. As for Web Answers - pass me that hippo sized swimsuit, I've obviously had too many gin and vodka cocktails:-)
I've been playing around with both of these for about an hour this afternoon trying to get a feel for how and if these work.
Zoom (subtitled Concept Navigation) "offers suggestions to narrow and refine your search ("zooming in"), or expand your search ("zooming out") to explore new ideas." The Zoom suggestions should appear on the right hand side of your results page. I found that if you carry out a fairly precise search such as my 'gin vodka sales UK' test search, nothing appears in the Zoom section. A search on 'climate change', though, suggests that I might like to narrow my search to global warming, global warming causes, global warming impact etc. Alternatively, it suggests I could expand my search using strategies such as Kyoto Protocol, Ice Age theory.
The new Web Answers claims to extend "Ask Jeeves' direct-answering abilities by mining unstructured data in real time." This part of Ask Jeeves is apparently triggered by questions, phrases or keywords for example "how....". "what.....". I tried what I thought was a straightforward question - how fast can a hippopotamus swim?
It did not help that the top five results were sponsored web results for swimwear and swimsuits at M&S (Marks and Spencers - a UK based retailer). 10 minutes later and when I had stopped laughing I found that none of the "real" links gave me an answer and the Zoom option to narrow my search suggested two queries: how many bones does a hippopotamus have and how fast can a hippopotamus run. Wikipedia comes up with a possible and credible answer straight away.
"Why is the grass green", a test search suggested to me by Neil Infield, did not do much better until I had worked through two levels of the Zoom searches. The first results were offering me lawn care services, grass seed and astro turf.
In conclusion, I found Zoom to be a useful additional tool. If it does not appear next to your results list then that suggests you are already running quite a precise search. As for Web Answers - pass me that hippo sized swimsuit, I've obviously had too many gin and vodka cocktails:-)
Yahoo! Mindset
Yahoo! Mindset: "View Yahoo! Search results sorted according to whether they are more commercial or more informational (i.e., from academic, non-commercial, or research-oriented sources)."
I really like this one! Type in your search and Yahoo! Mindset gives you the first 10 results with a slider bar at the top of the page. At one end of the bar is "shopping" and at the other "researching". You start off in the middle and can slide the bar in either direction to change the emphasis.
A test search on 'gin vodka sales UK' actually came up with a good result at number 1 with the slider in the middle - the Gin and Vodka Association (yes, there really is one and the site has some good statistics!). Moving the slider towards 'researching' started to move the Gin & Vodka Association down the list but brought in equally interesting data I might otherwise have missed. As expected, moving the slider towards 'shopping' brought up sites selling gin and/or vodka, books on Amazon telling me how to make gin and vodka cocktails and a site with the wonderful name of Dinky Drinks!
More research orientated strategies such as 'climate change' and 'hubbert peak oil' were not as varied and the shopping side was more about books on the subject. What they did highlight, though, was that shifting the bar in either direction significantly altered the results that appeared in the top 10 and presented pages that one might not have normally seen.
Highly recommended.
I really like this one! Type in your search and Yahoo! Mindset gives you the first 10 results with a slider bar at the top of the page. At one end of the bar is "shopping" and at the other "researching". You start off in the middle and can slide the bar in either direction to change the emphasis.
A test search on 'gin vodka sales UK' actually came up with a good result at number 1 with the slider in the middle - the Gin and Vodka Association (yes, there really is one and the site has some good statistics!). Moving the slider towards 'researching' started to move the Gin & Vodka Association down the list but brought in equally interesting data I might otherwise have missed. As expected, moving the slider towards 'shopping' brought up sites selling gin and/or vodka, books on Amazon telling me how to make gin and vodka cocktails and a site with the wonderful name of Dinky Drinks!
More research orientated strategies such as 'climate change' and 'hubbert peak oil' were not as varied and the shopping side was more about books on the subject. What they did highlight, though, was that shifting the bar in either direction significantly altered the results that appeared in the top 10 and presented pages that one might not have normally seen.
Highly recommended.
Sunday 29 May 2005
Google Print
Google Print
At last Google Print has its own search screen. It took long enough! Previously, you had to use the standard search screen and use the strategy 'books about...' whatever you were interested in and even then it only displayed three titles.
At last Google Print has its own search screen. It took long enough! Previously, you had to use the standard search screen and use the strategy 'books about...' whatever you were interested in and even then it only displayed three titles.
Thursday 26 May 2005
Swoogle - search and metadata for the semantic web
Swoogle
Just heard about this tool at the Prague Inforum 2005 conference. Think of it as a sort of Google for the semantic web.
Just heard about this tool at the Prague Inforum 2005 conference. Think of it as a sort of Google for the semantic web.
Sunday 22 May 2005
Updated Search Tools Summary and Comparison table
An updated version of the
Search Tools Summary and Comparison table is now available on the RBA web site. Additional features in this updated comparison include synonym search, proximity operators and unique features.
Search Tools Summary and Comparison table is now available on the RBA web site. Additional features in this updated comparison include synonym search, proximity operators and unique features.
Monday 16 May 2005
Final version of MSN Desktop Search launched
Final version of MSN Desktop Search launched
Microsoft have launched the final version of their Desktop Search. Although it now supports over 200 file types the email search is still limited to Outlook and Outlook Express, and there is no direct support Open Office or Star Office documents. They claim, though, that they will allow developers to create plug-ins for the toolbar that will search other file types.
Microsoft have launched the final version of their Desktop Search. Although it now supports over 200 file types the email search is still limited to Outlook and Outlook Express, and there is no direct support Open Office or Star Office documents. They claim, though, that they will allow developers to create plug-ins for the toolbar that will search other file types.
Dogpile Missing Pieces
Dogpile Missing Pieces
A neat little tool from meta search tool Dogpile that compares the top 10 results from Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves. The graphic shows how many results are in only 1, 2 or in all 3 search engines for a particular search and includes sponsored links from the top of the pages.
Dogpile have also produced a white paper (PDF format) on the subject entitled Missing Pieces: A Study of First Page Web Search Engine Results Overlap. The findings are no great surprise to many of us but it is always useful to have our experiences confirmed by experimental data. I find that the degree of overlap varies with the search: sometimes it can be as low as 2-3% in the first 100 results whilst on other occasions it can be as high as 90%. If you want to compare a wider range of search tools and their top 100 results try Thumbshots Ranking.
A neat little tool from meta search tool Dogpile that compares the top 10 results from Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves. The graphic shows how many results are in only 1, 2 or in all 3 search engines for a particular search and includes sponsored links from the top of the pages.
Dogpile have also produced a white paper (PDF format) on the subject entitled Missing Pieces: A Study of First Page Web Search Engine Results Overlap. The findings are no great surprise to many of us but it is always useful to have our experiences confirmed by experimental data. I find that the degree of overlap varies with the search: sometimes it can be as low as 2-3% in the first 100 results whilst on other occasions it can be as high as 90%. If you want to compare a wider range of search tools and their top 100 results try Thumbshots Ranking.
Thursday 12 May 2005
RBA Training Courses, Workshops & Presentations
RBA Training Courses, Workshops & Presentations
An update schedule of my presentations and workshops has been uploaded onto my web site. I am giving various presentation on search strategies and technologies at Inforum in Prague and then at the WebSearch Academy in Paris on June 1st-2nd.
Back in the UK, I am running workshops on Business Information at Manchester Business School and then at TFPL in London. Details are on the organizers' respective web sites.
I gather that the Manchester course has been mentioned in The Times (there is a link to the article from the MBS page). The article claims that Dominic Broadhurst, head of the business information services, said "You learn how to go directly to the quality information. It is a business course so it is not about finding the best chat rooms, but we do try to make it fun."
Fun?! We'll have to put a stop to that :-)
An update schedule of my presentations and workshops has been uploaded onto my web site. I am giving various presentation on search strategies and technologies at Inforum in Prague and then at the WebSearch Academy in Paris on June 1st-2nd.
Back in the UK, I am running workshops on Business Information at Manchester Business School and then at TFPL in London. Details are on the organizers' respective web sites.
I gather that the Manchester course has been mentioned in The Times (there is a link to the article from the MBS page). The article claims that Dominic Broadhurst, head of the business information services, said "You learn how to go directly to the quality information. It is a business course so it is not about finding the best chat rooms, but we do try to make it fun."
Fun?! We'll have to put a stop to that :-)
Saturday 7 May 2005
UW E-Business Institute Benchmark Study of Desktop Search Tools
UW E-Business Institute Benchmark Study of Desktop Search Tools
A useful 15 page PDF report comparing the performance of the major desktop search tools.
"... In an effort to help understand the differences between the latest desktop search tools on the market, the UW E-Business Consortium recently conducted a benchmark study of 12 popular desktop search tools. The benchmark criteria that were used for the evaluation included usability, versatility, accuracy, efficiency, security, and enterprise readiness."
Apart from switching the top two positions, I agree with their final ranking. They have Copernic in the number 1 slot and Yahoo at number 2. I prefer Yahoo because of the wide range of file formats it supports but would agree that Copernic's dynamic indexing, which means that it detects new and updated files on the fly, is a big plus.
A useful 15 page PDF report comparing the performance of the major desktop search tools.
"... In an effort to help understand the differences between the latest desktop search tools on the market, the UW E-Business Consortium recently conducted a benchmark study of 12 popular desktop search tools. The benchmark criteria that were used for the evaluation included usability, versatility, accuracy, efficiency, security, and enterprise readiness."
Apart from switching the top two positions, I agree with their final ranking. They have Copernic in the number 1 slot and Yahoo at number 2. I prefer Yahoo because of the wide range of file formats it supports but would agree that Copernic's dynamic indexing, which means that it detects new and updated files on the fly, is a big plus.
Wednesday 4 May 2005
Tales from the Terminal Room, April 2005 - Issue No. 61
Tales from the Terminal Room, April 2005 - Issue No. 61
The latest issue of the newsletter Tales from the Terminal Room is now available. Some of the news items have already appeared in this blog but there are additional items on Blinkx.tv, tracking UK legislation, Top 10 Search Tips 'n' tricks and of course Gizmo of the Month.
The latest issue of the newsletter Tales from the Terminal Room is now available. Some of the news items have already appeared in this blog but there are additional items on Blinkx.tv, tracking UK legislation, Top 10 Search Tips 'n' tricks and of course Gizmo of the Month.
Sunday 1 May 2005
Using Bloglines (or How to keep up with dozens of blogs everyday)
Using Bloglines (or How to keep up with dozens of blogs everyday)
If you are new to blogs and RSS feeds and want to just "dip a toe in the water", then the web based RSS reader Bloglines is a good place to start. This is an excellent tutorial, with screen shots, that takes you through the process of setting up a Bloglines account, adding feeds and also includes a section on how to search for blogs.
If you are new to blogs and RSS feeds and want to just "dip a toe in the water", then the web based RSS reader Bloglines is a good place to start. This is an excellent tutorial, with screen shots, that takes you through the process of setting up a Bloglines account, adding feeds and also includes a section on how to search for blogs.
HM Revenue & Customs: Home Page
HM Revenue & Customs: Home Page
This is the web site of the new UK government department responsible for, amongst other things, VAT and Income Tax and formed by the merger of the Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise. Having spent so many hours, days and weeks trying to find my way round the old Customs & Excise site I was horrified at the prospect of having to start all over again. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see a clear, easy to read home page and was able to navigate quite easily through the site to most of the information that I needed. The search option got me quickly to documents and guides that I could not easily locate via the menus. Overall, I am impressed.
This is the web site of the new UK government department responsible for, amongst other things, VAT and Income Tax and formed by the merger of the Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise. Having spent so many hours, days and weeks trying to find my way round the old Customs & Excise site I was horrified at the prospect of having to start all over again. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see a clear, easy to read home page and was able to navigate quite easily through the site to most of the information that I needed. The search option got me quickly to documents and guides that I could not easily locate via the menus. Overall, I am impressed.
Wednesday 20 April 2005
Google Local
Google Local
Google has added the UK to its list of Local Search countries (previously just the US and Canada) at http://local.google.co.uk/. You type in what you are looking for e.g. double glazing, restaurants and the location, which can be a town or postcode. Google then combines information from its web database with Yellow pages. A map is produced alongside the list of results with the locations of the businesses marked on the map. The businesses nearest your location are listed first and subsequent pages of results move further out. When you click on the location on the map, the address pops up and you can also ask for directions. The route from your starting point is marked on the map and there are detailed written instructions, for example "Turn left at Playhatch Road - go 0.6 mi"...
It is not perfect, though. My search on restaurants in Caversham missed three excellent eateries in the centre of the village that are in both Google and Yellow Pages.
Google has added the UK to its list of Local Search countries (previously just the US and Canada) at http://local.google.co.uk/. You type in what you are looking for e.g. double glazing, restaurants and the location, which can be a town or postcode. Google then combines information from its web database with Yellow pages. A map is produced alongside the list of results with the locations of the businesses marked on the map. The businesses nearest your location are listed first and subsequent pages of results move further out. When you click on the location on the map, the address pops up and you can also ask for directions. The route from your starting point is marked on the map and there are detailed written instructions, for example "Turn left at Playhatch Road - go 0.6 mi"...
It is not perfect, though. My search on restaurants in Caversham missed three excellent eateries in the centre of the village that are in both Google and Yellow Pages.
Thursday 7 April 2005
YaGoohoo!gle
YaGoohoo!gle
An interesting tool that runs your search on both Google and Yahoo at the same time. It displays your results in two fames alongside one another in your browser so you can view both sets at the same time. Actually - its better to look at them one at a time; I started to feel seasick trying to compare the results in both sets. If you just want to compare coverage and results between Yahoo and Google for a particular search strategy then use Thumbshots Ranking.
An interesting tool that runs your search on both Google and Yahoo at the same time. It displays your results in two fames alongside one another in your browser so you can view both sets at the same time. Actually - its better to look at them one at a time; I started to feel seasick trying to compare the results in both sets. If you just want to compare coverage and results between Yahoo and Google for a particular search strategy then use Thumbshots Ranking.
Tuesday 5 April 2005
Gigablast Related Pages
Gigablast Related Pages
This is not like the Google related or similar pages where you start with a single relevant page and ask Google to find other pages similar in type and content. The Gigablast offering works at the search level: you type in your search strategy as usual and near the top of the results list there is a "related" pages section displaying a few extra pages with a more link to other "related" pages.
I found that they do not always appear, especially when you type in a complex or more detailed strategy. Also, I am a bit suspicious as to how these so called related pages are selected. Gigablast gives an example of searching on Colorado activities:
"You will see many webpages which are contextually related to the original query terms, but have no obvious direct connection to them. Many show the word Colorado, but not activities or activity, yet the pages all seem to fit well into the descriptive two-word query Colorado activities."
And then:
"Upon searching for the original query terms within several of these pages, one is left wondering how the Gigablast software code is able to distinguish them as being relevant in the first place. The answers? …proprietary, of course."
After running a few of my standard test searches, I have the impression that a lot of these pages could be paid-for placements and not many were relevant to my searches. But perhaps I am being uncharitable. More useful to me is the Giga Bits section, which shows alternative search strategies and they are relevant.
This is not like the Google related or similar pages where you start with a single relevant page and ask Google to find other pages similar in type and content. The Gigablast offering works at the search level: you type in your search strategy as usual and near the top of the results list there is a "related" pages section displaying a few extra pages with a more link to other "related" pages.
I found that they do not always appear, especially when you type in a complex or more detailed strategy. Also, I am a bit suspicious as to how these so called related pages are selected. Gigablast gives an example of searching on Colorado activities:
"You will see many webpages which are contextually related to the original query terms, but have no obvious direct connection to them. Many show the word Colorado, but not activities or activity, yet the pages all seem to fit well into the descriptive two-word query Colorado activities."
And then:
"Upon searching for the original query terms within several of these pages, one is left wondering how the Gigablast software code is able to distinguish them as being relevant in the first place. The answers? …proprietary, of course."
After running a few of my standard test searches, I have the impression that a lot of these pages could be paid-for placements and not many were relevant to my searches. But perhaps I am being uncharitable. More useful to me is the Giga Bits section, which shows alternative search strategies and they are relevant.
ProcessLibrary.com - The online resource for process information!
ProcessLibrary.com - The online resource for process information!
If you have ever wondered what on earth all those "processes" that appear in Windows Task Manager after you hit Ctrl-Alt-Del are doing, this is the site for you. Type in the full name of the process, for example dragdiag.exe, and ProcessLibrary will tell you what it does and whether it is legit, spyware, a virus or a trojan.
The database is free and maintained by a company called UniBlue. They sell a program called WinTasks Pro which helps deal with any nasty processes that you may have on your computer so they have a vested interest in providing the database. If, though, you are not sure how to remove the bad guys from your system or they just keep popping back up, it may be worth investing USD 49.95 in the program. In any case, the ProcessLibrary is still a very useful resource.
If you have ever wondered what on earth all those "processes" that appear in Windows Task Manager after you hit Ctrl-Alt-Del are doing, this is the site for you. Type in the full name of the process, for example dragdiag.exe, and ProcessLibrary will tell you what it does and whether it is legit, spyware, a virus or a trojan.
The database is free and maintained by a company called UniBlue. They sell a program called WinTasks Pro which helps deal with any nasty processes that you may have on your computer so they have a vested interest in providing the database. If, though, you are not sure how to remove the bad guys from your system or they just keep popping back up, it may be worth investing USD 49.95 in the program. In any case, the ProcessLibrary is still a very useful resource.
Google News Sources
Google News Sources
Google does not provide a list of sources for its News service, but this site runs a php script that captures the Google News home page every 15 minutes and then logs the news sources it finds. You can view sources for all countries or select an individual country from the drop down list. However, the country option does not appear to be very accurate so probably best to stick to the "all" option. As of April 5th, a total of 2990 sources were listed.
The default listing is by source, but you can change that to Frequency- that is by the number of articles per source. According to this site, the top 10 so far are:
ABC News
Reuters
Guardian
Terra España
Xinhua
BBC News
El Universal (México)
New York Times
Scotsman
Bloomberg
Google does not provide a list of sources for its News service, but this site runs a php script that captures the Google News home page every 15 minutes and then logs the news sources it finds. You can view sources for all countries or select an individual country from the drop down list. However, the country option does not appear to be very accurate so probably best to stick to the "all" option. As of April 5th, a total of 2990 sources were listed.
The default listing is by source, but you can change that to Frequency- that is by the number of articles per source. According to this site, the top 10 so far are:
ABC News
Reuters
Guardian
Terra España
Xinhua
BBC News
El Universal (México)
New York Times
Scotsman
Bloomberg
Sunday 3 April 2005
BananaSlug
BananaSlug
Another gem from Phil Bradley's blog (I don't know where Phil finds these sites!). You put in your search strategy and then BananaSlug adds a random search term. Alternatively you can select a category for your random word - e.g. animals, great ideas, random number, themes from Shakespeare.
The idea behind this site is to promote serendipitous surfing. By adding a random term, which may or may not be relevant, you pull up pages that are buried way down in the results list and which you would probably never see. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
BananaSlug uses the Google APIs and is limited to 1000 queries a day. If the site is past the limit, you are diverted to Google with your search term and random word.
Another gem from Phil Bradley's blog (I don't know where Phil finds these sites!). You put in your search strategy and then BananaSlug adds a random search term. Alternatively you can select a category for your random word - e.g. animals, great ideas, random number, themes from Shakespeare.
The idea behind this site is to promote serendipitous surfing. By adding a random term, which may or may not be relevant, you pull up pages that are buried way down in the results list and which you would probably never see. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
BananaSlug uses the Google APIs and is limited to 1000 queries a day. If the site is past the limit, you are diverted to Google with your search term and random word.
Friday 1 April 2005
Ask Jeeves Blog: The Future of Search Arrives: Introducing The Jeeves9000 (BETA)
Ask Jeeves Blog: The Future of Search Arrives: Introducing The Jeeves9000 (BETA)
Ask Jeeves has joined in the April 1st spate of beta launches with their Jeeves9000 humanoid search robot. The claim is that this is a product that is both cool and useful. Forget about web search, Jeeves9000 can do really important things like operate light switches, door knobs, and garage door openers. "This innovation brings search to previously unimaginable levels of relevance, speed, and ease of use."
"The Jeeves9000 will initially retail for $399.99. We will also introduce a free, ad-supported model, which will spontaneously offer product demonstrations on behalf of our sponsors."
Ask Jeeves has joined in the April 1st spate of beta launches with their Jeeves9000 humanoid search robot. The claim is that this is a product that is both cool and useful. Forget about web search, Jeeves9000 can do really important things like operate light switches, door knobs, and garage door openers. "This innovation brings search to previously unimaginable levels of relevance, speed, and ease of use."
"The Jeeves9000 will initially retail for $399.99. We will also introduce a free, ad-supported model, which will spontaneously offer product demonstrations on behalf of our sponsors."
Google April Fool's Search
Google April Fool's Search
Search 401,000 pages covering anything and everything to do with April Fool's Day. You may also be interested in the lunar job under the Work at Google link!
Search 401,000 pages covering anything and everything to do with April Fool's Day. You may also be interested in the lunar job under the Work at Google link!
Google Gulp
Google Gulp
Another great service from Google - but still in beta - and launched on April 1st:-)
Designed to "quench your thirst for knowledge", Google Gulp is "a line of "smart drinks" designed to maximize your surfing efficiency by making you more intelligent, and less thirsty." Plus "it's low in carbs! And with flavors ranging from Beta Carroty to Glutamate Grape, you'll never run out of ways to quench your thirst for knowledge."
The FAQ tells you all you need to know about Google Gulp from how it works ("to comprehend the long version of this answer, you'd need a PhD (from Stanford, natch)") to when will Google Gulp come out of beta, to which their response is:
"Man, if you pressure us, you just drive us away. We'll commit when we're ready, okay? Besides, what's so great about taking things out of beta? It ruins all the romance, the challenge, the possibilities, the right to explore. Carpe diem, ya know? Maybe we're jaded, but we've seen all these other companies leap headlong into 1.0, thinking their product is exactly what they've been dreaming of all their lives, that everything is perfect and hunky-dory and the next thing you know some vanilla copycat release from Redmond is kicking their butt, the Board is holding emergency meetings and the CEO is on CNBC blathering sweatily about "a new direction" and "getting back to basics." No thanks, man. We like our freedom."
Another great service from Google - but still in beta - and launched on April 1st:-)
Designed to "quench your thirst for knowledge", Google Gulp is "a line of "smart drinks" designed to maximize your surfing efficiency by making you more intelligent, and less thirsty." Plus "it's low in carbs! And with flavors ranging from Beta Carroty to Glutamate Grape, you'll never run out of ways to quench your thirst for knowledge."
The FAQ tells you all you need to know about Google Gulp from how it works ("to comprehend the long version of this answer, you'd need a PhD (from Stanford, natch)") to when will Google Gulp come out of beta, to which their response is:
"Man, if you pressure us, you just drive us away. We'll commit when we're ready, okay? Besides, what's so great about taking things out of beta? It ruins all the romance, the challenge, the possibilities, the right to explore. Carpe diem, ya know? Maybe we're jaded, but we've seen all these other companies leap headlong into 1.0, thinking their product is exactly what they've been dreaming of all their lives, that everything is perfect and hunky-dory and the next thing you know some vanilla copycat release from Redmond is kicking their butt, the Board is holding emergency meetings and the CEO is on CNBC blathering sweatily about "a new direction" and "getting back to basics." No thanks, man. We like our freedom."
Tuesday 29 March 2005
Cellular Networking Perspectives: Irreverent Acronyms
Cellular Networking Perspectives: Irreverent Acronyms
I came across this little gem while checking up on some telecoms related sites. My favourite "alternative" definitions of acronyms are:
AOL - Acronym Overload Land
Internet- In no time everyone’s raiding nearly everyone’s trash
WAP - What! Another Protocol?
I came across this little gem while checking up on some telecoms related sites. My favourite "alternative" definitions of acronyms are:
AOL - Acronym Overload Land
Internet- In no time everyone’s raiding nearly everyone’s trash
WAP - What! Another Protocol?
Saturday 19 March 2005
Tales from the Terminal Room, February 2005 - Issue No. 60
Tales from the Terminal Room, February 2005 - Issue No. 60
The February 2005 issue of Tales from the Terminal Room is now available.
The February 2005 issue of Tales from the Terminal Room is now available.
Thursday 17 March 2005
Brainboost Answer Engine
Brainboost Answer Engine
I groaned when I saw that Brainboost "uses Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing techniques" to answer questions written in plain English. But I found this "answer engine" to be very good. It successfully answered "which US presidents were assassinated", "which UK prime ministers were assassinated", and "who directed the Duck Hunt cartoon".
It was not so clever on "who is Karen Blakeman". Brainboost came up with some 3 year old information on a course I was running at the time in London, and " Karen Blakeman is chairing the Concessions Committee, and will be needing LOTS of help here". You bet I will! I know nothing about the Concesssions Committee - obviously another Karen Blakeman. The regular search results taken from a range of search tools fared better on the last one.
Worth a look and an interesting alternative answer/reference tool to answers.com.
I groaned when I saw that Brainboost "uses Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing techniques" to answer questions written in plain English. But I found this "answer engine" to be very good. It successfully answered "which US presidents were assassinated", "which UK prime ministers were assassinated", and "who directed the Duck Hunt cartoon".
It was not so clever on "who is Karen Blakeman". Brainboost came up with some 3 year old information on a course I was running at the time in London, and " Karen Blakeman is chairing the Concessions Committee, and will be needing LOTS of help here". You bet I will! I know nothing about the Concesssions Committee - obviously another Karen Blakeman. The regular search results taken from a range of search tools fared better on the last one.
Worth a look and an interesting alternative answer/reference tool to answers.com.
monzy.org Unsafe Search
monzy.org Unsafe Search:
I was alerted to this by fellow Internet Consultant Phil Bradley via his blog.
Unsafe search works by performing two Google queries, a normal query and a query with SafeSearch enabled. The set of 'safe' results is then subtracted from the set of normal results to yield only 'unsafe' entries. The idea behind Google's SafeSearch is to eliminate p**n and other "undesirable" sites.
What is interesting about Unsafe Search is discovering what Google considers to be "unsafe". The first test search I ran was on air quality. It yielded only one unsafe result in the top 30: the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality! A search on chocolate consumption came up with 3 unsafe results (one on chocolate is good for pregnant women, one on the potential health risks and a link to a Nestle forum). A search on gin vodka came up with no unsafe results in the top 30. Great! Now where did I put that cocktail recipe book?
I was alerted to this by fellow Internet Consultant Phil Bradley via his blog.
Unsafe search works by performing two Google queries, a normal query and a query with SafeSearch enabled. The set of 'safe' results is then subtracted from the set of normal results to yield only 'unsafe' entries. The idea behind Google's SafeSearch is to eliminate p**n and other "undesirable" sites.
What is interesting about Unsafe Search is discovering what Google considers to be "unsafe". The first test search I ran was on air quality. It yielded only one unsafe result in the top 30: the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality! A search on chocolate consumption came up with 3 unsafe results (one on chocolate is good for pregnant women, one on the potential health risks and a link to a Nestle forum). A search on gin vodka came up with no unsafe results in the top 30. Great! Now where did I put that cocktail recipe book?
Friday 11 March 2005
Google Desktop Search out of beta and better!
Google Desktop Search
Google Desktop Search is out of beta and has been officially launched. It is much improved and now searches PDF files. Support for Netscape, Firefox, Mozilla and Thunderbird has also been added. For Open Office and Star Office users there is a plugin at http://desktop.google.com/plugins.html
As well as switching off cacheing and indexing of secure web pages, such as your online bank statement, you can also switch off indexing of password protected pages. All documents still remain in the cache after you have deleted the original unless you follow the remove instructions at http://desktop.google.com/features.html#remove
It is a rather tedious process and isn't straightforward. There is a danger that you could miss files, especially individual emails.
Personally, I'll stick with Yahoo Desktop for the time being.
Google Desktop Search is out of beta and has been officially launched. It is much improved and now searches PDF files. Support for Netscape, Firefox, Mozilla and Thunderbird has also been added. For Open Office and Star Office users there is a plugin at http://desktop.google.com/plugins.html
As well as switching off cacheing and indexing of secure web pages, such as your online bank statement, you can also switch off indexing of password protected pages. All documents still remain in the cache after you have deleted the original unless you follow the remove instructions at http://desktop.google.com/features.html#remove
It is a rather tedious process and isn't straightforward. There is a danger that you could miss files, especially individual emails.
Personally, I'll stick with Yahoo Desktop for the time being.
Monday 7 March 2005
Our Property - Property and house prices revealed - OurProperty.co.uk
Our Property - Property and house prices revealed - OurProperty.co.uk
One of the many services that repackages the Land Registry's data but this one offers users 20 free searches a week. You get to see the address of the property, the date it was sold and how much it was sold for. It does not give the name of the owner or the name of the lender. For that, you have to use the Land Registry's priced service. At present, the data goes back to 2000 and covers England and Wales only. "Our Property" plans to add Scottish data in the near future.
The quick search on the home page enables you to search by post code but you can refine your search or use the Advanced Search to limit your results by street, town or locality, freehold/leasehold, house type (detached, terraced, flat etc.) and date.
If you use up your 20 searches you can top them up by either recommending a friend for 5 free searches or by signing up to a weekly newsletter which contains a voucher for 20 free searches.
A really neat site.
One of the many services that repackages the Land Registry's data but this one offers users 20 free searches a week. You get to see the address of the property, the date it was sold and how much it was sold for. It does not give the name of the owner or the name of the lender. For that, you have to use the Land Registry's priced service. At present, the data goes back to 2000 and covers England and Wales only. "Our Property" plans to add Scottish data in the near future.
The quick search on the home page enables you to search by post code but you can refine your search or use the Advanced Search to limit your results by street, town or locality, freehold/leasehold, house type (detached, terraced, flat etc.) and date.
If you use up your 20 searches you can top them up by either recommending a friend for 5 free searches or by signing up to a weekly newsletter which contains a voucher for 20 free searches.
A really neat site.
Sunday 27 February 2005
Tales from the Terminal Room, January 2005 - Issue No. 59
Tales from the Terminal Room, January 2005 - Issue No. 59
The January issue of Tales from the Terminal Room is now available. There are reviews of Firefox, the new search engine Exalead and an article on RSS.
This month's Gizmo of the Month is HiJack This.
The January issue of Tales from the Terminal Room is now available. There are reviews of Firefox, the new search engine Exalead and an article on RSS.
This month's Gizmo of the Month is HiJack This.
Friday 25 February 2005
Copernic Desktop Search - The Search Engine for Your PC
Copernic Desktop Search - The Search Engine for Your PC
Copernic have launched version 1.5 of their Desktop Search tool. Significant additions include support for Thunderbird and Eudora email and attachments, and search in Thunderbird contacts. CDS already supports the Firefox browser. For me, all it needs now is support for Open Office and Star Office files and it will be a worthy competitor for Yahoo Desktop.
Copernic have launched version 1.5 of their Desktop Search tool. Significant additions include support for Thunderbird and Eudora email and attachments, and search in Thunderbird contacts. CDS already supports the Firefox browser. For me, all it needs now is support for Open Office and Star Office files and it will be a worthy competitor for Yahoo Desktop.
Tuesday 22 February 2005
Seekport UK - Search the United Kingdom - UK Search Engine
Seekport UK - Search the United Kingdom - UK Search Engine
A new search engine concentrating on UK web sites. The advanced search offers searches for all the words, exact phrase, exclude words, any words as well as domain, web site and linked pages. The Liveseek link shows you what people are currently searching on. Worth a look if you want to focus on the UK.
A new search engine concentrating on UK web sites. The advanced search offers searches for all the words, exact phrase, exclude words, any words as well as domain, web site and linked pages. The Liveseek link shows you what people are currently searching on. Worth a look if you want to focus on the UK.
The Government Says
The Government Says
An interesting site that pulls together news releases from various UK government departments. Produced and maintained by Democracy.org.uk - "a loose collective of like-minded individuals who believe that there is little wrong with UK society that a healthy mixture of transparency and public engagement won't fix."
RSS feed available.
An interesting site that pulls together news releases from various UK government departments. Produced and maintained by Democracy.org.uk - "a loose collective of like-minded individuals who believe that there is little wrong with UK society that a healthy mixture of transparency and public engagement won't fix."
RSS feed available.
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