ICAEW's gateways and guides to business information

There are many excellent business resources on the web but finding them is not always easy, and Google does not always come up with the best and most relevant. This is where gateways such as the ones compiled by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) come into their own. Their Library and Information Service have pulled together a number of guides on topics such as international company registration, SMEs, startups, country resources and industry guides.

The guides cover official and unofficial information sources from the print collection of the ICAEW Library & Information Service and recommended websites on the internet. Some resources are for members only but many sections are open to all. It is worth spending some time working your way through the menus to get an idea of the range of information that is available.

The Library and Information Service main page is at http://www.icaew.com/en/library

Microsoft and Google go head to head over tracking Santa

NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) has been tracking Santa since 1955. It all began when a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement misprinted the telephone number for children to call Santa. The phone number put the children through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief's operations hotline. The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location and the Santa Tracker was born.

NORAD now uses four high-tech systems to track Santa – radar, satellites, Santa Cams and fighter jets. The Santa Cams "are ultra-cool, high-tech, high-speed digital cameras that are pre-positioned at many locations around the world. NORAD only uses these cameras once a year. The cameras capture images and videos of Santa and his reindeer as they make their journey around the world". Full technical details of all four systems can be found on the NORAD Santa site at http://www.noradsanta.org/en/how.html.

In 2007 Google became an official NORAD Tracks Santa partner and provided the maps that displayed real time information on Santa's location. This year, that partnership ended and NORAD is now using Microsoft's Bing Maps. In response Google has launched its own Santa Tracker at http://www.google.com/santatracker/. It will be interesting to see how it compares with NORAD's but straight away I have to query the quality of Google's pre-launch information. On the "Learn more" page at http://www.google.com/santatracker/about.html the image shows not Santa as the central figure but a large snowman. Surely some mistake?

Google is also trying to push Google+ as the main source of information with up to the minute reports being posted on +Googlemaps at https://plus.google.com/+GoogleMaps/posts

At the time of writing this post lift off was just 15 minutes away so you still have time to get a ring side seat with the tracer of your choice:

The original NORAD tracker http://www.noradsanta.org/

Google Santa Tracker http://www.google.com/santatracker/

PNC Christmas Price Index Surges 4.8 Percent In 2012

Prices for six items in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" song on par with 2011, but drought causes swans and geese prices to soar 

Christmas has many traditions and one of the more recently established ones is the Christmas Price Index compiled by PNC Wealth Management.

The 29^th annual survey reveals that an improving US economy coupled with a severe drought that caused increased feed costs for large birds resulted in a 4.8 percent surge in the 2012 PNC Christmas Price Index. Based on the gifts in the holiday classic, "The Twelve Days of Christmas," the price tag for the PNC CPI is $25,431.18 in 2012, $1,168 more than last year.

"The rise of the PNC CPI is larger than expected considering the modest economic growth we've had over the past 12 months," said Jim Dunigan, managing executive of investments for PNC Wealth Management. "Despite some weak spots in the economy, consumer balance sheets are improving along with consumer confidence, which means this may still be a spirited holiday season."

PNC Wealth Management also tabulates the "True Cost of Christmas," which is the total cost of items gifted by a True Love who repeats all of the song's verses. True Loves must spend over $107,300.24 for all 364 gifts, a 6.1 percent increase on last year.

Swans rose by 11.1 percent whilst six items (the Partridge, Two Turtle Doves, Four Calling Birds, Eight Maids-A-Milking, Nine Ladies Dancing and 10 Lords-A-Leaping) remained the same price as last year.

The prices for 11 Pipers Piping ($2,562.00) and 12 Drummers Drumming ($2,775.50) are up 5.5 percent

The Three French Hens were up 10.0 percent and the Five Gold Rings soared 16.3 percent.

As the only unskilled labourers in the PNC CPI the price for the eight Maids-a-Milking is represented by the minimum wage. With the US minimum wage flat at $7.25 per hour hiring the maids this year will not increase labour costs.

For those True Loves who prefer the convenience of shopping online, PNC Wealth Management also calculates the cost of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" gifts purchased on the Internet. True Loves will pay a grand total of $40,440 to buy the items online, which is 1.5 percent more than last year and almost $580 more than this year's traditional index.

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

The full press release is at http://pnc.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=3473&item=133834 and the index itself  is at http://content.pncmc.com/live/pnc/microsite/CPI/index.html. The site includes an interactive scavenger hunt where visitors can take a trip around the world to locate the 12 gifts of Christmas.

Historical data can be downloaded as a spreadsheet from:

http://content.pncmc.com/staging/pnc/microsite/CPI/2012/downloads/PNC_CPI_Historical_Data_2012.xlsx

Another reason to say no to Google+?

One of my Twitter network complained today that when they went to run a Google search a Google+ reminder for someone's birthday popped up in top right hand corner. Google did the same to me prompting me to wish them a Happy Birthday. Does that remind you of a social network beginning with F? Yes, we were both signed in to our Google accounts and I have confessed on several occasions that I have sold my soul to Google. I have even gone as far as to sync all my data between my devices and my Google dashboard via Chrome. I made that decision knowing how much information about me that would give Google but I decided it would be worth doing. I can access my maps, bookmarks, searches etc. when I'm on the move and using my Android smartphone; and if my laptop dies all my Google and web browsing stuff can be quickly restored to a new machine.

I still have another Google account that predates even Gmail but on the few occasions when I use it Google doesn't so much suggest rather than demand that I upgrade to Google+. It requires a lot of effort, ingenuity and many clicks to say "NO!" Many of Google's services and search features now require you to have an account and by default it may soon have to be a Google+ account. A reminder that someone in your Google+ circle has a birthday may seem a minor issue but as my Twitter correspondent said "function creep". And there's been a lot of that going on in Google search recently.

Google search bar moves

Just when you thought you had sussed out the additional search options on Google's results page Google decides to move them. Instead of appearing to the left of your results page the menu has been moved to the top, leaving a blank space where the old menus used to be.

There are the usual options such as images, maps, shopping and videos and clicking on More reveals a drop down menu for News, Books, Places, Blogs etc.

 It begins to get confusing when you click on Search tools and an extra row of options appears.

It is not obvious what the "The Web" does but clicking on it gives you two options. "The Web" is the default and I assume that to be the whole of the world because the second option for me is the UK. Presumably for those of you in other countries it will be your own country. The "Any time" option gives you the various time periods and custom time period by which you can limit your search. "Reading, UK" is my physical location and some results are personalised using that location. The location can be changed to another town or the country as a whole, as with the previous side bar menus. It is not clear what "All results" does but again clicking on it reveals the final set of search options including the all important Verbatim.

As with previous side bar menus, the second level options change depending on which type of resource you are searching. For example, if you click on Search tools in Images there are links that take you to options that include size, colour and type.

This change looks as though it is here to stay as most people in the UK are now seeing it and several of the country versions of Google I've looked at are also displaying it. All the old options are still there but it requires extra clicks to get to the same place and I sometimes forget what each link has underneath it. So those of you who, like me, run training sessions expect to spend the next few weeks updating your slides and training materials.

New StatsWales to be launched

StatsWales is the key website to visit for statistics on Wales. A new version of the site, StatsWales 'Beta', has been launched with a full launch planned for Monday 3rd December.

New features include:

• improved search capability
• enhanced charting
• direct URI access to data catalogue and reports
• better sharing of reports including those personally tailored/configured
• additional direct data access formats
• more powerful personalisation
• support for legacy links

The old platform will be available until December 31st

While data is being transferred to the new system access to both the new and the old services will be provided as follows:

https://statswales.wales.gov.uk - will link to the new system
http://statswales1.wales.gov.uk - link to the old StatsWales system will work until 31st December
http://statswales.wales.gov.uk - will point to the actual current system in use during this transition period

A video tutorial on the new system is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a08s26rDM1g

Graphwords visual thesaurus

Graphwords (http://graphwords.com/) is another thesaurus visualisation tool that uses Wordnet (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/). Type in a word and it generates a map of associated nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.

To view the meaning of a group of words move your cursor over the node and to explore a word and its related terms in more detail simply click on it.

Many thanks to Carol Bream for the alert.

Top tips for business information

Here are the Top Tips for business information compiled by the participants of my latest business information workshop held on November 15th, 2012 in London. The set of slides that was the starting point for the workshop can be found on authorSTREAM at http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/karenblakeman-1601945-business-information-key-web-resources/

1. Zanran http://zanran.com/ A search tool for  identifying charts, graphs and tables of data within formatted documents such as PDFs, Excel spreadsheets and images. Enter your search terms and optionally limit your search by date and/or format type.  Zanran comes up with a list of  documents that match your criteria with thumbnails to the left of each entry. Hover over the thumbnail to see a preview of the page containing your data and further information on the document. Very useful if you are looking for industry statistics.

2. University library subjects guides. If you are looking for some good starting points on a subject seek out some university library subject guides. These list resources that are only available to their own students and staff but may also include links to relevant publicly accessible resources that have been assessed for quality.


3. Socialmention http://socialmention.com/ Several social media search tools were covered in the workshop but this one received a special mention as a good general all round social media tool. It covers images, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, audi0 and bookmarks. If you are monitoring a topic you can set up email and RSS alerts.


4. Companies House http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/ The official registry for UK companies. Other services such as Company Check (http://companycheck.co.uk/) and DUEDIL (http://www.duedil.com/), which repackage Companies House data, may provide more information free of charge but it is always worth double checking with Companies House to see if there is more up to date information and to get a full of list of the documents that are available on a company. The history and list of documents that can be ordered for a company is informative in itself. On the Companies House web site use the Find Company Information to locate the company in the register and then click on “Order information for this company”. You will then see a list of available documents. Titles such as “Struck off and dissolved” and “Application for administrative restoration” would suggest that perhaps you ought to investigate further before doing business with the company.


5. LinkedIn groups A couple of the workshop participants regularly use LinkedIn groups for research questions. Look for groups set up by professional and official bodies relevant to your subject.


6. Twitter If you are looking for a professional, research or trade association that may be able to help with your research you only need to find just one organisation on Twitter covering your topic. Then, to find others that might be useful, see who that organisation is following.


7. Millionshort http://millionshort.com/. If you are fed up with seeing the same results from Google again and again give Million Short a try.  Million Short runs your search and then removes the most popular web sites from the results. Originally, as its name suggests, it removed the top 1 million but the default has changed to the top 10,000. The principle remains the same, though.  Exclude the more popular sites and you could uncover a real gem. The page that best answers your question might not be well optimised for search engines or might cover a topic that is so “niche” that it never makes it into the top results.


8. Biznar http://www.biznar.com/ Biznar is a federated search engine that runs your search in real-time in about 70 resources. There is a list on the Advanced Search screen where you can deselect individual or groups of resources. The results are combined into a single list and organised on the left hand side of the screen into folders such as Topics, Authors, Publications, Publishers and Dates. These are computer generated but can help you narrow down your search. A bit erratic at times and sometimes comes up with odd results but people still thought it was worth including in the Top Tips list.


9. DUEDIL http://www.duedil.com/. This service repackages Companies House data and provides some of it free of charge. The feature that won DUEDIL a place in the Top Tops is the "Group" visualisation that illustrates the connections between the company you are researching, its parent companies and subsidiaries. You have to create an account (free at the moment) to access all of the information.

10. CoRe http://www.score.ac.uk A catalogue of current and historical printed company reports held in UK libraries. The catalogue does not provide links to digitised documents but is a very quick and easy way of identifying libraries that hold hard copy reports. The participating libraries include London Business School, the British Library, Manchester Business School, City Business Library, Guildhall Library, Strathclyde University and the University of Warwick. A full list is available at http://www.score.ac.uk/collections.asp.

Visuwords online graphical dictionary

Visuwords (http://www.visuwords.com/) is an online graphical dictionary based on Princeton University’s WordNet (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/). Type in a word and it displays definitions, related terms, synonyms and antonyms as a diagram.

The colours show whether the words are nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs and the format of the lines joining them represent the type of link between words. A broken blue line, for example, represents "also see". Move the cursor over a word to see a definition and double click on a node to expand it. This is a great tool if you are stuck for an alternative word and prefer a visual rather than textual approach to this type of search. It was suggested by one of my European contacts who was looking for a tool to help a colleague draft documents in English.

Google search to get more personal

Google search is about to get even more personal - possibly. If you are signed in to your Google account and search Google.com, Google includes and highlights content from people in your networks. This has been available for some time but a couple of months ago Google launched a field trial that added your Gmail to the search mix, and a few days ago they added documents from Drive. You have to request to be added to the field trial and it only works on Google.com. If you are interested in trying it out you can signup at https://www.google.com/experimental/gmailfieldtrial.

Above your results Google.com tells you how many personal and other results have been found. A head and shoulders icon next to a result indicates that it is from someone in one of your networks. Click on the number of personal results to see just those. Across to the right there are a head and shoulders and world icons. If you want to hide the personal results click on the world icon. If you have searched on a person or an organisation their Google+ profile, if they have one, is shown to the right of the screen. Above this, any messages or documents in your Gmail and Drive that match your search are displayed.

I have mixed feelings about this. At first I was very much against the integration of personal posts and data with general search. If I want to search Google+ I'll do it within Google+, and similarly I go into Gmail if I want to search my email. However, I would not routinely do that for research projects and during this field trial I have sometimes found useful information in my Google+ circles, giving me a very different view of the topic/person/organisation I am investigating. The question then is can I pass this on to a client or include it in a report? The answer is not straightforward. If the Google+ posting has been made public and not restricted to a circle then yes. Otherwise I would have to obtain the person's permission to use it or pass it on. With Gmail I would have to obtain permission from all the parties concerned and I would also need to check the ownership of any documents identified within my Drive.

I can clearly see and understand the difference between public and private search results as I am sure all information professionals and many researchers can, but I do wonder about other Google users. "It's come up in a Google search so I'm free to use it as I want". It could be argued that you shouldn't put anything up on Google+ unless you don't mind it going public, even if you have restricted it to a small circle of contacts but email should remain private and be kept out of general search results. I can see legal actions looming!

This is a limited field trial, though, so not everyone who uses Google.com is seeing the Gmail and Drive results yet. If you do take part in the trial and have any concerns about how it works and potential privacy issues, there are feedback links next to the Gmail and Drive results. Use them!

Oi, Google! NO!!

I've been seeing what looks like a new annoying Google search "feature" for a few weeks. I have been trying to ignore it in the hope that it would go away but it hasn't. The problem is that Google has started giving me long lists of YouTube videos for some of my queries, even though I am in web search. For example a search on comfrey compost tea came up with about a dozen videos before giving me web pages with text describing the benefits of comfrey compost, which was what I wanted. In addition, in the menus on the left hand side of the screen Google offered me options to refine my video search by duration. But, Dear Google, I did NOT want videos at all!

It did not matter whether or not I was signed in to my Google account. The videos were still given priority. I wondered if this was just an issue with Chrome so I switched to Firefox. The list of videos disappeared and was replaced by just one entry for YouTube at the top.

This gave me a clue as to what might be going on. I use Chrome for most of my "personalised" search. I generally stay logged in to my account, have enabled web search history and do not clear out the search cookies. In contrast I use Firefox for "de-personalised" search. I stay logged out of Google and social networks, and cookies and history are cleared after each session. I usually watch permaculture and gardening videos in Chrome, which probably explains why YouTube was taking pride of place in many of my search results. To test the theory I paused and deleted my web search history, and cleared cookies and browsing data. I then signed out of Google, cleared cookies again and re-ran the search. The blasted videos were still there.

What if I ran the search in a Chrome incognito window? The results were identical to those when using Firefox. Back to a normal Chrome window and the videos returned. I then checked that my web history was off and deleted. It wasn't and it steadfastly refused to go away. Then the penny dropped. All my Chrome data - bookmarks, history etc - are synced to my Google account so no matter how often I try and delete the stuff locally it will all come back down again from my account. I disconnected my Google account under Chrome's settings and, "Hey presto", no more videos. I reconnected and they were back. It appears that if you are using Chrome and have synced it with your Google account you will get personalised results, even if you are signed out of your account.

So, if you are a Chrome user you may think that you have switched off personalisation by logging out of your account but that may not be the case. If you are conducting serious research it is always worth running your searches in an Incognito window, using a different browser or a completely different search engine like DuckDuckGo (http://duckduckgo.com/).

Postscript: I forgot to mention that I also tried Verbatim, but to no avail. Verbatim makes sure that all your terms are in the pages/documents exactly as you have typed them in but that still gives Google plenty of leeway in presenting those results. Google still bombarded me with videos although some were different from my original search.

Rediscovering BananaSlug for "long tail" search

I think it must have been seeing Phil Bradley the other night that made me think of revisiting BananaSlug.com (http://bananaslug.com/). I don't mean that Phil reminds me of a banana slug but he did introduce me to the search tool via his blog way back in 2005. I have been looking at ways of getting out of what I call "search ruts". You keep seeing the same results again and again but suspect that there may be something more relevant if only you could get to it. Million Short, which I mentioned in a previous blog post (http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2012/10/04/million-short-unearthing-stuff-hidden-in-the-dungeons-of-googles-results/), is one way to tackle the problem. BananaSlug takes a different approach to what is known as long tail search. It adds a random term to your search and pulls up pages buried way down in the results list that you would probably never see. Just type in your search and then select a category, for example Animals, Great Ideas, Random Number, Themes from Shakespeare. BananaSlug then adds a random word from that category to your terms.

At first glance this approach to search may seem appropriate for frivolous, fun stuff only but I find that it works really well with serious research topics. Running one of my test searches zeolites "environmental remediation" through the categories pulled up information that could have taken me hours or even days to find otherwise. Bear in mind that BananaSlug uses Google so synonyms and variations of the random word will be included in the search. When I selected Colors as my category red was added to my search and Google included reddish and reds.

Most of the categories came up with something useful although Random Number, inevitably for this type of search, came up with page numbers of journal articles. I didn't think Themes from Shakespeare would work but the random word it suggested was storm and there were several interesting papers on storm water management and treatment.

This may seem a bizarre way to explore search alternatives but if you are stuck for ideas give it a go.

Note: for more information on the banana slug Ariolimax see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_slug. The Pacific banana slug is the second-largest species of terrestrial slug in the world, growing up to 25 centimetres (9.8 in) long.

Million Short: unearthing stuff hidden in the dungeons of Google'sresults

Fed up with seeing the same results from Google again and again? Wondering if that elusive document is buried somewhere at the bottom of Google's 2,000,000 hits? Then get thee hence to Million Short (http://millionshort.com/). Million Short runs your search and then removes the most popular web sites from the results. Originally it removed the top 1 million, as its name suggests, but the default has changed to the top 10,000. The principle remains the same, though: exclude the more popular sites and you could uncover a real gem. The page that best answers your question might not be well optimised for search engines or might cover a topic that is so "niche" that it never makes it into the top results. Million Short does not say what it uses for search results or how it determines what are the most popular web sites. According to Webmonkey "Sanjay Arora, founder of Exponential Labs, tells Webmonkey that Million Short is using "the Bing API... augmented with some of our own data" for search results. What constitutes a "top site" in Million Short is determined by Alexa and Million Short's own crawl data." (http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/05/million-short-a-search-engine-for-the-very-long-tail/).

Using Million Short is straightforward. Type in your search and select how many sites you want to exclude (top 10K, top million, top 100). The results page includes a list of the sites that have been removed and you can opt to add one or more back in. You can also block a site using a link next to it in the results or click on "Boost!" so that pages from the site go to the top.

Million Short automatically tries to detect which country you are in but you can change it under "Manage Settings and Country". I didn't notice much difference when I changed countries but then most of the queries I pass through Million Short tend to be scientific or technical. On the same page you can manage sites that you have blocked, added or boosted.

Does it work? I would not use it instead of the existing major search engines such as Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo but as an additional tool to surface material that is not easily found in the likes of Google. As well as web search there are image and news searches, but I'm not convinced that I'd find those all that useful.

If you are interested in comparing Million Short with Google try Million Short It On at http://www.millionshortiton.com/index.html. I had several goes at this and most of the results were a draw. That is no surprise as the searches I ran were very specific and I wanted to see if Million Short would pull up additional information, which it did. Million Short won outright on a couple and Google on one. The Google win was by default because Million Short did not come up with anything for comparison (the search in question was biofuels public transport carbon emissions).

There are a number of techniques that you can use to improve Google results for example changing the order of the words in your search, Verbatim, filetype or Reading Level but I would also recommend trying Million Short. The results should at least be different and may reveal vital information for your research.

Top search tips from North Wales

August is usually a quiet month for me with respect to work. Time for a holiday away and then a couple of weeks ambling along the Thames Path or pottering around the garden. This year, though, as soon as I was I back from my travels I was knuckling down and updating my notes for two search workshops in North Wales. Both were for the North Wales Library Partnership (NWLP), the first taking place at Coleg Menai in Bangor and the second at Deeside College. Both venues had excellent training facilities and IT, which meant we could concentrate on getting to grips with what Google is doing with search and experiment with different approaches to making Google do what we want it to do.

At the end of the workshops both groups were asked to come up with a list of  Top 10 Tips. I've combined the two lists and removed the duplicates to generate the list of 16 tips below.

1. Repeat one or more of your search terms one or more times
   Fed up with seeing the same results for your search?  Repeat your main search term or terms to change the order of your results.


2. Menus on left hand side of Google results pages
   Use the menus on the left hand side of the results page to focus your search and see extra search features. To see all of the options click on the ‘More’ and ‘More search tools’ links. The content of the menus changes with the type of search you are running, for example Image search has a colour option.


3. Verbatim
   Google automatically looks for variations of your terms and no longer looks for all of your terms in a document. If you want Google to run your search exactly as you have typed it in, click on the ‘More search tools’ options at the bottom of the left hand menu on your results page and then on Verbatim at the bottom of the extended menu that appears.


4. intext:
   Google's automatic synonym search can be helpful in looking for alternative terms but if you want just one term to be included in your search exactly as you typed it in then prefix the word with intext:. For example carbon emissions buses intext:biofuels flintshire. The command sometimes has the effect of prioritizing pages where your term is the main focus of the article.


5. Advanced search screen and search commands
   Use the options on the advanced search screen  or the search commands (for example filetype: and site:) in the standard search box to narrow down your search. A link to the advanced searchscreen can usually be found under the cog wheel in the  upper right hand area of the screen. If you can't see a cog wheel or the link has disappeared from the menu go to http://www.google.co.uk/advanced_search. A list of the more useful Google commands is at http://www.rba.co.uk/search/SelectedGoogleCommands.shtml


6. Try something different
   Get a fresh perspective by trying something different. Two most popular during these two workshops seemed to be DuckDuckGo (http://duckduckgo.com/) and Millionshort (http://millionshort.com). Other search engines to try include Bing (http://www.bing.com/) and Blekko (http://blekko.com/).


7. Use the country versions of Google for information that is country specificThis will ensure that the country's local content will be given priority, although it might be in the local language. Useful for companies and people who are based in or especially active in a particular country, or to research holiday destinations. Use Google followed by the standard ISO two letter country code, for example http://www.google.de/ for Google Germany or http://www.google.no/ for Google Norway.


8.  Filetype to search for document formats or types of informationFor example PowerPoint for experts or presentations, spreadsheets for data and statistics, or PDF for research papers and industry/government reports. Note that filetype:ppt will not pick up the newer .pptx so you will need to include both in your search, for example filetype:ppt OR filetype:pptx. You will also need to look for .xlsx if you are searching for Excel spreadsheets and .docx for Word documents. The Advanced Search screen file type box does not search for the newer Microsoft Office extensions.


9. Clear cookies
   Even if you are logged out of your Google account when you search, information on your activity is stored in cookies on your computer. These can personalise your results according to your past search and browsing history. Many organisations have set up their IT systems so that these tracking cookies are automatically deleted at least once a day or whenever a person logs in or out of their computer account. At home, your anti-virus/firewall software may perform the same function. If you want to make sure that cookies are deleted or want to control them manually How to delete cookies at http://aboutcookies.org/Default.aspx?page=2 has instructions on how to do this for most browsers.


10. Looking for research papers? Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/) is one place to look but there may be additional material hidden somewhere on an academic institution's web site. Include advanced search commands, for example filetype:pdf site:ac.uk, in your search.


11. For the latest news, comments and analysis on what is happening in an industry or research area carry out a  Google blog search and limit your search by date. Simply run your search as usual in the standard Google search box. On the results page click on Blogs in the menu on the left hand side of the screen and then select the appropriate time option.


12. site: and -site:
    Use the site:command to search within a single site or type of site.For example:2011 carbon emissions public transport site:statistics.gov.uk to search just the UK official statistics web siteasthma prevalence wales site:gov.uk OR site:nhs.ukto search all UK government and NHS web sites
    
    If you are fed up with a site dominating your results use -site: to exclude it from your search.
    
    For example:
    
    Dylan Thomas -site:bbc.co.uk


13. Reading level - from tourism to research
    Use this to option in the menus on the left had side of your results page to change the type of information. For example run a search on copper mines north wales. Then click on Reading Level in the left hand menus. Selecting "Basic" from the options that appear at the top of the results gives you pages on tourism and holiday attractions. "Advanced" gives you research papers, journal articles and mineral databases. Google does not give much away as to how it calculates the reading level and it has nothing to do with the reading age that publishers assign to books. It could involve sentence structure, grammar, the length of sentences on a web page, the length of the document, the terminology used and doubtless many other criteria.


14. Google.com
    Apart from presenting your search results in a different order Google.com is where Google tries out new features. As well as seeing pages that may not be highly ranked in Google.co.uk you will get an idea of how Google search may look in the UK version in the future.


15. Numeric range search
    Use this for anything to do with numbers – years, temperatures, weights, distances, prices etc. Use the boxes on the Advanced Search screen or just type in your two numbers separated by two full stops as part of your search.For example:world oil demand forecasts 2015..2030


16. An understanding of copyright is important if you intend to re-use information found in the web and absolutely essential if you are going to use images. Creative Commons licences clearly state what you can and can't do with an image but they are not all the same. The list at Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ outlines the terms and conditions. "FAQs - Copyright - University of Reading" at http://www.reading.ac.uk/internal/imps/Copyright/imps_copyrightfaqs.aspx gives some guidance on copyright but if in doubt always ask! An example of what can happen if you get it wrong is demonstrated by "Bloggers Beware: You CAN Get Sued For Using Pics on Your Blog" http://www.roniloren.com/blog/2012/7/20/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-for-using-pics-on-your-blog.html.

Doing Business in the United Kingdom and France

Compiled and published by Bryan Cave LLP, Doing Business in the UK is an excellent summary of what is involved in setting up a business in the UK and the associated legislation. As well as describing the various types of company it also covers director's duties, UK taxation, employment law, business immigration, intellectual property, data protection and competition law. There is a similar publication on Doing Business in France. Both are free of charge.

Yet another irritating Google feature

There was a time when Google would aggregate pages from the same website in your search results. There might be just a couple of entries for the site with a "More from...." link next to the result.

Alternatively you might see a mini sitemap:

This has the advantage that you are not swamped with results from a single website but are given instead a variety of options that might provide you with a better answer to your question.

Not any more.

You may have noticed that multiple entries from single websites have started appearing in your results. For example, rather than just one Wikipedia entry you see 4, 5, 6 or even more. On the other hand, you might not have noticed anything at all. Some of my colleagues are seeing this and some are not. Google tests new features and algorithms on a small percentage of its users to see how they react so new or test features are not seen by everyone (see How Google makes improvements to its search algorithm - YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5RZOU6vK4Q). As far as I'm concerned this particular "improvement" is a disaster.

I was running a very general search on the use of biofuels by public transport in the UK. I just want to get an idea of some of the issues that were being discussed before refining my search and went, by default, to Google. My first screen had nothing but results from the UK government Department for Transport (DfT).

I scrolled down and saw more DfT pages. I scrolled down further and yet MORE dft pages. OK, Google, so dft.gov.uk is a good place for me to look at biofuels in public transport. I get the message. STOP! There were 27 DfT pages in total flooding the top of my results page, which I have set to display 100 entries at a time. Creeping in at number 28 came the Guardian with 5 results.

The Friends of the Earth website had 7 results, and then at last I started to see more variety in my results at around number 40, but still with a lot of repetition.

Google may think that the DfT is a very important source of information on the topic but I want to decide whether or not to explore more of a particular site. Spamming my results list annoys me and makes me want to go elsewhere. So I did.

DuckDuckGo (http://www.duckduckgo.com/) is my main Google alternative and it came up with a decent and varied set of results without repetition, hesitation or deviation.

Bing (http://www.bing.com/) and Yandex (http://www.yandex.com/) came up with similar, non-repetitive results.

Blekko (http://www.blekko.com/) came up with some interesting alternative pages for me to consider. These would not have been that useful to me in the earlier stages of my research but this test confirmed my feeling that Blekko is good at pulling up information that explores more than the mainstream issues.

If you want to stay with Google how do you deal with multiple listings of sites? The most obvious approach would be to incorporate a '-site:' command in your search, for example:

biofuels public transport -site:dft.gov.uk

If you are conducting in depth research and are likely to be running many variations on a search, incorporating '-site:' each time can become a chore. Google's own browser Chrome has a Personal Blocklist extension that enables you to block selected sites from results (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef). Once installed a block link appears next to each entry in your results. Click on the link to block the site from all future results. A message appears at the bottom of searches that would normally contain pages from the blocked site warning you about exclusions.

The 'show' link displays and highlights the previously blocked pages and offers an option to unblock them.

Neither the -site: option nor the Blocklist approach should be necessary. There was nothing wrong with the previous ways of offering additional pages from a site in search results. It wasn't broke but Google did break it by trying to fix it. For me, there are now several Google alternatives that produce quality results and with less irritation. I shall be using them more in future.

Google maps UK canals

First cycle routes and now canals. Google is collaborating with the Canal and River Trust to provide a Google Map guide to the UK's canal network called In Your Area (http://canalrivertrust.org.uk/in-your-area). It is not available as part of the standard Google Maps. The map allows you to enter your address or postcode to find the nearest canal. The map shows the locations of canals, canal locks and bridges and also volunteering opportunities, places to eat and drink and boating services and moorings.

It is early days and not everything is marked up on the map, or at least it isn't for the Kennet and Avon Canal in Reading. Also planned for later this year is the addition of  'Street View' images of the canal and river network. (Please, no lurking in the bushes by the side of the tow paths and pushing the Google cycles into the canal!)

Google adds cycling routes to UK maps

Google has added cycle routes and directions to its UK maps. The feature has been available on US and Canadian maps since 2010 but has now been extended to the Europe and Australia. In the UK Google has been working with Sustrans (http://www.sustrans.org.uk/) to include bike trails, lanes and recommended roads. Set your starting point and destination as usual and the directions area on the screen should include a bicycle icon in addition to the car, public transport and walking icons.

Select a suggested route and as well as text instructions it will be outlined in blue on the map. The "bicycling layer" also shows trails (dark green lines), dedicated lanes (light green lines) and bicycle friendly roads (dotted green lines). Google came up with two routes from my house to Reading Railway Station. The first more direct one followed the roads.

The second suggestion took the scenic route along the river, which would be more pleasant and probably safer during the rush hour.

The directions come with the usual warning that they are in beta and that you should use caution. There is an option to report unmapped bike routes, streets that aren't suited for cycling, and other problems.

Further information is available on Google Lat Long: Biking directions expands into Europe and Australia (http://google-latlong.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/biking-directions-expands-into-europe.html. The Guardian Bike Blog has tested out a couple of routes in London (Google Maps' cycle routes: just how good are they?  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/bike-blog/2012/jul/12/google-maps-uk-cycle-routes?) and set up a Twitter hashtag #cycletest for cyclists to comment on the routes they have tried.

Personalised vs non-personalised search - a word cloud comparison

My talk at the recent INFORUM 2012 conference held in Prague was about the issue of personalisation and the impact of our social network activities on search results. I believe that personalisation, and in particular contributions from our social and professional networks and even Google+, can present us with an alternative view of a topic or person that can be an important part of our analysis of a situation. I always have two different browsers open. One is not logged in to any account of any sort, has all cookies cleared at the end of each research session, and has search history disabled. The other is permanently logged in to a Google+ enabled account, social and professional accounts, and has web history enabled. This enables me to quickly switch between two very different environments to give me very different results when I am conducting research on Google or even Bing. Demonstrating this at a workshop or conference can be difficult, though, because postings and comments from the social elements of the search results may have been restricted to friends or limited circles.

For the INFORUM 2012 conference I decided to generate word clouds for personalised and non-personalised results for a Google.co.uk search on the single word Prague. The titles and up to the first 250 words of the top 20 results for the searches were scraped into a document from which the clouds were generated. In the graphic below, which has been taken from my presentation, the first word cloud represents a search that is as non-personalised as I could make it and the second has been personalised by several weeks of research on what to do and see in Prague. There are no prizes for guessing what we were interested in visiting!

Business Information Workshop - Top Tips

The TFPL business information workshop held on May 17th in London turned out to be quite an intense day with plenty of questions and much discussion between the participants regarding the services and resources they use. When it came to the participants nominating their Top Tips at the end of the day there was a bit of umming and ahhing initially but they soon picked up speed and we ended up with eleven. Here they are.

1. BL BIPC industry Guides The British Library Business Information and IP Centre's industry guides were very popular. You probably already know about the BL Business Essentials wiki Industries pages (http://bl-business-essentials.wikispaces.com/Industries) but these have now been expanded into a series of 30 PDF guides at http://www.bl.uk/bipc/dbandpubs/Industry%20guides/industry.html highlighting relevant industry directories, databases, publications and websites. One of the participants who had been using the guides since they were launched said that they are regularly updated and everyone was impressed that a named person responsible for the guide is clearly shown on each one.

2.  Zanran  http://zanran.com/ A search tool for  identifying charts, graphs and tables of data in PDFs and Excel spreadsheets. Run your search and Zanran comes up with PDF and spreadsheet files that match your criteria. Very useful if you are looking for industry statistics.

3. Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/ Looking for a conference presentation, an expert on a particular subject, overview or background on an industry then look in Slideshare. One workshop participant commented that they wished they had known about this a couple of weeks ago.

4.  SCOTBIS  http://scotbis.nls.uk/  A national information service aimed at Scottish businesses and based on the business resources at the National Library of Scotland but, nevertheless, useful information for those of us not based in Scotland. SCOTBIS provides its users with a free enquiry service and also offers fee-based research and other charged services.

5.  Don't just Google - try other search tools! If you are carrying out a general web search don't just Google. You may find the information you are looking for more quickly using alternatives such as Bing.com, DuckDuckGo.com, Yandex.com, Blekko.com

6.  Advanced search commands. Familiarise yourself with the advanced search commands, in particular 'site:'  for searching within a single site and 'filetype:'. Look for PowerPoints for presentations, spreadsheets for data and statistics, or PDF for research papers and industry/government reports. Note that filetype:ppt will not pick up the newer .pptx so you will need to include both in your search, for example.

filetype:ppt OR filetype:pptx

You will also need to include .xlsx if you are searching for Excel spreadsheets and .docx for Word documents.

7.  BUSLIB-L  - an email based discussion list that addresses all issues relating to the collection, storage, and dissemination of business information regardless of format. To join the list, go to http://list1.ucc.nau.edu/archives/buslib-l.html where there are also searchable archives.

8.  Bureau van Dijk's M&A Portal http://www.mandaportal.com/ A gateway to news, events, research and analysis on mergers and acquisitions worldwide. Some of the information on the portal home page is free of charge and there is a free search option for tracking down deals and rumours contained in BvD's Zephyr database. The deals can be sorted by value, date or status. Basic information is free but you can purchase the full details from the Zephyr database using a credit card. The cost of the reports varies depending on the amount and type of information available.

9. Mergers and Acquisitions Review (Thomson Reuters). This was recommended by one of the workshop participants. Free quarterly summaries and reviews of M&A activity, for example http://dmi.thomsonreuters.com/Content/Files/4Q11_MA_Legal_Advisory_Review.pdf and http://dmi.thomsonreuters.com/Content/Files/4Q11_MA_Financial_Advisory_Review.pdf

10. Official Company Registers. A first port of call for many of us when checking up on a company. Most registers' sites will offer an English language interface for searching but the information is usually in the local language. To locate searchable online official registers try one of the following:

http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm

http://www.commercial-register.sg.ch/home/worldwide.html

http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/links/introduction.shtml#reg

11. ISI Emerging Markets http://www.securities.com/ Provides news, company information, industry reports and M&A from over 100 emerging markets. Much of the content is unique to ISI Emerging Markets. This was another service that was highly recommended by one of the workshop participants.

Useful industry information guides from the British Library BIPC

Evaluated listings and subject guides from people who know the sectors are the quickest way to home in on good quality sources of information. The British Library Business and IP Centre (BIPC) has, for a long time, had a wiki at http://bl-business-essentials.wikispaces.com/Industries listing web-based resources on a number of industries. These have been expanded into a very useful series of 30 PDF guides at http://www.bl.uk/bipc/dbandpubs/Industry%20guides/industry.html highlighting relevant industry directories, databases, publications and websites.

All of the guides show when they were last updated and the name of the person who has edited the guide. Not all of the resources are freely available on the web but you can access the information for free in the Business & IP Centre at the British Library, St Pancras. You will need a Reader Pass; details on how to obtain one can be found at http://www.bl.uk/bipc/visitus/howtouse/index.html.

The resources are split into Directories, Business Advice Sources, Market Research and Statistics, Trade Magazines and Newsletters, and Internet Resources. Even if you cannot make it to the BIPC to access the publications these guides are valuable pointers to the key sources of information on industry sectors. Highly recommended.

A bit of telecoms history off to recycling

This time I really am going to do it. About 4 years ago I had a grand clear-out of my office and decided that my archive of telecoms software and manuals had to go. I offered them to anyone who was interested and a few items were snapped up. The rest are still sitting here in a box and I am offering them again to anyone who might be interested for historical reasons, research or whatever. You do not have to take the whole lot. Let me know if you are interested. Closing date  is 28th May 2012 when they are definitely off to recycling.

Database/information provider specific

Mercury Business Intelligence (MBI) User Guide Version 1.1. A5 ring binder
MBI Launcher v 1.2 (Windows) 3.5" disk + hardcopy installation guide.

FT Profile freeway user manual (Windows 3) + 3.5" disk

DialogLink for Windows Operating Systems Version 2.0 1993
User's Guide + 3.5" disk

Radio-Suisse DataMail Guide 1991-1992 (Guide to setting up and using DataStar's online DataMail service)

General telecomms software

Odyssey User Manual spiral bound + 3.5" disk. 1990
Odyssey for Windows A5 User manual + 3.5" disk 1995

Crosstalk for Windows User's Guide + Crosstalk for Windows CASL Programmer's Guide 3X 3.5" disks, 3x 5.25" disks. 1992

Deputy User Guide. A5 ring binder + 3.5" diskette 1992, version 3.04

Procomm Plus User Manual + Aspect Script Language Reference Manual + 2x 3.5" disks, 3 x 5.25" disks. 1991.

Procomm Plus for Windows User Manual (EC Version) + Windows Aspect Script Language (EC Version) + 3 x 3.5" disks, 3 x 5.25" disks. 1992

Procomm Plus Very Connected 3.0 user guide + CD

Hayes Smartcom for Windows 1993:

Read Me First!
User's Guide
Quick Reference
Editor Reference
SCOPE for Windows Technical Reference
Communications Reference
4x 3.5" disks
4x 5.25" disks

Sage Chit-Chat 2.6 for IBM PC/XT
Boxed set of user manual, installation notes, 3.5" disk, 5.25" disk

QuickLink II Fax and telecommunications Windows & DOS 1993. User manual + 3.5" disk

QuickLink Message Center: voice, fax & telecommunication. Windows. 1993. User manual + 3.5" disk

Order matters with Google advanced search commands

The great thing about running search workshops is that you have so many people experimenting with advanced commands that someone is bound to spot an anomaly that you haven't. We've become used to seeing different results when changing the order in which we enter keywords but not when using advanced search commands. During one of my workshops we had a couple of people playing around with Google's allintitle command. This tells Google to look for all of the keywords following allintitle in the title of a document.

The search that was initially used was allintitle:diabetic retinopathy and came back with 277,000 results. Restricting the search to UK academic sites by using allintitle:diabetic retinopathy site:ac.uk reduced the number to about 2,190 and gave sensible results. But changing the order of the commands to site:ac.uk allintitle:diabetic retinopathy gave  two very bizarre results:

Both results are from academic sites but the allintitle as a search command seems to have been ignored. The first entry includes intitle, diabetic and retinopathy and the second has allintitle, diabetic and retinal. Using the Verbatim option from the menus on the left hand side of the results page gave us zero!

Next we tried combining allintitle with fieltype:pdf.

allintitle:diabetic retinopathy filetype:pdf

gave us 3490 results of which at least the first 100 were relevant.

Switching the order to :

filetype:pdf allintitle:diabetic retinopathy

gave 495,000 results some of which were relevant but many did not contain all of our terms nor did they contain both diabetic and retinopathy in the title. Google was also looking for variations on our terms.

Using Verbatim on this search gave us zero again.

When we looked at the advanced search screen Google had put everything in the right boxes. If we used the advanced search screen to enter our terms afresh the search worked with Google putting the allintitle command at the start of the search.

Was this a general problem or just with allintitle? We then played around with the intitle command.




intitle:diabetic intitle:retinopathy site:ac.uk - 2220 sensible results (slightly more than our original allintitle search)

site:ac.uk intitle:diabetic intitle:retinopathy - 2220 sensible results identical to those above

intitle:diabetic intitle:retinopathy filetype:pdf - 3480 sensible results

filetype:pdf intitle:diabetic intitle:retinopathy - 3480 sensible results same as previous search

We then tried using a phrase after intitle:

intitle:"diabetic retinopathy" site:ac.uk - 2130 sensible results

site:ac.uk intitle:"diabetic retinopathy" 2130 sensible results identical to previous search

Following a suggestion made by Tamara Thompson of PIBuzz ( http://pibuzz.com/) changing the search slightly to site:ac.uk "intitle:diabetic intitle:retinopathy" gave exactly the same results.

Just to make sure that it wasn't just us in the UK seeing this I asked fellow members of AIIP (http://www.aiip.org/) to run the original two allintitle searches. They saw exactly the same thing.

Its seems, then, that there is a problem when allintitle is not the first command in a search. The intitle alternatives appear more reliable. If you prefer to use the command line rather than fill in the boxes on the Advanced Search screen remember that order sometimes matters.

Does this affect other combinations of commands? I left it at allintitle and intitle but I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Use more than Google

If you need more evidence - other than me telling you! -  that you need more than Google then take a look at The Disruptive Searcher (Sanity checking Google http://disruptivesearcher.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/sanity-checking-google/):

"if I hadn’t searched across more than Google for data on a small, new company that I was asked to research recently, I would have missed out on some very significant information that Google just wasn’t showing me."

So take a look at Bing (http://www.bing.com/), DuckDuckGo(http://duckduckgo.com/) and Blekko (http://blekko.com/) for starters. The Disruptive Searcher also mentions Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com/), which combines results from Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Google+ overrides search settings

I've noticed this strange behaviour for a while but have only now had to time to try and find out what is going on. When I'm signed in to a Google account that has Google+ associated with it I cannot display more than 10 search results per page. This is despite having Instant switched off and specified 100 results per page in my search settings. I checked another Google account that does not have Google+ and my settings are respected as they are when I am signed out. I have cleared cookies and web cache, and tried different browsers. The same problem occurs. So it seems that if your account has Google+ associated with it Google overrides what it likes! I already have two browsers open all the time: one signed in to my main Google account for gmail and other stuff, and one signed out for search. Sometimes, though, I want to run the same search within Google+ and then on web search so I have to go to the effort of copying my search across to the signed out browser.

This may sound like a minor issue but if Google is ignoring this user setting one starts to wonder what else it is choosing to ignore.

Clear your YouTube history

Now that Google has merged all your personal data, time to double check that you've removed stuff you do not want Google to use. As well as the steps mentioned in my previous posting (Google personalisation: web history isn’t the only problem http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2012/02/22/google-personalisation-web-history-isnt-the-only-problem/) you might want to clear out your YouTube history as well.

Sign in to your account and go to  http://www.youtube.com/my_history  and  http://www.youtube.com/my_search_history. The first is your viewing history and the second your search history. If you don't want Google to use this information to "enhance your search experience" in its other products clear both of the histories and pause to stop it gathering future activity.

And another reminder that if you are fed up with Google trying to personalise your ads you can opt out at http://www.google.com/ads/preferences. Note that this does not get rid of Google's ads altogether it just stops Google using your past searching and browser behaviour to decide which ads to display. To opt out of targeted advertising from other networks you should also pay a visit to  http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ and http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.

Update

I should have said that the opt-out of targeted advertising is done via cookies on your computer and so is computer and browser specific. If you or your system periodically clears cookies then you will have to opt out again. You do not have to be signed in to a Google account to do this. There is also a  Keep My Opt-Outs plugin for Chrome.

Further update

I've just checked a very old Google account of mine that was used for news alerts but does not have a Gmail account or anything else associated with it  (it was set up pre-Gmail). I can log in to YouTube with it but when I try to access the My History page to delete search and view history it insists that I set up a channel, which I do not want or need, before I can do it. Tell you what, Google, I'll just delete the whole account.