Tales from the Terminal Room

September 2000 Issue No. 13

Archives

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Tales from the Terminal Room (TFTTR) is a monthly newsletter, with the exception of July and August, which are published as a single issue. TFTTR includes reviews and comparisons of information sources and search tools; updates to the RBA Web site Business Sources and other useful resources; dealing with technical and access problems on the Net; and news of RBA's training courses and publications.

In this issue:

• FT Global Archive now totally free
• New and updated sites added to RBA's Business Sources on the Net
• Gizmo of the Month
  • Ad-Aware
• Meetings and Training
  • November 2nd, The Internet: search techniques and food related sites
  • November 13th, How to Make More Effective Use of the Internet

All articles on FT.com's Global Archive (http://www.ft.com/) will shortly be made available free of charge. If you have a credit account with the FT Global Archive, you should already have received an email notifying you of the changes and how to obtain a refund of, or donate to charity, any remaining balance in your account.

The FT has been making more and more of the collection free so this is not a complete surprise. The not so good news is that certain paid for publications will no longer be available. These are:

Business Times (Singapore)
Campaign
Corporate Money
DIY Week
Dow Jones Online News
Electronics Times
International Money
Marketing
Marketing
Marketing Week
Money Marketing
Packaging Magazine
PR Week
Precision Marketing
Sharewatch
The Daily Telegraph
The Economist
The Lawyer
The South China Morning Post
The Straits Times (Singapore)
The Sunday Telegraph

Most of these publications have their own Web sites but in some cases only selected articles from the current issue are available and archives may be limited or non-existent. The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph are two exceptions with archives going back to November 1994.

Information Resources

Statistics and Market Research (http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stats.htm)

Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) (http://www.abc.org.uk/)
ABC audits the circulation of over 3400 magazines and newspapers. That information is now freely available on the Web site and is of particular interest to advertising agencies and advertisers. The main section of the Web site provides analysis for Regional Paid Newspapers, Regional Free Newspapers and a monthly report of the National Newspapers circulation. The Magazine Data section covers bulk distribution, business to business magazines, business annuals and consumer magazines. The data represents the current average net circulation or distribution for the titles concerned.

You can search by region, circulation or distribution size, and types of circulation. The Quick Search option enables you to look for a single title.

In addition to the free data there is a paid subscription service for the National Newspapers that provides circulation data in Excel format and going back to 1931.

IDC (http://www.idc.com/)
An excellent source of market research and surveys on IT, the Internet and ecommerce, much of it available free of charge. There are also three free Newsletters: IT Forecaster, Ebusiness Trends and ASP Adviser.

Nielsen Netratings (http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/)
Free information on this site includes Top 10 Advertisers, Top 10 Web Properties and Usage data for a number of countries.

Miscellaneous Day to Day Essentials(http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/misc.htm)

Bank of England Monetary and Financial Statistics Division (http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/mfsd/index.htm)
Links to detailed information on exchange rates and interest rates. The Base Rates link is a spreadsheet that gives details of UK interest rates, and when they became effective, going back to 1970. Invaluable for small businesses who charge interest on overdue payments and who need to check what rate was in use on a particular date.

Industry Classification Codes
For UK SIC codes, the link to the ONS Web page has been removed and replaced with one to Netscope:

UK Standard Industrial Classification (http://www.netscope.co.uk/sic1.htm)

Stock Markets and Company Financials(http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stocks.htm)

Investhink (http://www.investhink.com/)
A portal that concentrates on providing information and access to financial and investment sources both free and subscription based. Search by keyword, category or use the search wizard. The "Product Profile" for each resource gives you detailed information about the site content; the "Vendor Profile" gives information on the supplier and publisher. (First mentioned in the Portals Galore article in the June Issue of Tales From the Terminal Room).

HUGIN Online International (http://www.huginonline.com/)
Provides access to intermediary reports, annual reports, prospectuses and analyst presentations on European companies who are clients of HUGIN. Geographical Coverage includes UK, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. Search by company name, browse alphabetical index or industry sector. Free of charge.

Vrisko (http://www.vrisko.com/)
The Vrisko home page provides "The easiest way to find the Home page of the UK's top 100 Companies". Select from the menu or type in the first few letters of the company name.

Government and Politics (http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/govern.htm)

UK Online (http://www.ukonline.gov.uk/)
The UK government has launched yet another portal and called it UK Online. It is claimed that this will be "a single point of entry to government information and services online. Available 24 hours a day, it will offer the easiest way to access everything you might need from government. Information will be organised around particular life events .....By grouping these linked services together online, we aim to make life easier and more straightforward for you when you deal with government."

I would love to know why they decided to continue using the name UK Online when it had been pointed out to them that another organisation has already been using that name for several years. Towards the bottom of the page they do say that this government backed service should not be confused with Internet Service Provider UK Online. They should also have added that neither should it be confused with the UK Online User Group (UKOLUG) (http://www.ukolug.org.uk/) who will no doubt soon be receiving enquiries from some very confused people!

FirstGov (http://www.firstgov.gov/)
The US Government has developed its own Portal to government information. FirstGov aims to provide the general public with easy, one-stop access to all online US Federal Government resources. It covers everything from researching at the Library of Congress to tracking a NASA mission. It also enables users to apply for student loans, track Social Security benefits, and compare Medicare options. You can use the "Search" window at the top of the page to search all US Government Web sites by keyword. Alternatively, browse the Interesting Topics section, which takes you to a list of relevant sites.

GrayLIT Network (http://www.osti.gov/graylit/)
Provided by the US OSTI (Office of Scientific and Technical Information), this site gives access to the gray literature of the US Federal Agencies. The help file defines gray literature as "foreign or domestic open source material that usually is available through specialized channels and may not enter normal channels or systems of publication, distribution, bibliographic control, or acquisition by booksellers or subscription agents."

The network is made up of five databases:

1. Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) Report Collection, which is a subset of approximately 30,000 reports dating back to 1974. Subject areas include defence research, basic sciences, biological and medical sciences, environmental pollution and control, behavioural and social sciences, and patents and patent applications.
2. The Department of Energy Information Bridge Report Collection gives access to over 55,000 reports on physics, chemistry, materials, biology, environmental sciences, energy technologies, engineering, computer and information science and renewable energy.
3. The EPA National Environmental Publications Internet Site (NEPIS) covers subjects such as water quality, wastewater, pesticides, ecological issues and wetlands.
4. The NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) Technical Reports cover deep space developments and robotic missions
5. The NASA Langley Technical Reports provides access to publicly available online NASA documents on aeronautical and space science.

Gizmo of the Month

Ad-Aware

Many programs and utilities that are offered as free downloads over the Internet incorporate advertising systems such as Aureate or Cydoor. The display of these adverts help provide revenue for further development of the program.

For the model to work, the ads have to be rotated and a record kept of how many are displayed. This is done by using small programs called adbots that take up residence on your computer when the main program is installed. When you connect to the Internet the adbot downloads advertisements and stores them on your hard drive. Thus, if you use ad-supported software while you are off- line, the adbot can still update the ads. When you reconnect to the Internet, the adbot sends what is called a "backchannel report" detailing which banners were displayed.

If you prefer to have ad-free software, you can usually pay for registered, advert-free versions of the programs. Type your registration details into the appropriate boxes and the ads disappear, but the advertising software may still be at work on your system.

As well as keeping track of what advertisements you have seen, the ad software may also keep tabs on your Web browsing habits and general Internet usage. The latter activity sometimes continues when you have paid for a registered version of your program or even after you have deleted it. That is why the ad-software is often referred to as "spy- ware".

Ad-Aware is a free program that scans your system for advertising system software such as CometCursor, Aureate/Radiate, Conducent/Timesink, Gator, Web3000, Flyswat and Cydoor files and references. It then gives you the option of removing them entirely.

If you want to remove an ad supported program completely from your PC, you should first uninstall it either with the accompanying uninstaller or by using the Add/Remove option in Windows Control Panel. Once that has been done you can check that the advertising software has also been removed by running Ad-Aware.

Note: If you are using advertisement supported software such as Go!Zilla, do not use Ad-Aware to remove the ads because the program will no longer work without them. If you should find that your favourite utility no longer works after running Ad-Aware, simply reinstall it.

Ad-Aware can be downloaded from Lavasoft at http://www.lavasoft.de/

Meetings and Workshops

November 2nd
Karen Blakeman will be giving a presentation on Search Techniques at the Leatherhead Food Research Association (The Internet: Search Techniques and Food Related Sites)
Venue: Leatherhead Food RA, Leatherhead, Surrey, UK
Contact: Training and Conference Administration, Leatherhead Food RA
Tel:01372 376761 Int. Tel: +44 1732 376761
Mailto:conferences@lfra.co.uk
Web: http://www.lfra.co.uk/

November 13th, How to Make More Effective Use of the Internet (http://www.rba.co.uk/training/effective.htm)
Course leader: Karen Blakeman
Organised by: RBA Information Services
Venue: TFPL Training Suite, 17-18 Britton Street, London EC1M 5TL
Contact: Karen.Blakeman@rba.co.uk mailto:training@rba.co.uk
Tel: 0118 947 2256

TFTTR Contact Information

Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services
UK Tel: 0118 947 2256, Int. Tel: +44 118 947 2256
UK Fax: 020 8020 0253, Int. Fax: +44 20 8020 0253
Address: 88 Star Road, Caversham, Berks RG4 5BE, UK

Archives

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