Tales from the Terminal Room

May 2001, Issue No. 21

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:

• Updates to the RBA Web site
  • Vrisko
  • NameBase
  • Search Strategies - Keeping up to Date
  • Subject specific Scout Reports discontinued
  • Update on open.gov.uk
  • Lexis-Nexis at BIRD Online
• These things are sent to try us
  • Undeliverable email
• Gizmo of the Month
  • WebWasher top of accelerator tests
• Meetings and Training
  • June 18th, Company Information on the Internet

Information Resources

Vrisko http://www.vrisko.com/
Vrisko has launched its new Web site, which includes a very useful and free, comprehensive, Homepage finder for all UK PLCs that have a Web site. Also, information on Vrisko's priced services has been extended and improved. Products include the Vrisko Electronic Company Briefing Pack, News Tracker, People Tracker and the Global Business Tracker.

The People Tracker (now added to the RBA Miscellaneous Day to Day Essentials on http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/misc.htm) enables you to set up customisable search screens for users to enter search terms, such as an individual's name and/or a known company name. The system will then automatically search all selected information sources, applying a specific pre-configured search strategy for each source. In the Product Description and examples the sources shown for the People Tracker include Lexis-Nexis, IFR Magazine, Euromoney funds, Corporate Finance, OneSource and EuroWeek. However, the People Tracker is set up and customised for each client and is based on the services to which they already have subscriptions.

NameBase http://www.namebase.org/
This is a biography resource that has been added to the RBA day to day essentials. Maintained by Public Information Research Inc, NameBase is an index of people influential in politics, the military, intelligence, crime, business and the media since World War II.

NameBase claims to include 100,000 names from approximately 260,000 citations. The names are drawn from over 700 books and serials as well as from documents identified using the US Freedom of Information Act. Although the source list appears to be US dominated, the coverage is truly International. As well as what one would consider to be standard texts for this type of resource there are more interesting publications such as "Spy Catcher", "The Politics of Lying" and David Leigh's "The Wilson Plot: How the spycatchers and their American Allies tried to overthrow the British Government".

If you are not sure of how a name may be spelt or entered in the index, the best way to search is to enter just the person's surname as you think it is spelt. NameBase then conducts a phonetic search and presents you with a list from which to choose.

When you have selected the name from the list, you are shown the list of "citations" and the total number of pages found. Whilst you can search on names and display information about the sources in the citation list free of charge, there is a fee for the pages of information themselves. There is a registration fee of USD 50 (covers two years registration) and document/delivery charges vary depending on where you are based and the mode of delivery (full details are on the Web site).

In addition to displaying the number of citations from a name search, NameBase shows other names that are listed on the cited pages. You can also display a "social network diagram" for the name (free of charge). I must confess to getting hooked on this particular aspect of the service as you can zoom in on names within the diagram to generate yet another "social network". Fascinating stuff.

Search Strategies for the Internet
Keeping up to Date (http://www.rba.co.uk/search/subscribers/uptodate.pdf) (Available to subscribers only)
Three resources on keeping up to date have been added to this chapter:

• SearchDay - a free newsletter from SearchEngineWatch.com featuring Web search news, reviews, tools, tips, and search engine headlines from the Moreover News Headlines service. SearchDay is published daily, with headlines only on Fridays. If you wish to subscribe there is a form at http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/ or you can send a blank email message to mailto:join-search-day- text@list7.internet.com. Past issues are at http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/archives.html
• Search Engine Forums (http://www.searchengineforums.com) - a collection of discussion boards on search engines and techniques, with the major search tools having their own discussion board. You need to register to have access to the full posting facilities and all of the forums but you can read the main discussions without having to register. International in coverage with several regular contributors from Europe.
• I-Search (http://list.adventive.com/archives/i-search.html) An email mailing list aimed primarily at Web page authors and designers. Information on joining the email list is available on the archives page.

Business Information on the Internet
Keeping up to Date (http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/updtodate.htm)
The Internet Scout Project will no longer be publishing the Scout Report for Business & Economics as they have been unable to secure funding to continue publishing their subject-specific reports. The last issue of the Scout Report for Science & Engineering will appear on June 20. There are no immediate plans to cease publication of the the main Scout Report. Further information on the Internet Scout Project can be found at http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/

Our celebrations regarding the continuation of www.open.gov.uk as reported in the April issue of TFTTR may have been premature. The May issue of the E-Government Bulletin (an Email Newsletter On Electronic Government, UK and World-wide) includes a report about UK Online and refers to open.gov.uk:

"On 1 July open.gov.uk will merge into the Cabinet Office's UKOnline portal (http://www.ukonline.gov.uk). The site was created in 1994 by the then government computer agency CCTA, which from April this year has been subsumed into the Office of Government Commerce at the Treasury.

The service has been hugely popular, with several kinds of interactive index to all kinds of public-sector information.

Though the relocation was described as a "planned transition" on the web site, several open.gov.uk users have contacted E-Government Bulletin to express concerns that the site could be downgraded.

The OGC said such worries were unnecessary because all of the site's functionality will be maintained. But the Cabinet Office was rather more cautious, saying that the precise practical details of the amalgamation of open.gov.uk into UKOnline are still being discussed."

News sources http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/news.htm

Lexis-Nexis at BIRD Online http://www.bird-online.co.uk/
Lexis-Nexis are entering into partnership deals with a number of Web sites enabling users to search their news service on a pay as you go basis. One such partnership site is BIRD Online, an established business information portal covering UK and Ireland sources of information.

Lexis-Nexis offers access to news from over 5,000 newspapers, magazines and journals published around the world with some going back to 1984. There is no subscription and you can search free of charge; each article costs USD 2.50 and payment is by credit card.

The Quick Search on BIRD Online enables you to type terms into the search box and select "any mention" or "major mentions". The pull down sources menu enables you to choose from General News (Global), Major World Publications, UK Newspapers, All News, Financial Times, and Regulatory News Service. For limiting your search by date you can choose from Today, Previous Week, Previous 6 months, Previous 12 months, Previous 2 years, All available data or enter a specific date range. If your search retrieves more than 1000 results you are prompted to refine your search further.

The Advanced Search has an additional option for looking for search terms Anywhere, In the Headline, Headline and 1st Paragraph, In the Indexing, In the Company Field and combining terms using And, Or, Same Sentence, Same Paragraph or exclusion (AND NOT).

Results are displayed in reverse chronological order and you select the articles you require by ticking the boxes next to the relevant entries. You have to register before you can purchase documents but that only takes a couple of minutes. When it comes to entering your credit card details, it is not obvious that the page is on a secure server: it is within a frame and none of the usual indications of security - https in the URL, locked padlock in the browser status bar - are visible. A quick look at the page preferences, however, shows that this is a secure page.

How does Lexis-Nexis news compare with the FT Global Archive?

The FT Global Archive (http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/) is completely free of charge but its newspaper coverage is far less comprehensive than Lexis-Nexis. The FT Global Archive only goes back 5 years but this is unlikely to be a serious drawback for most searches. With respect to search options, the FT Global Archive offers searching for terms as an exact phrase, in headlines only, journalist only. You can also refine your search by industry, region or individual publications.

Assuming that you do not have or do not want a subscription to one or more of the major news services, how does this version of Lexis-Nexis fit into a general search strategy for news?

1. If you have a favourite newspaper or know the source of a story, then head straight for that paper's Web site (if you do not know the URL ABYZ News Links on http://www.abyznewslinks.com/). Many newspaper Web sites that are free of charge do not carry all of the stories that appear in the hardcopy, though, and archives may be non-existent or limited.
2. For free coverage and access to current stories, try Moreover at http://www.moreover.com/, but bear in mind that this service carries out a free text search on news Web sites and does not offer indexed or context searching.
3. For more sophisticated search options and 5 year archives, try the free FT Global Archive (http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/). Remember, though, that there are significant gaps in newspaper/journal coverage.
4. For comprehensive searches and archives going back to 1984, then the Lexis-Nexis pay as you go option will probably be the most cost effective solution.

These things are sent to try us!

Undeliverable email

As if mis-directed emails were not bad enough (see the April issue of TFTTR), I have now been receiving some rather odd "undeliverable email" notifications. These notifications are automatically sent by mail servers when email cannot be delivered - sometimes because the mail server is "down" but more often because the email address no longer exists. What is odd about the recent spate of "undeliverable" messages is that I never sent the messages in the first place and the addresses are not even in my address book.

The latest message to be returned to me starts:

"Currency Trading Made Simple!
Do You Have The Yen To Be a Millionaire?
200% return in less than 90 days!
Unique Strategy Trading in the International Currency Markets!
Largest MarketPlace in the World!"

Yes. It is SPAM!!!!

A new trick that is being used by spammers is to set someone else's email address as the Reply To: and that poor person gets all the hassle. Thankfully, the spammers have moved on from using just one email address from their list: an acquaintance of mine was on the receiving end of this ploy and had to deal with several *thousand* bounce messages and about a hundred very nasty complaints from recipients of the spam. The more "sophisticated", automated approach selects email addresses in rotation from the spam address list.

What can you do about it? Not a lot :-(( But if you suddenly start receiving a lot of "undeliverable" messages that relate to spam (the notifications usually append the text of the message that could not be delivered), you should contact your IT manager or your Internet Service Provider and explain what has happened. Otherwise, irate recipients of the original spam may complain in sufficient numbers resulting in your email facilities and/or Internet account being suspended.

Gizmo of the Month

WebWasher top of accelerator tests

WebWasher (http://www.webwasher.com/) is a "gizmo" that filters out banner ads, animations, pop-up windows and many other annoying "features" of Web pages.

The June issue of Internet Magazine has a review of Web accelerators: the quick and the dead. (Internet Magazine, ISSN 1355-6428, June 2001, number 79, pp 118-122). Included in the tests were Netsonic, Accelerate 2000, Modem Booster, WebWasher 3, NetSuperSonic 2 and Web Optimizer 300.

In their conclusion they say:

"Should you install a Web accelerator? That's impossible to answer without considering your connection. You might notice a huge improvement, you might not. So it's worth trying out a couple.

NetSonic comes out on top as an integrated system, although you might resent the advertising it sends you. NetSonic and WebWasher were the only programs that demonstrated speed increases you could actually see.

Modem Booster is also worth a mention as the most professional of the registry tweak programs

As an overall winner, we have to name WebWasher. It was the only application to offer a Mac version, it's free to use [Ed: but only for home use] has no irritating advertising, and provides results."

Meetings and Workshops

Karen Blakeman will be presenting the following course:

June 18th, 1.30 - 5.00 pm
Company Information on the Internet
Half day Professional Training
Organised by: Berkshire Library & Information Partnership
Venue: Black Horse House, University of Reading, Berkshire UK
Contact: Mike Sharrocks, The Library, Gyosei College, London Road, Reading RG1 5AQ Tel: +44 118 920 9321
Web: http://www.blipweb.org.uk/

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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