|
|
Tales from the Terminal RoomApril 2002, Issue No. 31 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Please Note: This is an archive copy of the newsletter. The information and links that it contains are not updated.
|
|
Tales from the Terminal Room ISSN 1467-338X April 2002, Issue No. 31 Editor: Karen Blakeman Published by: RBA Information Services 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:
Google Reveals AllThis month, on April 1st, Google finally came clean about the technology behind its success - PigeonRank T.
For those concerned about the working conditions of the pigeons:
This is an interesting and well researched article (!) and includes essential data such as pigeon cluster efficiencies and wing span vs beak speed. Further details may still be available at http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html Nominet to provide UK Web owners' detailsTracking down who is behind a Web site is sometimes an essential part of assessing the independence and authority of the site. It can also be the key to identifying and locating spammers and those who distribute unsavoury material over the Net. For many domains, such as .com, you can find the name and address of the person or organisation that registered it, when the domain name was registered and when it is due to expire. For many UK domains, however, Nominet who administer part of the UK system only provide the registrant's name, the name of the organisation who registered it on their behalf, when it was registered and the details of the domain name servers on which they are held. In theory, then, one could use a fictitious company name to register a .co.uk, or even choose a name that is similar to a well established and trusted organisation. Nominet UK now plans to make more information available about individuals and organisations that have registered domain names. From this summer they will also provide the address of the domain registrant, which will bring it into line with other top level domain registries around the world. In order to protect the privacy of the registrant, Nominet will not display telephone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses. If you want to check who is behind a domain name, there are plenty of Web sites and tools that can help you. My own favourites are Checkdomain (http://www.checkdomain.com/) and a utility called Sam Spade (see Gizmo of the Month below). Updates to the RBA Web SiteStock Markets and Share Price Information http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stocks.htm Finsight (http://www.finsight.co.uk/), provider of UK financial information for the private investor, has announced that its Web site and Portfolio services have been discontinued with effect from 31st March 2002. For investors seeking an alternative source of information, analysis and portfolio management, Finsight has been recommending ADVFN (http://www.advfn.com) as an alternative. Existing Finsight subscribers have been allocated an account with ADVFN and will be able to transfer their portfolio data to this account. ADVFN is an online Web based service, whereas Finsight Portfolio included software that enabled one to analyse data off-line. This off-line facility was a significant factor in my decision to subscribe to Finsight. Once I had downloaded the daily updates, I could bash away at the figures on my laptop wherever I happened to be and without having to connect to the Internet. Yahoo! Finance extends its historical share price service Free historical share price data in tabular format is now available for many of the stock markets covered by Yahoo! Finance. The default date range for daily prices is the most recent 90 trading days and data includes the daily open, high, low, close and volume for each trading day in the chosen date range. If available, historical quotes typically go back to 1970. There is currently no restriction to the amount of historical quote data you can request, but only 200 rows will be displayed at a time. If you prefer, there is an option for downloading all of the data in spreadsheet format. Originally only available for US and Canadian stocks, the service now covers many of the European markets including the UK. To access Yahoo! Finance, go to your favourite country version of Yahoo (e.g. www.yahoo.co.uk) and click on the Finance link. Mergers & Acquisitions http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/manda.htm BvD takes over Zephus Bureau van Dijk (BvD) have announced that, following their take-over of the mergers and acquisitions service Zephus (http://www.zephus.com/), they will be launching a service called Zephyr. This will be a new product combining Zephus M&A data with company financial and ownership information. BvD and Zephus were already developing Zephyr, a product that would have been co-published. The opportunity for acquisition arose when Zephus' parent company, RIM, was sold to Johnston Press. Zephyr is due to be launched in early May. It combines the Zephus pan-European M&A, IPO and private equity database with l detailed financial company information and ownership data from the BvD Suite (http://www.bvdsuite.com/). The Zephus database currently contains detailed information on over 71,000 deals involving a European company dating back to 1997. Information on a further 40,000 deals per year is being added and coverage expanded to include American and Asian transactions. Until the launch of Zephyr, the existing zephus.com service will continue to be provided. Users can pre-register for free trials, or obtain more detailed information by e-mailing uk@bvdep.com News sources http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/news.htm Google News (beta) http://news.google.com/ The service uses information gleaned from news sources over the previous week. There is a source list but this is just a small proportion of the services that are actually covered and sources are being added every day. Geographical coverage is indeed international and all the major European sources appear to be included. The news is updated throughout the day. The unique feature of Google's News Search is the grouping technology. Google automatically puts links to the same story from different sources in the same search result. This makes it easier to scan the headlines without the clutter of repeat articles, but also gives you the option of reading the alternative versions provided by different sources. Telegraph charges for crosswords :-( Direct Marketing http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/marketing.htm Yell re-launches business database http://tbd.yell.com/tbd/
The site is now much faster and the steps involved in building your mailing list are clearly laid out. You can search by any combination of business types (market sectors, Yell classifications, SIC classifications, SIC codes), locations (county, town, post code) and employee bands. Once you have finished the building process you can calculate the cost of your list. The basic record costing 11 pence for single use, includes business name, address, Yell category, SIC Code and contact/name function if available. Additional items of data, for example telephone number, turnover band, employee size band cost an extra 2.5 pence each per record. There is no minimum spend but there is a maximum permissible spend of GBP10,000. A really neat feature is the option to save your list, which you do on-site once you have registered for an ID and password. This means that you do not have to decide immediately whether or not to buy the list. You can take time to think about it and edit the list further. It also enables you to set up and save one or more lists that you may want to purchase and use again at a later data. One minor criticism: The "View example data" option is a bit misleading. The sample is not taken from your own selection but is a standard example intended to show the type of data that is available. So don't panic if the geographic coverage or business types do not match your own search criteria. Company & Telephone Directories http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/directs.htm Invest Northern Ireland http://www.investni.com/ The new site provides company information, sources of business support and advice, and guides on many aspects of starting up and running a business. The old EDnet (Economic Development Network) site had a very useful database provided by Dun & Bradstreet and covering approximately 40,000 companies in Northern Ireland. This has been carried over to Invest Northern Ireland but is hard to find. In fact I find navigating the whole site a nightmare. It is not that there are no signposts or site maps - there are plenty of those -it is just difficult to work out how the information has been grouped. I eventually found the D&B database along with a Key Northern Ireland exporters directory of 800 companies and a Northern Ireland Products database (look under Add Value to your Business, followed by Invest in Knowledge and then Business Information). This is a relatively new site so there are bound to be some teething troubles, and I hope that the navigation will be made clearer and more obvious. That aside, Invest NI promises to be a very useful source of information on companies and doing business in Northern Ireland. Miscellaneous Day to Day Essentials http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/misc.htm Electric Eclectic Glossaries http://bloxword.ca/glossaries.htm Keeping up to Date http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/uptodate.htm I have finally got around to adding several newsletters and alerting services that have been essential reading for me for some time. Library News Daily http://www.lights.com/scott/ is the most recent addition to my newsletter mailbox. A daily Web log of "the latest on databases, conferences, services, software, vendors....". The news is gleaned from a variety of sources including press announcements, Web sites and public discussion lists, and you can receive a daily update via email. This is a useful service even if you, yourself, subscribe to the lists that it monitors: you get just the facts and none of the wibble. E-Government Bulletin. Email newsletter on Electronic government, UK and world-wide. To subscribe, e-mail egovbulletin-subscribe@headstar.com For further information go to http://www.headstar.com/egb/subs.html LLRX http://www.llrx.com/. A free Web journal providing legal and library professionals with up-to-date information on a wide range of Internet research and technology-related issues, applications, resources and tools. There is a free weekly newsletter called LLRXBuzz (see ResearchBuzz below). The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/. Daily news on the Internet. IT and online services industry. Daily headlines can be delivered direct to your mailbox. Research Buzz http://www.researchbuzz.com/ These things are sent to try us!Yahoo! changes privacy policy: prepare to be spammedYahoo! Has changed its privacy policy with the result that anyone who has signed up for an ID and password, for example for the My Yahoo customisation option, could find that they have been opted-in for spam, junk snail mail and cold calls without their knowledge. I was alerted to the changes by an article in The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/24683.html). Apparently Yahoo! sent out a standard email to users telling them about the change, but I have no record of having received it. A colleague very kindly sent me a copy of his. Amongst the bland and innocuous blurb that managed to disguise the overall message all too well were the following snippets: "Our commitment to privacy hasn't changed." [Many users would disagree with that] "We believe that you should understand what we do with your information and what choices you have." [I would agree with that wholeheartedly] "We have reset your marketing preferences" [Ermmm - excuse me, but isn't that illegal in certain countries, including some in which your servers are based?] "you may begin receiving marketing messages from Yahoo! about ways to enhance your Yahoo! experience" [Enhance my Yahoo experience? Pah!!] When I went to check my account, the opt-out for third party spam was still checked but a whole new series of a dozen "Yahoo Special Marketing" communications were checked for opt-in. I hastily unchecked the lot. As well as email junk mail, if at any time you have supplied a postal address or telephone number you will have to check the relevant boxes to opt out of direct marketing snail mail and cold calls. To check your account, go to http://subscribe.yahoo.com/showaccount Postscript: I subsequently discovered that my ISP's spam eating system, Brightmail, had trapped the Yahoo! notification. on further enquiries, the support staff explained that so many copies of the same message hitting the mail servers at the same time suggested that the email was spam. The fact that it came from a yahoo.com address seemed to confirm it! Gizmo of the MonthSam Spadehttp://samspade.org/Sam Spade is a free utility that sits on your PC and enables you to:
Not much more that needs to be said except that you may have problems with ping and traceroute if you are running a firewall on your system. A copy of Sam Spade can be downloaded from http://samspade.org/ or from any Tucows site (http://www.tucows.com/) *ping - a means of finding out whether or not a site is alive and kicking. ** traceroute - gives a map of the route taken by data from your system to the remote server, together with details of the time taken to travel each part of the journey, or the point at which the transmission is halted. Training and MeetingsWorkshop: Key Business Resources on the Net This one day workshop concentrates on Internet resources relevant to business applications, and in particular portals and the so-called "invisible web". The emphasis will be on pay-as-you-go and free services. The workshop will benefit anyone who plans to use, or already uses, the Internet for gathering essential business information. The programme will include:
Cost: GBP 195 + VAT (Total cost GBP 229.12) Workshop: Market Research on the Web This one day workshop offers practical guidance on how to find and evaluate Web based statistical and market research information, both free and fee based. Topics to be covered include:
Cost: GBP 195 + VAT (Total cost GBP 229.12) UKOLUG Biennial Conference The 2002 UKOLUG Biennial state of the art Conference will explore the latest trends and technologies in online information provision. There will be the opportunity to see these innovative technologies in action alongside practical papers delivered by key players in the information industry. Bob McKee from CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, will set the stage with his keynote speech. Speakers include Laurence Bebbington, Karen Blakeman, Phil Bradley, Alan Gilchrist, David Snowden, Sheila Webber, Martin White. Many of the topics will be backed up by live demonstrations of software and systems in action so you can see if it really works! The conference is suitable for all librarians, information professionals and knowledge workers in any sector including arts, humanities, education, research, business, commerce, law, science, engineering and health. Further details of the programme and a booking form are on the UKOLUG Web site (http://www.ukolug.org.uk/) TFTTR Contact InformationKaren Blakeman, RBA Information Services ArchivesTFTTR archives: http://www.rba.co.uk/tfttr/archives/index.shtml Subscribe and UnsubscribeTo subscribe to the newsletter fill in the online registration form at http://www.rba.co.uk/tfttr/index.shtml To unsubscribe, use the registration form at http://www.rba.co.uk/tfttr/index.shtml and check the unsubscribe radio button. Privacy StatementSubscribers' details are used only to enable distribution of the newsletter Tales from the Terminal Room. The subscriber list is not used for any other purpose, nor will it be disclosed by RBA or made available in any form to any other individual, organisation or company.
|
| This page was last updated on 29th April 2002 | 2002 |
