Tales from the Terminal Room

January 2002, Issue No. 28

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:

• Pesky, pop-up varmints!
• Updates to the RBA Web site
  • UK 1901 Census
  • UK Official Statistics
  • Zephus charges for M&A data
  • Scavenger in beta test
  • Historical share prices - Yahoo, BigCharts
  • Hemscott premium services
  • BvD Increases coverage of AMADEUS
  • First Directory
  • Absolutely Bogus Printer Driver
  • Changes to Excite
  • Changes at Northern Light
  • Google increases Web and Usenet coverage
• These things are sent to try us
  • Conexant fails to connect
• Quote of the Month
• RBA Meetings and Training
  • Market Research on the Web; Advanced Search Strategies; Key Business Resources on the Net; Effective use of the Internet; Business Information Resource Management Strategies

Pesky, pop-up varmints!

Some of you know me well enough to have discovered that I am obsessed with Internet security and privacy. "Paranoia 'r' Us" ought to be my company's strap line. On my PC I have two virus checkers (one is for test purposes), a personal firewall (Zone Alarm), WebWasher to zap ads, pop-up windows, dodgy scripts, etc, Cookie Crusher to control which cookies are accepted and rejected, and AdAware to check that no spyware wheedles its way onto my computer. It's a miracle that I get anything at all off the Internet!

But it seems that I am not alone in my distrust of pop-up windows, and in particular those ubiquitous advertisements. Stephanie Longmuir of NBS Services alerted me to an article on the subject at http://www.poenews.com/inhouse/vx2.htm. The tale is about Audio Galaxy and pop-up ads that gather more information from users than they suspect, including information from forms they fill in and even emails that they send. This is a well written article and one that explains what is going on in plain English without being too sensationalist.

Steve Gibson (http://www.grc.com/) is well known for his strong views on Web privacy and security, or rather the lack of it, but his style is a bit over-the-top at times and, as a result, some people dismiss his work. The poenews article is more restrained in its tone, but its findings are as alarming as Steve Gibson's. I am not going to go into details here but I strongly recommend that you read the story in full; you will never trust another pop-up again.

Then I discovered that staff at Google are well and truly fed up with being blamed for pop-up ads that appear on users' screens, and have posted a notice in response to the numerous complaints.

Google states categorically that "Google does not allow pop-up ads of any kind on our site. We find them annoying." It goes on to explain where these ads may have originated:

1. You may have encountered a squatter with an address similar to Google's. Occasionally, individuals will register domain names that are one letter off from a well-known URL in hopes of attracting those who make mistakes in their typing.

2. You visited a site while surfing, and that site launched pop-up windows in the background known in the advertising industry as "pop- unders." When you go to Google, the windows may then become visible.

3. If you have installed some free programs, especially music-sharing programs such as BearShare or AudioGalaxy, you may have installed other programs as well. These tiny "time bombs" can show pop-ups at random intervals or based on anything you type on a web page.

At work, you probably have little or no say in what is happening on your PC, and very often you do not need to know. In many cases the network firewall zaps pop-ups and pop-unders before they hit your desktop.

If you are bothered by these pesky varmints on your home computer, there are plenty of utilities that you can install to block them. AdAware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/) will check your PC for "spyware" and remove any suspect programs, and WebWasher (http://www.webwasher.com/) can block ads, pop-ups, cookies etc. The drawbacks of gizmos such as these are that free, ad-supported programs may not run unless you allow them to serve up ads and Web sites sometimes use pop-ups for help files. Any half-decent utility will, though, give you the option to leave an ad program in place or to temporarily re-enable pop-ups on individual sites.

Updates to the RBA Web Site

Statistics and Market Research

The Statistics and Market Research page has been split into two: one for Market Research at http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/mr.htm and one for Statistics at http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stats.htm. Numerous sites have been added to the statistics page, the majority being links to official national statistics offices.

UK 1901 Census

For the UK, we were hoping to add the 1901 Census site (http://www.census.pro.gov.uk/) but within hours of the site going live, it caved in under the unexpectedly large number of visitors and was closed while the developers worked on technical fixes. The Public Records Office (PRO) has now put up an announcement on the site explaining:

"Having reviewed the work required to implement the enhancements to the site, PRO and QinetiQ have agreed to wait until all the work has been completed in full before re-opening access to the databases. All this takes time, but we are working hard to bring the site up in a controlled manner over the next couple of weeks. This will mean that many users will not be able to access the site immediately the technical changes are in place. Even with these improvements, the site will not be able to service the levels of demand encountered on the first few days, and we ask users to continue to be patient."

UK Official Statistics http://www.statistics.gov.uk/
Meanwhile the UK Official Statistics has had a makeover, and at last there have been attempts to make it easier to find some of the wealth of information that it holds. On the home page there are clear links to popular resources such as the latest economic indicators and population estimates. On the StatBase home page, the descriptions of the sections and methods of searching have been greatly simplified so you no longer need a degree in information science to understand what is going on! Nevertheless, the structure of the datasets is such that you may still have to try several different routes before you arrive at the data you need.

Another little gem that is not easy to locate, unless you happen to spot it in the animated gif at the bottom of the home page, is the 2002 Official Yearbook of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. At the time of writing it could be found at URL http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=5703&More=N but the main "Search" function should be able to locate it for you with "2002 Official Yearbook" as the search terms.

The yearbook has masses of information in the form of text, maps and graphs on all aspects of life in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. You may find that a significant number of your statistics enquiries about the UK can be answered by the yearbook, so it is worth downloading both the 577 page book, which is in PDF format, the maps and the Excel spreadsheets.

Mergers & Acquisitions http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/manda.htm

Zephus charges for data http://www.zephus.com/
Zephus is now charging for its merger and acquisitions data. Searching is free but there are charges for viewing and downloading the data. As well as a range of annual subscription plans there is a pay-per-view option with charges starting at GBP 3 per record. However, there is a minimum charge of GBP 54. The e-mail alerting service is still free - at least, I am still receiving mine!

Zephus includes comprehensive details of the size and terms of UK and European deals and also generates league tables. Over 60,000 M&A, IPO and venture capital deals are covered with pan-European coverage dating back to 1997. As only one of the partners involved in a deal has to be European, companies and organisations from the rest of the world may also be found in Zephus.

Support for SMEs http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/sme.htm

Cobweb's Scavenger.net (http://www.scavenger.net) - mentioned in the December 2001 TFTTR - is still in beta test phase. Billed as "a free classified index of essential business information sources", this promises to be a useful source of information for SME's (Small and Medium sized Enterprises). In addition to the free information, there are links under "Research Mart" to priced services such as ICC (providers of European company financials), essential guides to UK business sectors and opportunities, and mailing lists.

If you would like to preview the service, email support@scavenger.net to register for guest access.

Stock Markets and Share Price Information http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stocks.htm

Free Historical share prices

Yahoo Finance http://chart.yahoo.com/d
If you are looking for a range of historical quotes on US companies, Yahoo Finance offers free data going back to 1970 at http://chart.yahoo.com/d

Select your date range, frequency (daily, weekly, monthly) and enter the company symbol, for example HSY for Hershey. The table of data gives you open, high, low, close and volume with 200 lines displayed per page. You can also download all of your data in spreadsheet format.

BigCharts http://www.bigcharts.com/
BigCharts gives you historical data for stocks on one specified day but if you use the Java chart option, you can display the share price for the stock on one or more dates by moving your mouse cursor along the share price line. As well as US stocks, this service is also available for stocks in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

To access the full list of countries, select Historical Quotes on the home page and then click on the Global link that is next to the symbol/keyword search box.

Company Financials & Annual Reports http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/finars.htm

Hemscott premium services http://www.hemscott.net/
Hemmington Scott has added several premium subscription services to its list of products.

Chart Insight provides a twice weekly email newsletter of stock analyses. It covers the top five stocks that have been requested by subscribers, so you may find that the companies in which you are interested are not covered. There is a two week free trial and thereafter it costs GBP 10 a month or GBP 99 a year for a single subscription.

IPO Eye is a weekly service providing news on companies coming to market, a star rating on their quality, and the value their flotation price offers. As with Chart Insight, there is a free two week trial and thereafter the subscription is GBP 10 a month or GBP 99 a year if you sign up for 12 months.

Company Insight gives you immediate access to detailed information on all London Stock exchange listed companies. The information is updated daily and includes contact details, activities, subsidiaries, products, director information, major share holdings, news, key financial ratios, five year trading record, broker forecasts, five years Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statements. The information is delivered to you via email in Excel format and costs GBP 30 per report.

The REFS online service is not new but has been grouped together on Hemmington Scott's Web site with the more recent premium services. REFS provides one page of facts and figures on each UK listed company. The information is updated daily. I seem to recall that one could purchase these on a pay-per-view basis but now you can only choose between an annual or monthly subscription. The monthly subscription is GBP 62 and the annual sub is GBP 675. Factmerchant (http://www.factmerchant.com/) continues to sell single REFS at GBP 10 each but I have not yet been able to ascertain whether these are as up to date as those from the Hemscott.net site.

BvD increases coverage of AMADEUS

The number of companies on AMADEUS, a European company database produced by Bureau van Dijk, has been increased. Users can now access information on up to 5 million public and private companies from 34 European countries. The company reports are provided in BvD's own standardised format with information collated from 30 different sources. AMADEUS is available on the Internet, as an Intranet feed, on DVD and CD-ROM. It is also available as part of the BvD Suite (http://www.bvdsuite.com/) which now contains 8.5 million companies. Free trials are available: contact marketing@bvd.co.uk telephone 020 7549 5000 (international telephone +44 20 7549 5000) or visit the main BvD Web site http://www.bvdep.com/

Company & Telephone Directories http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/directs.htm

First Directory http://www.1stdirectory.com/
First Directory, UK Business Information and Business to Business directories, covers over 25,000 UK companies listed by market sector. You can browse by sector, products and services, company name, or search by keyword. Initial information on each company includes name, address and a brief description. A link takes you to more detailed information including contact names, telephone, fax, email, Web address, and a more substantial description of the company and its products and services.

Tales from the Terminal Room http://www.rba.co.uk/tfttr/

One of the most popular editions of TFTTR is the November 1999 issue, which included an item on the Absolutely Bogus Printer Driver. A separate and updated version of the article and associated links is now available at http://www.rba.co.uk/tfttr/abbogus.htm

Search Strategies for the Internet http://www.rba.co.uk/search/

The Excite search service has been acquired by Infospace. Excite no longer uses its own search engine to crawl and index Web pages but displays instead results from the Dogpile service. Excite.co.uk has been discontinued and users are now redirected to Lycos UK. The Excite chapter and summary sheet have, therefore, been deleted from the Search Strategies Web pages.

Northern Light http://www.northernlight.com/
It's all change at NorthernLight. The year started with an announcement that NorthernLight was discontinuing its free Web page index and concentrating on the Special Collection of priced documents. Reactions varied from disappointment to comments such as "Well, it was never a very good Web search tool anyway". It may not have been as comprehensive as Google or FAST but it had two useful and unique search engine features: the folders that attempted to group and categories your results, and an option to sort your results by date. I found the latter - commonplace in many priced, indexed databases - invaluable when looking for a chronology of events relating to a company or industry sector.

The good news is that the Special Collection will continue. The News Search also remains, with the most recent two weeks of news being free, as do the free Alerts and Special Editions.

Then it was announced that Northern Light has been acquired by divine inc., described as providing "integrated content, collaboration and knowledge solutions".

So far, it looks as though the "new" NorthernLight service is safe but the content is also being made available as part of Yahoo's Premium Search at http://premium.search.yahoo.com/

The Yahoo Premium Search screen is very basic with just one box for your search terms. Only when your results are displayed are you given the option to use the advanced search options so familiar to regular NorthernLight users. Functionality at the advanced search level and pricing appear to be the same as the direct NorthernLight service.

The NorthernLight sections have been removed from our Search Strategies pages while they are updated.

Google http://www.google.com/
Google's Web coverage has increased to 3 billion. On careful reading of the press release it becomes clear that the 3 billion "documents" includes 2 billion Web pages; non-HTML files such as PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Corel; and 330 million images.

In Google Groups, a 20 year archive of Usenet postings is now available. Bad news for those who of us who would rather the postings we made in our youth were not made public!

These things are sent to try us!

Conexant fails to connect

When I started out in consultancy twelve years ago, sorting out problems modems was my bread and butter business. Over the last five years, though, the "plug 'n' play" of later versions of Windows has meant that that part of my business has dwindled away. Recent experiences of a friend, however, suggest that this trend may well be reversed.

My friend had purchased a spanking new Dell desktop computer, complete with a Conexant HCF internal modem. Conexant (formerly Rockwell) does not make modems but does manufacture chips for modems produced by other companies.

My friend found that connecting to the Internet was a problem right from the start. The modem was very choosy as to when it would connect and to whom. Sometimes it refused to speak to the telephone line at all. Plugging in an old PC and modem confirmed that it was not the ISP or telephone line that was at fault. After several days of erratic behaviour, my friend called the Dell helpline. Four hours and several support staff later, my friend was no further forward but at least Dell had conceded that they needed to send out an engineer to investigate further.

The engineer duly arrived but needed a lot of convincing that the root of the problem was not the ISP or the telephone line. After an hour, he too had to resort to the Dell helpline and was equally unsuccessful at curing the fault. The consensus was that it was a problem with the modem drivers: different ones are required for different operating systems and different hardware. Five hours and several mugs of tea later, he gave up and went home having promised to return the following week. Not only had he not cured the fault but he had made matters worse and left the Dell totally dead as far as going online was concerned.

The engineer did indeed return and fixed the Dell within a few minutes. Did he install new modem drivers? Was it all down to the wrong AT command and initialisation string? No. He simply ripped out the Conexant modem and replaced it with a Lucent!

If you find yourself in a similar situation, but do not want to adopt the more radical approach, try http://808hi.com/56k/rockhcf.htm where you can find extensive information on bugs and troubleshooting, and Microsoft's hardware compatibility list at http://www.microsoft.com/hcl/. On second thoughts, having just had another look at those pages, the rip-out-and-replace strategy looks like a better bet.

Quote of the Month

Caption from a Roger Beale cartoon in the Financial Times IT Review, December 5th, 2001, page II:

"It's our new approach to innovation - why waste money on the next big thing when the thing before last still works."

Training and Meetings

Details of RBA's new training programme for Spring/Summer 2002 are now available at http://www.rba.co.uk/training/. Most of the workshops will be held in the Information Skills Suite at Aston University, Birmingham, UK.

The first is Market Research on the Web, 20th February 2002 (http://www.rba.co.uk/training/markres.htm). It will be re-run on April 11th and May 29th.

The other workshops in the series are:

Advanced Search Strategies - March 27th, May 16th (http://www.rba.co.uk/training/searching.htm)

Key Business Resources on the Net - April 10th, May 28th (http://www.rba.co.uk/training/bii.htm)

Effective use of the Internet - April 30th, July 3rd (http://www.rba.co.uk/training/effective.htm)

Karen Blakeman is also running a seminar for the UK Online User Group (UKOLUG) entitled Business Information: Resource Management Strategies, to be held at the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in London on March 20th. Further information on this course can be found on the UKOLUG Web site at http://www.ukolug.org.uk/meetings/businfo.htm

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

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