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Tales from the Terminal RoomJuly/August 2003 Issue No. 45 |
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Please Note: This is an archive copy of the newsletter. The information and links that it contains are not updated.
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Tales from the Terminal Room ISSN 1467-338X July/August 2003 Issue No. 45 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:
Farewell Netscape?AOL has made most of the development staff who work on the Netscape browser redundant. The company says that it will keep the Netscape brand alive and support old editions of the software but there will not be any new releases. Netscape was launched in 1994 and was the first reliable and compact graphical browser written specifically for desktop computers. AOL bought the company in 1998. Many of the staff who have been made redundant are moving to the Mozilla Foundation, which will now take over the browser's development. AOL will give USD 2 million to the Foundation and transfer domain names, trademarks and intellectual property. The closure does not really come as a great surprise - there have been suspicions and rumours of closure for some time. Many Netscape fans, including myself, have already switched to Mozilla or to the new slim-line version Mozilla Firebird (see the June 2003 issue of Tales from the Terminal Room). Both browsers can be found at http://www.mozilla.org/. Online 2003 Programme AnnouncedDate: 2-4 December 2003. Venue: Olympia Grand Hall, London, Online Information, now in its 27th year, has formally announced its programme for 2003. The event, which includes a conference, exhibition and various satellite events, will have content management as a key theme. The full conference programme is at http://www.online-information.co.uk/ where you can also register for the free exhibition. If you are interested in attending the conference, there are a range of delegate rates depending on whether you are a member of an association such as UKOLUG or CiG, in the academic sector or working for a not profit organisation. There are also various "early-bird" discounts. Full information on the delegate rates and discounts can be found at http://www.online-information.co.uk/ol03/conf_prog/conf_options.html As usual, the November issue of Tales from the Terminal Room will be previewing what is likely to be of interest in the exhibition. Information ResourcesBvD EIU Market Indicators and Forecasts and OSIRISWhile many of us have been relaxing - or should that be roasting? - over the summer, the people at Bureau van Dijk (BvD) have been busy bees. BvD and the Economist Intelligence Unit have launched Market Indicators and Forecasts as part of their co-published EIU DataServices collection. The new module contains over 500 market indicators for 60 economies around the world. Market Indicators and Forecasts is a comprehensive database of global industry data. It includes five year forecasts, historical data, statistics on industries, demographics, consumption, average wages, income levels, consumer markets, infrastructure, sovereign risk, business risk and the business environment. The data is gathered by 650 EIU in-country contributors and 100 analysts and economists. BvD have also added documents from Global Reports LLC, a provider of international company filings online, to OSIRIS, a database of publicly listed companies world-wide. The new module, available mid-August, includes annual reports, interim and quarterly financials plus IPO prospectuses. Documents are provided for 18,000 companies in over 65 countries. Historical coverage dates back to 1996 with a minimum three year history per company. The documents are in PDF formats and most are in English as well as their native language. They are also integrated into BvD's alert system, so users can be made aware of specific reports as soon as they are published. The documents are also available via BvD's other company information products, where applicable, including ORBIS which combines data from BvD's product range and AMADEUS, BvD's pan-European database. There are also documents sourced on the Web that complement the other reports available on OSIRIS. Users can view various standardised and peer reports, EDGAR filings for US companies, "as filed" spreadsheets, market research and information exactly as presented by the companies themselves. Further information on both products is available by contacting BvD on +44 020 7549 5000 or e-mailing london@bvdep.com. News Sources http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/news.htmGuardian charges for selected services The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/) has joined other UK newspapers - The Times, The FT and The Independent - in charging for selected Web based content. The Wrap, Guardian Unlimited's digest of "the best of the British newspapers" is now one of the Web site's paid-for services as is The Informer, an afternoon news round-up. If you are fed up with ads littering your screen, you can subscribe to the Ad-free service that gives you access to a version of the site with no promotional sidebars, animated banners or pop-up adverts. However, even Ad-free subscribers will see ads in the email alerting and news services and you may still see the occasional advertisement on the Ad-free site. The Guardian claims that "for technical reasons we cannot turn off every single ad on Guardian Unlimited. We do say that 99 per cent of pages will have no third-party advertising, and that 100 per cent of pages have no "intrusive" advertising (including pop-ups)." The subscription is £20 a year and payment is by credit or debit card. Digital versions of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers are also being developed. They will cost £98.57 a year or £10 a month for The Guardian, and £29 a year or £5 a month for The Observer. Google Introduces Advanced News Search Google has introduced an Advanced Search option for its News service (http://news.google.com/). Many of the Web search advanced features are included, such as exact phrase, but there are additional options for Google News that are designed to help users pinpoint articles more accurately. You can specify particular sources, for example the Telegraph, a country in which the news sources must be located and a date range. Stock Markets and Share Prices http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stocks.htmGold Stock Center
http://www.goldstockcenter.com/ The information is organised by region and the information is gleaned from well known established sources such as Kitco, Yahoo Finance and the World Gold Council. If you are going to be working in this area on a regular basis you may prefer to make a note of some of them and go direct to their Web sites. But this portal does take the hassle out of identifying who is in a particular market, for example Australia, and then having to search for the information on those companies. The news feeds, again, are compiled from a variety of resources and make keeping up with events much easier. Market Research http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/mr.htmSnapshots International revamp Web siteSnapshots International (http://www.snapdata.com/) who publish market research overviews have revamped their Web site and enhanced report delivery options. I initially reviewed this service in September 2002 and my only complaint was that there was not enough free information about the reports to help users decide on their usefulness before purchase. The new site has pop-up tables of contents and abstracts, allows multiple purchase options, and has an improved search and browse facility. It is now a much faster, slicker and attractive site to work with. The search facility has been enhanced to enable filtering by industry code and the new reports for 2003 have been further improved by the addition of category definitions and the inclusion of more market specific data. There are more flexible delivery options ranging from pay-as-you-go options to Unit packages. You can also choose to subscribe to modules such as "all Telecoms", "just China" or the existing regional packages. These things are sent to try us!SoBig causes SoHuge hassleIf you don't know what I'm talking about, then you either have superb IT support that has protected you from every manifestation of the SoBig virus or you have been in another galaxy! Its effect on the Internet has been huge: email boxes have been clogged up around the world and the networks of International corporations brought to a standstill. Being totally paranoid I was checking for updates to my anti-virus software every few hours once news of the "worm" hit my desktop. But for some it was too late and many people opened infected attachments before the updates were available. A colleague of mine was zapped by the nasty when he received an application that purported to come from someone he knew and had the subject "Re: your application". As he was helping to adjudicate an awards scheme, he thought it was a submission and "opened" it. There was nothing there and then "funny things" started to happen to his PC. He immediately downloaded updates to his AV software but it was taking a long, long time to check everything on his hard disk. That is when he rang me. "My PC keeps freezing half way through the check" he cried. "What do you mean?" I asked . "It just stops?" "Sort of. I've started it for the third time and it's already taken 3 minutes to scan 19 per cent of my hard disk" I managed to persuade him that was not unusual and that he should be patient. We chatted while we waited for the scan to finish. Then there was a sort of "Uurrerraarghhhh!" from his end. He had SoBig!! Cleaning up was relatively straightforward but the whole episode had wasted a morning of our time. And it doesn't stop there. SoBig has a nasty little habit of extracting email addresses from the victim's system and inserting them in the from and reply to field when it propagates itself. You may be totally free of the virus, but a recipient of a SoBig email that *looks* as though it has come from you may immediately email you saying that you are infected. Many organisations have even automated the process and are causing as big a headache as the virus itself. I have already had at least twenty of these automatic messages. Some have included the full headers of the virus-ridden emails so I have been able to quickly confirm that they most definitely have not come from me. As I write, reports have been appearing in the press saying that the worst is over. But a few minutes ago, I picked up messages from colleagues saying that it seems to have started up again :-( SoBig F is apparently programmed to expire on September 10. Graham Cluley, of Sophos Anti-Virus, has said that we can expect the next one soon after. Or perhaps even sooner? So what is the moral of this little Tale from the Terminal Room? 1. Make sure that you keep your anti-virus software up to date - and I do *not* mean checking once a month! Some people schedule their AV programs to look for updates every day, but even then the virus may hit your inbox before the anti-virus brigade can mobilise. 2. If you have a choice, you might like to consider switching to a non MS email program and browser. Many of viruses use address books from Outlook or look for addresses in your IE Explorer Internet Web page cache. 3. Set up your email program so that it does not automatically open and display attachments. 4. Telling people not to open emails from strangers is pointless with the current generation of viruses. Messages can appear to come from your best friend and you may well be expecting them to send you that fantastic screen saver you asked for. 5. Keep up with what is happening and use an alerting service from one of the AV software vendors. My own particular favourite is Sophos (http://www.sophos.com/). Even if you do not subscribe to the Sophos software, you can still receive their email alerts or add their alerts and news feeds to your web site. Unfortunately, we are going to have to learn to live and work with these things. The trick is to be aware of what is going on out there and be prepared for when you are hit. Yes - I said "when" you are hit, not "if". No matter how good your AV protection and how cautious you are, sooner or later a virus will break through your defences. Meetings and WorkshopsIntellectual Property and Ethics Feature in UKOLUG's Autumn Schedule[Declaration of interest: I think I should declare that I am Honorary Secretary of UKOLUG and on the UKOLUG Management Committee, so I am perhaps biased in my opinion of these excellent courses!] UKOLUG (http://www.ukolug.org.uk/) is running several interesting courses this autumn, two of them on key issues that affect everyone who uses electronic information. If you thought patents were boring, then think again. Patent information is increasingly being used for commercial intelligence but the nature of patents and their structure can pose hazards for the unwary searcher. "Patents for non-patent people", or "101 things to do with patent information" is presented by consultant Stephen Adams of Magister Ltd. The course looks at the different patent systems around the world, sources of information, and how to search for and analyse patent information. It will be of value to researchers who may be asked to do occasional work with patents or who are totally new to this field. Date: 7th October 2003. Venue: CILIP, London. If you have not yet caught up with the impending changes in copyright law, Laurence Bebbington (Law Librarian and Information Services Copyright Officer at the University of Nottingham) is presenting an updated repeat of "Coping with Copyright - Identifying and Managing Copyright Issues in a Digital Environment". This course was sold out on both previous occasions so early booking is advised. Date: 28th October 2003. Venue: CILIP, London. Following directly on from the Copyright meeting is the UKOLUG Ethics Day (29th October). This will focus on the application of ethical decision-making in commercial environments, public and academic sectors. The event is being co-ordinated by Jonathan Gordon-Till and among the speakers will be Graham Cornish, Bernard Naylor and Ralph Adam. Date: 29th October 2003. Venue: CILIP, London. Full details and booking forms can be found on the UKOLUG Web site at http://www.ukolug.org.uk/meetings/meetings.htm Note: there is a 15% discount for those attending both the Copyright meeting and the Ethics day. Forthcoming Courses Presented by Karen BlakemanWorkshop: Assessing the Quality of Information This is a new course that looks at separating fact from fiction on the Net, and how to scrutinise the credentials of a Web site or author. Although all types of media, including print, will be covered the emphasis will be on electronic resources. The techniques are applicable to all sectors and types of organisations, and all levels of expertise. Workshop: Setting up Shop on the Internet This half day seminar looks at what is involved in setting up shop on the Internet, from basic order placement pages to fully integrated systems with online payment, stock control and despatch. The seminar concentrates on off-the shelf applications and services and looks at how they can be combined into an online store. Workshop: Key Business Sources on the Net This one day workshop concentrates on information sources relevant to business applications, and in particular portals and the so-called invisible web. The emphasis is 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. 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.
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| This page was last updated on 26th August 2003 | 2003 |
