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Tales from the Terminal RoomJune 2006, Issue No. 71 |
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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
June 2006, Issue No. 71
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, and November and December, which are published as single issues. TFTTR includes reviews and comparisons of information sources; 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.
Tales from the Terminal Room can be delivered via email as plain text or as a PDF with active links. You can join the distribution list by going to http://www.rba.co.uk/tfttr/index.shtml and filling in the form. You will be sent an email asking you to confirm that you want to be added to the list. TFTTR is also available as an RSS feed. The URL for the feed is http://www.rba.co.uk/rss/tfttr.xml .
GoshMe brings together hundreds of specialist web sites and databases. The home page has a number of major headings such as science, environment and society, audio, health, law, reference, sports. Select the most appropriate subject or subjects and type in your search. GoshMe looks at the results from different search engines - it claims to cover approximately 1,000 - and then displays what it thinks are the best tools in which to run the search. You can then choose the tools you want to use.
http://livesearch.alltheweb.com/
This is a great new search tool from AlltheWeb, now owned by Yahoo. As soon as you start typing your search terms, Livesearch suggests how you might like to complete your strategy. For example, I had only got to 'peak o' of one of my test searches - peak oil - and it was already suggesting peak oil news, peak oil production, peak oil myth etc. And for my search on how to get from London to Nimes by train or air I got as far as typing in London Nime and it was suggesting some excellent sites. At the same time it starts displaying results in the main part of the screen. The suggested strategies and results change as you type in more letters.
The suggested searches are good but, in addition, the way the results change so quickly as you add or modify terms means that you can immediately spot if you are going down the wrong track. Highly recommended.
X1 are now offering their X1 Enterprise Client (formerly X1 Desktop Search) free of charge. If you have tried Yahoo Desktop Search then the X1 interface will look very familiar because the Yahoo product uses X1's technology and interface. Yahoo has not implemented any significant updates to their product for at least 18 months but there have been some improvements in X1's. More file formats are supported (a full list is at http://www.x1.com/products/viewable_file_formats.html), X1 indexes Open Document Format files, and Thunderbird email is now fully supported. Thunderbird emails are previewed as separate messages in X1 whereas Yahoo displays the whole of the inbox containing the relevant message.
I found, though, that X1 was highly selective in choosing which Thunderbird inboxes and folders to index so it misses about 80% of my emails. It seems that X1 indexes only messages at the inbox level. Most of my email is automatically filtered and sorted into sub-folders and it appears that these are ignored by X1. Another negative for me is that it does not index removable drives so the data on my 250 GB USB drive remains a mystery to X1. So the top three desktop search tools for me are still - in alphabetical order - Copernic, Exalead and ISYS.
Ask has added a blog and RSS search option to its collection of search tools. Accessed via the Ask home page or http://blogsearch.ask.com/, it claims to index more than 1.5 billion posts that extend "from 2001 through 5 minutes ago (or less)," over 2.5 million individual feeds, and 7,000 news sites. It is indeed ultra-fast in picking up new postings. I found with my test searches that the claim of "5 minutes ago or less" was no exaggeration.
Blog posting results are displayed by default but tabs at the top of the results screen allow you to switch to RSS feeds or syndicated news services. Results are automatically sorted by relevance but that can be changed to most recent or by popularity by checking the relevant radio button. There are also direct links to options for subscribing to the RSS feeds found by your search.
The Advanced Search options can look for terms or phrase in the title, author, body, subject, description, email address, URL, within enclosure or in citation.
Altogether, an excellent blog search tool.
http://www.internet-librarian.com/
The full conference programme for Internet Librarian International 2006 is now available at http://www.internet-librarian.com/ . The emphasis is on discovering new resources and demystifying new technology. Taking place in London on 16 & 17 October, the event's Opening Keynote will be given by Danny Quah of the London School of Economics, discussing the knowledge glut.
The 2-day programme will concentrate on practical applications for internet technologies. There are 50 speakers from organisations and institutions around the world explaining how they implement new technologies, adopt Library 2.0 techniques, employ management skills, collaborate with colleagues and bring information to remote areas.
Areas covered include:
CILIP, The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, is again supporting Internet Librarian International as Association Sponsor and CILIP members will benefit from a 20% discount on the full conference registration.
The event is being held at the Copthorne Tara Hotel, London.
The Internet Detective is back on the case after a year's vacation. Internet Detective was originally developed in 1998 with funding from the European Union but was withdrawn in 2005. The free online tutorial is designed to help students develop the critical thinking required for their Internet research and is now in the Intute (formerly the RDN) Virtual Training Suite at http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/detective/
Although aimed at students the tutorial is of value to anyone who uses the Internet for research. It highlights why information quality is an issue on the Internet, offers hints and tips on evaluating information, and how to recognise scams and hoaxes. The tutorial and associated exercises take about an hour to complete, although I would expect experienced researchers to be able to do it in less than that and get all the answers right! You can skip sections if you wish and you do not have to complete it in one sitting.
If nothing else, it serves as a reminder to all of us on how to differentiate between the the Good, the Bad and the Ugly on the Net.
The 2006 edition of the Russia: All Regions Trade and Investment Guide is now available. The guide covers all 89 regions giving data on markets, current economic conditions, sources of supply, infrastructure, trade opportunities, operating conditions, investment projects, and the legal and tax environment. Data is provided directly by the local administrations and governments, and reviewed and verified through government agencies. I have found this guide to be an invaluable starting point in the past when researching the trading environment in the region.
Prices range from £395 to £595 depending on whether you order the book and/or the CD ROM and whether you want them in English or Russian, or both. There is a 25% discount if you order before Friday 7th July.
Further information and order forms can be found at http://www.dataresources.co.uk/russ89.htm
http://www.airport-parking-shop.co.uk/
Set up and maintained by Fubra who run Ourproperty.co.uk and petrolprices.com, Airport Parking Shop compares prices across 6 of the biggest UK parking brokers for 24 UK airports. Select the airport from which you wish to fly, enter you departure and return date, and the number of passengers. It then comes up with a list of possibilities.
As I always use public transport to get to UK airports I was astounded at the variety and range of options and prices. At the upper end of the market you can treat yourself to a meet and greet deal where you drive straight up to departures, leave your car with a valet who will park it for you, and then have it waiting outside arrivals on your return.
For each entry in the results you can see if the service is on/off airport parking or meet and greet, transfer time to the terminal, frequency of transfers, any awards that the service has won, and more detailed information in an airport car park guide. It also tells you whether or not there is a charge for credit card processing. If you decide to pre-book - and apparently you can save up to half the cost by doing so - links take you direct to the car parking service web site.
On every page there are also links to the Car Hire Centre, http://www.car-hire-centre.co.uk/ , another Fubra run site, that compares the prices of a range of car hire brokers; coverage is worldwide. Choose the airport or city where you want to pick up the car, enter the dates and you are then presented with a list sorted by price. Cheapest first of course!
Reed Business and search company FAST Search & Transfer have launched a business-to business (B2B) search tool called Zibb. Zibb.com, currently in beta, unifies over 900 of Reed Business titles into a single vertical portal. It will also crawl the indexes of other publisher's content. There are tabs for searching by News, Products, Suppliers, Webs and Blogs, and All (the default).
Why use this rather than Google? If you are looking for companies and products, and especially smaller companies, you often end up with a large amount of dross even with Google. Try searching for companies such as Next or Smarty in a standard search engine! Zibb narrows down the field considerably. Once you have found the company you are interested in there is a form that you can fill in to request a quote or send an email.
It is still a beta product and is not perfect, but they welcome feedback and quickly corrected some out of date information that I found. I would not use if I were looking for a comprehensive list of product suppliers or manufacturers. For that I would go straight to a directory such as Kelly's or Kompass. Definitely worth a try and one to watch.
As well as managing your blog's list of links, BlogRolling can also be used to maintain and update any list of links on any of your web pages. You create your list of links in BlogRolling.com, paste the code created by BlogRolling into your blog template or web page and that's it. Every time you edit or add or a link to the list in BlogRolling, the list on your web pages is automatically updated. There is even a 'Blogroll It!' button for your browser (works in both IE and Firefox) that quickly adds interesting sites to your blogroll.
Workshop: Finding pharmaceutical information
Organiser: UKeiG
Venue: The British Medical Association, BMA House, Tavistock Square,
London, WC1H 9JP
Date: Friday 7th July 2006, 09.30 - 16.30
Course presenter: Shaida Dorabjee
Course fee: UKeiG members £130 + VAT (£152.75); others £160
+ VAT (£188.00)
URL: http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/july06/pharminfo.html
Outline: The development and marketing for a new medicine is long, complex
and highly information-intensive. There is a wealth of information on pharmaceuticals,
whether in development or on the market, both freely available and subscription-based.
This workshop will identify key sources of information relating to the various
stages of development and also information available on current medicines on
the market.
Workshop: Business Information on the Internet
Organiser: UKeiG
Venue: University of Warwick Library
Date: Wednesday 12th July 2006, 9.30 – 16.30
Presenter: Karen Blakeman
Course fee: UKeiG members £150 + VAT (£176.25); others £180
+ VAT (£211.50)
URL: http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/july06/businfo.html
Outline: This one day workshop concentrates on key sources of business
information available on the Internet. The emphasis will be on pay-as-you-go
and free services. Topics to be covered include: key starting points, evaluated
listings and portals; company information, including information on SMEs ; directories
and marketing resources; news, alerts and RSS; official statistics and market
data. Throughout the day, there will be practical sessions during which you
can work through exercises or try out your own research. The workshop will benefit
anyone who plans to use, or already uses, the Internet for gathering essential
business information.
Workshop: Developing and managing e-book collections
Organiser: UKeiG
Venue: Training Room 1, Dublin City University, Dublin
Date: Tuesday, 12th September 2006, 9.30 – 16.30
Course presenters: Chris Armstrong, Ray Lonsdale
Course fee: UKeiG members £150 + VAT (£176.25); Non UKeiG,
non ANLTC members £180 + VAT (£211.50). ANLTC members: A limited
number of ANLTC subsidised places are available at €100 (incl VAT) on a
strictly first come first served basis. Once these places have been allocated
then ANLTC members will be invoiced at the same rate as UKeiG members.
URL: http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/2006_09_12_ebook.html
Outline: This course opens the door to a new electronic format. In the
last six years, there has been an unprecedented growth in the publishing of
e-books with an increasing array of different types available for all sectors.
The programme will give you the opportunity to explore a range of different
ebooks including a range of commercially-published and free reference works,
monographs, textbooks, and fiction. Examples will include individual titles
and also collections of ebooks, such as those offered by NetLibrary and Oxford
University Press. The course will also facilitate consideration of the new opportunities
ebooks offer for librarians and users, and the significant collection management
and promotional issues which challenge information and library staff.
Workshop: Knowledge Management: the next generation
Organiser: UKeiG
Venue: CILIP, 7 Ridgmount Street, London, WC1E 7AE
Date: Friday 22nd September 2006, 9.30 – 16.30
Course presenter: Chris Collison
Course fee: UKeiG members £130 + VAT (£152.75); others £160
+ VAT (£188.00)
URL: http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/september06/km.html
Outline: Chris Collison, Author of "Learning to Fly", provides
an interactive course, designed to explore ways in which we can help knowledge
management to mature in our organizations. Chris will take a rounded view of
knowledge management, exploring such topics as structuring captured knowledge,
tools and processes for learning, communities of practice, leadership behaviours
and embedding knowledge management into company processes. These tools and processes
will be illustrated using examples, videos, mini case-studies and group discussion.
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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Copyright (c) 2006 Karen Blakeman. All rights reserved
| This page was last updated on 29th June, 2006 | Copyright © 2006 Karen Blakeman.
All rights reserved |