| |
Tales from the Terminal RoomSeptember 2006, Issue No. 73 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
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 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 . In this issue
Search ToolsMSN Search becomes Windows Livehttp://www.live.com/There I was, standing in front of a workshop full of seriously proficient Internet searchers, and running through my list of Google alternatives. I get to MSN Search, hit the bookmark and stand there in bemused silence for what seemed like an eternity but was probably only about 10 seconds. In the couple of hours since I had checked the site, MSN Search had become Windows Live. A superb example of how quickly sites can change and at the most inconvenient time. The screen may look very different but the search features and commands, some of them well hidden, are the same. The home page is the most obvious difference but the Search Builder, now renamed Advanced Search, has disappeared. It reappears once you display your results list. Why? I can only assume that Microsoft thinks that all searchers only resort to advanced search options when their initial basic search has failed. Not that it really matters, since some of the really good advanced options are not listed in the menu anyway and you have to use them by going into ‘command line’ mode. For example: car ownership UK filetype:xlsThe home page now has links for Web, Images, News and Local search but the free access to Encarta has been dropped. I have, though, seen various reports saying that you can still get to it by searching on encarta plus your search terms or site:encarta.msn.com plus the terms. It would also be helpful to have the More option on the home page rather than having to generate a results page to see it. At present More gives you access to a Feeds search and Academic Live, both of which are still in beta. I first reviewed Academic Live in April 2006 (http://www.rba.co.uk/rss/2006/04/windows-academic-search.html). Not much seems to have changed in functionality but I note they have added many more journals to the database, including biomedical and healthcare titles. I subscribe to just about every official Microsoft alerting service but the enhancements do not seem to have made it to any of them. This is an ongoing problem with MSN Search/Windows Live; if you want to keep up with developments you have to regularly hunt around the site for changes and review the help files for the new and really useful commands*. The Local search works pretty well, but I need to look at it in more detail and compare it with other similar services before I pass final judgement. One problem that struck me straight away was that although it started off with a UK map it transported me over to the US when I searched for churches in Caversham. I had to include UK in the location to force it back to the UK. The satellite images are slightly higher resolution and crisper than Google’s for my location, and they seem to be more up to date. Apart from Academic Live, I am not yet convinced that I should be using Live.com as my regular search engine. The web search results still seem to be more consumer and retail orientated than Google and Yahoo, and I am usually looking for research or statistics on a subject. A search on ‘gin vodka sales uk’ in Google and Yahoo will bring up market research reports and industry stats galore: on Live.com, the first is a statistical overview but the remainder on my first result page are online stores where one can buy gin and vodka! This is not actually a problem, and there are times when you may want to bias the search in this way, but it is as well to be aware of it. Overall, a nice clean interface but very little has changed under the bonnet and some useful search features have disappeared from view. * One useful command that you might have missed is the feed command. The scenario: you are , like me, a news and RSS feed junkie. You have found a really good news site covering your subject or industry sector but surely it cannot be true that they do not have RSS feeds? Check by using the Live.com feed command combined with the site command. For example: site:superduperwidget.co.uk feed:superduperwidget.co.ukTry it on the BBC web site and you’ll discover that they have 1,956 feeds! Google RSS Reader revampedhttp://www.google.com/reader/Thank Heavens! Google has totally redesigned its RSS feed reader. The old interface was a disaster: hideous, confusing and non-intuitive. I suspect that many users who were new to RSS feeds have given up on the technology forever as a result. Having got that whinge out of the way how does the new reader compare with what is already out there? For starters, the default display will now be familiar to existing RSS junkies like me. The left hand side of the screen lists your feeds, and in folders if you have decided to organise them in that way. The individual items are displayed in the central area of the screen, and there is a tips and tricks box on the right hand side of the "Home" page.  Google Reader now allows you to view just new items, all items in a single list, all items by folder or items by individual feed. For me, a variety of viewing options is essential. I need to view individual, priority feeds as soon as I fire up my reader in the morning but I am then quite happy to scan through all the UK news feeds, for example, as one long "folder" list. The only serious gripe I have with the display of the items and feeds is that Google Reader does not include the feeds own icons. It may seem a minor point but it is a quick way of identifying the feed source when scanning through a combined list of all your new items. One point to watch is that the default in Expanded View is to mark items read as you scroll through them. This is a feature that I find extremely irritating but is easily put right by going to Settings, Preferences. There are two 'views' for items: Expanded View gives you the title, source and as much of the article that the publisher has decided to include in the item. The List View gives you the title, the first few words of the article and the date in just one line. To view the original or source document just click on the title or the double chevron next to the title. For each item you can Star, Share, Email, Mark as read and Edit tags. When I tried these out only the Email and Mark as read options worked: the others gave an "error has occurred message". But it is early days with the new interface so hopefully these glitches will be addressed. The email option defaulted to my Googlemail account so there could be a problem if you want to send headlines or stories to colleagues and clients using your corporate email account. Other web based readers such as Newsgator use your default email reader. Also, you cannot send more than one headline or item per email - a failing with many web based RSS readers. Another notable omission is that you cannot keyword search your feeds or set up alerts, again a non-feature of most web based readers. You can easily import and export your existing list of feeds and adding a subscription is straightforward. Google Reader, though, does not support user authentication so if you have Factiva feeds, for example, it is back to your PC based reader or Newsgator.com. Overall, I am impressed. Until now I have been telling RSS newbies who want to just dip a toe in the RSS stream to avoid Google's reader like the plague. It is still not perfect, and I shall continue to use Omea on my laptop, but I have now added Google Reader to my list of recommended web based readers Market Research on the Web - Top 10 TipsInformation professionals from the commercial sector, universities and government agencies attended the workshop Market Research on the Web, held at Manchester Business School on September 6th. A regular feature of the courses that I run is the Top 10 tips, sites and tricks that I ask the participants to compile at the end of the day. This time, they came up with a very interesting mix of sites and search techniques.
Autumn ConferencesThe autumn conference season is now in full swing and October is choc-a-bloc with information related events. Internet Librarian International kicks off on October 16th in London, quickly followed by a one day event on Investing in Eastern Europe. Then it’s off to Nîmes for the International Conference for Science & Business Information.Internet Librarian Internationalhttp://www.internet-librarian.com/index.shtmlThis two day event, organised by Information Today is being held at the Copthorne Tara Hotel in London on October 16th -17th. The programme includes sessions on Blogs, Wikis and Collaboration Tools, E-Learning and Teaching, Digital Libraries and Resources, Web Research Skills and Resources, and Technology for Libraries. In addition there are four pre-conference masterlasses on Sunday October 15th on International Business Information Resources (Marydee Ojala); Conversation, Community, Connections and Collaboration: Practical, New Technologies for User-centred Services (Michael Stephens and Jenny Levine); Advanced Search Techniques for the Power Searcher and the Aspiring Power Searcher (Greg Notess); and Web Accessibility 2.0: A Holistic Approach (Brian Kelly). Investing in Eastern Europe: Focus on Assets, Ownership and Governancehttp://www.dataresources.co.uk/confintro.htmThis is the 6th International conference on Commercial Information Gathering & Analysis and is organised by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Effective Technology Marketing. The venue is the Strand Palace Hotel, London and the date Thursday 19th October. Programme Chairman - Paul Byfield, Legal Information Specialist, EBRD Keynote Address The role of the Russian judicial system in protection of shareholders' rights in Russia Olga Anisimova, Partner, Solicitor, Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe and former Russian Judge Politics and the Bankruptcy of Russia's Richest Company: Analysis of the Yukos affair Alan Rousso, Lead Counsellor, Office of the Chief Economist, EBRD Corporate Governance in Action. The situation in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans Gian Piero Cigna, Counsel, Office of the General Counsel, EBRD Has eastern Europe benefited from privatisation? speaker to be confirmed Overview of the investment climate in The Caucasus Anna Walker, Senior Editor & Economist for Eastern Europe, Economist Intelligence Unit. The BIG THREE and others - commercial online east European business information services Dr Frank Ryan, Manager, Business Information Centre, EBRD Overview of free sources on the Internet relating to company ownership in central and eastern Europe Karen Blakeman, Consultant, Rhodes–Blakeman Associates International Conference for Science & Business Informationhttp://www.infonortics.com/chemical/index.htmlAtria Novotel, Nîmes, France, October 22nd - 25th, 2006. Organised by Infonortics Sessions include Trends, New Technologies, New Models, New Challenges; Applications in the Information Centre; Data Catalogues and Comparisons; The Information Centre; The Frontiers of Search; and Data Integration. I shall be giving a presentation on the first day entitled ‘RSS, Blogs and Wikis: What Information Professionals Need to Know’ and fellow UKeiG member Gary Horrocks is talking on ‘Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar: What's the Difference?’. Information ResourcesGoogle News goes back in time
http://news.google.com/archivesearch |
| This page was last updated on 2nd October 2006 | Copyright
© 2006
Karen
Blakeman. All rights reserved |
