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Tales from the Terminal RoomMay 2008 , Issue No. 83 |
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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
May 2008, Issue No. 83
Editor: Karen Blakeman
Published by: RBA Information Services
Tales from the Terminal Room (TFTTR) is an electronic newsletter that includes reviews and comparisons of information sources; useful tools for managing information; technical and access problems on the Net; and news of RBA's training courses and publications. Many of the items and articles will have already appeared on Karen Blakeman's Blog at http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/
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
I did a double take when I first spotted this story in my RSS feeds. Live Search have discontinued Academic Live and Live Books Search . Surely a late report of an April Fool, I thought. Unfortunately it was a genuine posting on Live Search's official blog . Both sites have now been taken down and they are winding down their digitization initiatives, including their library scanning and their in-copyright book programs.
I have tried to support Live.com and promote it to those who attend my workshops as a viable alternative to Google. In my experience, it seems to have the most up to date database, often finds pages and documents that the other search engines miss, and has a great command for locating RSS feeds on a web site. But it keeps shooting itself in the foot. The site recently had a makeover, but the presentation of the advanced search is still awful and the only reliable way of using the options is via the command line. Live News has improved greatly and now has an RSS alert option, but only in the US version of Live. And it had by far the best link and linkdomain commands but disabled those because of mass automated data mining.
Both Live Books and Academic Live were superior to Google's offerings. They had different coverage but the advanced search options, for example date and author search, actually worked in Live, and Academic Live had options for exporting records to RefWorks and EndNote, albeit one by one. Live goes on to say in its announcement that books and scholarly publications "will continue to be integrated into our Search results, but not through separate indexes." Sorry, but not good enough. That will work fine if you know exactly what you are looking for and it is a very narrowly focussed search, for example I can easily find my husband's papers on ESR studies of zeolites, but it is impossible to limit a search to books or peer reviewed papers on a more general topic.
It seems that this part of the market does not make enough money for Live and it says that it will now "focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel, and offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers." Bribery appears to be part of the new company policy: another headline in the same feed update read "Office 2007 plus petrol: Microsoft Australia is trying to lure Aussies to buy Office 2007 with petrol"!
Forget about self-inflicted metatarsal wounds, I am beginning to suspect that Live has a serious death wish. I wonder what will be the next part of Live to go?
The UKeiG Business Information on the Internet workshop was run on April 2nd and April 8th, 2008. At the end of each day the participants were asked to come up with a list of top sites and search tips. This is the combined list in alphabetical order:
Ask ( http://news.ask.com/ ) has updated it news service to 'Big News'. Search results look very much like Ask's web search with an option to narrow by category and suggestions on other types of resources you might like to view such as images, profiles and encyclopaedia entries. In addition you can filter the sources by region for example Europe, Middle East, Oceania. Results are automatically sorted by relevance, and stories about the same topic or event are clustered together. You can, if you wish, choose to sort your results by date.
The most obvious change, though, is the numeric "Big Factor" ranking that appears next to each groups of stories or event. This analyses four aspects of the event:
Scores range from 1-100 and you can display a graph of the relative importance of each of the factors by moving your cursor over the score. Click on the score and Ask displays the news articles, blogs, images and videos related to the event. I am finding this a really useful feature and a quick way of identifying videos of news and interviews on the story. If you want to monitor this particular story, click on the "Track" link that is part of the Big Factor score icon and you can add the RSS feed to your favourite feed reader. If you want regular updates on your entire search, at long last you can have an RSS feed on that as well.
The lack of RSS alerts has been the main reason why I have not regularly used Ask News in the past, but the availability of feeds plus the innovative features they have now introduced have convinced me to add them to my main collection of current news sources. A long time coming but well worth the wait. I do have one niggle - don't I always?! - Big News is only available on the .com site. The UK site has the same old interface and results: I have to remember to enter news.ask.com as the URL. As with other developments and new features that they have introduced, I hope that they will roll this one out onto the UK site soon.
Ask is not the only search engine to restrict new services to its US site. Following Live.com's announcement (http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2008/04/17/we-ve-revamped-news-search.aspx) about its revamped news results, I waited with bated breath to see the new improved service in operation. Alas, nothing happened and after several days of monitoring and hearing from other bloggers how wonderful it is I was still getting the same boring old results. Then I twigged that it was probably because Live.com automatically kicks me into the UK version of its services rather than the US one. Those of us in the UK see a straight forward linear listing of text articles.
Live News - UK version
It was only when I changed my Language settings from English (United Kingdom) to English (United States) that I saw what all the fuss was about. The results page, as many have commented, is more 'Google-like'. The appearance is similar, stories are clustered together and photos included in the listings. One up on Google, though, is the inclusion of news videos. Roll your cursor over the thumbnails and you see a preview.
Live News - US Version
Overall, I prefer Live's presentation of the results to Google's but Live at now offers RSS feeds for alerts.
The Energy Export Databrowser (http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/), set up Jonathan Callahan, is based on BP's Statistical Review(http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6848&contentId=7033471) and provides a quick and easy way to view country data on consumption, import and export of crude oil and natural gas. It covers over 80 countries and data goes back to the 1960s. There is feedback on the browser itself and an interesting discussion on the accuracy and validity of the underlying data on The Oildrum (http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4127).
Energy Export Databrowser: UK natural gas consumption, production, export and import
Alacra's Research Recap (http://www.researchrecap.com/) pulls together industry, economic, academic, market, investment and credit research reports. It concentrates on free content but also offers links to selected paid research deemed of relevance to the topic. Priced reports are sourced from a wide variety of providers, including the Alacra Store. Much of the paid research is usually password-protected and will not show up in a Google-type search, but Research Recap has made arrangements with providers to review their proprietary research to determine what is appropriate to highlight for Research Recap's audience. Research Recap does not claim to be comprehensive and may not include items that are widely circulated elsewhere. Research Recap is published in blog format and is also available as an RSS feed.
Seven new Editions of the World's Major Companies Series have been published by Graham & Whiteside and are now available for purchase on the dataresources (http://www.dataresources.co.uk/contents/en-uk/d57_worldsmajorcompanies.html) web site.
Major Chemical and Petrochemical Companies of the World 2008
This directory covers more than 7,000 of the leading chemical and petrochemical companies worldwide.
Major Energy Companies of the World 2008
More than 4,000 companies involved in coal mining and coal products; electricity supply; fuel distribution; natural gas supply; nuclear engineering; oil and gas exploration and production; oil and gas services and equipment; and oil refining worldwide.
Major Financial Institutions of the World 2008 (2 Vols)
Over 9,000 leading financial institutions worldwide, including banks, investment, insurance and leasing companies.
Major Food and Drink Companies of the World 2008
9,800 of the leading food, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink companies worldwide.
Major Information Technology Companies of the World 2008
This directory covers more than 3,100 of the leading information technology companies worldwide.
Major Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Companies of the World 2008
The world's largest pharmaceutical companies, providing essential business profiles of the international leaders in the industry.
Major Telecommunications Companies of the World 2008
Profiles of more than 3,500 of the leading telecommunications companies worldwide, including many of the top Internet companies.
Page2RSS monitors web pages for changes and notifies you of those changes by RSS. Simply type in the URL of the page you wish to monitor and then add the feed URL to your favourite feed reader. Excellent tool for pages that do not offer their own RSS feeds.
Workshop: Business Information: Key Web Resources
Organiser: TFPL
Venue: TFPL, London
Date: Thursday, 17th July 2008
Presenter: Karen Blakeman.
URL: http://www.tfpl.com/skills_development/courses/cd.cfm?linkid=TR945&catid=f&searchid=2
Outline:
This one day workshop looks at key sources of business information available on the Internet. It will compare what is available for free with pay-as-you-go and subscription services, and highlight quality, coverage, functionality and price. Throughout the day, there will be practical sessions during which you can work through exercises or try out your own research. Each delegate receives a comprehensive set of notes. The workshop will benefit anyone who plans to use, or already uses, the Internet for gathering business information.
Workshop: Assessing the Quality of Information
Organiser: TFPL
Venue: TFPL, London
Date: Friday, 26th September 2008
Presenter: Karen Blakeman.
URL: http://www.tfpl.com/skills_development/courses/cd.cfm?linkid=TR943&catid=f&searchid=2
Outline:
This course provides a step by step guide to assessing and evaluating the quality of information. All types of media will be covered but the emphasis will be on electronic resources. The techniques are applicable to all sectors and types of organisations and all levels of expertise.
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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| This page was last updated on 20th June 2008 | Copyright
© 2008 Karen Blakeman. |