All posts by Karen Blakeman

I have worked in the information profession for over twenty years and have been a freelance consultant since 1989. My company (RBA Information Services) provides training and consultancy on the use of the Internet, and on accessing and managing information resources. Prior to setting up RBA I worked at the Colindale Central Public Health Laboratory, and then spent ten years in the Pharmaceutical and Health Care industry before moving to the International management consultancy group Strategic Planning Associates. I edit and publish an electronic newsletter called Tales from the Terminal Room. Other publications include Search Strategies for the Internet. I am a Fellow of CILIP: The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, a member of the UK eInformation Group (UKeiG).

Google

Google previews web pages in results

November 15, 2010 Karen Blakeman

Google are offering previews of web pages in your results. People have been reporting this feature for many days now but today is the first time I’ve seen it in action. Run your search as normal and next to each result in your list you should see a magnifying glass. Click on it and Google gives you a preview of the page with the areas containing your text outlined and the text in boxes superimposed on top of the preview. Although it is a useful tool for assessing the relevance of a page I do find it irritating that Google then automatically previews every result as I move my mouse around the results page. You have to click on the magnifying glass again to switch it off.

Google Previews Search Results Pages

Business Information

Five tips on going freelance

November 15, 2010 Karen Blakeman 5 Comments

Earlier this year I was asked by a magazine for five tips for people considering setting up business and becoming self-employed. As is so often the case the deadline was along the lines of “the next half hour”. What I came up with was off the top of my head. (I don’t know if they were ever used in the final article as I do not subscribe to the publication). I’ve recently had a few people ask me about going freelance so I thought I’d reproduce the tips here. I might have changed a couple of them if I’d had more time to think about it but I’ve left the five as I originally wrote them.

It’s feast or famine. Clients don’t spread their custom neatly throughout the year. They are like buses: you wait for one for ages and then half a dozen come at once! There will be “quiet” periods when you will not be earning (for me they are August, end of December and beginning of January) and times when you have to be here, there and everywhere. Make sure you have a cash buffer or reserves to cover the quiet times so that you can continue to pay the bills.
You can say no. It is tempting to say yes to everything especially as you never really know when the next job or project will be, but be realistic. Can you really travel from Reading to Cardiff to Edinburgh to Huddersfield to Canterbury and then on to Aberystwyth in one week? And if something is outside your main area of expertise think twice about taking it on. It is good to stretch yourself and expand your knowledge and the services that you can offer, but if it is going to be a one-off and take you a week or two to get up to speed – DON’T DO IT!
Be realistic in your estimates of billable work and time and fix your fees accordingly. If you are lucky, you will be working for six months of the year. The rest of the time will be taken up by the “quiet” periods ( see 1 above), travelling, marketing, social media, preparing proposals, keeping yourself up to date, admin, invoicing, chasing payments… you get the idea. Holidays? No holiday pay. Not feeling too good? No sick pay.
Use social media to the full. Get yourself on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Flickr etc. Write a blog. It all takes time to set up and establish a presence but it really is worth it. Google, Bing and Yahoo all include social media in their search results so it makes sense to exploit every opportunity to reach as many people as possible. As well as a marketing tool it is a great way to keep in contact with other self employed people, share experiences and – sometimes – clients.
Don’t be afraid to admit it is not for you. Being self employed does not suit everyone. It can be difficult keeping yourself motivated if you are working on your own and some find it difficult to cope with the uncertain cash flow. If it becomes too stressful, walk away. At least you will have a better idea of what is involved in running a business and, hopefully, appreciate freelancers a little more.

Business Information, Statistics

StatsWales: free statistics on Wales

November 10, 2010 Karen Blakeman

When looking for UK official statistics many of us immediately think of http://www.statistics.gov.uk/. If you are looking for data on Wales, though, you really should be heading for the Welsh Assembly’s StatsWales at http://statswales.wales.gov.uk/. This is a free-to-use service that allows you to “view, manipulate, create and download tables from the most detailed official data on Wales”. You can run a keyword search on the data or simply browse the Reports folders.

StatsWales folders

The built in search option may be your best bet (Note: Google ‘site:’ search does not work on this data collection). Most of the tables, charts and reports are clearly labelled but there are some sections where all you are told is that the data is “Indicator 9a” or “Indicator 12c”, for example. It is only when you click on the file that you discover it’s contents.

StatsWales Folders

You can also select subsets of the data and produce your own tables and charts. If you register you can create your own profile, design and save your reports.

StatsWales Charts

There are many options for viewing and manipulating the data on the web site itself and it can seem overwhelming at times. You may prefer to just download the data sets and work on them offline, but if you think you might be a regular user of the this site it is worth working through the tutorials and getting to grips with the StatsWales tools. You can register for e-mail notifications of changes to specific datasets and RSS feeds are also available to alert you to new sets that have been added to the site.

Twitter

Paper.li: useful Twitter summary or major irritation?

November 7, 2010 Karen Blakeman 3 Comments

Paper.li (http://paper.li) organizes links and tweets into a newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for your own Twitter network, a list or #tag. It is run by SmallRivers, a privately held Swiss startup co-founded by Edouard Lambelet and Iskander Pols and located at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL campus.

To create a newspaper simply sign up with your Twitter account and decide whether you want a newspaper generated from your own Twitter network, a hashtag or a Twitter list. Paper.li then extracts all tweets that include URLs, the content found at these URLs (text, blog post, photo, video), analyses the content to identify the topic (for example Politics, Technology ) and then constructs a newspaper for you.

The front page gives you what Paper.li thinks are the most important stories for each topic. How it chooses those is not clear: the FAQ merely says that it uses semantic analysis and “paper.li magic”! You can view more stories on a topic by clicking on one of the tabs at the top of the page.

The paper is updated daily but you can change the update frequency to morning and evening or weekly editions and also alter the time at which the edition is created. Email alerts can be set up to tell you when a new edition is available.

I was initially sceptical about the value of Paper.li. I use Tweetdeck to manage my Twitterstream with searches, lists and groups to help me keep up with subjects and people that are important to me. I also have RSS feeds of some of my searches. After a few days of using it, though, I found that it did bring to the fore important or interesting stories that I might otherwise have missed, especially when I am travelling and do not have time to catch up with all of my Twitterstream. It has also highlighted Twitter users – mostly publishers- who I follow but who rarely report on anything that is relevant to my areas of interest. (A frenzy of unfollowing ensued after I viewed my first few editions). I can also see it as being a useful way of presenting Tweets and information from a conference. Simply set up a Paper.li for the hashtag. It is by no means perfect and I would not rely on it as the sole means of keeping up to date. It does miss and exclude stories that are important to me, but the paper that is produced is easy and quick to scan and as long as you are aware of its limitations it can be a useful addition to your information management toolbox.

So why the possible “major irritation”? You can promote a paper automatically on Twitter using the “Promote it” option. The default is set to ON – or certainly was when I signed up – with the result that some of us were being bombarded with notifications that someone’s latest Paper.li was out. Frankly, I don’t care and neither do a lot of other people. It created a backlash against the service for a while so if you do decide to set your own daily paper please go into your settings and set ‘Promote on Twitter’ to OFF. If you have set up a conference or hashtag Paper.li, simply mention the link on an appropriate blog or web page, or in the occasional tweet. People can them decide for themselves whether or not to subscribe to it.

If you want to keep up with developments at Paper.li they have a blog at http://blog.paper.li/, are on Twitter at @SmallRivers and Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/smallrivers/274789310110

Update: Just tried to change the update frequency and title for two hashtag newspapers. You can’t! The settings can only be changed for a newspaper generated for your Twitter username. #FAIL

Business Information, Top 10 Business Sites

Top Business Search Tips – 27th October 2010

November 5, 2010 Karen Blakeman 3 Comments

October 27th saw me back in Wales running another business information workshop. This built on the session I ran in July (see Top Business Search Tips at http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/08/10/top-business-search-tips/). We looked at more advanced search techniques for business research with an emphasis on industry/market sectors and covering both official data, market research and what can be gleaned from social media. As usual I asked them to come up with a group Top 10 Tips at the end of the day. There were two tips that were common to both sessions: my own business sources listings (well, they were influenced slightly in that some of my pages were mentioned during the session) and StatsWales, which is the place to go for statistics if you are doing business in Wales. They were also at liberty to suggest sites and tips that I did not mention in the workshop but which they, their users and clients find useful.

1. British Library’s Business Essentials on the Web http://bl-business-essentials.wikispaces.com/

“Our wiki is a one-stop shop listings site of essential websites for small businesses and entrepreneurs. The aim of the site is to save you time trawling the web, by bringing together useful sites for small businesses in one place.”

Recommended for the Industries section that gives useful sites and starting points for SMEs and start-ups who may be researching industry sectors.

2. Business Information on the Internet (http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/) Business resources organised by type for example statistics, market research, company registers.

3. Slidefinder http://www.slidefinder.net/
Google’s filetype ppt search looks for your terms anywhere in a presentation. Slidefinder’s default search finds single slides that contain all of your terms. Two of the participants gave this one a thorough road test and were seriously impressed!

4. Repeat one or more of your search terms once, twice, thrice… to change what appears in your results page. Useful if you are fed up with the same old pages coming up again and again. You can enter up to 32 search terms in Google before Google starts dropping terms.

5. Filetype search. Use the Advanced Search file format or the filetype: command to focus your search on PDF (market/industry reports, government documents), XLS (for data and statistics in spreadsheets), PPT (expert presentations, conference talks or overviews on a topic from independent experts, academics, government bodies). If your file extension is not listed in the advanced search screen menu enter your search terms in the standard search box followed by command filetype: and the file extension. For example

wind turbines energy generation UK filetype:pptx

Use Docjax (http://www.docjax.com/) as a quick way of searching both Yahoo and Google for PDF, XLS, DOC and PPT files.

6. StatsWales http://statswales.wales.gov.uk/ The place to go for official statistics on Wales. “StatsWales is a free-to-use service that allows visitors to view, manipulate, create and download tables from the most detailed official data on Wales.” Email alerts and RSS feeds are available.

7. Getting British Business Online ( http://www.gbbo.co.uk/) A collaboration between Enterprise UK, Google, BT, and e-skills UK with the support of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. This site provides a simple and quick way to for small business to create their first website. Recommended by several of the workshop participants in conjunction with…

8. Business IT Guides (http://wales.businessitguide.com/) E-business support from the Welsh Assembly.

9. Realise the importance of social networks. Yes, it is biased and it can be difficult or impossible to find out who is behind the rant and the extreme negative comments but a lot of people read and forward these to their followers or friends. What started out as an isolated complaint can snowball to a major hate campaign. Companies ignore social media at their peril. Get in there quick if a customer is making a lot of noise about a bad experience and turn it to your advantage.

10. Time! The internet, search engines, business resources and social media are ever changing. Try and find time to keep up to date and try out new “stuff”.

Business Information

Scottish Business Information Service (SCOTBIS)

October 24, 2010 Karen Blakeman

The Scottish Business Information Service ( http://www.scotbis.com/) is a national information service for Scottish businesses based on the resources held at the National Library of Scotland. SCOTBIS provides users with a free enquiry service and also offers fee-based research and other charged services. Further information of their services is available on their web site and details of their charges are at http://www.scotbis.com/index.cfm?section_id=01.05. The Web Resources section lists useful sites and key starting points for business including market research, statistics, company information and starting a business. Some of the information concentrates on Scottish markets and companies but most of the information is of value and interest to businesses based elsewhere.

As well as browsing through the list of resources you can search the site using keywords and limit your search to title, industry or country/region. There is also an option to restrict your search to specific databases, for example companies, market research reports.

The What’s New section lists the latest resources added to the listings and databases. Although there are RSS feed icons on some of the What’s New pages they do not seem to be working at the moment. Apart from this glitch SCOTBIS is an excellent starting point for anyone wishing to search for and purchase business information and for reliable, good quality business resources.

Google

Google thinks I’m male

October 23, 2010 Karen Blakeman

I have always suspected that there was something different about me. Am I slightly eccentric, totally bonkers, or perhaps I am an alien from another planet? Google has the answer. After believing for the whole of my life that I am female Google tells me I am male!

I am giving a presentation this week in Edinburgh to the Scottish Financial Crime Group about what Google knows about us as individuals. For the purposes of accurate research I enabled Google’s web search history, suspended my usual advert and cookie management, and disabled my browsers’ ad blocking plugins. The ads drove me mad and my Google search results began to go all over the place. It was a ghastly experience. I was not, though, expecting my Google’s ad preferences page to tell me that based on the pages I had viewed it had deduced I was male (stop sniggering at the back). Here is the screen shot of my ads preferences:

Googles ads preferences

Google obviously thinks that we ladies are not interested in business, computers, internet or social media. So what would classify me as female? Viewing recipes perhaps? Shopping for clothes online? Or visiting pages about embroidery?

Normality has now been restored to my computer and I have regained my sanity. I have disabled web history, opted out of targeted advertising, re-implemented my cookie management procedures and re-enabled my ad blocking plugins.

If you want to see what Google thinks about you, go to http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/

social media

Social Media in a Corporate Context

October 18, 2010 Karen Blakeman 2 Comments

I’ve just returned from one conference and now about to go off to another. Last week it was Internet Librarian International which looked at how internet technologies, and social media in particular, are being used by libraries and information centres as tools for research, to provide better services and support users. It was a well attended and very interactive conference with social media being put to good use to share the event within and outside of the conference. On Friday the hashtag #ili2010 was trending on Twitter in the UK. If you would like to catch up with tweets, presentations, photos etc. the links below should give you a head start:

Twapperkeeper #ili2010 tweet archive http://www.twapperkeeper.com/
Socialmention http://socialmention.com/ Search on ili2010
Addictomatic http://addictomatic.com/topic/ili2010
Twazzup http://www.twazzup.com/ Search on ili2010
Flickr http://flickr.com/ Search on ili2010

This week’s conference is Social Media in a Corporate Context and starts tomorrow (Tuesday, 19th October 2010) in Manchester. Organised by Communicate magazine this event is very different from Internet Librarian in its emphasis and concentrates on corporate communications and reputation monitoring/management:

How can you keep your company’s integrity and reputation intact when control is harder to manage?
How can you effectively use the information gained from social media evaluation?
How do you catch the attention of the tech savvy internet generation?
How do you ensure you have the planning, expertise and resource to manage communications during a crisis?
How can companies reach out to dispersed employees and keep them engaged?

The full programme and list of speakers is available at http://communicatemagazine.co.uk/events-mainmenu-29/107-smcc/1670-agenda . I am particularly looking forward to Karl Brookes, head of NHS Salford communications and marketing, presenting “The NHS – Reaching disparate audiences: a case study”. They may well be using social media to reach their audiences but for most of those working within the NHS social media is usually blocked!

I understand that there are still a few places available so get in quick if you’d like to attend. If you are attending the main part of the conference on Tuesday there is an option to attend a free half day workshop on Wednesday on “Reaching and engaging journalists through social media”. Details are at http://communicatemagazine.co.uk/events-mainmenu-29/115-workshop-reaching-journalists-through-social-media

The hashtag for the event is #smcc10

A tweet archive has been set up on Twapperkeeper at http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/smcc10 and there is a Lanyrd at http://lanyrd.com/ctbh

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