The July/August issue of Tales from the Terminal Room is now available at http://www.rba.co.uk/tfttr/archives/2010/jul2010.shtml
In this issue:
If you carry out a lot of research on businesses and industries in China you might be interested in the offer currently available from dataresources. For a limited period they are offering 45% discount on SinoMedia’s China Full Directory Kit, which provides information resources required to do business in China. Originally priced at over £1350 the kit is now £750 (+delivery) .
The China Full Directory Kit includes:
Full details can be found at http://www.dataresources.co.uk/
At the end of July I was in mid Wales running a workshop on business information. There was a good mix of experience and backgrounds amongst the participants and plenty of time for people to try out ‘stuff’ and share tips with each other. At the end of the day they came up with a list of their top 10 business search tips. Actually it was 11 – the additional one was my own web site, which I used as a starting point for many of the examples. You could say they were virtually brainwashed into including it so I am giving them that one as a ‘free’ extra! Here is the full list.
1. Marketingfile http://www.marketingfile.com/ Collection of business to business and consumer mailing lists. Free to search and reasonably priced pay as you go purchase options. Buy as many or as few records as you need or as dictated by your budget.
2. Directionlessgov http://www.directionlessgov.com/ Having problems finding information on UK government web sites or on DirectGov? Then get thee hence to this Google custom search engine from the people behind They Work for You (http://www.theyworkforyou.com/), What do they know – make and browse Freedom of Information Requests (http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/) and FixMyStreet (http://www.fixmystreet.com/)
“We got so fed up with the general uselessness of the multi-million pound shambles otherwise known as the Direct.gov.uk portal, that we decided to build something better in under an hour. Sadly, we ran catastrophically behind schedule, but we still finished before lunch.
Google results are shown on the right hand side of your results screen and you can compare them with the DirectGov results on the left hand side of the screen. There seems to be intermittent problems at the moment when clicking on the Directionlessgov search results; you are sometimes taken to the Directionlessgov home page instead of the page in the results. Nevertheless, still worth using as the results are far superior and you do at least have the details of the web site and document.
3. Companies House http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/ The official companies register for the UK. There is a free companies and disqualified directors search available under the Webcheck Service. At the time of writing the link was in the middle of the right hand part of the home page. You can search the database for free and free company information includes name, registered company number, registered address, status, date of incorporation, nature of business, date of accounts, previous names. Documents can be purchased on a pay per view basis.
4. Kompass http://www.kompass.com/ Worldwide directory of products. Search by keywords, company, products, classification codes. Basic search is free of charge. In order to use the advanced search and view full company profiles you will have to purchase a subscription or ‘credit units’. The minimum number of 50 credit units costs EUR120 or USD 170
5. StatsWales http://statswales.wales.gov.uk/ Forget about the ONS – if you need data and statistics on Wales this is the place to go. “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.
6. Business support, information and advice | Flexible Support for Business Wales http://fs4b.wales.gov.uk/ Everything you need to know about setting up and running a business in Wales.
7. D&B UK small business centre for business reports and company financial performance tracking http://www.do-business.net/sbc/. Provides reports on over 3.3 million UK companies. Report content varies depending on whether you need a customer, competitor, supplier or a partner report. Prices start at GBP 7.50 and there are sample reports to give you an idea of what each includes. The supplier report, for example, gives star ratings for overall condition of the business and how it compares with other business in the same industry sector, size of the business, names of the directors, significant legal proceedings/events such as County Court Judgements.
8. FITA http://www.fita.org/ Founded in 1984, FITA “fosters international trade by strengthening the role of local, regional, and national associations throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada”. In addition to services for members, there is a very useful collection of Web resources for International trade. There are over 8000 annotated links. Categories include country or region, legal resources, doing business in another country, International market research and business directories. The business directories are subdivided into industry specific, global and country directories. The links are in the menu on the left hand side of the screen.
9. UK Trade and Investment http://www.ukti.gov.uk/ “UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) works with UK-based businesses to ensure their success in international markets, and encourage the best overseas companies to look to the UK as their global partner of choice.” There is information on industry sectors and business opportunities in other countries as well as help for new and experienced exporters.
10 LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/ Useful professional networking site for biographical information on people (if they are members) and for identifying contacts within companies.
And the eleventh is Business Information on the Internet (Compiled by Karen Blakeman) http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/, business resources organised by type e.g. statistics, market research, company registers.
Google has rolled out Bing style results for its image search. If you have never used Bing Image search take a look now. Several people in my latest search workshop loved it so much that they included it in their top search tips (http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2010/07/16/top-search-tips-14th-july-2010-workshop/). Bing Images results do not do page by page results: Bing Images does continuous scroll. As you move down through the results more images are loaded, and more, and more. There is no click “next page” to distract you. And now Google has copied the style… sort of.
I have several problems with Google’s new image results layout. The first thing that struck me was that the images are all crammed in side by side to neatly fill the rows. Have the images been cropped to obtain the desired effect or have they been selected by dimensions, rather than relevance, to fill the ‘mosaic’? Bing has four images in each row regardless of their relative dimensions so there is more white space between the images, which is easier on the eye. Google’s display makes me feel as though I’m in a jam-packed standard class commuter train carriage: Bing is the more spacious, relaxed first class.
Neither Google nor Bing display by default image information, but you only need to hover over the image in which you are interested to see further details. The information is almost the same in both but Bing has an additional option to look for more sizes. The size option is great if you want to use an image but do not want to have the trouble of re-scaling it for your particular application. But not all images are available in ‘more sizes’. It depends on whether or not other web pages have reproduced the image with different dimensions. If you own a particular image with strict copyright protection and you know you have only posted a specific size on one page, this can be a useful tool in tracking down copyright violations.
When it comes to scrolling down through your results, Google seems to have lost the plot. Work your way down through the results on Bing and the display smoothly unfolds. Google’s is stop start stop…….start, stop. And it is so sloooooooow. I can almost hear the cog wheels clanking. Another distraction in Google is that batches of images are separated by the text ‘page 2’, ‘page 3’, ‘page 4’ etc. Why? The whole point of continuous scrolling of results is that there are no pages of results.
As a comparison, here are Google’s results for an image search of Blackpool Tower:
Here are Bing’s results:
Bing is so much faster, smoother and slicker.
When it comes to clicking through on an image Google almost wins. Google gives you a background of the web page and superimposed upon that is the full size image. To the right is information about the image with the warning “This image may be subject to copyright”.
Bing’s does not have the same initial impact, but it does display a scrollable list of thumbnails of your search results to the left of the screen. This is very useful if the image you have selected turns out not to be exactly what you need and you want to review the alternatives.
Who wins? It has to be Bing. It is much faster, easier on the eye, has equally relevant results and has an extra ‘more sizes’ option. And finally… it just feels right.
I am running a series of hands-on workshops this autumn in London, and the first is on Advanced Google Searching. It is being held on September 23rd at Just IT, 7 Sandy’s Row, which is near Liverpool Street.
Google is the first port of call for many of us when it comes to searching the Internet, and with more data and services being added all the time it seems the obvious place to start. More information, more search features but not necessarily more relevant results. This hands-on workshop will look at the latest developments in Google and how to focus your search to obtain better results.
Topics covered include:
This workshop is suitable for all levels of experience. The techniques and approaches covered can be applied to all subject areas.
Please note: this workshop concentrates on Google and does not cover the same topics as my recent UKeiG “Changing Landscape of Search” session.
A booking form is available at http://www.rba.co.uk/training/AdvancedGoogle.htm
Sorry? David Foster Wallace – who he?
Exactly. Not well known in the literary circles we move in. But let’s go back to the beginning…
This all started with numerous tweets about “I write like” (http://iwl.me/). Just paste in some text from a blog posting, article or essay that you have written and it tells you who you write like. It told me that one of my blog postings was in the style of Dan Brown, and a second blog posting and an article for Information Today’s Online magazine were in the style of David Foster Wallace. Phil Bradley tweeted that his style was reported as being akin to DFW. Like me he had never heard of the fellow (http://twitter.com/Philbradley/statuses/18723367233).
This is where I have to play around with the chronology of events because I want to get the frivolous stuff out of the way before moving onto the seriously worrying aspects of this website. So, first I shall regale you with some more “you write like” pronouncements.
Neil Ford (Twitttername: @neiljohnford) tweeted “just cut & pasted a few paragraphs from A Christmas Carol into “I Write Like” and it told me I write like Stephen King!” (http://twitter.com/neiljohnford/statuses/18769020129).
And thanks to Tom Roper for “I Write like Dan Brown « LRB blog” http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2010/07/15/christopher-tayler/i-write-like-dan-brown/. Do read the comments as well.
Phil Bradley then tweeted that he had “Pasted in some Hamlet, and told it was like James Joyce.” (http://twitter.com/Philbradley/statuses/18769523421). Phil did not say which part of Hamlet he used but I can believe that a computer analysis of the text could come up with Joyce. What is odd, though, is that I would have expected “I write like” to recognise a famous Shakespeare play. I tried paragraphs from A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. They came back with Charles Dickens as I would expect. But would it recognise a lesser known work? I dug out a few paragraphs from The Wreck of the Golden Mary, courtesy of Gutenburg (The Wreck of the Golden Mary http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1465/1465-h/1465-h.htm) and Charles Dickens was transformed into Jack London.
And more great news for me. I pasted in the bullet points from my recent workshop on the Changing Landscape of Search and I am a budding Charles Dickens. I have pasted below the text that I used so that you can all appreciate my true literary worth:
Charles Dickens, eat your heart out.
How does this work?
According to the “I write like” blog:
“Actually, the algorithm is not a rocket science, and you can find it on every computer today. It’s a Bayesian classifier, which is widely used to fight spam on the Internet. Take for example the “Mark as spam” button in Gmail or Outlook. When you receive a message that you think is spam, you click this button, and the internal database gets trained to recognize future messages similar to this one as spam. This is basically how “I Write Like” works on my side: I feed it with “Frankenstein” and tell it, “This is Mary Shelley. Recognize works similar to this as Mary Shelley.” Of course, the algorithm is slightly different from the one used to detect spam, because it takes into account more stylistic features of the text, such as the number of words in sentences, the number of commas, semicolons, and whether the sentence is a direct speech or a quotation.”
But writing style is more than that. It is the vocabulary, the sentence structure (and that is not just about the number of words, commas and semicolons) and the subject matter. When I told my husband what I was blogging about he confessed that he had tried it out on a couple of his articles. The results were Conan Doyle and David Foster Wallace (him again!). I had a go with two pages of his novel University Shambles and it came back with H P Lovelock. Rather a come-down he thought as one reviewer had described his masterpiece as “very David Lodge”, but that was probably referring more to the treatment of the subject matter rather than the writing style.
Harmless bit of fun?
At the top of the “I write like” blog there is a reference to another blog posting “Are you Tolstoy or are you Dan Brown? Ask ‘I Write Like.’ Then disregard answer – Lewis Grossberger” http://trueslant.com/lewisgrossberger/2010/07/16/are-you-tolstoy-or-are-you-dan-brown-ask-%E2%80%9Ci-write-like-%E2%80%9D-then-disregard-answer/ Do read this.
For most of us it is just a bit of fun. We play with it, we move on. But when it has analysed your text and told you how marvellous you are there is a prominent invitation to subscribe to download a free copy of “Short Story Writing: A Practical Treatise on the Art of the Short Story By Charles Raymond Barrett, Ph. B.”
Although its says “We respect your privacy: email addresses are never sold, and you can unsubscribe at any time.” I decided to play safe and use a disposable Spamgourmet email account. [If you want to investigate disposable emails Phil Bradley has an excellent list at http://www.philb.com/iwantto/email.htm]
I haven’t yet read “A Practical Treatise on the Art of the Short Story” – I’ll report back later – but it does sound rather learned and dry. Much more exciting and enticing is “Do you want to get your book published?”. Of course you do! And the ultimate “Learn how to secure a book publishing contract!” This is it. You are going to be famous. Both of these links take you to “eBooks: Writing a Winning Book Proposal” at http://michaelhyatt.com/products/ebook-writing-a-winning-book-proposal. It looks as though “I write like” is an affiliate of Michael Hyatt’s website, which offers two publications on writing “winning” proposals for fiction and non-fiction books. That means “I write like” earns commission when people click on the links on “I write like” and make a purchase on Michael Hyatts publications page.
The ebooks aren’t free but neither are they that expensive:
“…I decided to offer these eBooks for just $19.97 each. I may raise the price later, but for right now, I would rather make these eBooks available to as many people as possible at an affordable price. In addition, if you are considering both fiction and non-fiction, you can buy both eBooks for just $29.94—a $10.00 savings!”
I have no idea if the books are any good, but I’ll find out soon. Yes, reader, I have bought them. Watch this space for reviews.
What worries me about this type of set up is not so much that people are being asked to part with money – it is a relatively small individual amount – but that it raises hopes. My husband’s first novel, University Shambles, has been published and is doing well. It took him 18 months to write but 3 years to find a publisher. Many in the publishing industry have told us that he was lucky to find a publisher so quickly or at all! It is easy enough to write a formulaic winning proposal but that won’t guarantee that it will be even glanced at by the publisher. Most are filed straight away under WPB. We are living in tough economic times and there are bound to be many who will be putting pen to paper or dusting off a manuscript in the hope of hitting the virtual shelves at Amazon or even a real physical shelf at Waterstones. Writing the book is nothing compared with the long hard slog of finding a publisher. The only real winners in this set up is Michael Hyatt and his company Thomas Nelson Publishers.
By the way, this posting is written in the style of H P Lovelock.
An interesting mix of sectors were represented at my recent UKeiG workshop “The Changing Landscape of search”. With social media becoming such an important part of search, there was a lot to cover in just one day and still include time for delegates to try out search tools for themselves. At the end of these workshops I ask the group to come up with their own top 10 tips. On this occasion we ended up with 13 and then a few people emailed me some more, thereby doubling the number to 20! The list is a combination of simple tried and tested techniques, new services and tools, and new strategies for dealing with the vast amount of information that is returned by the search engines.
The slides for the day can be found on Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/changing-landscape-of-search
Real Business reports that Business Link is yet another UK government service due for the chop. In an exclusive interview Mark Prisk, the business and enterprise minister, told Real Business ““We’re going to wind down the Regional Development Agencies, and as part of those, we’ll be winding down the regional Business Link contracts.” (Business Link to be axed http://realbusiness.co.uk/leadership/exclusive_business_link_to_be_axed).
Mark Prisk went on to say “The regional Business Links have spent too much time signposting and not enough time actually advising.” and that he envisages a “21st Century service” co-funded by the private sector and delivered online. The interview has been picked up by numerous blogs and the regional press, and comments have been both negative and positive. Some people have nothing but praise for their local Business Link whilst others report that the advice they received was useless and a waste of time. This reflects the mixed feedback I get from people who attend my business information workshops: the quality of the service varies widely depending on which Business Link you use and who you speak to.
Also worth reading is Real Business’s analysis of Business Link at “Business Link: never fit for purpose” at http://realbusiness.co.uk/leadership/business_link_never_fit_for_purpose.
So what is going to replace Business Link if anything? Mark Prisk is reported as saying that he envisages private-sector business support agencies, such as those linked to their local Chamber of Commerce, taking on a bigger role in providing face-to-face advice and networking. In addition the “21st century” approach will include an improved and easier to use desktop and mobile online service and a call centre that will provide “that little bit of extra advice”.
Oh joy! We can now look forward to being held in a call centre queue for half the day before we reach a “consultant” who then works through the mandatory script. Some questions are easy enough to pre-package and include in an FAQ, for example where to find information on a company or the latest changes in VAT regulations. But, to be honest, if you do not already know the answer to either of those the chances of your business surviving are slim. Would the call centre be able to handle more complex enquiries, though? How about explaining why information on a particular company is NOT available at Companies House and should you be worried that it isn’t, or where to find a list of the 100 best selling books on mind, body and spirit for the years 2005-2009?
I must admit that I have never used Business Links myself. They were not around when I started my business in 1989 and as I have worked in the information industry for over 25 years I know where to find the main sources of reliable business information. More importantly, personal and professional networks play a significant part in my intelligence and news gathering activities as they probably do for many other business people; and the use of social media is increasing. I wonder, then, how much impact if any the demise of the Business Links will have on SMEs and UK business in general.
You may find advertisements on search results pages irritating but the search engines go to a lot of trouble to ensure that the ads you are exposed to match the content of your search and the sites that you select. Google stores this information in your ad preferences and allows you to view and edit them. You think you don’t have any just because you don’t click on ad? Then check out http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/.
It does not matter whether or not you are logged in to your Google account because the information is stored in cookies associated with your browser. If you use more than one browser, each will have their own set of preferences that have to be viewed from within the browser. This has implications if you conduct confidential research and others have access to your computer. You might be deleting your search history but it is still possible to get a general idea of what areas you are working on. Your ad preferences also affect advertisements that Google shows on other websites for which it provides advertisements, for example YouTube, news sites and blogs.
You can remove or add an interest category, or opt out altogether from Google’s targeted advertising. My Firefox ad preferences mostly reflect the type of research I carry out, although I was puzzled by the inclusion of Local -Regional Content – Africa.
To opt out of behavioural or targetted advertising run by other services the Network Advertising Initiative at http://www.networkadvertising.org/ lists about 50 members and allows you to opt-out of all or a selection. The list will also inform you whether or not you currently have an active cookie from that service. When I looked at my listing there were about fifteen I had never heard of and amazed that I had active cookies on nearly all of them. This is big business!
NAI member companies set a minimum lifespan of five years for their opt out cookies but if your browser is set to automatically clear cookies after a certain time period you will have to go through the opt-out procedure again. Note that opting-out does not mean that adverts will no longer be displayed, it just means that they will not match what Google and other services believe are your interests.
The Daily Mail has done it again and proved that the quality of their research is second to none, because they don’t do any. They have an exclusive on the possible product recall of the iPhone 4. You can see the article on the Daily Mail site at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1289965/Apple-iPhone-4-recalled-says-Steve-Jobs.html, or possibly not. By the time you read this posting the Daily Mail might have realised that they have made complete idiots of themselves and removed the story. So here is a screen shot of the headline:
The source of the story? The man himself: Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the possible recall last night via his Twitter account @ceoSteveJobs. There’s just one teensy weensy problem. The ‘bio’ for @ceoSteveJobs clearly states:
“I don’t care what you think of me. You care what I think of you. Of course this is a parody account.”
Perhaps the Daily Mail does not understand what parody is? Or maybe the ability to read is no longer a requirement for Daily Mail journalists?
Checking the authority and veracity of a source is an important part of research as those of us who do this for a living well know. It can be a time consuming and long-winded process but in this case it was clearly stated on the Twitter account that the source was A PARODY ACCOUNT. How difficult is it to read the profile on this account?
No doubt the Daily Mail will now regale us with tales of how Twitter is riddled with liars, fakes and false information and that it should be immediately banned from these shores.
Time to sing along to that popular ditty “The Daily Mail Song” by Dan and Dan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI
And as I finish writing this I see that the Daily Mail have pulled the story from their web site. If you are desperate to see a copy of the original I have one here. It will feature in my workshops on assessing the quality of information!