RBA Logo

Day-to-Day Essentials

Home
About RBA
Business Resources
Search Strategies for the Internet
Tales from the Terminal Room
Training
Contact Us

[Business Information Home Page] [Company Directories] [Company Financials] [Country Information] [Day-to-Day Essentials] [Direct Marketing] [Government & Politics] [Industry Sectors] [Keeping up to date] [Listings & Key Starting Points] [Market Research] [Mergers & Acquisitions] [News] [SMEs] [Statistics] [Stock Markets]

This page lists resources that we at RBA use on a regular or daily basis. It covers day to day essentials such as currency exchange rates, weather, postcodes, telephone directories, biographies and acronym finders.

Currency Exchange Rates
Libor rates
Purchasing Power over Time
Currency Abbreviations
VAT Rates

UK Base Rates/Interest Rates

Industry Classification Codes

UK Property/Real Estate

Street Maps
Postal Services

UK Electoral Roll
UK Telephone Codes
Telephone Directories

Glossaries

Acronyms

Travel

Biographies

Online Bookshops

Weather

Translation sites

 

Currency Exchange Rates

Pacific Exchange Rate Service pacific.commerce.ubc.ca/xr/
Historical daily exchange rates are available for 87 currencies, some going back to 1971. A chart gives the earliest date available for each currency.
Oanda Currency Convertor www.oanda.com
Includes options for generating tables and graphs of historical data some of which goes back to 1990. The tables can be formatted as HTML, ASCII or CSV.
Global Financial Data www.globalfindata.com
Current and Historical Data for the United States and over 150 countries, including stock markets from 1690, exchange rates from 1590, interest rates from 1700, commodities from 1500 and inflation from 1264. Data are recorded daily, weekly, monthly, and annually. There are several free annual data series including: inflation rates since 1264, interest rates since 1700, commodity prices since 1257, exchange rates since 1800. Subscriptions to the priced service range from USD 25 for some individual files to several thousand dollars for an annual subscription to the entire database.

Libor Rates

British Bankers Association www.bba.org.uk
Provides access to historic Libor rates in Excel format and going back to 1986.

Purchasing Power over Time

Current Value of Old Money
www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/current/howmuch.html

Currency Abbreviations

World Currencies and Abbreviations
www.jhall.demon.co.uk/currency/index.html

VAT Rates

Deloitte Tax www.deloitte.com
For a table of VAT and sales tax rates across the world, select Services followed by Tax, Indirect Tax, and then VAT/GST rates. Free service.
VAT Number Validation ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/vieshome.do
Validate any EU VAT number by selecting the member state and entering the VAT number.
PricewaterhouseCoopers: Global VAT Online
www.globalvatonline.pwcglobal.com
Priced service only.

UK Base Rates / Interest Rates

Bank of England Monetary and Financial Statistics Division www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/index.htm
Links to detailed information on exchange rates and interest rates. The Base Rates link is a spreadsheet that gives details of UK interest rates, and when they became effective, going back to 1970

Industry Classification Codes

Ramon - Eurostat Classification Server europa.eu.int/comm/eurostat/ramon/
If you don't know your NACE from your HS6, this site has many of the coding systems in use around the world including the Harmonized Commodity Description used in trade statistics services. Codes can be viewed online or downloaded in various formats.
1992 UK SIC Codes www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=483&More=N
Europa List of NACE Codes europa.eu.int/comm/competition/mergers/cases/index/nace_all.html
US Standard Industrial Classification Search
www.osha.gov/oshstats/sicser.html
North American Industry Classification System
www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html

Property/Real Estate (UK)

HM Land Registry www.landreg.gov.uk
The Land Registry guarantees the title to, and records the ownership of, interests in registered land in England and Wales. You can download Form 313 which is the form that you need to use to find out who owns a particular property.
Our Property - Property and house prices revealed OurProperty.co.uk
One of the many services that repackage data from the Land Registry of England and Wales, and the Registers of Scotland but this one offers users 20 free searches a week. You get to see the address of the property, the date it was sold and how much it was sold for. It does not give the name of the owner or the name of the lender. There is also an email alerting service that enables you to monitor house prices up to 500 meters from a post code. (http://www.ourproperty.co.uk/alert.html). The data goes back to 2000 and covers England, Wales and Scotland.
Land Registry Online www.landregisteronline.gov.uk
Provides immediate access to the Land Registry for England and Wales. Each property request costs GBP 2 and payment is made online via credit/debit. Once payment has been authorised the details are delivered as a PDF file.
HM Land Registry Property Prices Database www.landreg.gov.uk/propertyprice/
Up to date average house prices broken down by region, unitary authority, local authority, and post code sector and then by detached, semi-detached, terraced, flat/maisonette. Covers England and Wales only.
House Prices - Nationwide Building Society www.nationwide.co.uk/hpi/
Land Registers of Scotland www.ros.gov.uk
Environment Agency www.environment-agency.gov.uk
Information on flood risk and pollution available by location or post code.
Images of England www.imagesofengland.org.uk
Web site set up by English Heritage National Monuments Record containing information about listed buildings.

Street Maps

Google Maps maps.google.co.uk
Can combine street map with "local search" for business, restaurants etc.
Maps Live Search maps.live.com
UK Street Maps www.streetmap.co.uk
Multimap www.multimap.com
192.com Street Maps www.192.com

Postal Services

Postal Rates www.postalrates.info
Links to postal sites world-wide providing postal rates, postcodes, postal authorities, and philately.

UK Postcodes

Royal Mail www.royalmail.co.uk/paf/

Post and Zip codes World-wide

Links to Postcode Pages www.grcdi.nl/linkspc.htm

UK Postal Services

Royal Mail www.royalmail.co.uk
Parcel Force www.parcelforce.com

UK Electoral Roll

UK Electoral Roll www.192.com - Priced service.

UK Telephone Codes

UK Telephone Code Locator www.ukphoneinfo.com/section/home/introduction.shtml
Online CodeLook www.magsys.co.uk/telecom/codelook.asp
Searchable web database but number of lookups is restricted. There is also a windows application that can be downloaded to look-up partial telephone numbers to find the locality and tariff band, and look-up localities to find the code. Available to members only.

Telephone Directories

Telephone Directories on the Web www.infobel.com/teldir/
Annotated list of online telephone directories organised by continent and country.

Glossaries

The Glossarist www.glossarist.com/
Directory of glossaries on all subjects.
Electric Eclectic Glossaries bloxword.ca/glossaries.htm
See also the home page bloxword.ca/jimsbmks.htm where there are links to lists on grammar, dictionaries, experts, dates, authors and a lot more.
Moneyextra - Glossary - A-Z of financial terms
www.moneyextra.com/glossary/

Yahoo Financial Glossary biz.yahoo.com/glossary/

Acronyms

Acronym Finder www.acronymfinder.com
Acronyma www.acronyma.com

Travel

BAA - UK Flight Arrivals, Flight Timetable, Airport News
www.baa.co.uk
Real time information on flight arrivals at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Southampton.
Dohop - low cost flight search engine www.dohop.com
National Rail - the Gateway to Britain's National Rail Network
www.nationalrail.co.uk
Links to UK train companies, timetables, types of ticket, train running information (for example problems with the rail network in general, delays to services).
Trainline www.thetrainline.com
Ticket and reservation service.
Transport Direct - Connecting People to Places www.transportdirect.info
Information on buses and trains in the UK.

Biographies

Answers.com - Online Dictionary, Encyclopedia and much more www.answers.com/
Pulls together information from a variety of resources including Wikipedia.
Wikipedia www.wikipedia.org
The different language versions of Wikipedia are not usually translations of each other, but usually contain articles by different authors.
Credo Reference www.credoreference.com Formerly xRefer. Priced service.
Biography Center www.biography-center.com
Gale Biography Resource Center www.galegroup.com/BiographyRC/ Priced service.
Who2 www.who2.com
Biographies of famous people including classic authors, movie stars, kings and queens, mythical gods, cartoon characters.
Who named it www.whonamedit.com
A biographical dictionary of medical eponyms
NameBase www.namebase.org Priced service

Online Bookshops

Fast Book Finder www.fastbookfinder.com
A book price comparison tool that enables you to search by author, title or ISBN across several book stores at once and compare prices. UK and US based online book stores are displayed separately.
iBooknet: the independent booksellers' network www.ibooknet.org British cooperative of used books booksellers. Over 500,000 books listed by 40 established independent booksellers. Books bought and sold.
Golden Books Group - Leather bound books, used books and book sets, bookstore www.goldenbooksgroup.co.uk Antiquarian leather bound books, book sets and rare book dealers. Also stockists of antiquarian prints, maps, antiques and fine art.
Amazon UK www.amazon.co.uk
Amazon US Bookshop www.amazon.com
The Book Place www.thebookplace.co.uk
Blackwell's bookshop.blackwell.co.uk
Abebooks www.abebooks.com (formerly Just Books)
Second hand, out of print and antiquarian books.
Abook4All www.abook4all.com
An independent UK out of print online bookstore.

Weather

BBC Weather www.bbc.co.uk/weather/
The Met Office www.meto.gov.uk
Yahoo Weather weather.yahoo.co.uk

Translation Sites

Most of the sites listed below are machine translation sites or give you links to translation sites. They can be useful for obtaining rough and ready translations of text and Web pages but the results should be treated with caution.

AltaVista Babelfish babelfish.altavista.com
Google Language Tools www.google.com
Online Dictionaries and Translators www.word2word.com/dictionary.html
Free Translation of Web and Text www.freetranslation.com


[Business Information Home Page] [Company Directories] [Company Financials] [Country Information] [Day-to-Day Essentials] [Direct Marketing] [Government & Politics] [Industry Sectors] [Keeping up to date] [Listings & Key Starting Points] [Market Research] [Mergers & Acquisitions] [News] [SMEs] [Statistics] [Stock Markets]
This page was last updated on 29 July, 2007 Copyright © 1999-2007 Karen Blakeman
All rights reserved.