Tales from the Terminal Room

June 2003 Issue No. 44

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Tales from the Terminal Room ISSN 1467-338X
June 2003 Issue No. 44
Editor: Karen Blakeman
Published by: RBA Information Services

Tales from the Terminal Room (TFTTR) is a monthly newsletter, with the exception of July and August, which are published as a single issue. TFTTR includes reviews and comparisons of information sources and search tools; 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.


If you have taken a look at TFTTR on the Web site recently, you will have noticed a few changes. We are using a new template to make navigating this section easier and more consistent. The main consequence of this is that the pages now have the file extension .shtml and not htm. If you link to any pages in Tales from the Terminal Room, have bookmarks set up or are using page change monitoring software please change the URLs accordingly.

Also, if you browse the archives you may have noticed that we have started removing the hyperlinks from some of the older issues. This is because we do not normally update the content of the archived issues and URLs do change or sometimes end up pointing to completely different content. The text of the links will be kept but you will not be able to click on them.

We have also added a new page that lists the Gizmos of the Month. Not every Gizmo will be listed, only those that are still alive and kicking and of continued relevance.

Other changes in the pipeline include a PDF option for email delivery and additional print options for printing from the web site.

Watch this space!

Karen Blakeman


In this issue:

  • Turbo10 meta-search: less “turbo” and fewer breakdowns please
  • New Browser on the Block: Mozilla Firebird
  • Information Resources
    • Cookies and IT Law – Masons Out-law.com and Aboutcookies.org
    • Land Registry Online (pilot Web site)
    • Fast Book Finder
    • UK Law Firms on the Web
    • Bar (Barristers) on the Web
    • Research Buyers Guide
  • Gizmo of the Month
    • AlltheWeb URL Investigator
  • Meetings and Workshops
    • UKOLUG Seminar at Umbrella, UMIST, Manchester, 4th July 2003
    • Market Research on the Web, Manchester Business School, 3rd September 2003
    • Assessing the Quality of Information, TFPL, London, 16th September 2003


Turbo10 meta-search: less “turbo” and fewer breakdowns please

You have to hand it to Turbo10. If nothing else, they certainly know how to create interest in their product by turbo-charging their press releases. Every newsletter editor I know seems to have received details of the launch of this supposedly novel and innovative search service. Turbo10 is a meta-search tool which means that it takes your search and runs it across several other search tools at once. The results are combined and presented as a single list with any duplicates removed.

One does not always have time to review a new service properly but I was surprised at some Newsletters carrying Turbo10's press release almost verbatim and without any comment on the erroneous statements made by Turbo10. Claims such as “first commercial metasearch engine to connect to hundreds of specialised engines en masse” and “the first of its kind in the industry" are just plain wrong. Or do the likes of Copernic and Webseeker not count? And the clustering technology is not new either. NorthernLight is no more but Vivissimo and KillerInfo, both of whom cluster results into topics, are very much alive and kicking.

Testing the service

What about the service itself? As well as covering the standard search engines Turbo10 also searches what is sometimes referred to as the invisible or deep Web, or in Turbo10's case – the “Deep Net”: that is specialist databases not picked up by crawler based engines such as Google. The type of information covered in the “deep web” ranges from business sites, universities, and government departments to commercial directories and scientific databases.

With over 1000 sources to choose from, where does one start? Well, there is always the default Turbo10 (Globalseeker, Dogpile, Dmoz, mirago, encyclopedia.com, MSN, Yahoo and Wisenut). It is fast and the results of my test searches were of average to good relevance, but not as good as those achieved with Killerinfo, another meta-search tool and reviewed in the May issue of Tales from the Terminal Room.

What looks more promising, though, is the option to set up “My collections”. This enables you to set up topics or channels of up to 10 search tools selected from Turbo10's list. It is an interesting if somewhat eclectic list but, being UK based, Turbo10 has a refreshing sprinkling of UK and European sources. The difficulty here is finding out which are the best ones for a particular subject. The sites can be displayed under broad headings e.g. cooking, medical, science, legal, but you still need to know what individual sites cover in order to build up a good collection. Another issue, which some people may object to, is that you must supply a valid email address for "My Collections" to work. This, apparently, is so that they can email you a link for reloading your collections should you lose them by deleting the cookies set on your PC by Turbo10.

I set up two collections: one covering UK government and another for biomedicine. I started off with quite complex search strategies and got nowhere so ended up simplifying my test searches to “one- worders”. For UK government I searched on IR35 and for my biomedicine collection I tried separate searches on aspartame and on anthrax. Zilch! I checked that the sites did in fact have information relating to my queries by searching them directly. As I had expected, there was plenty of information on all of my subjects.

I tried out some other “My Collections” of “invisible” sites and experienced the same problems. Turbo10 is quite happy with standard search tools such as Google and AltaVista but fails dismally when it comes to tackling the specialist databases. I am not sure why this is. Many of the sources I looked at are handled perfectly well by KillerInfo and software tools such as Copernic, and it is not that difficult to set up interfaces to these databases. I had a go myself with Bluesquirrel's Webseeker. Webseeker is a meta-search software tool that sits on your PC and, in addition to predefined categories of search tools, it provides a wizard that enables to define your own groupings and add whatever sources you want. I replicated my Turbo10 “collections” and my test searches worked. Clearly, then, the problem is at Turbo10's end.

Conclusions

What can I say? It is a nice idea: a free meta-search service that covers standard search tools, includes specialist databases and directories, and allows you to define and select your own groupings. The problem is that the most interesting and useful part of the service – the “deep net” searching – does not work.

If Turbo10 can actually get their search interface to work, then it may be a contender. As it stands, I am sticking with KillerInfo for meta-searching, Copernic Professional for subject groupings of databases, and Webseeker for setting up my own lists of resources for searching. Both Copernic and WebSeeker are priced – USD 79.95 and USD 29.95 respectively - but they do work!

Karen Blakeman

URLs of sites:

Turbo10 http://turbo10.com/
KillerInfo http://www.killerinfo.com/
Copernic http://www.copernic.com/
Webseeker http://www.bluesquirrel.com/


New browser on the block: Mozilla Firebird

If you want a fast, reliable, free alternative to Internet explorer try Mozilla's Firebird. Firebird is just the browser component of Mozilla – no news or email reader, or other bells and whistles.

Features include options for blocking pop-ups, managing passwords and cookies, and controlling javascript options such as scripts that hide or change the status bar text. There is also a neat automatic image resizer that shrinks any image that is bigger than your window to make the whole image visible. And for Google Toolbar fans, there is a Mozilla version available at http://googlebar.mozdev.org/

Mozilla Firebird can be downloaded from http://www.mozilla.org/


Information Resources

General Sources http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/general.htm

Cookies and IT Law

Two sites from UK Law firm Masons are helping business stay legal on the Web. A new UK law, coming into force on 31st October 2003, will require Web site owners to tell visitors about the use of cookies on their sites and how they can control them. AboutCookies.org (http://www.aboutcookies.org/) is a service provided by Masons and provides up-to-date information on the law surrounding cookies as well as how to manage cookies. The free service encourages Web site owners to direct their visitors to www.aboutcookies.org to find out more about cookies.

Masons out-law.com (http://www.out-law.com/) is another free service and was launched in May 2000. It provides guides, articles and news stories relating to everything from the drawing up of on-line contracts and agreements to issues of taxation and defamation.

Out-Law explains IT, e-commerce, privacy, software, tax and employment and is updated daily. The initial target market included start-ups, Internet businesses and new media companies but the free service is now also used by government bodies, academic institutions and in-house lawyers.

 

Miscellaneous Essentials http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/misc.htm

Land Registry Online (pilot Web site) http://www.landregisteronline.gov.uk/
The Land Registry has been available for public view since December 1990. This is a register of title in England and Wales. Prior to 1990, only registered owners and people with the owner's permission could look at the register.

Until now, a request for property ownership details had to be made by post, although the required forms could be downloaded from http://www.landreg.gov.uk/.

The new pilot site provides immediate access to the register. 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. The database has details of 18 million registered individual properties in England and Wales. The details include a description of the property, who owns it, mortgage lender (if any), price stated (if registered since 1st April 2000), rights of way (not public rights of way), and any conditions or restrictions.

The Land Registry does not provide historical or genealogical information, cannot provide a search by owner's name and does not provide details about the internal layouts or contents of any building.

Fast Book Finder http:www.fastbookfinder.com/
This is a neat 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 as many US sites will only ship within North America.

Industry Specific Directories http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/trade.htm

Directories of UK law firms and barristers

Law on the Web has set up two UK legal directories: Law Firms on the Web (http://www.lawfirmsontheweb.co.uk/) and Bar on the Web (http://www.barontheweb.co.uk/).

Law Firms on the Web is a directory of over 450 UK law firms that have a presence on the Web. You can search by legal problem (select from a pull down menu), keyword, location, and name. Click on a link in the results list to go direct to the law firm's own Web site.

Bar on the Web is maintained in association with the Kennedy Guide to Barristers and has details of approximately 70 barristers who have supplied details for the Web site. Search by name, practice area, chamber or region, or browse the whole directory.

These are useful additional resources to those already listed in the legal section of the Industry Specific Directories listing:

  • The Law Society's Solicitors Online (http://www.solicitors-online.com)
  • Martindale-Hubbell's Lawyer Locator (http://www.lawyerlocator.co.uk/)
  • Scottish Law Online (http://www.scottishlaw.org.uk/) - a listing of legal sites and sources of information with a link to a Scottish Law Firm Directory.

Research Buyers Guide http://www.rbg.org.uk/
The Research Buyer's Guide is a directory, published by the Market Research Society (http://www.mrs.org.uk/), of organisations in the UK and Republic of Ireland offering market research and related services. All listed research providers employ at least one Full Member or Fellow of The Market Research Society - designated by MMRS and FMRS respectively in each listing. You can search by name, company type, location, market sectors, research services and expert areas. The online directory is free to search but registration is required.


Gizmo of the Month

AlltheWeb URL Investigator

http://www.alltheweb.com/

Identifying which Web sites have set up links to a particular Web page can be a useful indicator of the quality or authority of that Web page. It is also a useful way of finding similar pages to that at a known URL, the assumption being that pages with similar content or on the same subject tend to link to one another. The Google command link: combined with the URL, for example link:www.rba.co.uk, will find pages that link to www.rba.co.uk but will also pick up internal links on the RBA site. AlltheWeb's URL investigator goes a step further and excludes internal links within a site.

To use the URL Investigator go to AlltheWeb and type the URL you want to investigate into the search box. You are then presented with a page of information that gives you:

  • the language in which in the site is written
  • the size of the page
  • the date it was last updated (dependent on when AlltheWeb last visited the page and may not be accurate)
  • how many pages link to that URL
  • a link to see how the site looked in the past
  • a link to a Whois service to see who owns the domain

You can view the linked pages by clicking on “Find all external web pages that link to....”

The link to see how the site looked in the past takes you to the Wayback machine (http://www.archive.org/) which has been archiving Internet sites for several years. There is no guarantee that the site in question will be in the archive, as the site may have asked Wayback to remove or exclude their pages.

I found that the link to the Whois service does not always work and is limited in the type of domains it covers. A far better option for checking domain name ownership is Allwhois at http://www.allwhois.com/

Strangely, URL investigator does not work on UK government sites but does with US government pages.

If you need to carry out a comprehensive search for linked pages, for example if you are restructuring your site and want to contact everyone who has set up a link to you, then you should use the link commands on other search engines as well. If, say, you are researching the site www.xyz.co.uk:

  • in AltaVista (http://www.altavista.com/) use link:www.xyz.co.uk -host:www.xyz.co.uk (will ignore internal links)
  • in Google (http://www.google.com/) use link:www.xyz.co.uk but remember that it will pick up internal links on the xyz.co.uk
  • in Hotbot UK (http://www.hotbot.co.uk/) go to the Advanced Search page and use the Page Links Analyser

Meetings and Workshops

Presentation: Making sense of visitor logs: a black art? Part of the UKOLUG series of seminars at Umbrella 2003
Organiser: CILIP
Venue: UMIST, Manchester, UK
Date: Friday, 4th July 2003
URL: http://www.umbrella2003.org.uk/programme/ukolug.htm

Workshop: Market Research on the Web
Organiser: Manchester Business School
Course leader: Karen Blakeman
Venue: Manchester Business School
Date: Wednesday, 3rd September 2003
URL for bookings: http://www.mbs.ac.uk/corporate/bis/html/training.cfm
URL for course outline: http://www.rba.co.uk/training/markres.htm
Cost: GBP 250 + VAT; GBP 215 + VAT (BINN/MBS Members)

Workshop: Assessing the Quality of Information
Organiser: TFPL
Course leader: Karen Blakeman
Venue: TFPL, London
Date: Tuesday, 16th September 2003
URL: http://www.tfpl.com/skills_development/courses/cd.cfm?linkid=tr566


TFTTR Contact Information

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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