Tales from the Terminal Room, June 2005 – Issue No. 63
The latest issue of Tales from the Terminal Room is now available. If you are a Google Desktop Search fan, you might be interested in the article “That darn Google Desktop cache“
Monthly Archives: July 2005
EUROPA site – VAT number validation
Update 20 April 2011: This service has now moved to http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/vieshome.do
If you are VAT registered and trading with companies based in the EU, this site enables you to verify the validity of a company’s VAT number. Select the Member State from the drop-down menu and enter the number to be validated.
Search Strategies for the Internet: Search Tools Summary and Comparison
Search Strategies for the Internet: Search Tools Summary and Comparison
The summary and comparison table has been updated with corrections and additions to the column on Exalead.
Pharmaceutical Information Sources
Pharmaceutical Information Sources
The section on pharmaceutical information sources on the RBA web site has been extensively updated. It lists a selection of resources that provide data and information on the sector, but is not intended to be comprehensive and is not a directory of companies operating in the sector. Several of the sites mentioned in the list already do that and I do not see any point in reinventing the wheel! There are also numerous cross-sector directories such as Kompass and Europages that allow you to search for companies by product or services and country. Kompass, in particular, has a detailed product classification that enables you to carry out a very precise search and also has a brand/trade name search option. Searching is free in Kompass and there is a limited amount of free information, but access to the full service is priced.
Yahoo! Desktop Search Beta
Yahoo has updated its Desktop Search and now supports Thunderbird email. Although previous versions of YDS did index and search Thunderbird files you had to search them under the “All files” category. Now you can chose just “Email”. The number of file types supported in the main program has been considerably reduced, though. If you want the full range of 300+ file types you have to install the expansion pack.
For me, Yahoo Desktop is still by far the best with Copernic’s offering coming second.
Google Toolbar for Firefox
Google has at last launched a version of its toolbar for Firefox. It seems to have all the features of the IE version but appears to be missing several of the “special” searches that are incorporated into the separately developed Googlebar, such as Scholar, Print, Video, Dictionary and Glossary Search. Googlebar is also experimenting with adding Google Labs “Google Suggests” into the toolbar, although the version I tried froze on occasion.
I shall stay with Googlebar for the time being.
Gigablast Launches Blog Search
Gigablast Launches Blog Search
Gigablast has added a blog search to its home page covering nearly 16.5 million pages. I have not had time to test it thoroughly and compare results with tools such as Feedster and Technorati, but it seems worth adding to my blog search toolkit. There are the same advanced search features as in the web search and the usual Giga Bits that suggest related terms and searches to add to your strategy. For example, I typed in ‘climate change peak oil’ and it came up with quite a lengthy list including ‘oil production peak’, ‘oil depletion’, ‘action on climate change’. You click on a suggestion and it adds it to your existing search string. I find this a very quick and easy way of coming up with different pages of results on a topic.
Search Strategies for the Internet: Search Tools Summary and Comparison
Search Strategies for the Internet: Search Tools Summary and Comparison
An updated version of the comparison chart covering Yahoo, Google, Exalead, MSN, Giigablast and Teoma is now available as an HTML file and as a PDF.
I’ve given up trying to restrict it to just one page. There are so many search engine features that are worth mentioning that it now fills two pages.
SPG Media RSS Feeds and Industry Web Sites
This is a really neat site from UK based SPG Media. RSS news feeds, compiled from news sources world-wide, are organised by sector for example energy, telecoms, transportation. The emphasis is on technologies and the companies that supply them. Feeds are available as both ATOM and RSS.
In addition to the news feeds, there are 28 sector specific technology web sites. Each site provides information on industry projects in production or under development, an A-Z company index of contractors and suppliers, a catalogue of companies by product or service, a diary of relevant exhibitions and conferences, and a list of industry organisations.
FeedJumbler
lazytom’s FeedJumbler is a web-based application that allows you to merge several RSS or Atom-based feeds into a single RSS and/or Atom feed. You can also convert an RSS or Atom-based feed into RSS, Atom and/or HTML and JavaScript. You enter the URLs of your source feeds and it generates a link to your merged feeds, which you can put into your feed reader. Alternatively you can register with FeedJumbler to get a personalized page where you can keep track of your merged feeds.
It is similar to RSSMix but there does not seem to be any limit to the number of headlines in your merged feed – with RSSMix it is 20 – and no limit to the number of feeds that you can combine. Any more than 4 or 5, though, and I think the resulting mega-feed would become rather unwieldy to scan.