July 24, 2010
Options at Google Finance
Google Finance adds oodles of options, Google Finance Blog (Jul 20)
Google Finance added puts and calls.
June 10, 2010
Northern Light adds vendor literature
Northern Light Adds New IT Content for SinglePoint Research Portals, Newsbreaks (Jun 10)
"Northern Light announced the immediate availability of a new content collection for SinglePoint strategic research portals, comprising more than 20,000 publicly-available information technology (IT) vendor white papers and case studies. The literature, distilled from the websites of 800 leading IT vendors, is full-text indexed by Northern Light so relevant documents can be highlighted and linked to in the integrated search results generated by a SinglePoint user's research query. The vendor white papers and case studies augment an already extensive repository of IT industry information available to SinglePoint subscribers, including research reports from nearly 80 IT industry analyst firms, and hundreds of IT industry news and commentary from traditional media and industry authority blogs."
June 07, 2010
Using Google Trends
Search in Big Communication Trouble, by Stephen E. Arnold, Beyond Search (June 6)
Fascinating use of Google Trends to assess interest in "enterprise search" - low, judging from the infrequent use of the phrase by searchers. "business intelligence" does better. Carry on looking at "knowledge management", taxonomies etc.
March 15, 2010
New Hoover's
Hoover’s Launches New Platform and Nearly Doubles Coverage , Paula Hane, Newsbreaks (Mar 15)
New platform at Hoover's.
"Hoover's (www.hoovers.com), the well-known online resource for reliable company and industry information, has launched a new platform that is designed to appeal to both its subscribers and its advertising partners. Users now experience an improved site design and benefit from enhanced functionality, but they also have access to nearly twice as many companies and people worldwide-now more than 65 million enterprises and 85 million professional contacts globally. The new platform architecture also allows Hoover's to introduce a new advertising platform that offers a wider range of ad sizes with an increased level of targeting and placement."
February 28, 2010
Using University Business Research Guides
Getting Educated Before You Search, Mary Ellen Bates, Bates Info (Feb 2010)
Always good advice from Mary Ellen Bates, master researcher. Her secret is asking others - especially other librarians.
"Most large university libraries create resource guides or "pathfinders" to help students find information on frequently-requested topics. Business libraries are great sources for tools for conducting research in a specific industry."
Points to some business research guides in the US.
What about Canada? Rotman Business Information Centre at University of Toronto has this guide to industry information. (May 2009) and on Investment information (OCt 2009)
Want more? Run a search at Google, Yahoo, Bing for site:
February 26, 2010
Guides to US Business Research
Two research guides for business researchers.
Searching for Company Information, New York Public Library
Researching Public Companies Through EDGAR: Guide for Investors, U.S. Securities Exchange Commission
February 16, 2010
Zillman's Business Intelligence List
Business Intelligence Online Resources, By Marcus P. Zillman, LLRX, Published on February 3, 2010
Partially annotated list of resources you can use for business intelligence or business research.
The annotated part looks good. The "comprehensive business intelligence link compilation" has some dead wood in it - I wouldn't bother using Altavista or Alltheweb as search engines - they use the Yahoo database and haven't been upgraded for years. Teoma goes to Ask Answers and I doubt that it will have much for business intelligence. But others are worth checking - pick the ones you can use for your bookmark collection.
January 29, 2010
Financial Information at Bing
Bing Debuts In-Depth Stock Pages, Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Jan 28)
"Bing has announced a new “Stocks and Funds page” that offers in-depth information for users following or doing research related to stocks and finances."
Enter a ticker in the search box e.g MSFT to get quotes and links to financial information.
Only works on the US Bing, and for US stocks.
December 06, 2009
Google Finance adds news
Google adds streaming news to Google Finance by Tom Krazit, Webware (Dec 4)
"On the main Google Finance page, users can now click on a news tab that brings up what appears to be a constantly updated Google News-powered stream of news stories related to the general market or specific portfolios set up as part of a profile."
Look for Market News.
November 02, 2009
Guide for Competitive Intelligence
Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Updated and Revised October 2009 by Sabrina Pacifici (Oct 11)
This terrific guide to tools to use for competitive intelligence has been updated. It is geared to US researchers, but others will get value from the sections on general search, news search, blogs, some business, and the for-fee collection.
+ Selected Search Engines for Web, Blogs, Video, News and Alerts
+ Selected Business Info Websites, Databases, Blogs - Fee and Free
+ Selected Online People Tracking Sources
+ Television and Radio News Transcripts
+ Legislative Monitoring and Tracking
+ E-Newsletters, Online Newspapers, Journals and News Sources
+ Monitoring Trends, Companies and Products
+ Selected RSS Feeds From Business Related News
+ Identification of Company Legal Representation
+ Online Tools for Competitor Monitoring
+ Westlaw Watch and Lexis Trackers
+ Benchmarking and Country Profiles
+ CI Pathfinders and Link Collections
+ Web Directories and Portals
+ Website Trackers
There are a few general search tools on the list that I think are tired (Surfwax, Metacrawler and a couple of others), but generally this is a good guide for types of resources to use.
To the search section I would add allplus.com or its sibling polymeta.com for a metasearch that does topical analysis.
September 04, 2009
Yahoo vs Google Finance
Where Yahoo Leaves Google in the Dust, by RANDALL STROSS, Digital Domain (Aug 22)
Judging by traffic, Yahoo Finance is better than Google Finance. This article compares the two.
Conclusion: "It seems unlikely, however, that Google’s new tools — whose metrics include one called the Fast Stochastic Oscillator — will do as much for building traffic as a fluffy news story or a short video featuring talking heads. Yahoo understands that a free finance site prospers by drawing less from the world of mathematics and more from the world of entertainment, informing just enough to satisfy users without setting off an anxiety attack."
August 06, 2009
Finance Addons for iGoogle
10 iGoogle gadgets for tracking financial data by Don Reisinger, Webware (Aug 4)
"If you're one of those people trying to make sense of the markets, you might be happy to know that instead of jumping from site to site to get all your financial information, you can simply add some gadgets to your iGoogle home page. From currencies to commodities, iGoogle gadgets will satisfy any desire."
April 21, 2009
Hoover's adds LinkedIn
Hoover’s Integrates LinkedIn Contacts, Information Today (Apr 20)
LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals, just got all the recognition it will ever need -- "Hoover's, Inc. (www.hoovers.com), a D&B company, announced it has added LinkedIn contact data to its subscriber site. This new addition provides seamless integration between Hoover's information on 31 million companies and 37 million people with LinkedIn's professional network of business contacts (www.linkedin.com)."
April 15, 2009
The Search Process
Filling in the Gaps: Company Intelligence Beyond the Corporate Website , by Sarah Hinton, FUMSI (March 2009)
Good advice in this article - particularly the point that much depends upon words.
"There are useful search phrases which help to generate interesting results on topics such as company strategy or product innovation. With this sort of search I've even found, on occasions, that the oft-avoided route - taking the plunge and entering just what you want to find into Google - can work surprisingly well.
But, most of the time, the search involves playing around with your keywords, bearing in mind the context of what's required ... "
The article links to others on the same theme and also excellent. One to note is Key to Research Success: Asking the Right Questions by Jane John
March 31, 2009
Guide to CI Resources
Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Updated and Revised March 2009 by Sabrina Pacifici, LLRX.com (Mar 28, 2009)
This excellent guide to resources was first published in March 2006 and receives two updates a year from the indefatigable Sabrina Pacific. It's hard to keep these resource compilation entirely fresh. This is a good starting point for leads on trackers, online news, rss feeds, competitor monitoring.
March 26, 2009
Northern Light's MIAnalyst
Northern Light Boosts Search Insight With Launch of MI Analyst 3.0 by Paula J. Hane, Newbreaks (Mar 26)
Northern Light has made further advances in employing "meaning extraction" technology to identify facets to a topic. Some of this can be seen at its free business news search site nlsearch.com - run the search, note the folders, and click on MI Analyst for more analysis.
Northern Light has improved MI Analyst in version 3.0 to show concepts related to the documents - issues, companies etc. This version is available to subscribers.
From the review:
"MI Analyst applies text analytics optimized for market intelligence applications to search results. MI Analyst goes beyond the extraction of just nouns-people, places, things, etc. It uses advanced text analytics technologies to provide entity extraction for key business facets, relationship identification between entities, sentiment scoring, meaning extraction, and trend analysis."
March 19, 2009
LiveWire in VIP for Info Pros
News from Gary Price that he posted to ResourceShelf
"I’ve expanded my role with FreePint, the publisher of ResourceShelf, to include vendor and product coverage for VIP, particularly the LiveWire (http://web.vivavip.com/forum/LiveWire/ ). You can find industry comment on the LiveWire from VIP’s team of contributing editors.
Get a weekly digest of headlines emailed by subscribing to the LiveWire Digest: http://www.vivavip.com/order/digest/"
Good to follow.
Newssift for Business News
Financial Times Launches Newssift, A Business News Search Engine by Matt McGee, Search Engine Land (Mar 18)
Newssift - a new business news engine in test that uses semantic technologies.
"Currently indexing thousands of news sources worldwide, and with millions of articles in its database, Newssift aims to bring context and meaning that its creators say is missing from traditional keyword-based business news search engines."
Very faceted: "Users can refine queries across multiple search options, such as Topic, Organization, Place, Person, and Theme/Keyword (see the gray area at top). Below the suggestions, Newssift’s search results include additional context, such as the ability to refine results by Sentiment and/or Article Sources (see pie charts on left)."
Eg sentiment meter for American International Group
March 18, 2009
Prospect Research Story
Research: A Strategy for Raising $1 Million by Margaret King, FUMSI (Feb 2009)
Describes the process for researching for fund raising purposes. Involved close analysis of keyterms and the language used by potential funders.
March 04, 2009
Good Tipples
Favourite Tipples at Freepint in March , were picked by Christine Hamilton-Pennell - an interesting mix of CI, data visualization, Pipl for people search, and business and trade sources.
Christine Hamilton-Pennell is President of Growing Local Economies , Inc. in Canada. She wrote Canadian Business Research Resources, published in November 2008 through FUMSI.
February 02, 2009
Financial Resource Guide
A Searcher’s Journey Through a Morass: Researching the Financial Crisis by Stephen Fadel, Business Reference Librarian, Fogler Library, University of Maine, Searcher (Feb 2009)
How would you go about creating a resource guide for students on the economic crises and bailouts? This was the topic that Stephen Fadel tackled using a book catalog, CQ Researcher, Congressional Research Service Reports for the US plus Canada’s Library of Parliament Research Publications and Britain’s House of Commons Library Research Papers, news sites, and friends and listservs. Fadel then delivers his findings in this article.
current bailout/economic issue
January 21, 2009
Patent Search for SMEs
Powerful Patent Search Service Created, Science Daily (Jan 20)
Innovall - "cost effective" service for searching patent databases.
"A European project has created a powerful patent search service for SMEs. It is a major step forward as patents and patent information are extremely valuable."
December 30, 2008
XooxleAnswers - Research Resource
XooxleAnswers has an annotated directory (or link list) to free newspaper archives starting with a description of Google News Archives. This is an extensive list that covers the US, some international including Canada, college newspapers, and magazines. It received a strong recommendation from The Information Advisor's BestBizWeb's enewsletter.
XooxleAnswers (zooks-il answers) is the home website for David Sarokin, a researcher who offers for-fee services. He used to research for Google Answers, and also writes articles for eHow.com about research, computers, investing and much else.
He has created several useful guides to resources for legal and business, and links to articles he has written on a variety of topics.
For example, see David's article on Find Old Newspaper Articles and Archives Online for Free (Nov 2008)
In total, this is an excellent resource to help one go well beyond Google for specialty searches, and as a for-fee service to be helped on the really tough questions.
December 18, 2008
It Pays to Pay for Market Research
Free Data: Turning It into Something Worth Paying For by David Gudgin, FUMSI (Nov 2008)
David Gudgin, Sales and Marketing Director at Euromonitor International plc, argues persuasively that paying for market intelligence data is worth it. Free sources from governments of business information websites are not necessarily comparable, reliable, or complete.
"Key questions to ask of your information sources are:
* What are the data sources? Are they reliable?
* Are categories and methodologies clearly defined?
* Can data be compared across countries?
* Why are there gaps in the data? Can they be filled?"
The article shows how Euromonitor International handles each of these in its macro-economic research.
November 17, 2008
Dow Jones Factiva Webinar on the Business Researcher
The Evolving Role of the Business Researcher: A Dow Jones Research Study, ON-DEMAND Recording of a session from Dow Jones (Oct 16, 2008) about its study, Research the Researcher.
Dow Jones presents key findings in this one hour webinar where we will share key findings from this research project. "Product Manager, Ken Sickles and Market Research Manager, Ellen Maccabe will discuss the results of our research and how emerging technologies, organizational trends, and end user expectations are impacting the way researchers work."
Pre-recorded on October 16, 2008.
November 13, 2008
More from Deep Web Tech
Deep Web Tech Dives Into Vertical Search Portals by Paula Hane, Newsbreaks (Nov 13)
Paula Hane provides background on Deep Web Technologies and its work to create federated search engines (or portals - depending on your preference) that address specific information interests - business, medicine, science.
Biznar scans business sites, blogs, news, patent sources, and has received favourable reviews from Bob Berkman. Mednar is for medical research. This searches many US national health sites plus Google Scholar (interesting).
Deep Web provides the technology for Scitopia.org, Science.gov, WorldWIdeScience.org, U.S. Department of Defence search.
November 06, 2008
Accoona to be Revived
B2B Search Engine Accoona Acquired by Masterseek, Bill Hartzer (Nov 5)
Accoona is to be relaunched by Masterseek. Accoona was a business search engine - picked up information on companies and people and had some ability to identify entities in the text - that closed a few weeks ago. Few mourned the loss.
"With the acquisition of Accoona, Masterseek will fortify itself in its fight to become one of the largest B2B search engines in the world. The acquisition means that Masterseek will improve its company data and at the same time significantly increase the number of its users."
October 31, 2008
Biznar for Business Research
Biznar is a business research engine from Deep Web Technologies. Biznar chooses the sources and deeply indexes them. Results are clustered into topics, date range, and variety of facets. It has a starring system for rating quality. You can also set up an alert on the search.
There are some controls. Advanced search allows limiting to Blogs, Business Research, News, or Government info in total or to specific sources. Government info is only EDGAR-SEC in the US and patent databases. In Business Research has Gartner, Forrester, CIO and many more.
Can also sort by date, title, author, or ranking. There is a button to show status of results from a source - number of hits returned, timeout.
This is an impressive business research engine in sources used and the topical treatment. Only complaint is the slow speed.
October 10, 2008
Research Through Social Networking
Social Networking: A Research Tool , by Amelia Kassel, Freepint (Sept 2008)
"Dozens of social networking sites have given rise to potentially useful information that can be included in the information professional's toolkit."
September 11, 2008
CI for Small Businesses
Finding Competitive Information for Growing Companies by Christine Hamilton-Pennell, FUMSI (June 2008)
"While the needs of new and growing businesses vary depending upon a number of factors (regulatory environment, workforce availability, basic infrastructure and available capital, to name a few), some information needs are similar across all types of small businesses in all locations. This article addresses these common needs and identifies free and low-cost sources of business information from an international perspective."
July 11, 2008
Top Financial News and Research Sites
Yahoo! Finance Ranks as Top Financial News & Research Site in the U.S. with More than 18 Million Visitors in May, According to comScore, Press Release (July 9)
Chart shows Top Financial News and Research Sites in the US - May 2007 v May 2008.
+ Yahoo Finance well in the lead with over 18 million unique users in May 2008 from a total of 64 million.
+ AOL Money and Finance - 15.2 m
+ MSN Money - 13.7 m
No Google Finance in the top 10.
Category Displays Robust 35 Percent Growth versus Year Ago Amidst Uncertainty in the U.S. Economy
June 25, 2008
Real time at Google Finance
Google Finance gets real-time NYSE ticker updates by By Josh Lowensohn, Webware (June 24)
Google Finance - real time quotels for NYSE
"Tuesday morning the New York Stock Exchange partnered with Google and CNBC to provide real-time stock quotes that will show up on Google's finance site."
June 24, 2008
Research Needs of Entrepreneurs
Finding Competitive Information for Growing Companies Christine Hamilton-Pennell, FUMSI (June 2008)
Tackles how to serve the research needs of early-stage entrepreneurs concerning competitors, markets, customers, industry.
"... examine sources of information that can address these research needs. This round-up of resources is not exhaustive; rather it is meant to suggest a basic approach and starting point for conducting more in-depth research in each area. The focus is on information available through the Web, but keep in mind that public and university libraries have a wealth of resources that are often available for free to business owners."
Mentions many excellent resources as the starting point for this research including several from Canada.
Christine Hamilton-Pennell Founder and President of Growing Local Economies (www.growinglocaleconomies.com), a company that provides training, consulting and research to communities developing local entrepreneurship support initiatives.
This articles was mentioned in Competitive Research for Small Businesses, The Virtual CHase, along with a reference to Genie Tyburski's Company Information Guide.
June 22, 2008
Accoona now a B2B
Accoona, Once Pretender to Search Throne... Now Niche B2B Service by Richard MacManus, Read Write Web (Jun 19)
Accoona, which has been trying to be search engine for business users, is cutting back to business directory search and news search. Both still have the SuperTarget tools for refining the search - certainly Accoona's best feature.
News search has some merit. There are many Canadian sources - newspapers, magazines, networks, trade magazines. See them in this search on nuclear energy ontario
May 18, 2008
Pandia interview with David Seuss
Free business news search engine from Northern Light Pandia (May
David Seuss, CEO of Northern Light, describes the free business news search engine at NLsearch, and the customized business research SinglePoint.
Key difference between the two: "NLSearch.com is an excellent business news research tool, but by itself it’s not a comprehensive market intelligence resource — that’s what SinglePoint is."
Advantages of NLsearch: 1) "business and industry news from thousands of business news sources"; 2) "powerful analytical tools to determine what information is contained in the documents on a search results list".
Future of Search -- boils down to content, social, and meaning -- "in-depth understanding of the searched body of knowledge and associated ways of knowing."
May 05, 2008
Finding Small Business Owners
Finding Out Who Owns a Small Business by Genie Tyburski, The Virtual Chase (May 5)
Addresses how to find the name of the owner of a small private company in the United States.
"There are a number of resources and research strategies for finding business owners. I'll outline several methods, starting with relatively easy approaches and free sources of information. Then I'll suggest several harder-to-accomplish tactics that still utilize free sources and I'll end by mentioning some commercial databases."
April 25, 2008
Google Finance
Google Finance gets update, and people hate it by Garett Rogers, ZDNet (Apr 24)
New version of Google Finance has a very busy page that will take time to get used to. True for Google Finance Canada as well.
"Last night Google rolled out a fresh new version of Google Finance, and instantly people went on the offensive by attacking everything from the organization of data to the font being too small. Some have even accused it of being too “Yahoo!”."
April 14, 2008
Guide to Competitive Intelligence
Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide by Sabrina Pacifici, LLRX (Apr 4)
Complete revision of an excellent guide to wide variety of tools for searching and tracking. This was first published in Nov 2005.
The guide is one big page - scroll to see it all, or use the internal page links. The link for Selected RSS was broken when I used it. Either scroll down or use http://www.llrx.com/features/ciguide.htm#selectedrss
April 03, 2008
Company Information in New Places
New Resources for Company Information by Paula J. Hane, Newsbreaks (Apr 3)
Business information - company profiles directory style - is becoming available in very new ways and places through innovative partnerships and initiatives.
"The professional networking site LinkedIn has added a company directory, and a new company still in beta, TradeVibes, is working to build a user-generated database of company information."
Linkedin is working with BusinessWeek.com and Capital IQ, a unit of Standard & Poors, to provide its 20 million members, 160,000 company profiles. Businessweek is also added a Company Insider feature.
Tradevibes works on a wiki principle - people add the information - it "specializes in up-to-date information about private companies and serves as a tool for finding and sharing news and opinions about companies"
March 29, 2008
A New Northern Light
Northern Light Readies New Free Business Search Engine by Paula J. Hane, Newsbreaks (Mar 27)
Here is truly exciting news for business researchers -- Northern Light, which has been operating mainly as a for-fee business research service, is going to become free. Northern Light was much loved by researchers in the late 1990s for its early leadership in organizing search results into folders and orientation to business information. For various reasons it closed its public Web search engine and specialized in enterprise search needs.
Beginning in April, Northern Light will be available at nlsearch.com as a business search engine. Newsbreaks has the full story.
Paula Hane describes the range of content, the use of "meaning extraction", and addition of social search features.
"In addition to searching the best of the web’s business news sources and blogs, the new Northern Light Search now provides text analytics and "meaning extraction" capabilities from Northern Light’s MI Analyst application, formerly only available to the company’s enterprise clients. It also offers some collaborative social computing features, such as Market Intelligence Wikis."
"Northern Light Search is open for free to all users. Registration is only required to take advantage of the advanced functionality, such as Saved Searches and Alerts, Expert Searches, contributing to the Market Intelligence Wikis, and saving user preferences. Seuss says the free search engine serves as an open and freely available presentation of the company’s capabilities for potential enterprise customers. "And, if a lot of people use it, we can sell ads," he says."
March 13, 2008
New Features at Factiva
Flurry of Free Features From Dow Jones Factiva by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks ( Mar 11)
Barbara Quint spoke with poke with Brigitte Ricou-Bellan, manager of destination solutions, and Julia Mair, executive director of solutions marketing, at Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group (www.solutions.dowjones.com), about new features at Factiva.
+ de-duping alerts and search results
+ audio versions created through text to speech conversion
+ Newsletter Builder -- "Newsletter Builder as a wizard to design their own templates and create HTML-formatted newsletters easily without needing knowledge of CSS, HTML, or other programming languages."
March 12, 2008
Guides to Industry Research
The British Library offers industry guides for research business information. These are pdf publications that list print sources, journals, and web sites. These are written as guides to British Library resources, but the sharp researcher could find the print reference in a local library and possibly arrange access to an online commercial database. Orientation is to the UK and EU.
http://www.bl.uk/collections/business/bisheets.html
"These industry guides will give you details of sources to check for suppliers, competitors, the market and news on your chosen area of business. Each industry guide includes lists of printed and Internet sources. Most of the printed sources quoted can be accessed at the British Library - some shelfmarks appear in brackets after the title entry, please refer to the Integrated Catalogue for full details. Alternatively, some items may also be held in your local public library. "
January 21, 2008
Calling on Researchers
Thomson Scientific Tagging Researchers: ResearcherID.com by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Jan 21)
"Thomson Scientific (http://scientific.thomson.com) has opened up a new web service called ResearcherID.com (www.researcherid.com) that allows researchers to establish their own identities and, with some restrictions, to identify their writings. The service will soon open to outside sponsors, including universities, publishers, associations, etc., "via a standard Web Services API." Even in the few short weeks that the system has been open to invitees, James Pringle, vice president of product development at Thomson Scientific, says he has already seen some ResearcherID’s on Google search results."
January 15, 2008
Prospect Research
FreePint has a new service called FUMSI - for people who "Find, Use, Manage and Share Information". It publishes articles, tools, and a monthly magazine, to provide practical guidance in using and finding information.
In the January issue, Matt Ide writes about Prospect Research: Finally Coming of Age
Describes the work of researchers in the charity sector who do research to identify potential donors or funders, and provides tips and a list of resources for prospect researchers. One of these is Ide's own fResource with "600 resources, both free and subscription, that provide information on everything from finding addresses, postcodes and telephone numbers, right through to corporate databases, rich lists, news sites and publications."
December 07, 2007
Edgar Search Tutorial
How to Search the Edgar Database - tutorial from The Virtual Chase by Genie Tyburski (7 Dec)
"This 10-minute video explains how to use the Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR database. It covers both basic and advanced search features. You may use the table of contents to go directly to certain parts of the video, but this feature only works after the screencast loads completely."
Done with Camtasia
November 29, 2007
The New AOL Money
AOL Launches New Money & Finance Site, Powered By Relegence Search Engine by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (Nov 28)
Major redesign of AOL Money and Finance - http://money.aol.com/. Intends to compete with Yahoo Finance.
Does have Canadian stock exchanges but the data looks incomplete to me on Shoppers Drug Mart. You can create your own portfolio.
If you go to money.aol.ca you get the message - "the money channel is not yet available".
November 07, 2007
Five Top Business Research Sources
My Favourite Tipples from Mary Ellen Bates and Amelia Kassel, Freeping (Nov 8)
Five favourite business and company research sources from two experts in business research. Includes Country Insights from the Canadian Centre for Intercultural Learning,
November 04, 2007
Presentation on Competitive Intelligence
Competitive Intelligence on a Shoestring By Sabrina I. Pacifici and Susan Armstrong, LLRX, Published on October 30, 2007
PDF presentation: techniques, processes, services for CI research in the US and Canada.
October 16, 2007
Yahoo Finance Search
Look Closely: New Yahoo Finance Page Continues to Offer “Finance Only” Search ResourceShelf (Oct 16)
Yahoo Finance has a new look and it still has Finance Search - top bar, right beside Symbol Lookup.
August 09, 2007
Knuro BlogWatch
Business Search Engine Knuru.com Announces Release of Knuru BlogWatch, Enterprise Search (Jul 13)
"Knuru.com, a business information search engine, has announced the release of Knuru BlogWatch. Knuru BlogWatch, used in conjunction with Knuru’s Contextual News, is designed to provide real-time online monitoring of blogs worldwide."
Knuro provides natural language search of selected news resources. It also partners with Ask.com (UK) for Web results.
Business Information Resources Changing
"Business Information Trends: Locking Down and Opening Up Content" By Pam Foster, Freepint (Aug 9)
Foster covers many topics of interest to the business researcher in this article.
+ information companies Hoover's, McGraw Hill (Business Week) and ZoomInfo have been adding to what they provide for free.
+ it's getting more difficult to obtain embargoed research through intermediaries. The brokers are selling directly rather than through services like Investext.
+ there's more linguistic analysis / text mining of news to spot patterns, trends, sentiment. Specifically, Reuters is using Corpora. There are others.
+ Lots of merger activity.
August 02, 2007
Google Finance Canada
Google Finance in Canada - for real, Google Blog (Jul 31)
Good news for Canadians - there is a Canadian version of Google Finance.
It claims to have:
" * Top financial news from Canadian sources
* Search with a preference for Canadian companies
* Front-page high level economic data from the Bank of Canada
* Portfolios in Canadian currency (or the currency of your choice)
* Equity data from the Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX Venture Exchange, and Canadian mutual funds "
I still see many non-Canadian sources but it is a start.
It is very easy to search on a company - simply start typing the name and Google will find the ticker symbol and provide the profile, news stories, and summary.
This means that Canadians can keep a portfolio of stocks, but I don't see a way to add these to iGoogle.
July 16, 2007
Market intelligence
Northern Light Introduces SinglePoint 4.0, Newsbreaks (Jul 16)
"Northern Light (www.northernlight.com) introduced SinglePoint 4.0, the latest release of its hosted market research portal and content integration application for enterprises. SinglePoint provides centralized search, analysis, and access for diverse sources of market intelligence. Northern Light aggregates all targeted content daily for each SinglePoint client—internal primary research, licensed secondary sources, and other licensed material—indexes it, and makes it available for unified access."
July 13, 2007
Knuru Blogwatch
Business Search Engine Knuru.com Announces Release of Knuru BlogWatch, EContent (Jul 13)
"Knuru.com, a business information search engine, has announced the release of Knuru BlogWatch. Knuru BlogWatch, used in conjunction with Knuru’s Contextual News, is designed to provide real-time online monitoring of blogs worldwide. Using proprietary technology designed for accelerated data extraction, Knuru BlogWatch enables customers to monitor blogs to serve their business intelligence needs. "
Also - New Business Search Engine Knuru.com Announces Release of Knuru BlogWatch, DMN Newswire
"In order to access Knuru BlogWatch, users will need to perform a search query using natural language search. Once this has been done, users will be given the option to view results from the following tabs: Strategic, News, BlogWatch and Ask. Click on the BlogWatch tab to access the weblog database. "
July 03, 2007
CI Resource Guide
Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide By Sabrina I. Pacifici, LLRX (June 25, 2007) -- Update to a popular guide - has tools and resources for search, news, people, business, US government, countries, web trackers.
Approaches for CI
"Beyond Online: In-Depth Report from SLA" by Shirl Kennedy, Freepint (June 28)
Reports on a three-part session at the SLA 2007 Conference - 'Beyond Online' - on approaches for collecting competitive intelligence - attending conferences, watching patents, and learning from the company's sales force.
May 31, 2007
Tutorials for Business Search
BizWiki by the Ohio University Libraries has tutorials on how to perform business research on popular business sources. These are done as screencasts - watch how to use the tools Hoovers, TradeStats, Reference USA, Mergent Online, Business Source Complete.
May 07, 2007
SinglePoint Market Research Portal
Northern Light Launches MI Analyst by Paula J. Hane, Newsbreaks (May 7)
"Northern Light (www.northernlight.com), the provider of search technologies and business research content, has just introduced MI Analyst, a new application designed to speed and improve the analysis of market research content. It is offered as an add-on option to the company’s SinglePoint enterprise market research portals."
April 09, 2007
ZoomInfo Business Search
ZoomInfo Retools Its Business Info Search, SEW Blog (Apr 2)
"Business information search engine ZoomInfo has retooled its offering to create a single user interface for its various products. The new search engine gives one view of data on companies, people and jobs, which are crawled by ZoomInfo and organized semantically based on the relationship the data has to a company or person."
April 03, 2007
The new CIO.com site
IDG's CIO.com Launches Redesign of Website, Business Wire (Apr 2)
More signs of the times with changes at CIO.com. "The new site, categorized into five sections, adopts an entirely new content strategy geared at expanding the traditional community and creating expert resources from within the community. CIO.com is the first B-to-B website to adopt this model."
The five sections are How-To, Advice & Opinion, Research & Analysis, News and Careers.
It also uses a Google Custom Search and has a new taxonomy, "covering eight categories: four leadership and four technology".
March 07, 2007
Business Information Trends
"Business Information Trends: The Times They Are a-Changin'", by Pam Foster, Freepint (Mar )
Examines changes at Thomson in the break up of their Business Intelligence services, and at Factiva, now owned 100% by Dow Jones. But most interestingly also talks about Second Life - the virtual world - where companies are setting up presences.
"The number of organisations involved in Second Life grows each day and currently includes Reuters, Talis, IBM, Nissan, Wall Street Journal, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, Sun Microsystems, Adidas, Toyota, American Apparel, MTV, US Centers for Disease Control, the State Library of Kansas and many others. For some, the benefits are in marketing, while others benefit from the ability to collaborate. IBM has 1,000 of its senior executives involved and is using Second Life as a mentoring community. The company has built a connection environment, a social- networking tool, where avatars profile themselves, then meet in Second Life."
Also comments on the strengths of traditional media for news, and the threats posed by digital.
January 31, 2007
ZoomInfo Powersearch
Business Information Search Engine ZoomInfo Unveils PowerSearch 2007, Business Wire via Marketwatch (Jan 30)
ZoomInfo has developed PowerSearch 2007 for conducting research on people, companies, and industries. "Subscription-based pricing starts at $3,950 per user per year."
"More than 1,500 customers currently benefit from the power of ZoomInfo's patented semantic search engine. The search engine continually crawls the Business Web - the millions of corporate Web sites, press releases, electronic news services, SEC filings and other online sources - then automatically aggregates and organizes the information into easy-to-digest and easy-to-search profiles."
January 22, 2007
Fate of Thomson Business Intelligence
Thomson Business Intelligence Dismantling by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Jan 22)
"Thomson Business Intelligence (TBI; www.thomsonbusinessintelligence.com), created from a 2005 reorganization of assets previously assigned to Dialog and reporting—somewhat oddly—to Thomson Legal & Regulatory (www.thomson.com/solutions/legal), has begun dismantling its operations and disposing of its products."
January 20, 2007
Competitive Intelligence Resources
Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide By Sabrina I. Pacifici and Donna Cavallini. LLRX.com (Jan 17 2007) -- revised version of excellent resource guide to search tools, news sources and articles, RSS feeds, tracking tools, and pathfinders.
January 19, 2007
Yahoo Personal Finance
Yahoo to add personal finance content to site -- The Wall Street Journal, among others to provide stories -- Marketwatch (Jan 19)
Yahoo Finance will cover "money matters" also under Personal Finance.
" Among the content on the new section, which will mostly be provided by other sources, will be tips and tools for household budgeting, tax planning, careers, real estate and debt management, the AP said. The content providers will include The Wall Street Journal, The Motley Fool, Consumer Reports and CNNMoney.com."
December 19, 2006
Google Finance Competition
Google Revamps Finance "Struggling financial site gets redesign, new functions but faces tough competition." Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service via PC World (Dec 13)
Google Finance falls far behind Yahoo Finance (#1) and MSN Money (#2). Will the enhancements that allow more personalization and show more history help? Not in Canada - the Canadian exchanges aren't listed.
SEC Resources
An Overview of Selected SEC Resources on the Web, by Jan Bissett and Margi Heinen, LLRX (Dec 2006)
This is an update to an earlier column. "We offer this column on Securities and Exchange filings as well as selected guides to SEC research as a pathfinder to assist those who are challenged by the complexities of this area of the law."
December 12, 2006
Changes to Google Finance
New look to Google Finance page. Has market and sector summaries, news, top movers. Registered users can easily add stocks and other financial instruments to their portfolio. Only has US stock exchanges.
See Google Updates Google Finance Home Page, SearchEngineLand (Dec 12)
November 29, 2006
Frasers for Canadian B2B
Frasers Industrial Web Search -- Canada has a search engine for Canadian suppliers of industrial products and services thanks to Rogers Media.
November 21, 2006
Private Company Information at Hoover's
Hoover’s Expands Private Company Coverage, Newsbreaks (Nov 20)
"Hoover’s, Inc. (http://www.hoovers.com), a D&B company, announced the imminent expansion of its private company coverage with the release in early 2007 of additional data for the top 250,000 private companies in the U.S. ranked by total sales. This release will more than triple the number of private company records in Hoover’s database."
November 09, 2006
More at Northern Light
One Stop Business Web, KMWorld (Nov 9)
Northern Light has a new version of its Business Research Engine.
"Users of the Business Research Engine can browse the market intelligence centers (MIC), access featured reports and resources from the Web, and use the Business Web search without limitations, says the company."
October 25, 2006
Google Finance
Google Finance Adds Compare, Timeline & More Features, SEW Blog (Oct 23) - new features are also listed in the faq for Google Finance.
October 24, 2006
Enhanced Hoover's
Hoover’s Enhances Subscriber Offerings, EContent (Oct 24)
"Hoover's, Inc., a D&B company that provides information about industries, companies, and key decision makers, has announced the launch of Hoover's Premium Select, an enhancement to its suite of subscription offerings."
October 17, 2006
Competitive Intelligence Guide
Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide, By Donna Cavallini and Sabrina I. Pacifici, LLRX (Oct 16)
Good listing of a multitude of tools including Website trackers.
September 11, 2006
Northern Light's Business Research Engine
Northern Light Debuts New Business Research Engine by Paula Hane, Newsbreaks (Sep 11)
Good news for business researchers. Northern Light has opened a Business Research Engine with free access to searching business content that includes a business web of 100 million pages and 22,000 sites, 3 million archived articles, and 1.3 million articles from more than 1,400 premium publications. Subscriber access to viewing the proprietary material is only $9.95 US / month.
"All visitors to the www.nlresearch.com site now have free access to the Business Web and can browse and search the proprietary business content for free. A subscription or a day pass—a new option with this version—is required to read articles from the journals and business news sources and to take advantage of advanced functionality such as Search Alerts, Public Alerts, and user preferences. The company hopes that access to the fairly extensive free search and editorial functionality—not to mention the lack of advertising, pop-ups, paid inclusions, or consumer content—will be an attractive enticement to subscribe."
July 20, 2006
Database of Sources at TVC
Database of Sources at The Virtual Chase has been completed. The Virtual Chase has excellent guides to doing company research and finding peopel
From the newsletter: "Released in beta during April of this year, the
database contains abstracts and links to Web-based sources of
information for conducting research on companies or people and for
finding legal or factual information. You may browse the database by
subject or search it by keyword. The old research guides will remain available for some time, but we will no longer update them."
July 18, 2006
Yahoo Finance
Yahoo Finance gets a face-lift, by Elinor Mills, CNet (July 16)
Yahoo Finance received a substantial upgrade for the first time in 5 years "with new interactive stock charts, improved message boards and business-related video clips from content partners."
Yahoo finance gets new look at Blogma (July 17)
July 07, 2006
Zoomlist
The Zoom List (Beta): An Autonomously Built Directory of Companies, Products and Services from ZoomInfo, ResourceShelf (June 27) - reviews the new Zoomlist directory of companies, products and services from Zoominfo.
May 05, 2006
Free Content for Business Research
"Trends in business information, provision and use", By Pam Foster, Freepint (May 1)
One of the trends is that "Content is increasingly being given away for free". Article has several examples - Highbeam Research has about 3,000 sources some of which are free; Congoo is a search engine that picks up premium sources of business information; Google Finance has North American stocks but is expected to be extended to cover Europe.
April 06, 2006
Free Publications at Statistics Canada
Access to Statistics Canada's electronic publications at no charge, Statistics Canada (Apr 5)
"Effective April 24, all electronic publications on Statistics Canada's Web site will be available free of charge." ... "his latest move makes available at no charge more than 150 electronic publications for which fees were previously charged."
March 25, 2006
Google Finance Ho Hum
Thumbs-down for Google Finance, by Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch (Mar 21) -- Francisco is not impressed with Google Finance -- "... Google Finance -- with its perfunctory quotes, news headlines, charts and the like -- is not terribly impressive, partly because it looks so much like other finance sites created years ago, notably Yahoo Finance."
March 24, 2006
Competitive Intelligence
LLRX.com has two articles on Competitive Intelligence (Mar 25)
Analyze This: The Evolution of Competitive Intelligence Products for the Legal Profession, By Donna Cavallini. The article is about ALM Research, "... the primary source for actual law firm financial data for all of the major U.S. and international law firms, including the Am Law 100, the Am Law 200, the NLJ 250 and the Global 100, and the release of its annual lists and rankings are eagerly awaited by the legal community."
Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide (Updated) By Donna Cavallini and Sabrina I. Pacifici.
March 21, 2006
Google Finance Beta
Google launches free financial news website Marketwatch (Mar 21) -- Google has created its own Google Finance website that has features similar to Yahoo Finance and others - quotes, charts, news etc, to which it has added some of its own like entries from blogs.
"Google Finance offers similar features to its rivals – share quotes and charts, integrated financial news from its Google News service, discussion groups and the ability for investors to create personalised portfolios of their share holdings.
It also introduces innovations. The interactive charts will map market data with news stories, so the effect of announcements can be tracked against the stock performance. The charts can also be dragged dynamically using a scroll bar through different time periods. "
Coverage is mainly of public companies in North America, although Google has picked up some information on private companies through partnerships and crawling.
The front page shows only the American exchanges but the database does have data from the Toronto Stock Exchange. You will find Canadian Tire here.
You can still run a search on a company ticker symbol to get figures quickly and links to Yahoo Finance, MSN Money, Marketwatch, CNN Money, and Reuters, as well as the new Google Finance. See this example for Microsoft - mfst.
Also see Danny Sullivan's review in SearchDay - Google Launches Google Finance (March 21)
March 13, 2006
The New Nexis
The New Look of Nexis by Marydee Ojala, Newsbreaks (Mar 13) -- LexisNexis has released a "new Nexis" (http://www.nexis.com) for business and legal researchers. This is a new "global platform" adopted to standardize the content and look and feel across all markets. The hope is that the new Nexis appeals a broader set of users than the customary information professionals. Migration will take place over the coming year.
Of interest: Nexis employs categorization to aid in discovery, and clustering.
"The new Nexis contains more than 32,000 sources from which customers can pick and choose. What normalizes the content is the categorization—that’s its value-add. Rector is proud that the new Nexis “is designed to help discovery.” It’s not just about doing a search, but discovering things unknown to the searcher. Leveraging LexisNexis SmartIndexing is an important component of this discovery—and normalization—process."
"The new Nexis makes use of clustering technology, which is similar to that employed by Web search engines such as Vivisimo, but it’s less problematic, since it works from controlled vocabulary, rather than algorithms applied to nonindexed Web pages. This clustering is particularly important because it can reveal aspects of a search term the researcher had not considered. It both disambiguates the terms and suggests types of coverage of the topic. Categories include source type, source name, subject, industry, company, geography, or language."
March 06, 2006
Hoovers' Beta
The New Hoover's: Simple. Comprehensive. Unified., by Deborah A. Liptak, Newsbreaks (Mar 6) -- "Simple and elegant, Hoover’s new beta interface ( http://beta.hoovers.com ) evokes the “Power of Simplicity” in this 21st century Web site makeover. " This site is for paid subscribers. The free Hoovers is unchanged.
March 05, 2006
Market Research Sources
"Purchasing and using market research services: some starting points on the Web", By David Mort, Freepint (Mar 3) - Has advice and resources for people who need to buy market research or commission a new study.
February 21, 2006
CI Tools
Got Competitive Intelligence? Tips, Tools, Techniques for the Savvy Marketer by Donna Cavallini and Sabrina I. Pacifici, LLRX.com (Feb 2006). Updated guide to resources for researching companies, people and markets and for monitoring news and trends. Legal resources listed are for the U.S. Excellent for people doing business research, prospecting, and competitive intelligence. Powerpoint presentation.
January 04, 2006
Competitive Intelligence
"Competitive intelligence: an introduction" By Vernon Prior, FreePint (Jan 5, 2006) - overview of conducting competitive intelligence by author and presenter, Vernon Prior.
Business Research in Chaotic World
The New Life Cycle of Business Information By Marydee Ojala, Online (Jan 2006) - The life cycle of business information used to be linear, understandable, and traceable. Now, as Ojala, points out, it's a jumble -- "It can come from anywhere—a blog entry, a professional discussion list, a company message board, a rumor mill—rather than the traditional press release. Even unlikely sources can be authoritative ..."
Article shows how to manage in this new world - picking up press releases from news aggregators, getting RSS feeds from corporate blogs, and perhaps mining podcasts for the unintended divulgence.
November 29, 2005
LLRX Competitive Intelligence
Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide, LLRX (Nov 2005)
"Donna Cavallini and Sabrina I. Pacifici's revised and updated guide includes core, reliable free and fee-based resources in areas that include: search engines; business info sites and databases; TV and radio news transcripts; legislative monitoring and tracking; identification of company legal representation; benchmarking; and e-news sources."
Future for Find.com
Scientigo and Find SVP Partner for Enhanced Find.com EContent (Nov 29)
"The new Find.com service will leverage Scientigo's Tigo intelligent search technology to exploit niches in the search arena, starting with personalized local, mobile, and product search. This acquisition is the latest in a series of purchases, partnerships, alliances, and technology licenses between Scientigo and providers in specific vertical industries, including intelligent search, intelligent document recognition, and intelligent enterprise content management. "
Find.com welcome page says there will be a new product in 2006. Meantime use the old one at http://www.find.com/home/home.aspx
November 28, 2005
Biz Wiki for Learning Business Research
Ohio University Libraries are using the wiki format to assemble a collection of business information at Biz Wiki. It will contain articles about "business reference books, databases, websites, and other research guides" that are mainly available through the Ohio University community. However, non-Ohio people will still benefit from the articles about the resources - why and how to use them. Browse A to Z to get the fastest view of articles available.
Mentioned in ResourceShelf Professional Reading Shelf (Nov 23)
October 15, 2005
Alacra for business information
Alacra Launches the Alacra Wiki EContent (Sep 20)
"Alacra, Inc., a provider of online business information solutions, has announced the launch of the Alacra Wiki, a free collaborative Web site designed to help people find sources of business information. The Alacra Wiki provides descriptions and links to in-depth business and financial databases ranging from archival news services to industry-specific directories. Alacra designed its Wiki with the objective of enabling users to educate themselves about the companies and people that drive the business information industry."
September 10, 2005
Enhancements at Hoover's
Hoover's Rolls Out Significant Enhancements To Family Tree And Adds Deeper International Company Coverage Press release (Sept 8)
"Hoover's, Inc., a D&B company that gives its customers a competitive edge with insightful information about industries, companies and key decision makers, today announced significant enhancements to its Family Tree Viewer and additional international company coverage. The enhancements, available to subscribers immediately at www.hoovers.com, provide greater insight than ever before into companies and their corporate structures."
September 06, 2005
Reputation Monitoring
LeisNexis and Biz360 Partner on Reputation Monitoring Solution Newsbreaks (Sep 5) -- " LexisNexis (http://www.lexisnexis.com) announced the availability of LexisNexis MarketImpact, a reputation and brand monitoring solution. It is powered by Biz360 (http://www.biz360.com), a provider of market intelligence solutions that also provides the Web content. "
August 22, 2005
Alacra for business content
Alacra Opens E-Commerce Site for Business Professionals by Paula J. Hane, Newsbreaks (Aug 22)
New (in beta) - " Alacra Store (http://www.alacrastore.com), an e-commerce Web site that taps into 30 of Alacra’s premium content databases to provide pay-per-view access to a wide range of content from top business publishers, including CreditSights, Datamonitor, D&B, EIU, Freedonia, Leadership Directories, Snapdata International, and Thomson Financial. Available content includes company profiles and financials, credit research, economic data, market and investment research, and news."
Reports on how this service is being received by searchers and information professionals.
August 16, 2005
Factiva Reputation Monitor
Factiva Still Seeking the Bubble “Reputation” by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Aug 15)
"The new service covers more than 11,000 active Web sites, 4 million blogs and message boards, and the full array of Factiva’s 9,000-plus full-text sources, including online media, radio, and television transcripts. The blog and open Web content come from an agreement with Intelliseek, Inc., a Cincinnati-based concern. Content passes through a reputation analysis tool, along with text mining and visualization developed at the newly formed Factiva Reputation Lab. One expert who has tracked the field for years commented that Factiva’s effort this time has a strong chance to succeed."
It doesn't come cheap - " Reputation Intelligence start at $225,000 and run to approximately $300,000."
August 10, 2005
Trends in business information
"Trends in business information, provision and use"By Pam Foster, Freepint (August 11) - reports on trends in business information that have been drawn from the VIP publications. On the one hand, information companies are giving away some content, and on the other, search engines (Yahoo specifically) are providing ways to search for premium content. There has been lots of attention to Asia. Meantime the European online market is slowing down. Lots in this article.
July 11, 2005
Hoover's Free Site
Hoover’s Enhances Site, EContent (July 8)
"Featuring new task-oriented functional pathways to its business insight and tools, Hoover's free site delivers a streamlined customer experience through navigation, allowing faster access to its coverage of 13 million companies, more than 14 million decision makers and 600 industries." ... "Additionally, the enhancements now give Hoover's non-subscribers access to: complete, subscriber-only content for a selection of top public and private companies worldwide each quarter; tabular format search results including company name, company type, location, and sales; and a selection of Hoover's most-used subscriber tools, including Download to Excel, Build A Report, Build Company List and Build Executive List."
May 13, 2005
Competitor's Website
"Analysing corporate websites for competitive intelligence" By Arthur Weiss, Freepint, (May 5) - feature article on how to get the most out of your examination of a competitor's website.
"You need to look at it in its entirety, searching for things that are below the surface, while focusing on your own strategic and organizational needs."
Corporate Governance
News from Shirl Kennedy at Resourceshelf about corporate governance resources. "Resource of the Week is a new feature offered by Yahoo! Finance: corporate governance ratings from Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc. The ratings -- available for more than 7,500 publicly traded companies around the world (including 5,500 U.S. companies) -- are now part of the <b>company profiles on Yahoo! Finance. "
April 05, 2005
Gale's Goliath
Thomson Gale Quietly Rolls Out New Business Service - by Paula J. Hane. Newsbreaks (April 5) -- Paula Hane found Goliath, a new service from Thomson, by following a lead from FindArticles which now points to several premium content services.
Goliath, (http://goliath.ecnext.com/), from Thomson Gale, has business and industry news, management articles, corporate information on over 450,000 public and private companies, and contact information. Access is by subscription but there is also pay-per-view.
Article reveals some of the intricate web of relationships in the business of premium content.
March 28, 2005
Business Research
Book review: The Skeptical Business Searcher by Robert Berkman. Reviewed by Penny Leidtke in Freepint.
""The Skeptical Business Searcher" is an easy read with plenty of
examples, anecdotes and even a few case studies. "
More information about the book at http://books.infotoday.com/skepticalbiz/
March 01, 2005
Accoona for Web and News
Accoona Adds News Search Functionality to its Artificial Intelligence Search Engine PR Newswire (Feb 28) Accoona applies its SuperTargeting (TM) to news stories. Article does not mention how many sources but does say that Accoona has a 30-day archive.
Of interest: "Accoona's breakthrough AI algorithm greatly improves the quantity and quality of Accoona's News results by seeking out the context of keywords rather than the keywords alone. The SuperTarget(TM) feature gives users greater control and flexibility over their search results. By allowing seekers to emphasize the most important search terms, SuperTargeting(TM) yields the most relevant news results of any search engine."
From the Accoona web site -- "SuperTargetTM is the term used by Accoona to describe the search features that enable searchers to change the ranking of the results in the same query in order to bring more focused results to the top."
For example, on a search for pipeda records management, Accoona offers each of those words as SuperTargets - pick one and narrow results instantly. The first search looks like an OR although Accoona explains that " Accoona Artificial Intelligence Technology understands the meaning of words to get you more results." Using SuperTarget terms, however, will force the presence of those terms. Accoona has some powerful syntax too for constructing queries. There is no information on the size of the News collection or the Web index, but it's not tiny. On a search for "current awareness services", Accoona had 3,028 and Google, 29,100 hits.
February 18, 2005
Northern Light Back in Town
Northern Light, the search engine professional searchers used to love, may be back in business for business research. It's not free, but the $50 all-you-can eat monthly fee will be attractive to some.
Tara Calishain reviewed it in Is It the Return of Northern Light? Northern Light's information page is at http://www.northernlight.com/library.html. Impressive list of industries. Picks up full-text from "1500 trade journals, business publications, and newspapers with all the charts, tables, figures, and pictures from the original articles" and current news from 70 newswires. Also has a "Business Web of 20 million pages from 16,000 editorially-selected websites of public companies, private companies, trade journal and trade associations, venture funded companies, venture capital companies, corporate law firms, MBA programs, and the agencies of the Federal Government that regulate business". In addition to content, there are many good features - alerts, custom folders.
30 day trial available.
February 10, 2005
Market Research Tutorial
Knowthis.com has a good online tutorial on Finding Information for Market Research (Part 1) Part 1 is an overview of the inexpensive sources - associations, company web sites, government, third party and universities. Part two will get into the for-fee resources (available in March.)
February 09, 2005
Listening to consumers
"Understanding Consumers through Online Competitive Intelligence" By Patrice Curtis, Freepint (Feb 10, 2005) Main message - CI researchers - pay attention to consumers.
"CI researchers can gain so much more from sustained attention to
consumer activity. In fact, beyond simple defensive postures, CI
professionals can proactively assist decision-makers in driving
company growth by identifying trends that might drive future product
innovation."
February 08, 2005
ENTERWeb for Business Sites
ENTERWeb lists and reviews resources on the Internet related to business (765 sites as of today). It describes itself as "an annotated meta-index and information clearinghouse on enterprise development, business, finance, international trade and the economy in this new age of cyberspace and globalization". The Main Menu provides a topical breakdown.
Enterweb has added a section on Competitive intelligence and strategic intelligence. First entry is a Guide on Competitive Intelligence produced by Industry Canada.
ThomasNet.com
ThomasRegister.com and ThomasRegional.com are Now ThomasNet.com; Industrial Search Site Meets Needs of Buyers and Sellers BusinessWire via CBS Marketwatch (Feb 7)
"Thomas Industrial Network, Inc., a leading online provider of Internet sourcing and marketing solutions for industrial buyers and sellers, today announced the official integration of Thomas Register of American Manufacturers (ThomasRegister.com) into its new Website, www.ThomasNet.com(TM)."
January 26, 2005
Canadian Business Research
Canadian Companies Research Guide from Winspear Business Reference Library at University of Alberta. One page listing of sources of information about Canadian companies through articles, company directories, rankings, annual reports, ownership and stock data. Sources include commercial vendors and databases, print, and Web.
Databases require logging into the University of Alberta. However, you may find some of these - such as CBCA and Canadian Newstand - at the website of your local public library.
Winspear has other guides about U.S. Companies, International, Tracking Corporate History, Business People, and Canadian Stocks.
Mentioned in TVC Alert (Jan 26)
January 18, 2005
My Hoover's for Customizing Business Research
Hoover's Launches My Hoover's Suite of Customization Tools and Features EContent Magazine (Jan 18) - Hoover's Online, the research centre for company and industry information, is adding many new customization tools for its subscribers through the new My Hoover's.
January 07, 2005
FexIT for Business
FexIT.com Launches New Generation of Intelligent Web-Searching for Business> PR Newswire via CBS Marketwatch [subscription] (Jan 6) From Iceland comes FexIt -- "a new website that combines the comprehensiveness of a business directory with the power of a Web-search." There are five components:
+ international directory of 278,900 business websites
+ fexSearch - a metasearch engine that picks up from Teoma, Netscape, Lycos, Wisenut, Hotbot. Offers 4 modes: intelligent, comprehensive, thorough, and fast. Apart from fast having fewer results, differences between the modes is not clear and there is no Help page.
+ fexWORDS - terms and acronyms. There are 14,071 terms - but wifi isn't one of them.
+ fexNews - business headlines. Has news by country and by topic and provides XML feeds. There was news from Canada on Jan 6 but not the United States! Suspect that FexIT is working on increasing sources.
+ Business in the News -- prepared searches on the database for popular topics such as The Desktop Search Battle.
Promising especially because of the business terms and directory.
December 27, 2004
Skeptical Business Searcher - Review
A Skeptic's Guide to Internet Research by Chris Sherman, Search Engine Watch (Dec 21) - reviews new book by Robert Berkman, The Skeptical Business Searcher -- "The Skeptical Business Searcher by Robert Berkman is an excellent guide to sorting out the wheat from the chaff of business information. And while the primary emphasis is on business research, the lessons offered are applicable to any type of online searching."
December 19, 2004
Find.com Partners with ThomasB2B
FIND.COM Launches Online B2B Sourcing Directory in Partnership with ThomasB2B.com PRWeb (Dec 16)
"Find.com today announced a content alliance with ThomasB2B.com, LLC, that will give searchers access to the business listings of more than 550,000 industrial suppliers from 29 countries. Find.com’s online business-to-business sourcing directory will combine comprehensive free company listings with ThomasB2B’s advanced pay-per-click ad matching technology to deliver targeted content to end-users."
October 27, 2004
Find.com
FIND.COM AND MARKETRESEARCH.COM IN STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP TO PROVIDE CONTENT TO SEARCH ENGINE Find/SVP (Oct 21)
Find.com, the business search engine (www.find.com), has partnered with MarketResearch.com Inc for online content related to market intelligence reports. Among the industries are Consumer Goods and Retailing, Business & Financial Services, Food & Beverage, Heavy Industry, Marketing, Medical Devices, and Technology & Media. Users will be able to view the titles, abstracts and table of contents for MarketResearch.com reports. Complete reports will be on a pay-per-document basis.
"Find.com was founded in June 2004 as a partnership of FIND/SVP Inc., Empire Media and TripleHop Technologies. Find.com provides a solution for business professionals in need of precise and reliable business-related information. The search engine allows access, on a free or pay-per-document basis, to research not generally available through other search engines, including Frost & Sullivan, Gallup, Datamonitor, NetContent, BNET/CNET, PricewaterhouseCoopers, BitPipe, InfoEdge, FIND/SVP, Choicepoint, Mintel, and IOMA. "
October 26, 2004
Hoover's Online
Hoover's Online Launches in the UK and Canada EContent (Oct 26) "D&B Canada is now marketing Hoover's business intelligence about more than 2,300 public and private Canadian enterprises".
October 14, 2004
Trends in Business Information Industry
"Trends in business information, provision and use" By Pam Foster, Feature Article in Freepint (Oct 14, 2004) Reviews content in VIP over the summer to identify several trends in the business information industry. Comments on strategic relationships, mentions new products and services such as Find.com, blinkx, and Textonomy.
October 01, 2004
Northern Light Back
Northern Light Releases New Version of its Business Research Engine
Adds current news and Search Alerts and is now available to individual subscribers PRNewswire via CBS Marketwatch (Sep 30) -- The new Northern Light Business Research Engine is at www.nlresearch.com . Content includes 20 million pages from 16,000 editorially selected sites, 1,400 trade journals, and current news from 70 sources. Individuals may subscribe at $50 / month for unlimited search, retrieval, and alerts.
September 02, 2004
Business in Australia
Free Australian and New Zealand Business Information Resources: A Report from the Melbourne Business Information Group By Nicole Sackers, Michelle Nutting, and Sinead Williams. ONline (Sep/Oct 2004) It's all about business resources for Australia but the framework would work for other countries.
August 25, 2004
Best Business Links
Business 2.0 has a list of best business links on the web - covers business, careers, company information, management, networks, people and much else.
July 22, 2004
Find.com Review
FIND/SVP and Partners Offer Business Search Engine by Paula J. Hane Information Today (July 22) - reviews Find.com, the free business search engine from Find/SVP and partners that weds web search with some premium content. Paula Hane noted that her limited testing showed weaknesses in the premium content component. Article notes that there is also an enterprise version. Competitors are current offerings from HighBeam Research, Factiva, and Northern Light.
July 20, 2004
Business Information Provision
Trends in Business Information Provision and Use By Pam Foster. Freepint (July 1, 2004) Pam Foster analyzed the content of the new VIP e-publication from Freepint to identify some trends in provision of business information. Notable trends are the acceptance and use of blogs in corporations, the growth in social networking, the transformation of vendors such as D&B into electronic publishers, and the introduction of new products.
June 18, 2004
Find.com for business research
FIND/SVP has found that Flawed Online Searches Costing U.S. Businesses $31 Billion Each Year Press Release (Jun 17) People are wasting time searching the Web. "In fact, 84 percent of respondents feel that Web searches take longer than they should due to poor results, resulting in an estimated $31 billion in wasted time. According to the study, 71 percent of business executives are frustrated with consumer search engines, and an astonishing 74 percent are not confident that their results are reliable. Despite this lack of confidence, 67 percent state that it would be difficult or impossible to do their jobs without Web-based search tools."
To address this FIND/SVP has launched a special purpose business search engine - Find.com - that crawls handpicked business sites on the Web - the Business Web, runs a meta-search on popular engines (Altavista, TEOMA, MSN) and provides content from premium sources on a for-fee basis. There is also a News search.
Results are organized by topic, format, site, and source.
Flawed Online Searches Costing U.S. Businesses $31 Billion Each Year*; FIND/SVP Partners with Industry Leaders to Launch Find.com Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (Jun 17)
"Find.com is a publicly-accessible search engine specifically created with the business user's information needs in mind. Find.com's searches are powered by an award-winning, next-generation retrieval technology, which aggregates documents from all major consumer search engines and combines them with results from more than 3,000 business Web sites, as well as access to premium research content from leading business information sources. "
Looks very nice. Business researchers will be very pleased.
June 04, 2004
News for Business Research
Search Tip Report: News for Business Research Eipert Information Services (June 2004) - Recommends the main news search engines Google News, Yahoo News, and the Altavista / Alltheweb pair for general news. For subject specialty news, Topix.net, Hoovers (for subscribers), and Findlaw were mentioned. RSS news feeds were touched upon as a tool for monitoring business news from hand-picked sites.
June 03, 2004
Background Checks
Detective Story: Information for Hire By JAMES GORMAN. New York Times (June 3, 2004) - sorry tale of trying to do a background search on a person through the for-fee services that popup constantly on the Web. Buyer beware. Writer mentioned backgroundcheckgateway.com and peopledate.com. He also ponied up $65 US for a public records search to get even less information, and what it had was wrong.
In commenting on this item, Genie Tyburski of TVC Alert recommended that people find a good information broker to do the search, possibly through the Association of Independent Information Professionals - www.aiip.org
May 28, 2004
Factiva for business
Search business turns serious By Mark Ward. BBC News Online (May 27) "For some people, particularly in business, Google and other net search engines are just not good enough." - Clare Hart, CEO of Factiva, argues the merits of using Factiva for business information.
May 07, 2004
Niche sites for business research
Niche search engines for business research by Susan Eipert (April/May 2004) - recommends government sites, non-profit, catalogs, white papers. Mentions HighBeam as a useful sources.
April 21, 2004
Up to date with web search
Staying Up to Date in the Ever-Changing Web Search World [PDF file] by Rita Vine. SLA Information Outlook (3 March 2004, pp.30-34) - Rita Vine reviews a variety of ways and sources for information professionals to stay up to date with web search - newsletters, weblogs, and RSS news feeds. Asks the very good question - "what are your goals for current awareness?" One other source she might consider is Web Search Guide.
April 15, 2004
Scannery Personalized
Scannery, the investor information service, has added some personalization. Source - ResourceShelf - Business Research--Specialized Search Tools
March 19, 2004
FinanceWise
ResourceShelf had good things to say about FinanceWise "the only finance-specific search engine". (March 18) FinanceWise also has Special Reports on Risk Management, Market Data, Reinsurance, the Euro, Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
March 08, 2004
The Scannery
Searching for Public Companies Around the World by Gary Price. SearchDay (March 8) - recommends the Scannery, an investor-purposed search engine with information about more than 12,000 companies in over 50 countries. Can search within industry and by geographic region. Has many helpful features for constructing the query.
December 08, 2003
Northern Light Business Research
Northern Light is Sailing Back into Business Research by Paula J. Hane. Information Today Newsbreaks (Dec 8) Northern Light is relaunching as "The Northern Light Business Research Library" as a "professional business tool for professional use.” The library will have 1,900 journals. It opens for enterprise use in January 2004, and for individual subscribers in March. More information about the service and the tools is at http://www.northernlight.com/library.html
December 05, 2003
Northern Light Business Research
Northern Light to Introduce New Online Business Research Tool for Enterprise Customers Press Release from Northern Light (Dec 5, 2003) "Northern Light's Business Research Library combines the Business Web™ with a comprehensive periodical database, organized by industry " Will have 1,900 periodicals, 100 million pages classified into 50 industries. To start January 15, 2004. Fee not stated.
November 06, 2003
Find Names of Past Employees
Eliyon Networking offers free access to its database of past employees for hundreds of companies and millions of names. The database has been created from the Web -- "Every day, Eliyon scans millions of corporate websites, news articles, SEC filings and other online sources for information about people and the companies for which they work. The information is then combined automatically into an easily searchable database." Eliyon offers a premium service for finding name and information about current employees at companies.
Judging from my scanning of past employees for the Toronto Dominion Bank and the Royal Bank of Canada, most names are from the years 2001 to 2003, with the occassional one before that. Search by company name is easy but one must be mindful of changes - Toronto Dominion Bank v TD Canada Trust.
Thanks to RC for the lead.
October 01, 2003
Business Search Engines
Marcus Zillman has noted two search engines from Penn State Univerisity for business research at his weblog
under The eBizSearch Engine.
- eBizSearch -- http://gunther.smeal.psu.edu/index.html "searches the web and catalogs academic articles as well as commercially produced articles and reports that address various business and technology aspects of e-Business. "
- SMEALSearch -- http://smealsearch.psu.edu/ -- articles, academic and commercial, that address all aspects of business.
Both support boolean and proximity searches and will do a citation search. They are both in experimental stages and could be slow.
Se also Gary Price's comments about the work of Dr Giles and team at Penn State University. Business Research, ResourceShelf (Oct 1, 2003)
August 14, 2003
Hoover's Online
Hoover's Gets Even Better by Paula Hane. Newsline Newsletter August 2003 -- Full description of free and for-fee features.
Hoover's Unveils Enhanced Online Service Hoover's Press Release (Aug 12) "Doubles Industry Coverage, Delivers Intuitive Navigation & Powerful Search Tools"
August 04, 2003
MSN Money Portal
Gary Price writing for SearchDay has tips in how to use MSN Money Portal for business research on publicly traded companies -- Searching for Corporate Milestones. (Aug 4)