Jinfo: Newsletter No. 284

FreePint publishes newsletters, websites, magazines and resources for the information industry. The FreePint Family of publications publishes practical tips, product reviews, expert tips, research collections and hands-on tools to support information work of all kinds. The FreePint Bar provides a Q&A forum for getting your research questions answered and building a network of peers worldwide.

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Editorial

By Sara Waddington

Sara Waddington New research is now underway, to help everyone in the industry understand the impact of the economic downturn. Take 10 minutes to participate in the anonymous Economic Impact survey. If you provide a valid email address at the end (not associated with your responses), you will receive a copy of the full report upon publication, to better understand how your organisation's choices around content and staff budgets and priorities compare with those of your peers around the world.

This issue of the FreePint newsletter examines the twin themes of intranet management and information access. In Part 1 of Patrick C Walsh's trilogy on the 'Lean Intranet', he talked about Intranet Zero. In Part 2, he discussed a model for a robust intranet 1.0 - the 'Lean Intranet'. In the last of these three articles, 'The Lean Intranet: from Intranet Zero to Intranet 2.0 and beyond (Part Three: Intranet 2.0 and Intranet 3.0)', he examines intranet 2.0 and surmises what the intranet of the future (truly integrated Enterprise Information Systems) might look like - intranet 3.0.

Traditional information sources In her article 'Sweeble: Making Print Production Accessible', Sue Greenwood reminds us that, for many people in the world, information access still means reading a paper (or blackboard) and describes how her company, Sweeble, seeks to put the means of production into the hands of those making the news.

It's a timely reminder that the web doesn't rule. The need to communicate with each other is what drives us, not the technology. But access to that technology, says Sue, divides us.

Technology is an enabler of connections. Get more ideas for how your organisation can better utilise those connections with the recent FUMSI Report: Folio on Social Media in the Enterprise, including the results of our survey on social media practices, editorial comment from our Share contributing editor Martin Belam, and five practical articles on implementing and leveraging social media for business. Purchase the report for further insight and expert advice, or subscribe to FUMSI to receive similar reports every month.

Sara Waddington
Managing Editor
FreePint

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My Favourite Tipples

By Marcy Phelps

Marcy Phelps

Any site that saves me some time is worth bookmarking:

More and more of us are doing business across multiple time zones. World Time Server lets you check the current time in just about any location, not just in major cities. It tracks Daylight Savings/Summer Time so you won't ever miss a conference call, and you can even read the local news.
In my research reports, I frequently have to look up historic monetary exchange rates. For this task, I head to FXConverter which converts 164 currencies. FXConverter is available in seven languages. Just enter an amount, a date, and the currencies - and you'll quickly get your answer.
To make sure the links on my websites are all in working order, I use Xenu's Link Sleuth, a piece of free software. I've also used Link Sleuth when I had to create a list of all the links on a website - Link Sleuth will create a report in seconds.
Online calculators have been cropping up on the Internet for years, but no one does it better than Martindale's Calculators On-Line Center. This collection of business and management tools helps you calculate costs involved with direct mail, employee turnover, and equipment leasing, and more.
This post from the Top Diva blog is more than a year old, but it has some timely tips for dealing with customer service representatives. Take a minute to read the post - it will save you lots of time in the long run.

Marcy Phelps is the founder and president of Phelps Research, a provider of business and market research services for info pros, entrepreneurs and marketing professionals. Marcy is also President of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP) and FUMSI's Find contributing editor.

Marcy blogs at www.MarcyPhelps.com, and she publishes ResearchNOTES, a monthly e-mail bulletin with tips and sites for Internet research. She is the author of the forthcoming book, "Research on Main Street: Using the Web to Find Local Business and Market Research". Marcy can be reached at marcy.phelps@fumsi.com

Would you like to add your Favourite Tipples suggestions for the FreePint Newsletter or write an article for FUMSI (Find, Use, Manage or Share Information?).

If so, please contact Sara Waddington at sara.waddington@freepint.com with your ideas or visit <http://web.freepint.com/go/family/contribute>.

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School of Informatics
http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/

With a postgraduate degree, you can earn up to 37% more than your colleagues who only have an undergraduate degree
(The Guardian, 17 Jan 2009)

Join our Master's courses in:

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Past topics include Digital Forensics, Mobile Search, and Data Visualisation

Call us on +44 (0)20 7040 0248 or visit http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/.

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For the cost of a single FUMSI report, you can get FUMSI for three months and share with every location of your organisation to gauge its value.

Take a no-obligation trial today and get:

August: FUMSI Report: Folio and Survey on Alternative Search
September: FUMSI Report: Folio and Survey on knowledge management
October: FUMSI Report: Folio and Survey, topic TBA.

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FreePint Bar

By Sara Waddington

Sara Waddington Data on mapping knowledge management, monthly retail stats, translation software and info services in the current financial climate are hot topics on the Bar at the moment. See a round-up of recent conversations below and click through to join the discussion. Post your research dilemmas to the FreePint Bar »

FreePint Bar

Can anyone help a Bar member find a model for representing an organisation's existing knowledge management on a graph? Any suggestions on sources for mapping knowledge management from the Bar would be greatly appreciated.
The next FreePint survey is now underway - participate in a brief online survey on knowledge management practices and challenges. The survey should take less than 10 minutes to complete. You'll learn what tools are organisations using for KM, what people-based practices support KM (training, compensation, etc.) and how satisfied staff are with KM results. Input is anonymous, but if you provide an email address at the end of the survey, we'll send you a copy of the report in September.
One 'Pinter would appreciate the Bar's ideas on finding monthly retail stats for a product category, (alcoholic beverages) for the first three months of 2009 for UK and France?
Another Bar member would like to know the Bar's thoughts on quoting from English translations using Google Translate. Are there any accuracy issues?
The mood on the street lately has been that the dust is starting to settle following economic upheaval. FreePint is conducting a survey to understand how information functions in organisations have weathered the storm. Please take a few minutes to participate. The survey will take less than 10 minutes to complete. Your responses will be completely anonymous. We will send a copy of the report to everyone who provides a valid email address.

Visit the FreePint Bar »

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The FreePint Feed keeps you up to date on what's new across all the sites in the FreePint Family.

[FUMSI] Magazine 20: Research @ The Guardian + ...
FUMSI Magazine 20 has been published. In this issue:FIND: When it comes to competitive intelligence, collecting hard data...

[RS] Resource of the Week: State Highway Safety...
You've probably been seeing a lot of news stories lately about the inherent danger of 'texting while driving.' This seems...

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How many people use the Internet - in China? How many people are using Twitter? What are the demographics of...

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Sara Waddington is Managing Editor of FreePint. She can be contacted at sara.waddington@freepint.com

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FUMSI Features

FUMSI publishes articles, tools, and a monthly magazine, to give you practical help with information skills. Visit http://www.fumsi.com/

However you Find, Use, Manage or Share Information, you'll find something in FUMSI to help.

Become a fan of FUMSI on Facebook »

We add new articles to the FUMSI database in each practice area every month, which are free to read, browse, email, print or save. Here are the most recent additions:

The Lean Intranet: from Intranet Zero to Intranet 2.0 and beyond. (Part Three: Intranet 2.0 and Intranet 3.0)

By Patrick Walsh
FUMSI: Manage

In the first two parts of this three-part series, Patrick Walsh has traced the evolution of organisational intranets from the baby steps of 'Intranet Zero' through its current 1.0 state, but believes that the collaborative approach hyped as 'Intranet 2.0' is a misnomer. He describes what a true 2.0 intranet must include and points to the future of successful intranets as truly integrated Enterprise Information Systems.

WHAT'S INSIDE: 'The perceptions of senior managers are generally not all that positive for intranets anyway and it now seems that the greatly heralded saviour of all things intranet, intranet 2.0, is rapidly going the same way. Without the full support of management, any new intranet initiative is doomed to failure'

Read, print, save or forward this article now »

Sweeble: Making Print Production Accessible

By Sue Greenwood
FUMSI: Share

Just because we're surrounded by news of digital media and resources doesn't mean that print has gone away; far from it. Sue Greenwood reminds us that for many people in the world, information access still means reading a paper (or blackboard) and describes how her company, Sweeble, seeks to put the means of production into the hands of those making the news.

WHAT'S INSIDE: 'The most active people in local communities aren't bloggers. They're the couple running the PTA and the under-13 football team; they're the village society committee, the book-club mums, the scout leaders, the charity volunteer...These are the people who generate the local events that used to fill pages of local newspapers. They often know most about what's happening locally and they may already be writing about it in parish newsletters or on school websites.'

Read, print, save or forward this article now »

Also recently added to the FUMSI database:

Browse all FUMSI articles »

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VIP Features

VIP publishes in-depth, unbiased reviews of business information products. If you purchase or use premium information resources, make VIP part of your professional reading every month »

Outsourcing, competitor intelligence, sentiment analysis and semantic technology in VIP Magazine No 68

Myths and phobias about outsourcing are briskly despatched in this issue, which publishes the results of a FreePint survey jointly conducted with outsourcing specialist Integreon. Sure, plenty of people agree with the statement that outsourcing puts jobs at risk, while admitting that senior management is actively interested in it. But respondents who have outsourced are pretty satisfied with the outcomes and, while many agree that their outsourced partners are not well integrated, most say that they would do it again.

But would you outsource your competitive business information? If the answer's yes, then advice from Heather Carine might help you in briefing your contractors. You need to refine your research parameters, rather than relying a broad brush approach, she suggests; think about who cares enough about the industry, company or person you're researching to come up with the most reliable intelligence; and don't ignore the repository of knowledge that might be sitting on your doorstep in your own organisation.

And it's no longer just the bald facts that you need to consider in your research; as Anne Jordan explains in her in-depth product review of RightTrade, you now need to get to grips with sentiment analysis as well. But does it work? The YellowBrix proprietary Semantic 3.0 Platform used in RightTrade it certainly endeavours to deliver objective results but you can't download the sentiment data for further analysis or customise the interface.

Semantic technology also lies behind Alacra's newish Pulse platform, again reviewed in detail by Anne Jordan. Separate focuses on analyst commentary, mergers & acquisitions, distressed companies and law firm mentions make it very easy to home in on specific issues and the fact that it covers blogs as well as traditional media is another plus point. But the automated semantic tagging isn't perfect yet, and you do get quite a few false drops.

Purchase the individual product reviews via the links above, or save money by purchasing the entire VIP 68, including the above features and insights, executive summaries of the product reviews and copies of the full product reviews.

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Visit the LiveWire for their insights, and subscribe to the free VIP Wires Weekly for regular alerts.

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