Subject: SEVENTH FREE PINT "Engineering Resources on the Web" Free Pint Helping you find quality information on the Web ISSN 1460-7239 5 February 1998 #7 > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Welcome to Free Pint Number Seven! Here is the seventh issue of Free Pint, once again packed full of practical information to help you make the most of the Web. In the Tips & Techniques section we cover how to incorporate the information you find on the Web into reports, proposals, etc. Then we have a fantastic Feature Article about how and where to find the best Engineering resources on the Web. This includes plenty of examples and pointers to some great Web sites. As you know, Free Pint can only be free to you with the continued support of advertisers. However, these advertisers want to know what country you are in. We never give out email addresses, but we can say what percentage of subscribers are based in which countries by looking at the last part of email addresses. However, if you have an international address ending in ".com" or ".net" then we do not know which country you are in. If this is the case, then next Thursday (12th Feb) you will receive an email from us asking you in which country you are based. If you receive this email then please answer as soon as possible to help us create an accurate overview of our 4500 subscribers based on country. Please remember that we are providing this information for potential advertisers so that Free Pint can remain free. Your specific email address or country will never be made available to advertisers. Since its my birthday this Sunday (8th Feb) here is a mini competition ... why not send me an ELECTRONIC birthday card to birthday@freepint.co.uk created using one of the free services on the Web?! You'll find a list at Yahoo! under "Business and Economy: Companies:Gifts:Greeting Cards:Electronic". The most inventive, imaginative or humourous card will get a mention in the next issue of Free Pint. Please note: I won't be able to reply personally. I hope enjoy this issue as much as we've enjoyed putting it together. Please feel free to pass it on to anyone you think may also like to receive their very own "Free Pint". William Hann Editor, Free Pint PS: If you do not already automatically receive your free copy of Free Pint, or would like to see past issues, then please visit our Web site at http://www.freepint.co.uk/ You may also find this issue easier to read and use if you print it out first. > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = IN THIS ISSUE TIPS AND TECHNIQUES "Fabricating Information" by William Hann FEATURE ARTICLE "Engineering resources: examples and sources" by Roddy MacLeod LETTERS > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = TRAINING COURSES FOR THE INFORMATION PROFESSION TFPL, the premier training organistion in business information, presents the following courses: Internet for Market Research 12 February Intranet: Anarchy to Sanity 17 February Internet Tools for the Advanced Searcher 23/24 February Intranet & Groupware Re-visited 3 March Write & design WWW Pages - the Basics 12 March For further details please contact sarah.sheldon@tfpl.com, visit our web site http://www.tfpl.com/ or telephone 0171 251 5522 > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =[tf71] TIPS AND TECHNIQUES "Fabricating Information" by William Hann In the last issue of Free Pint I made it quite clear that I know very little about medicine (except for perhaps playing Doctors and Nurses when younger ... much younger!). Well, I also used to have a train set and Lego building bricks, and this is about the extent of my engineering experience. However, if you use the Internet regularly to find information to help your work, then you will have to know a fair bit about engineering ... namely "fabricating information". No, I am not saying that you should falsify or change the information you find. What I mean is that often you may want to incorporate the information into your reports, articles, training courses, proposals, or whatever. The Foundations --------------- The simplest and easiest way to take textual information from your browser into another application is to use Copy and Paste. You simply highlight with the mouse the information you want, select the Edit menu and choose Copy. Then go to the application you want to put the information in and choose Paste from the Edit menu there. This is fine if there is a little text, but if there is a whole page of text then you most likely will save the text to the hard disk by selecting the File menu and choosing "Save As". You can save the file as plain text or keep all the HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language) codes. Most browsers will not save the graphics on a page automatically, and so you need to save those separately. To do this you simply click on the image with the right mouse button and then choose "Save Picture As" or "Save Image As". Tabular Data ------------ With textual information, things get a lot more complicated if the information is presented in a table which you would like to transfer to a spreadsheet program. A recent example of this I came across was the where somebody wanted to use company filings information from the SEC Internet EDGAR Databases (http://www.sec.gov/edgarhp.htm) in an Excel spreadsheet. The filings contain tables of information which have been created in plain text, with columns aligned using lots of space characters. The difficulty comes when you try to load this into a spreadsheet and the program gets confused with all those spaces. This problem has been overcome by the more modern spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel: Basically you save the table as a plain text file. Then in Excel you choose "Open" from the File menu, highlight the file containing the table, and in the "Files of type" box choose "Text Files". On the next screen you select "Fixed Width" and click on the "Finish" button. You now have a spreadsheet where all the tabular information has been entered into separate cells. Some Web sites convert material for you into a more useful format and offer a hypertext link. When you click on the link you will asked by the browser what you want to do next, and you simply need to save the file to your computer. The other important thing to note is the difference between a proportional and non-proportional font. A proportional font (like Times New Roman or Arial) is one where all characters take up different amounts of space depending on their size. For instance, a capital "M" is obviously a lot larger than a lower-case "i", therefore it takes up more space in a line of text. A non-proportional font on the other hand (like Courier) is one where all characters (including spaces) take up the same amount of space regardless of their size. This newsletter for instance should be read in a non-proportional font because otherwise you won't see the formatting (such as indents) which have been created using spaces characters. If you read a table which has been created using spaces (rather than Tabs or other formatting) in a proportional font then all the columns will not align properly. Problems with Frames -------------------- Some Web pages are split into different "windows" which are called "frames" (hence the need for a glazier and carpenter). Problems can occur if you want to save or print information in a particular frame. The way to do this is to click somewhere inside the frame you want to save or print. When you do this you may see a thin black line around the frame window (this doesn't happen in all browsers). By clicking in the frame you have ensured that it has the "focus", and that its contents (and not another frames) which are saved or printed. In some browsers, when you give the frame the focus you will then find different options in the File menu such as "Save Frame As..." and "Print Frame..." which makes it much clearer that you will be saving or printing that particular frame. I don't know of a browser where you can print the whole page (and all the frames) rather than just the contents of an individual frame. Printing Blank Pages -------------------- Have you ever printed a page and just got a blank print-out? This usually happens if the page you are printing contains text which is a light colour or white (for instance white text on a black background). Printers generally won't print background colours and so then tries to print white text on the white paper! To overcome this problem in certain browsers you need to go to the File menu and select "Page Setup". Then put a tick in the box which says "Black Text". Summary ------- Hopefully this has given you an introduction to some of the ways in which you can re-use information you find on the Web in your current projects. It is important though that you make sure you are not breaking copyright law by reproducing somebody else's work, and always get written confirmation from the original author/producer that they are happy for you to reproduce their work. Happy fabrication! William Hann PS: Lego is a trademark of the LEGO Group. Microsoft products referenced herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Hann is a professional information scientist who runs the information consultancy "Willco". The company provides Internet consultancy, training, and Web site services. Full details can be found at http://www.willco.co.uk/ > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = SUE HILL RECRUITMENT & SERVICES LTD A high level and comprehensive service recruiting key information sector professionals at all levels. Plus ad hoc services to answer information market needs in a fast and flexible way. Sue Hill Recruitment & Services Ltd, Tel/Fax +44 171 732 6718, 71 Montpelier Rd London SE15 2HD email: SueHillRecruit@compuserve.com > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =[sh72] Free Pint advertising has a proven track record See the advertisers page at http://www.freepint.co.uk/ or call +44 (0)171 681 1653 now! > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Computer Novices & Pros: Keeping current with the newest Windows 95/98/NT & Internet stuff is a full-time job--so let Lockergnome do the work for you! We'll e-mail our FREE Windows 95/98/NT newsletter to you twice a month--packed with the latest 32-bit downloads (freeware & shareware), websites, games, MIDI, WAV, TrueType fonts, updates & patches, themes, tips & tricks, computer industry news, and much more. To join, visit: http://www.lockergnome.com/ > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =[lo73] FEATURE ARTICLE "Engineering resources: examples and sources" by Roddy MacLeod I've lost count of the number of articles I've read which extol the virtues of the Internet, which then give a couple of often bland examples of web sites, and continue by stating that everything else of interest can be found through judicious use of the large search engines such as Alta Vista or HotBot. Whilst such search engines are extremely impressive information retrieval tools (indeed I use them more often than any other index), they are best for locating something very specific, for example the home-page of a known company or service. They are not so useful if you want to find or browse similar web sites (for example e-journals in mechanical engineering, or companies producing software for civil engineers). The Northern Light search engine (http://www.northernlight.com/) with its Custom Search Folders which 'dynamically group' together similar sites is rather better for this purpose, but still has many limitations. Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com/) is an extremely popular index to web sites, but its coverage of engineering resources is relatively poor, with, for example, less than 350 sites being listed in its United Kingdom: Engineering directory (http://www.yahoo.co.uk/Regional/Countries/United_Kingdom/Science/Engineering/). As a result of the limitations of the popular search engines and directories, many users of the Internet are unaware of the range of engineering resources which are currently available. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to rectify this in a small way by looking at a few examples of some of the many different types of engineering resources. As it is normally easier to find examples of US resources elsewhere, I will concentrate mostly, but not exclusively, on UK sites. As with other sectors, thousands of engineering companies now have their own web sites. Some are humble and some are grand. An example of the former, selected at random, is that of Dieline / Rykel Ltd, a manufacturing engineering company (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/DIELINE/homepage.htm) This home-page is one of many similar sites that have been created using the free space made available by various Internet Service Providers (in this case CompuServe). The site is small and contains brief details of the company's expertise, its location, and an email contact address. Most importantly, the Dieline / Rykel Ltd web site can be found through the big search engines mentioned above. I focus on Dieline / Rykel Ltd for no other purpose than as a typical example of thousands of similar sites. Many of these are listed in such directories as the U.K.Directory, in its Business: Manufacturing subsections, (http://www.ukdirectory.co.uk/business/index5.htm) and the Yellow Web directory in its Engineering section (http://www.yell.co.uk/yell/newweb/scitech/engnrng/index.html) and the UK Industry Directory in its engineering section (http://www.ukindustry.co.uk/ukidir.htm#Engineering). An interesting example of a regional directory of engineering companies is Engineering Ayrshire. This is an association of companies located within Ayrshire in Scotland which have grouped together to create a unified web site (http://www.engineering-ayrshire.org.uk/). One example of the many directories which concentrate on a particular engineering sector is UK Building Resource Pages which includes a categorized index for UK Construction Industry web sites (http://www.ukbrp.co.uk/index.html). Large companies can afford to create and maintain substantial web sites. I have chosen AEA Technology plc (http://www.aeat.co.uk/) at random from the many available examples. The AEA site contains a considerable amount of information about this international science and engineering services business, including an extensive product catalogue and detailed financial indicators. An example of a smaller company, but one which has its own domain name and a web site which also gives a large amount of company information, again chosen at random, is Bison Structures Ltd (http://www.bison.co.uk/). Given the name of such companies it is easy to locate their web sites using the large search engines. However the best way to find lists of similar companies with substantial web sites, or companies within various engineering sectors with large sites, is to use a gateway such as EEVL (Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library) which lists, amongst other things, over 800 quality commercial engineering sites (http://www.eevl.ac.uk). Engineers look to their scholarly societies and institutions to represent the interests of their profession, safeguard and encourage standards of professionalism, and promote their career prospects. Many of these institutions have developed exemplary web sites. Leading the way in the UK is the Engineering Council (http://www.engc.org.uk/), the national representative body of the engineering profession. The Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) maintains a large and useful site giving information about the Institution, its organisation and groups, activities, publications, some of which are available in full text, access to its library catalogue, and various files under the heading of professional and career development (http://www.iee.org.uk/). Another impressive site is that of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) (http://www.rics.org.uk/) with over 2,000 pages including a searchable RICS Directory and the full text of Chartered Surveyor Monthly. Other notable sites include the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (http://www.imeche.org.uk/), the Institution of Civil Engineers (http://www.ice.org.uk/), the Institution of Chemical Engineers (http://www.icheme.org/), and the Institute of Materials (http://www.instmat.co.uk/). As well as a Combined Index search engine which searches several institutional sites simultaneously, (http://www.muscat.co.uk/cgi-bin/fx?DB=EC/all), the Engineering Council provides a list of web servers operated by engineering institutions (http://www.engc.org.uk/welcome/inst.htm). Many more can be found through the EEVL gateway which I mentioned above, and the appropriate sub-sections of the University of Waterloo Electronic Library Scholarly Societies Project (http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/society/subjects_soc.html). There has been a rapid growth in the number of published engineering e-journals. Apart from those published by some professional societies, they are mainly of two main types; scholarly journals, and trade journals. Few of the former are freely and completely available on the Internet, but those which are include Optical Diagnostics in Engineering (http://www.ode-web.demon.co.uk/), Terra-Nova: the European Journal of Geosciences (http://www.gly.bris.ac.uk/WWW/TerraNova/terranova.html), Journal of Corrosion Science and Engineering (http://www.cp.umist.ac.uk/jcse/), Bell Labs Technical Journal (http://www.lucent.com/ideas2/perspectives/bltj/main.html), Electronic Journal of Information Technology in Construction (http://itcon.org/), and Journal of Technology Education (http://borg.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/jte.html). Engineers do rather better in terms of the provision of freely available trade journals, and useful UK titles include The Engineer Online (http://www.theengineer.co.uk/), Energy in Buildings & Industry (http://www.insidecom.co.uk/eibi/), Hot Echo: the Journal of the Scottish Software Community (http://www.hotecho.org/), UK Construction and Civil Engineering On-Line Magazine (http://www.contact-net.com/cce/), and Enterprise Manufacturing (http://www.gdspublishing.ltd.uk/enterman.html). Titles from outside the UK include Chemical Processing (http://www.chemicalprocessing.com/), Solid Waste Online (http://www.solidwaste.com/), Plant Services Magazine (http://www.plantservices.com/), and Chemical Week Magazine (http://www.chemweek.com/index.html). More titles can be found through EEVL (mentioned above), and through other engineering gateways such as Engineering Electronic Library, Sweden (EELS) (http://www.ub2.lu.se/eel/eelhome.html). Lund University maintain a comprehensive list of civil engineering journals on the Internet (http://www.ldc.lu.se/lthvbibl/tidskr-www.htm). Bibliographic databases are costly to produce and as a result are normally available through traditional online hosts at commercial rates. However, for a variety of reasons, some very useful engineering databases are freely available on the Internet. In the US, the Water Resources Scientific Information Center allows access to its water resources database containing over a quarter of a million abstracts and citations (http://www.uwin.siu.edu/databases/wrsic/index.html). The ASCE's Civil Engineering Database (http://www.ascepub.infor.com:8601/chrhome2.html) which indexes over 80,000 civil engineering publications; the Copper Data Center's databases, (http://cdc.copper.org/), the SPIE Publications Abstracts database giving details of 90,000 publications, (http://www.spie.org/web/abstracts/abstracts_home.html), and the Recent Advances in Manufacturing database (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/ram/) can all be searched at no cost. Finally some gateways to engineering information. These are usually excellent starting points for further investigation. Some, like EEVL and EELS, I have already mentioned. Other good general ones include the WWW Virtual Library: Engineering (http://arioch.gsfc.nasa.gov/wwwvl/engineering.html), Internet Connections for Engineering (ICE) from Cornell University (http://www.englib.cornell.edu/ice/ice-index.html), and Engineering UK (http://www.engineering-uk.co.uk/). For examples of subject specific gateways, try Sourcerer: Gateway to the Chemical Industry of the United Kingdom (http://www.sourcerer.co.uk/), or Chemical Industry Home Page (http://www.neis.com/). > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Roddy MacLeod is Senior Faculty Librarian at Heriot-Watt University. He edits the Internet Resources Newsletter (http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/irn.html), and is the Project Manager for EEVL: the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/). > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Would you like to see a certain topic covered? Drop us a line to letters@freepint.co.uk > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = RBA Information Services For publications and training on how to use the Internet more effectively, contact us at RBA. Topics that we regularly cover in our workshops and seminars include Internet search tools, using the Internet for business information, beginners guide to the Net, choosing the right software, how to avoid and get rid of junk mail. Tel: 0118 947 2256, E-mail: enquiries@rba.co.uk http://www.rba.co.uk/ > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =[rb74] LETTERS Thank you for all your emails and letters, and we have reproduced a selection here. If you would like to send us a letter, question or feedback, then please send us an email to letter@freepint.co.uk We will not publish your email if you do not wish us to, and cannot guarantee a reply to all letters. Letters may be edited for content and length, and we will withhold your contact details if you wish. > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Hann writes: We had an email from Christopher Pirillo, the editor of the free Windows 95-98-NT e-mail newsletter "Lockergnome". If you are not currently one of the many subscribers to the newsletter then I would strongly recommend paying a visit to http://www.lockergnome.com/ Chris informed us that he has reviewed Free Pint in the latest issue of Lockergnome, and his review is reproduced here with permission: "There are tons of e-mail newsletters on the 'Net. Each one is different (at least, we all hope so). While I was doing a search for free stuff the other day, I stumbled up on Free Pint--a new newsletter that is (honestly) refreshing. It tackles current topics in-depth, and a growing subscriber base. The host is knowledgeable on a variety of issues and has only begun passing along information to people who are looking for it. Past newsletters have revolved around medical sites, search engine results, and Internet frauds (to name a few). Subscribing is free--you can't beat that price. Tell him Lockergnome sent ya! :)" > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - As you know, Free Pint's success is largely dependent on you the subscriber spreading the word. We received a great email after the last issue, part of which reads: "... I'd like to express my compliments and thanks for the Free Pint newsletter. I "discovered" it only yesterday--linked from a link from a link--and have already subscribed to it, devoured all the back issues, and forwarded Issue No. 6 to the 200+ employees of my company ..." What wonderful support! Why don't you follow this lead (yes, now), and tell all your friends, colleagues and family about Free Pint. Its over to you! > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - As well as numerous other messages of support, we also received our first from China. It reads: "dear ser, I'm from China, today I received my first issue of it since subscribe. It's really an excellent newsletter i'have ever seen! A little request: How can I get the passed issure of freepint? I want to have "every bit". my current freepint is <22 January 1998 #6> thanks, May be I should say sorry for my poor english--if my english teacher see this letter,she will cry :)" We have witheld the authors name (to circumvent any problems with the teacher!), but actually think the English is great since we understood every word. In answer to the question, you will find a complete archive of past issues (which is fully searchable) on the Web site at http://www.freepint.co.uk/ Whilst there, you may also like to post messages, questions and feedback, and interact with other subscribers and authors on the "Free Pint Forum". > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Promotional gifts supplied by Riverside Promotions Tel: 01784 454785 Fax: 01784 466157 > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =[rp21] Well, we hope you have found Free Pint to be informative and useful. Please remember to send an electronic birthday card if you have a spare moment, and continue to support us by spreading the word. Kind regards, William Hann, Editor w.hann@freepint.co.uk (c) Willco 1998 http://www.freepint.co.uk/ ISSN: 1460-7239 > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Free Pint (ISSN 1460-7239) is a free email newsletter for anyone who uses the Internet to get information for their work in any business or organisation. The newsletter is written by professionals who share how they find quality and reliable information on the Internet. More details about subscribing, contributing or advertising can be found at http://www.freepint.co.uk/ or call +44 (0)171 681 1653 Please note: The newsletter is published by the information consultancy Willco (http://www.willco.co.uk/), and the publishers will NEVER make the subscriber list available to any other company or organisation. The opinions, advice, products and services offered herein are the sole responsibility of the contributors. Whilst all reasonable care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the publication, the publishers cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions. This publication may be freely copied and/or distributed in its entirety. However, individual sections MAY NOT be copied and/or distributed without the prior written agreement of the publishers. All rights reserved. > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =