In through the outfield

29 September 2008

ebic 2008 and Flight Memory.com

I’m off to ebic 2008 on Wednesday for the TFPL organised conference of which I was a regular attendee a ten years or so ago. After a gap of a couple of years they have revamped it in the form of a “networking event for people working in the knowledge and information arena”.

I am looking forward to meeting some old and new faces from the profession, and to seeing Berlin again after a ten year gap. At that time it was the largest building site in Europe as it adjusted to the removal of ‘the wall’.

flightmemory

Appropriately today’s Net@Nite with Leo and Amber included Flight Memory, a new flight tracking website which enables you to record previous trips and produce cumulative data. It also generates a map similar to the ones found in the back of the airline magazines showing where your flight routes.

They will also calculate your total time in the air, distance flown and even keep track of aircraft types and airlines. All they need to add is the amount you have added to global warming to complete the picture.

flightmemory2

15 September 2008

Journey of an invention blog

The British Library has always had a strong fan base, particularly when our funding seemed to be threatened. However it is great to see a new fan in the shape of Liz Joseph an inventor. She has started a brand new blog to follow her journey of discovery as she develops her mass-market product.

She has started her route to success by making full use of the wide range of services we offer, and it is great to see her positive comments on the practical benefits these give.

She has already put in for a detailed patent search, so fingers crossed for a positive result there. I look forward to following her adventures as the days and weeks go by.

27 August 2008

Google Reader explained in Plain English

As a fan of the Common Craft website which explains tricky Web 2.0 concepts such as Twitter and Web 2.0 itself, I was pleased to see that their latest video covers Google Reader.

I have been using Google Reader for several years now as my RSS feed aggregator of choice, and although I am aware it has lots of competitors such as Bloglines and Rojo.com it works for me.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSPZ2Uu_X3Y&hl=en&fs=1]

31 July 2008

Re-design your world with RedesignMe

For those of you who get as frustrated as I do with poorly designed products, you will be pleased to know there is now a place you can go to air your grievances. There is even a chance that the product manufacturers will take note and listen to your improvement suggestions.

Just pay a visit to RedesignMe and start a new topic. Or add you comments to the hundreds of suggestions already on the website.

For those of you who are a source of new ideas the site could even pay you for input into new product suggestions.

According to SpringWise, product manufacturers pay RedesignMe to establish “RDM Challenges,” through which a new product concept is presented and the site’s 1,000 or so active members are asked to react to it. Currently on the site, for instance, is one from the international DECT Forum, a group of wireless communications companies that are seeking product ideas based on CAT-iq (short for Cordless Advanced Technology – Internet and Quality).

Beginning with an initial proposed concept, users are free to modify the current design or upload their own ideas, using any combination of comments, sketches, pictures, mood-boards, movies, prototypes or total redesigns. In exchange, they are rewarded with RDMs—RedesignMe’s online currency, which is convertible into products in the online RDM Shop such as mp3-players, game consoles and gift cards. RDM Challenges can be open to all users or only a select few. Ideas generated on the site are then used as input by the manufacturer’s R&D team or professional designers, who decide on the final concept.

7 July 2008

An informational Aladdin’s Cave for the aspiring entrepreneur or small business owner

man

It is always nice when one of our customers blogs about their positive experience at the Business & IP Centre, at the British Library.

In the case of Andrew Warren-Payne (a recent from St Catherine’s College, Oxford, who is currently exploring potential ideas that help individuals and businesses make best use of Web 2.0 technologies in London) he has written about two visits to the Centre.

In his first visit on 14 June he discovered that we are; “an informational Aladdin’s Cave for the aspiring entrepreneur or small business owner. On the shelves and on their computer databases (from which you can download!) are reports from professional market research companies like Mintel, Datamonitor and Frost & Sullivan. This information is worth thousands of pounds. And yet, I have access to it, 15 minutes walk away from my flat, free of charge! And they run a lot of other services such as one-to-one clinics, free online courses, and have a YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe to it so they can see providing information like this is much appreciated!”

He came back on 4 July for a workshop was on business Terms and Conditions and why you should get them right and was held by Helen Parkins.

“Helen’s presentation was excellent and really explained why getting your Ts & Cs right is crucial when it comes to business. … Helen has also co-written a book titled A Zest for Business, and having bought it and had a quick read over it is definitely excellent value for money. Compact in size to slip in your briefcase or laptop bag, but absolutely filled with valuable advice far better than other books I’ve read so far (there’s no double spaced size 14 font as is often the case!), and the sections are neatly broken down into subheadings and relevant bullet point check lists.”

23 June 20086 March 2013

More cool librarians – Part 1

My search for the coolest librarian continued during the annual SLA conference in Seattle.

My previous winner of this (grossly under-recognised) award Louise Guy from Cirque du Soleil was not at the conference this year, although I did bump into Chad Eng, drummer in the death metal band From the Wreckage, looking suitably cool with his shoulder length blond hair and goatee beard.

This year I didn’t come away with a clear winner, but instead a trio of cool librarians.

Mary Ellen Bates

The first, and most surprising discovery for me, was Mary Ellen Bates. She is a big name in the information profession with more than 25 years of experience in business research. She has written hundreds of articles and white papers, conducted hundreds of speaking engagements, and is an acknowledged expert on various aspects of online and Internet research. Instead of her usual topic relating to what’s new in internet research and tools, her much more ambitious title was, The Next Information Revolution, and our Role as Revolutionaries. She caught my attention with her second slide which flashed up for just an instant with this photo of Patty Hearst, best known for her attachment to an SLA organisation with truly revolutionary intentions.

Her presentation (which I will cover in a later blog) was primarily about our new clients and customers known as millennials or digital natives. And how we must re-educate ourselves to provide services they want in the way they want. These are customers who will be telling us what they want rather than vice versa at present. Her blunt but effective scenarios contained scenes of librarians explaining the limitations of their databases or catalogues only to be met with, ‘I see your lips moving, but I’m not listening’. Or even worse, a response consisting of one of the two favourite three letter responses of this new generation, OMG (Oh My God) – meaning I’m not impressed, and WTF (What The ‘Heck’) – meaning I really don’t care at all about what you are saying to me.

As you can see by her photo Mary Ellen does not immediately strike one as of the revolutionary mould. In fact you could say she looks something close to the stereotype of the female librarian (although sans hair in a bun and wearing a pearl necklace). But with her casual (joking) references to giving up on her crack pipe, and other amusing but unexpected comments I didn’t have time to note, she effectively destroys that negative image of information professionals.

Needless to say, as a cutting edge librarian she has a blog (since 2006) called Librarian of Fortune (Mary Ellen Bates contributes white noise to the blogosphere) at http://www.librarianoffortune.com/

I can’t wait to hear her next presentation.

9 June 20086 March 2013

Aga goes Web 2.0

Having grown up cooking with and now the owner of an Aga cooker, I was fascinated to discover that the company is now engaging with social networking by establishing This is my Aga. This web-site very cleverly capitalises on the immense loyalty Aga owners often have to their cookers. Associated with an often life-long ownership are customer stories, varying from farmers who have used the warming oven to save freezing sheep, to tips on how to make the best bread or cakes.

This is my Aga site uses a Google Maps mashup to encourage you to plot your Aga onto a map of the UK. You can then find the nearest Aga to you with (or without) a story. Or search the database to find where all the Aga’s with the same colour (dark blue in my case) are located. Hundreds of people have already registered, but as with any Web 2.0 approach there are risks involved in giving customers a free hand to comment.

Let down and Disappointment – Sandy
My parents had a aga in 1931 when I was born, and had others for the rest of their lives. My wife and I have had them for the last thirty years and she regularly bakes ten loaves at a time for village functions. The photograph shows the result of the fire after our engineer fitting a new but faulty control unit supplied by aga to our twenty year old aga in December 2007. The Aga is not yet working again 17/05/08. Aga replaced the whole front, doors and all on the 21st of May and it is now better insulated than before, but looks odd with the old top and new bottom We are still very disappointed with the Customer Service Department they are not what the used to be, and are still in dispute with them,

20 May 20086 March 2013

Top Business Research Tips

The wonderful business information expert Karen Blakeman of RBA Information Services publishes a list of top business research tips on her blog at the end of each of her Business Information workhops.

This is the list generated by the researchers attending her workshop in April. As you may have spotted the 10 has grown to 15 in this instance.

1. FITA Import Export Business and International Trade Leeds. http://www.fita.org/. The “Really Useful Links” in the menu on the left hand side of the screen takes you to a range of international sources on business information. One participant of this workshop found the “Doing business”, and in particular in the Middle East, especially useful.

2. Nationmaster http://www.nationmaster.com/. An interface to a plethora of statistics on web sites world wide. Some of the statistics are 2-3 years old but there are links to the original site so that you can search for more up to date information. Several participants suggested that this site is a good ‘index’ of where data is likely to be found.

3. Blogpulse http://www.blogpulse.com/. One of several blog search engines, but this was singled out for its Trends graphs. These show how often your search terms are mentioned in posts over a selected period of time. In a business context the occurrences will usually match reports in the mainstream media. When they don’t, click on the peaks in the graph to see what is going on behind the scenes. Superb for picking up on rumours and gossip.

4. Yahoo Finance. Go to any Yahoo and click on the Finance link. For the UK version go to http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/. Yahoo Finance provides basic information on stock exchange quoted companies on the major stock exchanges around the world. Information includes current share price information (delayed by 15-30 minutes) provided by the stock exchanges; company profiles; charts in which you can compare the company share price with another company, the sector and an index such as the FTSE 100; current news on the company and focussing on the regulatory news; and daily historical share prices as figures that can be downloaded to spreadsheets.

5. Freepint Bar http://www.freepint.com/. Head for the discussion area, labelled as the Bar, where you can post your query and tap into the knowledge of regular ‘tipplers’

6. Silobreaker. http://www.silobreaker.com/. A new site pulling news from the usual newspapers and journals, but also blogs, video and audio. In addition It offers geographical hotspots, trends and a network visualisation tool, which was singled out by one participant.

7. Contact a relevant research, trade or professional body for help in locating experts. sources of information and reports. They may not have anything on their web site but there may something ‘on file’ that they are willing to supply free of charge or for which they are prepared to negotiate a fee.

8. Intelways. http://www.intelways.com/. An interface to many search tools grouped by type e.g. news, video, image. Type your search terms in once and click on the different search tools one by one. A reminder of the different types of information that you should be looking at and of the wide range of search engines that are out there.

9. Click on the Advanced Search option for any of the tools that you encounter, be it Google et al or a web site’s own search option. They offer great ways of focussing your search by date, file format, site, author etc.

10. RBA Business Sources. http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/. Selected sources of business information organised by type e.g. statistics, share prices, company registers. Yes, it is my own site [blush] but they did insist!

11. Phil Bradley’s web site and blog. http://www.philb.com/ and http://philbradley.typepad.com/. Excellent sources of information on Web 2.0 ’stuff’ and search tools. In particular, his blog has no-nonsense reviews of new search tools that claim they will change the world of search.

12. Intute. http://www.intute.ac.uk/. Forget about the ac.uk label. This is an excellent starting point for anyone working in business and wanting to identify quality resources on a wide range of subjects and industries.

13. Hometrack. http://www.hometrack.co.uk/. This site provides key statistics and data on the UK housing market and financing of that market. Especially relevant in the current economic climate.

14. Alacrasearch. http://www.alacra.com/alacrasearch. A Google custom search engine that focuses on business sites selected by Alacra. [A personal note: this is in my top 5 favourite search tools].

15. CIA World Factbook – country profiles. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factboo/. Key statistics on every country. For those of you of a more adventurous disposition when it comes to travel, it even includes the number of airports with unpaved runways.