Online articles from January 2004

Online archives from January 2004

Looking ahead, looking back.(the homepage)
January 1, 2004... January is always interesting. As the start of the new year, it's a time for renewal and reflection. There are those pesky New Year's Resolutions, which we have every intention of fulfilling, even if we know we didn't in previous years. "This...

Inmagic moves to a new business model.(Industry News)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Embracing open standards, Inmagic has signed a deal with systems integrator Digital Vantage Point, headquartered in Markham, Ontario, Canada. Digital Vantage Point will provide consulting, integration, development, and delivery services for...

Microsoft launches beta version of news alerting service.(Industry News)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Keeping up with breaking news is becoming an increasingly crowded area. The latest entrant is no less than Microsoft, which has launched a beta version of MSN Newsbot. With four languages represented--English, French, Italian, and Spanish--MSN...

Open access gains support.(Industry News)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... The Wellcome Trust, the U.K.'s leading biomedical research charity, has clearly positioned itself in support of open access publishing. Dr. Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, said in a press release, "As a funder of research, we are...

LexisNexis Group.(Peopleware)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... The LexisNexis Group announced that Michael Walsh has joined the organization as senior vice president, leading the company's global strategy and business development efforts. Walsh co-founded Infirmation.com, which became one of the...

xrefer.(Peopleware)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... John G. Dove has been named CEO of xrefer. Dove has 35 years of experience in information-based businesses including financial services, management consulting, electronic publishing, and education. Most recently, John has been working with the...

OCLC Board of Trustees.(Peopleware)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Lizabeth (Betsy) A. Wilson, director of University Libraries, University of Washington, has been elected chair of the OCLC Board of Trustees.

FIZ CHEMIE Berlin.(Search Engines)(FIZ CHEMIE now has tools to tackle the problem of the hidden Web--its subject-specific Internet search engines )(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Germany's "Chemistry Information Centre" (Fachinformationszentrum Chemic, FIZ CHEMIE Berlin) now has tools to tackle the problem of the hidden Web--its subject-specific Internet search engines ChemGuide (chemistry), MedPharmGuide (medicine and...

Metrobot LLC announced the release of Metrobot--A Map Based Search Engine and City Guide.(Search Engines)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Metrobot LLC announced the release of Metrobot--A Map Based Search Engine and City Guide, which employs a user interface that depicts a network of road segments and associated business listings in major U.S. cities. The roads are displayed in a...

Convera announced that its RetrievalWare enterprise search technology will now offer new audio search capabilities to pinpoint spoken and phrased words in split seconds.(Search Engines)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Convera announced that its RetrievalWare enterprise search technology will now offer new audio search capabilities to pinpoint spoken and phrased words in split seconds. Through a partnership with audio search engine Nexidia, RetrievalWare will...

MuseGlobal, Inc. announced the release of MuseSeek, a new consumer-oriented version of its metasearching technology.(Search Engines)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... MuseGlobal, Inc. announced the release of MuseSeek, a new consumer-oriented version of its metasearching technology. MuseSeek allows Internet users to perform simultaneous searches of an unlimited number of online information sources using an...

Tribune Media Services International launched News In Motion International to deliver News In Motion and Knight Ridder/Tribune (KRT) animations, TV graphics, and related editorial content to television stations and their Web sites on a subscription and spot sales basis.(Search Engines)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Tribune Media Services International launched News In Motion International to deliver News In Motion and Knight Ridder/Tribune (KRT) animations, TV graphics, and related editorial content to television stations and their Web sites on a...

Patolis Corporation, Japan's leading patent information service, announced an exclusive distribution agreement with Questel * Orbit in October.(Sci-Tech)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Patolis Corporation, Japan's leading patent information service, announced an exclusive distribution agreement with Questel * Orbit in October. The partnership leverages Questel * Orbit's extensive collection of international patent...

FIZ CHEMIE Berlin announced the launch of INFOTHERM, its well-known database of the thermophysical properties of substances, in XML.(Sci-Tech)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... FIZ CHEMIE Berlin announced the launch of INFOTHERM, its well-known database of the thermophysical properties of substances, in XML. By making INFOTHERM available via the Web and on company intranets, FIZ CHEMIE Berlin hopes to target those...

Kluwer Academic Publishers is participating in the AGORA initiative recently launched by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome in collaboration with major scientific publishers, Cornell University, Mann Library and the World Health Organization (WHO).(Sci-Tech)
January 1, 2004... Kluwer Academic Publishers is participating in the AGORA initiative recently launched by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome in collaboration with major scientific publishers, Cornell University, Mann Library and the World...

JCF Group, Inc., a European-based provider of global earnings estimates, international equity analytical models, and customized software solutions, and Mergent, Inc. announced a new strategic alliance.(Business & Finance)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... JCF Group, Inc., a European-based provider of global earnings estimates, international equity analytical models, and customized software solutions, and Mergent, Inc. announced a new strategic alliance. The partnership allows Mergent to...

EDGAR Online, Inc. announced the release of a new version of its premium EDGAR Online Pro service.(Business & Finance)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... EDGAR Online, Inc. announced the release of a new version of its premium EDGAR Online Pro service. In addition, the company outlined a new strategic focus on selling EDGAR Online Pro to clients in financial services companies, including...

Blue Marble Geographics announced that Domino's Pizza LLC (Domino's) has licensed its 2002 TIGER/Line Map Kit.(Business & Finance)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Blue Marble Geographics announced that Domino's Pizza LLC (Domino's) has licensed its 2002 TIGER/Line Map Kit. Domino's selected the Map Kit to assist in the documentation and analysis of physical store locations. The company will also use it...

Content from Agence France-Press, the international news and photo agency, has been added to Factiva.(Business & Finance)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Content from Agence France-Press, the international news and photo agency, has been added to Factiva. AFP content will be available in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese, including the English-language financial wires,...

Swets Blackwell has concluded another series of agreements with nine additional publishers providing access to online journal content via SwetsWise, which now carries a total of 7,645 full text e-journals, with more than 90 percent of the top STM publishers participating.(Online Services)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Swets Blackwell has concluded another series of agreements with nine additional publishers providing access to online journal content via SwetsWise, which now carries a total of 7,645 full text e-journals, with more than 90 percent of the top...

xrefer, the online ready-reference service that provides full-text, aggregated content to academic, public, and corporate libraries, announced the release of version 2.0 of its xreferplus service featuring improved information visualization capabilities, a host of new content, and unit conversions.(Online Services)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... xrefer, the online ready-reference service that provides full-text, aggregated content to academic, public, and corporate libraries, announced the release of version 2.0 of its xreferplus service featuring improved information visualization...

Social sciences & humanities.(Industry News)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Project MUSE announced new enhancements to its search interface. Users now have more options for working with their search results, including saving, e-mailing, and exporting results to RefWorks and EndNote, and downloading and printing in...

Legal Research Assistant.(Legal)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... A free legal research tool has gone into public beta testing. Legal Research Assistant allows users to metasearch primary legal materials, government sites, and legal blogs selected by information professionals for reliability. It also permits...

FindLaw announced that Block Financial Corporation has chosen FindLaw's lawyer directory as the exclusive lawyer directory in the popular Kiplinger's Home & Business Attorney and Kiplinger's WILLPower software packages.(Legal)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... FindLaw announced that Block Financial Corporation has chosen FindLaw's lawyer directory as the exclusive lawyer directory in the popular Kiplinger's Home & Business Attorney and Kiplinger's WILLPower software packages. Kiplinger's Home &...

Minesoft announced the launch of Minesoft Patent Family Portal, an easy-to-use facility to check patent families for over 70 countries and find out the latest legal status for over 40 patent-issuing authorities.(Legal)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Minesoft announced the launch of Minesoft Patent Family Portal, an easy-to-use facility to check patent families for over 70 countries and find out the latest legal status for over 40 patent-issuing authorities. Minesoft Patent Family Portal...

OCLC is testing the opening of WorldCat records to Google access.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... OCLC is testing the opening of WorldCat records to Google access. The project will extract a 2-million-record subset from the more than 53 million records in the WorldCat database. The subset will target the most popular and widely available...

Caldwell College has retained ProQuest Information and Learning to preserve its academic research heritage through a new program to create a digital archive of its master's theses.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Caldwell College has retained ProQuest Information and Learning to preserve its academic research heritage through a new program to create a digital archive of its master's theses. ProQuest will provide publishing services for Caldwell's...

Reed Business Information has selected NewsStand Inc. to provide digital production and delivery of New Scientist.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Reed Business Information has selected NewsStand Inc. to provide digital production and delivery of New Scientist. Established in 1956 and based in the U.K., New Scientist is a leading current affairs weekly magazine covering scientific and...

Access Innovations, Inc.(Portals & Intranets)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Access Innovations, Inc. announced the release for license of over 30 topical taxonomies that span knowledge domains from agriculture to technology. The collection includes taxonomies and training sets for defense, business, finance, education,...

Net Snippets.(Portals & Intranets)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Net Snippets introduced a server component to complement its platform for personal content collection and management. The new server module adds powerful functionality for enhanced collaborative online research, enabling the professional...

AlltheWeb and AltaVista are now owned by Yahoo!, along with Inktomi and Overture.(Internet Search Engine Update)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... AlltheWeb and AltaVista are now owned by Yahoo!, along with Inktomi and Overture. For now, Inktomi, AltaVista, and AlltheWeb continue to be available at their historic locations and have separate databases. Although AltaVista and AlltheWeb...

About.com.(Internet Search Engine Update)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... About.com sold its Sprinks ad network to Google and will start displaying Google AdWords on the About.com sites under the Sponsored Links section. The inclusion of the Google text ads has not yet caused much reduction in the pop-up and graphic...

Amazon.(Internet Search Engine Update)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Amazon has entered the search field in a big way with the introduction of its "Search Inside the Book" program. For publishers that have allowed their books to be included, the full text of the book content is searchable. Covering over 120,000...

AOL.(Internet Search Engine Update)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... AOL has renewed its use of the Google Web and ad databases and has made a few interface changes. It now offers access to the Google images database as a separate tab with "strict" filtering turned on. Local searching is available for AOL...

Ask Jeeves.(Internet Search Engine Update)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Ask Jeeves added an advanced search page with all the same features as the Teoma advanced search page except for the ability to get more than 10 results at a time and to open results in a new browser window. However, both of these options are...

Gigablast.(Internet Search Engine Update)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Gigablast has removed the date sort option on the advanced search form. As the only search engine to offer that option, it is disappointing to see this option disappear. On the plus side, Gigablast is now indexing, searching, and displaying...

LookSmart.(Internet Search Engine Update)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... LookSmart directory results will no longer show up on MSN Search after January 15, 2004. Instead, MSN will show Inktomi results, which already display when no matches in LookSmart are found or when you use the advanced search. Greg R....

Google.(Internet Search Engine Update)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Google has added a direct Google Glossary function (formerly only at Google Labs) to its main database. The define command works in two different ways using "definitions" found in a definition format on various Web pages. Enter define, a space,...

Goggle Labs.(Internet Search Engine Update)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Google Labs has a new experimental "Search by Location," somewhat similar to a feature that Northern Light offered years ago. Google's version adds a MapQuest map of locations for the hits based on the addresses given. It highlights matching...

InvisibleWeb.com.(Internet Search Engine Update)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... InvisibleWeb.com, Intelliseek's directory of invisible Web databases and resources, is gone. That address now redirects to Intelliseek's ProFusion meta search engine. Some of those databases are still searchable within ProFusion's subject...

Mooter.(Internet Search Engine Update)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Mooter is a new search engine from Australia which features visual clustering of results. In beta version, and available at mooter.com, it divides results into clusters using a diagram. Clicking the "Moot Quicker!" button displays the clusters...

Yahoo!(Internet Search Engine Update)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... Yahoo! has moved to tabs on its front page, at least for Internet Explorer users. It displays tabs for Web (the default), Images, Yellow Pages, and Products. The last tab goes to Yahoo!'s relaunched shopping search which includes product...

Harvesting USDA's agricultural information.(Cover Story)
January 1, 2004... The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), referred to by President Abraham Lincoln as "The People's Department," was founded in 1862 [www.ars. usda.gov/is/timeline/index.htm] and literally touches the lives of every U.S. resident, from food...

Conference call transcripts.
January 1, 2004... "Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?" Searching for conference call transcripts, some of the most elusive but most valuable business research sources, can leave information professionals feeling as harried and confused as...

Web conferencing for libraries: "can you hear me now?".
January 1, 2004... Reading about the wonders of today's broadband communications and the remote computer interaction features visible on the horizon makes information professionals wonder about library service applications. Can futuristic capabilities such as Web...

Investor relations on the Internet: CEOcast.com.
January 1, 2004... Seems everybody has an agent these days--actors, sports stars, and now, even businesses. Despite the recent deluge of negative news coming from Wall Street, plenty of companies really want investors to know about them. In addition to the...

Leading the pack: librarians create an original model for a customer-friendly publications system.
January 1, 2004... Foresight and imagination are nothing new to libraries and information professionals. For the past decade, we have been coping with, and capitalizing on, evolving technologies. Developing new electronic systems presents challenges to define and...

The future of citation indexing: an interview with Eugene Garfield.(Interview)
January 1, 2004... Dr. Eugene Garfield, the founder and chairman emeritus of the Institute for Scientific Information, spent a few days in Hawaii, giving a guest lecture at the University of Hawaii and an interview to ONLINE. This is the print version. A digital...

Toolbars: trash or treasures?(on the net)
January 1, 2004... The success and popularity of Google's toolbar has spawned broad interest from other search engines and sites in creating their own branded search toolbars. Search engines have tripped over each other this past year in offering up...

The lowdown on mutual funds.(the dollar sign)(Editorial)
January 1, 2004... It wasn't so long ago that mutual funds were considered the safest of investments--the "no-brainers" of investing. Parents counseled children to save money by investing in mutual funds. People with more money than time picked mutual funds, the...

About having fun.(industry insights)(Editorial)
January 1, 2004... Incoming asteroids (last year's metaphor for the dramatic changes in the industry) have hit; it's now time to reinvent out of the ashes. "It's fun to have fun, but you have to know how."--The Cat in the Hat, by Dr. Seuss The first...

Recipes for intranet standards.(intranet librarian)
January 1, 2004... A recent conference, IntraCom 2003 in Montreal, afforded me the opportunity to sit back and listen to experienced intranet developers present their recipes for successful intranet management. The intranets were diverse--some were in small...

Know the fundamentals and good design will follow.(web site management)
January 1, 2004... Designing an effective Web site can sometimes be overwhelming. After all, good design is actually the combination of many elements--the content users read, the colors and graphics they see, and the navigation they follow. Something as seemingly...

Peter's picks & pans.
January 1, 2004... In 2004, the Oscars will be awarded at the end of February, much earlier than usual, so for this January/February issue of ONLINE, I chose databases related to the Academy Awards. After all, chances are that there will be increased demand for...

The Core Business Web: a Guide to Key Information Resources.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... ** 1/2 edited by Gary W. White ISBN: 0-7890-2095-5 Published: 2003 Pages: 325 pp.; softcover Price: $29.25 Available from: Available from Haworth Information Press, 10 Alice St., Binghamton, NY 13904-1580;...

Business Statistics on the Web: Find Them Fast--at Little or No Cost.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... **** by Paula Berinstein ISBN: 0-910965-65-X Published: 2003 Pages: 244 pp.; softcover Price: $29.95 Available from: CyberAge Books, Information Today, Inc., 143 Old Marlton Pike, Medford, NJ 08055; 800/300-9868; ...

Practical RDF.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... *** Practical RDF by Shelley Powers ISBN: 0-596-00263-7 Published: 2003 Pages: 350 pp.; softcover Price: $39.95 Available from: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway N., Sebastopol, CA 95472;...

Google Pocket Guide.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... *** by Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest & DJ Adams ISBN: 0-596-00550-4 Published: 2003 Pages: 129 pp.; softcover Price: $9.95 Available from: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway N., Sebastopol, CA...

ONLINE! the Book: Because the Internet Does Not Come with a Manual.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... *** by John C. Dvorak and Chris Pirillo, with Wendy Taylor ISBN: 0-13-142363-0 Published: 2003 Pages: 720 pp.; softcover Price: $29.95 Available from: Prentice Hall PTR, 75 Arlington Street, Boston MA 02116;...

Copernic Summarizer.(online spotlight)
January 1, 2004... Information professionals all know that we're competing with Google--that we constantly need to surface the value we provide to our organization and offer additional information services to help our clients and patrons better use the...