Online articles from May 2000

Online archives from May 2000

And You, Sir, Are No Simple Searcher.(AltaVista introduces Advanced Search Center)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Most of you have already mastered the art of manipulating a traditional service's search interface. The Web is a different story, it's a constant challenge... In March, AltaVista rolled out its Advanced Search Center--a portal-like...

Letters to the editor.
May 1, 2000... STAY SKEPTICAL, BE PRACTICAL To the Editor: Congratulations on Michael Dahn's excellent article ("Counting Angels on a Pinhead: Critically Interpreting Web Size Estimates," January 2000, ONLINE, p. 35) which takes a skeptical look at...

Thomson Buys Dialog for $275 Million.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2000... At press time, The Dialog Corporation confirmed rumors that it is selling its Information Services Division (comprised of Dialog, DataStar, and Profound), to the Thomson Corporation for $275 million, which is enough cash to assure repayment of...

Reed Elsevier Divides into Three Parts: Gieskes Leaves LEXIS-NEXIS.(Hans Gieskes)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Crispin Davis, the new Reed Elsevier CEO, outlined his strategy in his year-end report to shareholders. He has divided the company into three parts: Scientific, Legal, and Business-to-Business. The Scientific Division will concentrate on...

Office.com.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2000... Small business information portal, Office.com, has bought an 80% stake in the NewsEdge Corp. subsidiary, Individual.com, with the right to acquire the remaining 20% in 2001. Winstar Communications Inc. (owns Telebase as a subsidiary) operates...

Bernan Associates.(acquires Accents Publications Service)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Bernan Associates has acquired Accents Publications Service for an undisclosed amount. Accents distributes international scholarly and professional books, U.S. and international governmental publications, and association and learned society...

VeriSign Inc.(acquires Network Solutions Inc.)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... VeriSign Inc. plans to buy Internet domain registrar, Network Solutions Inc., for a stock deal valued at $21 billion. Until recently, Network Solutions held a monopoly on assigning and recording names for .com, .org, and .net domain names....

Hoover's, Inc.(acquires stake in Intellifact.com)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Hoover's, Inc. has purchased a minority stake in Intellifact.com, Inc. Specific terms of the investment were not disclosed. Intellifact.com is creating a global network of vertical information designed for business professionals, where each...

FIND/SVP, Inc.(signs agreement with idealab!)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... FIND/SVP, Inc. has signed a collaboration agreement with idealab! to develop find.com as a new Internet site featuring search engine technology, content, and features. As part of the agreement, FIND/SVP is assigning the domain name find.com and...

RoweCom Inc.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... RoweCom Inc. and NewsEdge Corporation have mutually agreed to terminate an acquisition agreement announced in December 1999, where RoweCom would have acquired NewsEdge under a stock transaction. The companies will form a partnership where...

Thomson Corporation.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Thomson Corporation will acquire Wave Technologies International, Inc. via a tender offer for all the issued and outstanding shares of Wave Technologies' common stock, at a price of $9.75 per share in cash, or a total of approximately $45...

Sopheon.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Sopheon, a supplier of knowledge management software and services, will acquire Teltech Resource Network Corporation. Under the agreement, Sopheon will acquire Teltech through payment consisting of 2,192,954 new Ordinary Shares of Sopheon and...

U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO).(adds to the Cooperative Online Resource Catalog)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has agreed to add resources to the OCLC Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC) project. CORC is an international effort to organize and ease access to local library and Web-based electronic...

NLResearch.com.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... NLResearch.com, the Northern Light site designed for business and professional searchers, has been remodeled to improve usability and Performance. Enhancements include changes to the overall design; separate search boxes on the homepage for...

Powerize.com.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Powerize.com has formed several partnerships to its business research content via intranet portals to corporate and government clients. These partnerships represent the trend of collaborative relationships emerging in the Enterprise Information...

OCLC WorldCat Collections Sets.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... OCLC WorldCat Collections Sets (formerly OCLC Major Microform Services) has been enhanced to include cataloging records representing electronic databases available to libraries. Libraries can access the records through the OCLC cataloging...

NTIS.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... The NTIS database is now available via EBSCOhost. The database provides access to information representing hundreds of billions of dollars and covering more than 35 broad subjects, and includes bibliographic records for over two million...

EBSCOhost 3.2.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... EBSCOhost 3.2 has been released with several new features. Enhancements include changes to print functionality; persistent links that let users retrieve an EBSCOhost article by clicking on a link embedded in a Web site; improved page navigation...

EntryPoint Incorporated.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... EntryPoint Incorporated, the idealab! company that provides a free downloadable toolbar for delivering personalized news and information to the desktop, has announced the final integration of PointCast features into its EntryPoint toolbar, as...

Bacon's Internet Media Directory.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Bacon's Internet Media Directory (Bacon's Information) is a new directory that provides data on Web sites to help public relations personnel identify appropriate contacts for specific news or story ideas. The directory only lists sites with...

Fuld Competitive Intelligence Center.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... The Fuld Competitive Intelligence Center is a new resource in the Ask Dow Jones section of Dow Jones Interactive (http://www.factiva.com). The resource is designed to help business professionals by offering company, industry, and trend analysis...

FISonline.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... FISonline (Mergent FIS) content and features have been upgraded, following a series of 12 content/feature upgrades in 1999. Coverage of non-U.S. public companies has been increased to over 12,000, and FISonline now contains information on over...

arbsearch.com.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... arbsearch.com (LRP Publications) is a new site that offers access to more than 73,000 labor arbitration awards rendered since 1978, including all published awards (http://www.arbsearch.com). Features include templates that let users research an...

TermTracker.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... TermTracker is a new tool from ISI that helps corporations identify reports of their own products, or those of their competitors, from the full text of current scientific articles. On a daily basis, the product electronically scans the full...

Hoover's Online: The Business Network.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Hoover's Online: The Business Network has launched interactive financial "tombstone" advertisements. Traditional print tombstone ads (usually boxed with black border and minimal text) are run by investment banks to announce the sale of new...

Peopleware.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Sue Feldman is now at IDC in Boston where she is Program Director for Document Management and Content Technologies, which is part of the Software Research Group. Sue is one of the most respected online search gurus and independent information...

Sequoia Software Corporation.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Sequoia Software Corporation has announced a partnership with Semio Corporation to integrate Semio's Taxonomy Solution into Sequoia's XML Portal Server (XPS). Semio's Taxonomy Solution is a multilevel directory structure that includes...

linkUall.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... linkUall (Sinpag International, Inc.) is a new, free online service (http:// www.linkUall.com) that offers the ability to link small groups of users into a larger, organized scheme, and includes an access rights management system for...

BiblioTech PRO version 2.0.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... BiblioTech PRO version 2.0 (Inmagic, Inc.) has been released as a fully integrated library system powered by Progress Software's Version 9.0 RDBMS database, and also using Progress WebSpeed version 3.0 to offer advanced browser support for the...

Snippets.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Snippets (Snippets.com) is a Web tool for extracting information from HTML and XML sources and delivering it to the desktop in a concise icon form, called a "snippet." Delivered icons are organized in a row and each may contain information from...

EndNote 4.0.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... EndNote 4.0 (ISI ResearchSoft) has been released with a new user interface and more customization for both the Windows and Macintosh environments. New features include the ability for users to personalize their reference databases, enhanced...

A Report From Intranets 2000.(Intranets Conference and Exhibition)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2000... February 28-March 1, 2000 marked the second installment of the Online Inc.-produced Intranets Conference and Exhibition. Organized by Jean DeMatteo and Howard McQueen of McQueen Consulting, Intranets 2000 made a decidedly successful jump from...

AltaVista.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... AltaVista has added a find related pages feature for some search results. Look for a "Related pages" link to search for additional hits similar to the one chosen. This can also be done directly from the search box by using the new field search...

MP3/audio.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... AltaVista has also introduced new Search Centers. Dividing its multimedia search into three separate sections, there are now Search Centers for images, video, and MP3/audio. Each search center has a separate page with new search features and...

Advanced Search Center.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... In addition, they have moved their Advanced Search to a new Advanced Search Center. The Advanced Search still functions the same, but the surrounding portal content and links have changed. It includes information aimed at the advanced searcher...

Ask Jeeves.(acquires Direct Hit)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Ask Jeeves, the question and answer site, acquired Direct Hit. Greg R. Notess is a reference librarian at Montana State University.

BullsEye.(available in version 2)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2000... BullsEye from Intelliseek http:/www.intelliseek.com/ is now available in version 2. Unlike version 1, this version is free. BullsEye Pro version 2 is $149 and adds tracking, customized news-clipping techno1ogy, and advanced filtering for the...

Dialog.(introduces WebCheck)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Dialog has released WebCheck, formerly called K-Check. WebCheck is a free desktop application that ties into Dialog's Web search engine site, WebTop. Greg R. Notess is a reference librarian at Montana State University.

ExpertCentral.com.(sold to About.com)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... ExpertCentral.com has been acquired by About.com, the site formerly known as the Mining Company. Greg R. Notess is a reference librarian at Montana State University.

Fast.(Scandinavia Online will begin using database)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Fast announced that Scandinavia Online and its Evreka and Kvasir portals will begin using the Fast search engine database of Web pages. Greg R. Notess is a reference librarian at Montana State University.

Google.(changes cached pages display)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Google has changed the header on its cached pages display. It continues to report the date when Google cached the page, but it no longer reports the date of the page at the time it was cached. Greg R. Notess is a reference librarian at...

HotBot.(now supports left hand truncation)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... HotBot and a few other Inktomi search engines (including Snap and Anzwers) now support left-hand truncation. The asterisk (*) can be used at the beginning of a term, anywhere in the middle, or at the end to stand for any number of characters...

HotLinks Guide.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... HotLinks Guide has launched and functions both as a Web-based bookmark storage site and a searchable database of other people's bookmarks. Claiming over three million unique links, HotLinks allows participants to keep their bookmarks private or...

Inktomi.(WebMap database documents)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2000... Inktomi announced on January 18, 2000 that its WebMap database exceeded one billion documents and that the size had been verified by researchers from NEC (see http://www.inktomi.com/webmap/). However, while the page states that the number of...

MaxBot.com.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... MaxBot.com offers three domain specific search engines: SearchEdu.com, SearchMil.com, and SearchGov.com. They each index pages within their respective top-level domains. In the style of Google, they also offer cached versions of pages that show...

Northern Light.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Northern Light is now available as one of Yahoo!'s follow-up search options. It is listed in the "Other Search Engines" section at the end of the Yahoo! search results. Greg R. Notess is a reference librarian at Montana State University.

The Open Directory.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... The Open Directory has surpassed 1.5 million records in its directory, which is available at http://dmoz.Org/ as well as at AltaVista, HotBot, Lycos, and several other prominent Web sites. Greg R. Notess is a reference librarian at Montana...

The Numbers.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... The February statistical comparison of search engines at Search Engine Showdown (http://searchengineshowdown.com/) shows Fast maintaining its lead as largest database, followed by Northern Light and AltaVista. Despite major size increases in...

Web Search Engines: (More) features & commands.
May 1, 2000... Now, a year after we published the first version of the search engine chart (See "Web Search Engines: Features and Commands," May 1999 ONLINE, p. 24), it's time to take another summary look at the features provided by the major Web search...

What's New With Web Search.
May 1, 2000... Last year, in "The Future of Web Search" (ONLINE, May/June 1999, p. 54-61), I took on the somewhat quixotic task of painting a portrait of the state of Web search in the year 2004. All of the industry leaders I spoke with were amused by the...

SEARCH ENGINE Relevance.
May 1, 2000... What is relevant? What answer are people truly seeking when they approach an Internet search engine? As anyone who has spent time at a reference desk, information center, or has otherwise acted as an intermediary in the information seeking...

ORGANIZING THE WORLD'S INFORMATION.
May 1, 2000... Google Raises the Bar on Search Technology Google is a company name derived from the word googol, which refers to the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. The company uses the name to reflect the enormity of its mission, which is nothing less...

Meaning-Based Search Tools: Find what I mean, not what I say.
May 1, 2000... Like precipitation in upstate New York, the steady flow of information provides an incessant background to the day. Whether a constant drip or a deluge, we need more than an umbrella to handle today's information flood. Happily, several...

Avoid the VOID: Quick and Easy Site Submission Strategies.
May 1, 2000... "If I build it, they will come." This is one of the worst assumptions a Webmaster can make. No one will come unless you also promote your Web site, and search engines are one of the most important places to do this. Am I trying to turn...

The Internet's HIDDEN CONTENT and How to Find It.
May 1, 2000... Web watchers know that there's a growing gap between what's available on the Internet and what search engines can actually retrieve. Size statistics released at the end of 1999, for example, reveal differences in numbers of Web pages indexed,...

Specialized search engines: Alternatives to the Big Guys.
May 1, 2000... What do Ally McBeal, chicken soup, and the structure of DNA have in common? Answer: You can find information about them on the Internet by using a search engine. As of January 2000, many major search engines had databases containing...

Up and Coming Search Technologies.
May 1, 2000... Now that online searching has permeated today's Internet culture, there are plenty of companies working on new approaches to searching the Net. Search technology is big business on the Net. The most highly visited sites often started off...

The Business of Domain Names.
May 1, 2000... There was a time when you could register just about any domain name you liked with no problem. That has changed. These days, a company without a domain name is considered Neanderthal. Even clinosaur.com or outoftouch.net would be preferable...

Chargebacks: Solution or Setback?
May 1, 2000... It is of utmost importance to remember that when the library moves to chargebacks, it is essentially becoming an explicit internal vendor. Late last year, Outsell's staff was inundated with inquiries about implementing chargebacks....

Electronic Articles: A Battle for Control and Ownership of Content.
May 1, 2000... Others before me have stated that since our tax dollars subsidize most of the research conducted in this country, we should not have to pay for the articles that result. In the second half of 1999, our industry was bombarded with a series...

Delivering the Goods: Intranet Databases for Small and Large Projects.
May 1, 2000... Some of the most beautiful, flexible, and exciting intranets have databases hidden behind them. To some people, databases and the Web are about as far apart as can be. Web pages are just simple documents formatted for display on a computer...

Dialog's New Tools for Web-Age Knowledge Workers.
May 1, 2000... Most recently, Dialog has announced three new Web-oriented knowledge-worker products: Dialog Portals, Dialog PowerPortal, and WebTop When Dan Wagner and M.A.I.D. bought Dialog, they promised change--and delivered. Dialog in 2000 looks very...

Recommended Reading on Virtual Libraries.(Review)
May 1, 2000... Virtual libraries, digital libraries, hybrid libraries--whatever you call them, they're a part of our life. This month, we examine a collection of books to help you get or stay up-to-speed on the latest issues in cyber-librarianship. ***...

Going, Going...(pricing for online services)
May 1, 2000... remember the "ticking meter"? Remember DialUnits? How about per-search fees and hit charges? The Internet is finally confronting the perpetual bete noire of the traditional online world--pricing. How do you assign value to a particular...