NewsLink — Issue 67/May 2005 |
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NewsLink is a free weekly e-mail newsletter featuring news and resources for the information industry. If you are receiving this issue as a forward and would like to become a subscriber, please visit our Web site at www.infotoday.com or send a blank e-mail to join-infotoday@lists.infotoday.com. | |
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IN THIS ISSUE 1) WELCOME 2) ITI SNAP POLL 3) NEWSLINK MONTHLY SPOTLIGHT 4) NEWSBREAKS 5) FEATURED ARTICLES 6) CONFERENCE CONNECTION 7) BOOKSHELF |
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1) WELCOME Welcome to the May 2005 issue of NewsLink, Information Today, Inc.'s FREE e-mail newsletter for library and information professionals. May has finally arrived, and with it comes several of our spring conferences. Let's take a quick look at what is happening at ITI. This year's Buying & Selling eContent in Scottsdale (April 10-12, 2005) saw more than 200 executives gather to meet and network with colleagues, customers, and friends in the information industry. From our annual golf tournament to the various conference panels, attendees enjoyed themselves and left with food for thought and new ideas to challenge them over the next year. Many thanks to those who helped make this show a success. The May conferences at the Hilton in New York City are almost here! Enterprise Search Summit, WebSearch University, and Streaming Media East are all from May 17 to 18, 2005. Each event provides a unique opportunity to network with and learn from both colleagues and experts in the field. There is still time to register for all three conferences, although time is quickly running out. You can access all three events through our home page, www.infotoday.com. As for this summer, we are returning to Paris in 2005 with three Information Today conferences in June. WebSearch Academy, Enterprise Search Paris, and Collaboration in the e-Workplace will all take place at CNIT La Défense in Paris, France from June 1 to 2. Join other IT professionals who are interested in acquiring crucial knowledge, strategies, and tools that will enable them to increase the information ROI within their organizations. If you have any comments or suggestions on any special content you would like to see covered or on how to improve this newsletter and the information held in it, please let us know at newslink@infotoday.com. Best Wishes,
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2) ITI SNAP POLL Do you think the Google Print project of digitizing collections of leading research libraries will change the future of library services, possibly replacing brick-and-mortar libraries? Yes? No? Please comment at https://www.infotoday.com/ |
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3) NEWSLINK MONTHLY SPOTLIGHT Let Watson Find It for You by Paula J. Hane Computer users have lots of options available to them for search—Web search engines, professional online search services, desktop search tools (all the rage recently), and enterprise search applications. However, all of these rely on the user initiating a search and knowing basically where and how to look for information. And most of these search solutions rely on a few key words to initiate the search. Now, a new "push" product can operate in the background and present potentially useful information as needed. Watson is a desktop application from Intellext that automatically reads and understands the context of what you’re working on; it uses that knowledge to proactively find and deliver information to you as it’s needed, even if you didn’t know you needed it or where to find it. The Chicago-based start-up company Intellext (http://www.intellext.com) calls itself the "Intelligence in Context" software company. Intellext emerged from its research and development stage in late January, changed its name to Intellext from Open Road Technologies, hired technology entrepreneur Al Wasserberger as its CEO, and is now commercially marketing and shipping its software solutions. Watson is the result of research conducted by Intellext co-founders Jay Budzik and Kristian Hammond at Northwestern University. Budzik, now the company’s CTO, said that Watson "removes the burden of search from the shoulders of computer users." Watson can bring relevant data into a user’s work flow from multiple online and offline information sources, including:
The software works automatically in the background; it turns the gray light bulb icon yellow when information is available. Users can also request updated results and can even highlight words, phrases, or large sections of a page to provide context for Watson. Users are also able to add search terms to refine results. According to a FAQ on the Intellext site, Watson uses a combination of application-level semantics and statistical language analysis techniques to arrive at a characterization of the user’s document or page. As a user works with a document, Watson pays attention to the section a user is editing and tailors its results to that section. Watson also understands how to separate the "junk" surrounding an article on a Web page from the article itself. The Watson client for Windows is available in several options. The Watson Standard edition ($99.95 for a 1-year subscription) is for individual business users and provides content from a standard list of information sources, including search engines like Yahoo! and subscription services like HighBeam Research. Watson Professional is available for small and medium-sized businesses with up to 500 users. Watson Professional users can access corporate data sources such as corporate portal intranets and extranets, knowledge management solutions, and corporate databases; the software can easily be configured to search new information sources. Federated search vendor MuseGlobal (http://www.museglobal.com) has incorporated Intellext’s Watson technology as an optional add-on component to its MuseSearch products and services. Kate Noerr, CEO of MuseGlobal, said: "Watson as a front-end application driving the MuseServer powered back-end makes a very powerful information discovery system. As we expand into new markets such as legal and financial services, we expect this new functionality to make us an even more compelling choice." Intellext is also offering the MuseSearch MuseServer as part of the Watson solution for large organizations—aka the Watson Enterprise Edition. Users of this software are able to access the 3,000-plus preconfigured information sources available through the MuseServer and have access to the software management and reporting tools in the Watson Enterprise Server. At the recent Software 2005 conference, Intellext introduced its latest commercial solution, the ActiveContext iSuite. This product suite, which is based on the Watson technology, offers a set of tools for publishers and Web content providers to offer contextual search features to their users. It will be available at the end of June in three modules:
You can try Watson free for 30 days.
Download it from the company site and then just say to the handy, unobtrusive
assistant: "Watson, come here. I need you."
Paula J. Hane is Information Today, Inc.’s news bureau chief and editor of NewsBreaks. Her e-mail address isphane@infotoday.com. |
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4) NEWSBREAKS For a complete listing of previous NewsBreaks visit the Information Today, Inc. Web site at https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks. NewsBreaks for Monday, May 2, 2005 Wondir Launches Volunteer Virtual
Reference Service
While librarians across the country wrestle with virtual reference desk service schedules, Wondir, Inc. (http://www.wondir.com) has come out of a 2-year beta and launched a live Q&A service that “connects people with questions to people with answers.” Using a combination of search engine, instant messaging, and other technologies, it aims to allow “answer-full” volunteers to provide personal responses to queries and to generate automatic links to appropriate Web sites and news articles. In the course of development, Wondir has already tallied more than 1 million Q&A base pairs with answers coming from 100,000-plus people—more than 75,000 of whom have registered in the “Wondir community.” -->https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb050502-1.shtml
NewsBreaks Weekly News Digest Westlaw Expands Government Affairs
Resources
Knovel Offers Free Access to Nine
Reference Works
Yahoo! Introduces My Web
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5) FEATURED ARTICLES For full-text coverage of the following articles please use the hotlinks provided. INFORMATION
TODAY
The Federal Trade Commission estimates
that 10 million people were victims of identity theft in 2002, the most
recent year for which it has data. According to Gartner, Inc., 9.4 million
online U.S. adults were victimized between April 2003 and April 2004. The
losses amounted to $11.7 billion. ChoicePoint reported that the personal
information of 145,000 Americans may have been compromised in its breach,
in which con men posing as businessmen looking to do background checks
on their customers were given access to its credit information database.
The company reported that about 750 of those people whose information was
released were defrauded.
ONLINE Magazine
To find information inside a printed
book, people traditionally rely on an index or, for a few works, a concordance.
With the advent of e-books, however, people could search the entire text,
assuming they bought the e-book. Although a growing number of copyright-free
books are now on the Web, those still under copyright remained unsearchable—until
now.
COMPUTERS IN LIBRARIES
Many of you may already be using
open source software without realizing it. Firefox, the Web browser that
is growing in popularity as an alternative to Internet Explorer, was developed
by the Mozilla Foundation's open source project. Mozilla.org, which is
overseen by the Mozilla Foundation, is an organization of people who are
interested in using or improving the Mozilla source code. More information
about the foundation and its philosophy, as well as a free Firefox download,
can be found on the Mozilla Web site. An e-mail client, Thunderbird, is
also available for download as is Mozilla Suite, a set of Internet applications
that includes a Web browser, an e-mail and newsgroup client, an IRC chat
client, and an HTML editor. Documentation for these programs as well
as other resources are also available on the site.
SEARCHER
Magazine
The tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004, has
become another defining moment in the evolution and use of blogs. These
distributed, interactive resources rallied around the disaster in ways
that allowed readers to learn of the disaster, find ways to help through
direct donations or volunteer opportunities, and cope with the grief that
such an event inevitably brings.
MULTIMEDIA
& INTERNET@SCHOOLS
LINK-UP
DIGITAL
Everyone has different travel needs,
but you can get enough information online to make the best choices for
your personal circumstances. Some people want to be pampered to the limit,
while others are happy to simply have a clean room and fresh towels. So
whatever your tastes, use what the Internet has to offer to plan the best
possible trip.
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6) CONFERENCE CONNECTION Get the latest event information available for the library and information fields in the Conference Connection. The Conference Report/Update gives you an inside look at the most recent information industry events, while the Conference Calendar is updated monthly to provide you with important contact information for up-and-coming industry events. CONFERENCE REPORT/UPDATE Streaming Media For the Business
World
ITI's May Shows Are Almost Here
CONFERENCE CALENDAR May 2005 May 12-14 AMERICAN SOCIETY OF INDEXERS,
Pasadena, CA
May 16-18 ENTERPRISE SEARCH SUMMIT,
Hilton New York, New York, NY
May 16-18 STREAMING MEDIA EAST, Hilton
New York, New York, NY
May 16-18 WEBSEARCH UNIVERSITY, Hilton
New York, New York, NY
May 17-19 ASSOCIATION FOR INFORMATION
& IMAGE MANAGEMENT (AIIM) EXPO,
For the complete
Conference Calendar visit https://www.infotoday.com/calendar.shtml
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7) BOOKSHELF Yahoo! to the Max: An Extreme Searcher Guide By Randolph Hock "A comprehensive and readable guide to Yahoo! by one of the world's savviest online searchers."— Chris Sherman, Associate Editor, Search Engine Watch, and author, Google Power With its many and diverse features, it's not easy for any individual to keep up with all that Yahoo! has to offer. Fortunately, Randolph (Ran) Hock has created a reader-friendly guide to his favorite Yahoo! tools for online research, communication, investment, e-commerce, and a range of other useful activities. In Yahoo! to the Max, Ran provides background, content knowledge, techniques, and tips designed to help Web users take advantage of many of Yahoo!'s most valuable offerings - from its portal features, to Yahoo! Groups, to unique tools some users have yet to discover. Of course, Yahoo! is not going to sit still, and neither is Ran Hock: As with all Extreme Searcher guides, the author's regularly updated Web page helps readers stay current on the new and improved Yahoo! features he recommends. "We review many new publications, good and not so good, but we know straight away that if it's a Ran Hock title then it's going to be great." — William Hann, Managing Editor, FreePint June 2005/272 pp/softbound
To purchase this title, please go
to https://books.infotoday.com/books/yahootomax.shtml.
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