Jinfo: Newsletter No. 2

Newsletter No. 2

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                              Free Pint
            'The Internet Newsletter That Means Business'

ISSN 1460-7239                                    20 November 1997 #2
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Welcome to the second issue of Free Pint. We hope you enjoyed the
first issue and found it useful. We've had some great feedback from
readers, and a selection can be seen at the end in the 'Letters'
section.

We are covering a wide range of subjects again in this issue. We kick
off with the importance of CAPITALISATION in search engines, and then
find out how to spot fakes and frauds on the Net.  There are also
interesting questions and answers to be found just after the letters.

This issue is being sent to twice as many readers as the first and so
word is spreading fast. Please do tell your colleagues, friends and
family about Free Pint - why not get them to sign up free on our Web
site at http://www.freepint.co.uk/  If you missed the first issue,
then that is on the Web site also.

Thank you for your support,
William Hann
Editor

PS: Readers have commented that Free Pint is much easier to read and
use if you print it out first. Some read it on the train, and one
even reads it in the bath - with a pen to highlight interesting bits!

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                           IN THIS ISSUE

                        TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
              'CAPITAL Punishment in Search Engines'

                          FEATURE ARTICLE
                   'Fakes and Frauds on the Net'

                              LETTERS

                             QUESTIONS

                            ADVERTISERS
   TFPL, Financial Times Information, Hemmington Scott Publishing,
    Information Access Company, The Investext Group, Dow Jones
Interactive Publishing, Learned Information, RBA Information Services
                      and Riverside Promotions

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          TRAINING COURSES FOR THE INFORMATION PROFESSION
TFPL, the premier training organisation in business information,
presents the following courses:
Researching Global Company Information    - 27th November 1997
Internet for Market Research              - 28th November 1997
Web-CD-ROM Hybrids.....an update          - 1st December 1997
For further details please contact sarah.sheldon@tfpl .com or visit
our website: http://www.tfpl.com/

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                        TIPS AND TECHNIQUES

              'CAPITAL Punishment in Search Engines'
                          by William Hann

What a dreadful title for an article, I hear you say. Well, perhaps.
The thing is that I have been running a lot of Internet training
sessions recently and have been observing how people enter their
search terms into search engines. Some enter all words in lower case,
some all in UPPER CASE, and some in a MiX oF BotH.  One would imagine
(and hope) that this would have little bearing on the results
presented by the search engines. However, in reality, the CASE you
use makes such a profound difference to the effectiveness of your
search that I would like to explain some of the problems.

A good example which highlights the problems is the seemingly
innocent word "next". This word has a variety of meanings depending
on the case used. Among other things, it can mean 'being or
positioned or living nearest' (Oxford Encyclopaedic Dictionary), the
international clothing retailer 'NEXT' (http://www.next.co.uk/), or
the software company 'NeXT' (http://www.next.com/) which has been
purchased by Apple.

I have therefore used this example to examine how different search
engines make allowance for CASE.  Please read on and find out what
you should watch out for in the search engines you use.  Links to all
of the resources mentioned are listed at the end, including a summary
of the search results.

Case Sensitive
--------------

AltaVista is a great first example of how the results can change due
to case sensitivity. In both its Simple and Advanced search modes,
searching for 'next' doesn't retrieve any results because the word is
considered to be too common. However, 'NeXT' retrieves 13 thousand
results, 'NEXT' gets 300 thousand, and 'Next' gets a whopping 100
million pages.

With InfoSeek, if you capitalise adjacent words then it takes these
as a single name or title. This can cause a number of problems if you
are unaware it is doing this, and the engine retrieved totally
different results for the four example CASE variations.

HotBot ignores capitalisation if search term(s) are in lower case,
but does take note of words with 'interesting case' such as 'NeXT'
which gets 80 thousand results. All other variations get the same
12 million documents.

continued ...

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                    FINANCIAL TIMES INFORMATION
FT Profile - In-depth online service bringing together over 5,000
sources including newspapers, journals, newswires, trade publications,
industry and market research, company data, financial statistics,
trade tenders and more. FT Discovery - Web-based online service for
business end-users. News, politics, industry information, country
reports, business opportunities all available for a fixed monthly fee.
         Tel: +44 (0)171 825 7777 Fax: +44 (0)171 970 0420
        email: ftprofile@ft.com   web site: www.info.ft.com

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... continued

Case Insensitive
----------------

A number of search engines are case insensitive, but some still have
traps to watch out for.

Lycos and WebCrawler are both case insensitive. Yahoo is the same,
but you must remember that if it doesn't find any pages in its index
which match your search then it displays AltaVista pages. The latter
_is_ case sensitive and so you have to be careful.

Some search engines, like Northern Light for example, are case
insensitive when searching, but display the results in a different
order depending on the case used in the search term(s).

The final, and most worrying, example is Excite. When searching for
any CASE combination of 'next' you get the reply 'Your search
produced no results'.  It doesn't tell you why, but helpfully
suggests that you may have spelt the word incorrectly!

Conclusion
----------
Hopefully the examples above have shown how very important CASE is
when using certain search engines.  The best thing to do is to
read the help files and FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) for the
ones you use. That said, you may find your favourite engine won't
retrieve anything anyway because your search term is too common. My
general advice if you use a variety of engines would be to use lower
case. This will often make search engines find all occurences of a
word regardless of CASE used in the actual pages.

In the 'next' example, it turns out that I may well have been better
off just guessing the URL (Internet address) of the company's
homepages, which are www.next.co.uk and www.next.com

Anyway, I hope I have now justified my title for this article.

Successful searching,
William Hann

Links and Summary of Results
----------------------------
AltaVista - http://altavista.digital.com/
  next = 0, NEXT = 300k, Next = 100m, NeXT = 13k

HotBot - http://www.hotbot.com/
  next + NEXT + Next = 12m (different order), NeXT = 80k

InfoSeek - http://www.infoseek.com/
  next = 4.5m, NEXT = 92k, Next = 2m, NeXT = 18k

Northern Light - http://www.northernlight.com/
  next + NEXT + Next + NeXT = 6m (different order)

Lycos - http://www.lycos.com/
  all = 1.4m

WebCrawler - http://webcrawler.com/
  all = 180k

Yahoo - http://www.yahoo.com/
  all = 1k

Excite - http://www.excite.com/
  all = 0

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William Hann runs the Internet consultancy Willco
(http://www.willco.co.uk/) who provide a number of services ranging
from Internet training through to Web site creation.
He can be contacted via email to w.hann@willco.co.uk

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If you have any questions, suggestions or letters, then please send
them to letters@freepint.co.uk along with your full name and email
address.

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          HEMMINGTON SCOTT PUBLISHING - www.hemscott.com
Is the leading provider to the professional and private investor
community of fundamental information on UK quoted companies.  The
company produces a number of publications, for example Company Guide.
In addition HSP distributes electronic data directly to City
Institutions and other data vendors for inclusion in their products.
The HSP product set is completed by a range of CD-Rom products and a
superb Internet site. Contact jsuckling@hemscott.co.uk

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If you would like to advertise in Free Pint, please see the notes
and special offers at http://www.freepint.co.uk/

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INFORMATION ACCESS COMPANY:(www.international.iacnet.com) PRESENTS
INSITE PRO, a powerful flat-fee business intelligence solution on the
web designed especially for information professionals. INSITE PRO
offers access to the most trusted databases in the information
industry including PROMT. Providing fast and flexible search options,
a single annual subscription fee and easy navigation, you can enjoy
unlimited access regardless of how many searches you request or how
many articles you download. Further information: iacinfo@iacnet.com 

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                          FEATURE ARTICLE

                   'Fakes and Frauds on the Net'
                         by Simon Linford

Most people in business have probably seen one of the 'Nigerian'
letters.  A huge deal is being put together which would move tens of
millions of dollars out of Nigeria.  All they need is a foreign bank
account, yours, to pass the money through.  You hardly need to do
anything to make a fortune.  A couple of months and several thousand
pounds later, this sure-fire opportunity is exposed for what it
really is - a complete scam.  

With the growth of the Internet, a fresh channel has been opened for
the rather successful business of persuading the gullible to part
with their cash.  And as with the Nigerian scams, individuals and
companies are falling for the tricks like autumn leaves.  Although
the Internet is a great way for businesses to make money
legitimately, it is also a great way to make it illegitimately as
well.

The Internet offers several advantages to con artists.  One is
anonymity, as no one sees you, talks to you, knows who or where you
are.  A company's web or email address gives away fewer clues than a
phone call, letter or fax.  The Internet provides a very low cost
medium for reaching potential targets everywhere in the world.  Also,
people seem to lower their guard on the Internet and believe rather
more than they ought to, like the nineteen people who sent $3,000
each to Loyola State University to buy non-existent degrees.  

But alongside the traditional scams which have just migrated onto a
new medium, there are some far cleverer ones, where fraudsters are
exploiting the technical power of the Internet.  The star of the show
so far has to be the sexygirls.com case.  After a few teasing
pictures on the site, tempted surfers were asked to download a
special program to look at some of the better ones.  Within the
viewer however was a clever communications program that disconnected
the user from their ISP and reconnected them to a different phone
number.  From that point on, the user was no longer making a local
call to their ISP, but a rather expensive phone call to a premium
rate number actually located in Moldova!  The website owner and the
Moldovan phone company shared both vast profits and the admiration of
fraud watchers.

continued ...

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         GLOBAL BUSINESS RESEARCH FROM THE INVESTEXT GROUP
      ****VISIT US ON STAND 167 AT ONLINE INFORMATION 97****
The Investext Group offers the largest electronic collection of
investment research, market intelligence and trade association
information worldwide.  Our Investext, MarkIntel, Pipeline(sm) and
Industry Insider databases provide access to over a million research
reports from over 500 investment firms, brokerage houses, market
research organisations and trade associations worldwide. Access our
data collections directly online, on CD-ROM or via the Internet.

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... continued

It is not just fraudsters who you should be on the look-out for, but
companies that aren't really what they make themselves out to be.
The Internet is a fast moving environment, with a lot of small
under-capitalised companies launching products with short life cycles
on borrowed money.  Although it is an environment where fortunes can
be made, even more are likely to be lost, and if you are being
supplied by one of the losers it could be more than a little
inconvenient.

The market for online payment systems is a good example because it
is a market previously dominated by trustworthy and well regulated
financial institutions.  Internet users seem to assume that the
peddlers of online payment systems must be similarly secure and
trustworthy but this is not necessarily the case.  There is no
industry regulator.  Claiming that a system is endorsed by a major
bank is no guarantee either - all it probably means is that the
transactions end up at the bank, not that the bank has checked the
system that gets them there.

There are a number of things to be aware of when considering the
integrity of anyone doing business on the Internet.

Look at the website in detail:

A valid business website should say a lot about what the company
really is, where it is based, and who is running it.  Companies who
are offering a service are usually not scared to say who their
customers are.  If they don't give any details about their customers
they probably don't have any.

Do business with companies you know and trust:

Know who and where the companies are.  It's easier to have a dispute
with a company in Manchester than one in Panama.  You cannot
necessarily tell from the web address where a company is based so
ask, and get independent evidence of the company's validity.

Don't believe endorsements from financial institutions in respect of
payment systems:

Ask the bank whether the service provider can be trusted with your
transactions.  Get references and ask for a balance sheet - you will
be shown them if they tell the right story.

Know that unsolicited email violates computer etiquette and is often
used by con artists:

It also violates most agreements for Internet service.  Report
'spamming', as unsolicited email is called, to your online or
Internet service provider.

Guard your financial information:

Don't give out your bank account number, credit card number, social
security number or any personal or company information until you are
sure of the legitimacy of the other party, and the reason for them
needing the information.  Even with partial information a fraudster
can cause trouble.

Deal with companies in preference to individuals:

If things go wrong, it is marginally easier to take action against
companies than individuals (provided the company still exists of
course).

Don't be swayed by a flashy website:

A flashy website does not say anything about the authority of the
company behind it.  Websites are essentially advertisements, but they
are not regulated in the same way as those in other media.  Don't
assume that anything they say is true, however good it looks.

Overall, the best advice to avoid any pitfalls is to apply the same
standards of business control to online dealings as you would in
conventional media.  So when you receive an email from a
representative of the Nigerian National Oil Corporation, asking to
transfer $100m to your company account, as part of a completely risk
free export transaction, just hit the delete key!

Simon Linford

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The author is a director of Coconut Software, an Internet software
development company based in Jersey.  The company has produced two
proprietary products: WebSecure, which is a comprehensive access
security system for webservers, and WebSign, which protects web
pages from internal or external tampering.   The company also makes
its programming expertise available to web design companies, doing
work that ranges from producing simple CGI scripts, through bespoke
C or Java programs, to full scale database and payment integration
projects.  More details of Coconut's products and services can be
found at www.coconut.co.uk.

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We welcome your feedback on any section in Free Pint.  Therefore,
please send your comments or suggestions to letters@freepint.co.uk
along with your full name and email address.

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DOW JONES INTERACTIVE PUBLISHING http://djinteractive.com provides fast,
easy and timely access to 3800 reliable and authoritative business
publications, including exclusive coverage of The Wall Street Journal
and Dow Jones newswires; plus a vast collection of market and broker
research, company financials and share price histories. Research a
market sector like telecommunications, energy or healthcare, a specific
country or geographic area, the emerging markets, a company, personality
or topical issue. Email solutions@dowjones.co.uk for your free trial.

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                              LETTERS

What a great response we got to the first issue.  Here a couple of
letters we received.

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'Thanks for sending the first issue of freepint.  I think you have
done a grand job with this.  It will be a great help to me and I
shall spread the news about freepint.  Congratulations to all
contributors.  
Sincerely,
Robert E. Armbrust'
armbrustrobert@hotmail.com
http:www.hotmail.com

continued ...

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              Dan Wagner to open Online Information 97
Chief Executive Officer of The Dialog Corporation is to deliver this
year's Opening Address at Online Information 97.  Under the heading
"Online Industry in Context", the morning session of this year's
conference will analyse the rise of the Internet as the potential
market for professional information services.  Other speakers in this
session include Bill Bass of Forrester Research Inc, Tim Andrews, Dow
Jones Interactive, Ben Tomkins, Broadview Associations and Jeffrey S
Galt, The Dialog Corporation.
       For further details visit www.online-information.com

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... continued

'Dear FREE PINT Team,

Thank you for the first of many more well drawn FREE PINTS to come!

Yours aye,

Dougal Paterson.'
Resident British Consular Warden - Pampanga
The Philippines.
dougalp@mail.ang.sequel.net

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If you have something you would like to say (whether it be good or
bad), then please send it to letters@freepint.co.uk including your
full name and email address. Please note, letters may be edited for
content or length, and we cannot guarantee a reply.

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              INTERNET SEMINARS AND WORKSHOPS
RBA Information Services runs regular courses on finding business
information on the Internet. Our next scheduled workshop is:

   Business Information on the Internet        26th November
   Venue: Aston University, Birmingham

Full details from training@rba.co.uk or http://www.rba.co.uk/

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                             QUESTIONS

We had a number of questions relating to resources mentioned in the
first issue.  Here are three of the most popular questions, with
answers for the first two from Karen Blakeman (author of the Feature
Article in the first issue).

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Q1: I'm new to the Web and am confused by the all the different
search tools. In particular, is Metacrawler different from
Webcrawler? Does Webcrawler search across 6 search engines in the
way that Metacrawler does?

A1. Yes, it is very confusing but the two tools that you mention are
different in the way that they work. Webcrawler
(http://webcrawler.com/) is a search engine in its own right. It
tends to be more consumer orientated in its coverage than the other
search engines, but it can be excellent for finding basic, background
information on a subject.

Metacrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com/)is really just a front end -
albeit a very sophisticated one - to Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, Excite,
Infoseek and Webcrawler. You just type in your terms once and it
automatically runs the search through those engines. It then removes
any duplicates and presents you with a combined list.

The disadvantage of Metacrawler is that you cannot use the more
advanced features of the individual search engines. Nevertheless, a
lot of people use Metacrawler as their first choice when searching
the Web. If nothing sensible comes up, then they move onto the
individual search tools.

continued ...

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         Promotional gifts supplied by Riverside Promotions
                Tel: 01784 454785  Fax: 01784 466157

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... continued

Q2. Why do I sometimes get completely different results from a search
engine when I re-run *exactly* the same search within just a few
minutes? It's driving me mad! P.S. I usually use AltaVista

A2. This behaviour of AltaVista has puzzled (and irritated) many
people for quite a while. We only discovered the reason a couple of
weeks ago ourselves on the Search Engine Watch site
(http://www.searchenginewatch.com/). It seems that when AltaVista is
busy, it may not carry out a complete search. It allows only so much
time for each search and then displays the results found up to that
point, regardless of whether or not it has looked across its entire
database. If you repeat the search, even a few minutes later,
AltaVista may not be so busy and will carry out a complete search.
Hence the different results.

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Please send questions for Free Pint to letters@freepint.co.uk
including your full name and email address. Please note, questions
may be edited for content or length, and we cannot guarantee a reply.

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Did you enjoy Free Pint and find it useful? If so, then please try to
tell at least two other people or forward the entire newsletter to
them. Our aim is to double to number of subscribers again by the next
issue, and we can't do that without your help.

If you visit one of our sponsors then please don't forget to tell
them that you saw them in Free Pint.

                       See you in two weeks!

                       William Hann, Editor

(c) Willco 1997
http://www.freepint.co.uk/
ISSN: 1460-7239

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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 on the Web at http://www.freepint.co.uk/

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.

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