Newsletter No. 23
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Free Pint
"Helping 12,500 people use the Web for their work"
http://www.freepint.co.uk/
ISSN 1460-7239 1 October 1998 #23
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IN THIS ISSUE
EDITORIAL
TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
"The Good Times are not about to end, unfortunately"
by Phil Bradley
FEATURE ARTICLE
"There's an awful lot of coffee in Brazil:
Coffee information on the Web"
by Pablo Dubois
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FROM INFORMATION TO INTELLIGENCE, 11-14 October, 1998 www.eusidic.org
EUSIDIC's Annual Conference in Vienna
Session 1-Push Technology in the provision & use of information
Session 2-Users' View managing information in a dynamic world
Session 3-Publishers' View making data into knowledge
Session 4-Place of Free Information in the information economy
Workshops: Imprimatur, Intranets, XML
Contact: e-mail secretariat@eusidic.org tel +44 (0) 171 336 7098
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EDITORIAL
OK, let's make a deal. We promise to keep giving you a first-rate
"Free Pint" every two weeks for free ... your only obligation is
to tell all your colleagues and friends about it. Deal? If so, then
why not forward this copy to them now?
We start this issue with a look at Internet viruses and how to avoid
them. This is then followed by a fascinating look at coffee resources
on the Web ... and I guarantee when you read this you will, like me,
proclaim "Gosh, I never knew that". The feedback section is once again
packed with invaluable tips on searching.
Have you tried printing out Free Pint before you read it? Those
readers who do, tell us how much more they get out of each issue
because they can read it at a more convenient time - like on the
train - and can highlight the interesting bits. Why not print it now?
May I now invite you to read on and enjoy your twenty third Free Pint!
Kind regards,
William
William Hann MIInfSc, Managing Editor
e: william@freepint.co.uk
t: +44 (0)1784 455 435
f: +44 (0)1784 455 436
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To find out more Tel 08700 710 711 or visit http://www.dodogogo.co.uk
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*** NEW *** FREE PINT COMMUNITY *** NEW ***
http://www.freepint.com/
Make this your first port of call on the Web - with links to all the
major search engines and a handy reference card of features.
Also subject links to all articles which have appeared in Free Pint.
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TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
"The Good Times are not about to end, unfortunately"
by Phil Bradley
In this article I will try to shed some light on the existence of
viruses on the Internet, how you can 'catch' one of them, and what to
do if you receive a virus warning. Finally, I'll point you in the
direction of some useful web resources that give you more information.
If you have an email account (and these days which of us do not?)
you'll probably have been the recipient of at least one message
warning you about a virus doing the rounds of the Internet. If you
subscribe to mailing lists, you will almost certainly have downloaded
a message which says the same thing. The name of the particular virus
might well change - Good Times, Win a Holiday, Penpal Greetings, and
Join the Crew are some of the common names that you may have come
across. The basic text of the warning you receive will however be very
similar - if you download an email with a title such as those I've
mentioned various dire things will happen to your system. Anything
from deleting files to wiping your hard disk are all threatened, and
at the end of the email you'll be asked to send the warning onto as
many people as you possibly can. As a result, these warnings spread
like a rash around the Internet before dying down, only to be replaced
by another. A few months or perhaps a year later the whole sorry cycle
begins again.
First of all, lets deal with the bad news. It is possible to download
a virus from the Internet, and it can be passed onto other people.
There are two ways in which this may happen. The first is if you
download a piece of software from a web site it is possible (at least
in theory) for it to contain a virus, and when you run the software
your computer becomes infected. The second way that you may infect
your machine is if you download an email with a word processed
attachment; when you view the attachment a macro may run that does
nasty things to your system. The good news? Well, the good news is
that it is quite rare for this to happen - I've been using the
Internet for the last five years and have never personally caught a
virus, and have only heard of 3 genuine cases.
Lets look at this in a little more detail. Viruses spread successfully
in anonymous situations; someone may use a floppy disk on your machine
and infect it. Someone else then catches the virus and continues to
spread it, without even being aware of the fact. However, when you
download software from the Internet, you know the site that you've
copied it from, and it is not difficult to trace the virus back to its
source. As a result reputable companies try and ensure that all their
software is virus free because it would be commercial suicide for them
to do otherwise. If you're foolish enough to download 'hacked' or
illegally distributed software from a "warez" site or newsgroup you
have no such safeguard however. In that case, I have little sympathy
for you, since you shouldn't be using illegal software in the first
place. However, to be as sure as possible, always virus check software
when you download it using virus checking software before you do
anything with it. You'll find that more than 99.99% of the time your
checking software will inform you that your download does not contain
a virus, but its better to be safe than sorry.
If you receive an email from someone you don't know which has an
attachment, exercise caution about opening it. Write back to the
sender and ask them who they are and why they have sent something to
you. If you have any doubts, just delete the email with its
attachment unopened. Please note here that the danger is in opening
the attachment and NOT in reading the text of the email itself. Just
reading an email is not going to infect your machine. This last
statement is worthy of repetition - opening an email to read the
contents will not, in itself, infect your computer with a virus,
though viewing an attachment may, at least in theory, do so.
Why are there so many warnings in that case? There are a number of
answers to this question - people like to be helpful, and, on the face
of it, it's a nice thing to be able to warn friends and colleagues
about potential dangers. Unfortunately, people are also very gullible,
and are likely to take a virus warning on trust if it comes from a
supposedly reputable source, such as the Managing Director or the
Technical Support Department (and I have seen examples of both of
these in the past). If you receive one of these warnings yourself it's
very tempting to just continue the cycle by passing it on, but I'm
afraid to say that this just compounds the problem. The first thing
that you should do is to run a quick search on the Internet for the
name of the supposed virus, or take a quick look at a web site which
lists hoax virus warnings. I can virtually guarantee that you'll
quickly discover that the virus is in fact a hoax. At this point
either just delete the warning or contact the original sender and
inform them that they've made an error. It will take no more than 2
minutes of your time to run such a check, but it will be two minutes
well spent. The one thing that you should NOT do is simply send the
warning onto other people, because you then become part of the problem
and at the very least friends and colleagues will not think kindly of
you.
I could spend much longer talking about the problem, but that should
hopefully have given you an overview. To summarise:
* Obtain anti-virus software and run it on newly downloaded software
* Back up your system regularly
* Don't open email attachments from people you don't know, and be
careful about opening them from those you do
* Take virus warnings seriously, but check them out before passing
them on
* Do not be fooled into thinking that a warning must be true because
it comes from a seemingly reputable source
* Read up on the subject; this article only touches the surface!
* Visit some of the following sites:
http://kumite.com/myths/
http://www.why-not.com/virus/hoaxes.htm
http://www.stiller.com/Vmacro.htm
http://www.philb.com/hoaxes.htm
since between them they will go into much more detail, and will
provide lists of hoax warnings, tell you how to identify a real
virus and discuss many of the myths going around the Internet
about them.
My final piece of advice is a repetition of something I've already
said - don't pass on warnings without checking them out first; if you
do we'll all be stuck with reading about the Good Times virus (and the
rest of them!) for years to come. This is one occasion that I'd like
to see the Good Times come to an end.
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Phil Bradley is an independent Internet consultant; he runs training
courses on a variety of aspects of the Internet and is the author of a
new book being published in the autumn by the Library Association
called The Advanced Internet Searchers Handbook. You are encouraged to
visit his site at http://www.philb.com/
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FEATURE ARTICLE
"There's an awful lot of coffee in Brazil:
Coffee information on the Web"
by Pablo Dubois
Most of us like coffee. Most of us like tea too. Some people prefer
one, some the other and a lot like both, maybe on different
occasions or at different times of day. However this article is about
coffee, which is perhaps one of the most fascinating and complex
products in general circulation.
Coffee, because it is consumed so widely, requires a lot of beans to
satisfy consumers worldwide. Those coffee beans are produced in
over 50 different countries throughout the tropical regions of the
world. Each country has its own culture, landscape. economic
structure, soils and climate. Each country has its own marketing
systems, trade associations, tax structure and legislation relating
to coffee. And for many of those countries coffee is very important
indeed. Some of the poorest countries in the world, classed by the
United Nations as Least Developed Countries (LDCs) depend on
coffee for over half their total export earnings. Moreover coffee is
a source of cash income, and therefore entry into a modern economy
for millions of small farmers who otherwise would be confined to a
subsistence existence.
On the consumer side, apart from the different flavours associated
with the two main types of coffee, arabica and robusta, and the soils
and altitudes at which they are grown, there are scores of different
ways of preparing the beverage. In Ethiopia, the country of origin of
arabica coffee, it is consumed with a degree of ceremonial
reminiscent of the Japanese Tea Ceremony. Filter coffee, cafetiere
(French Press) coffee, espresso and cappuccino are just some of
the many and varied ways coffee can be consumed, without
mentioning the almost endless range of blends and brands.
Worldwide the value of coffee exports normally exceeds 10 billion
dollars each year. But when the value of retail sales is measured,
whether in the supermarkets or cafes or restaurants, this rises to
over 50 billion.
Coffee is big business, and crucial to the economies (and so too to
the politics) of many producing countries. But it is also a complete
product. To grow coffee trees, some tender loving care is needed.
The best varieties must be selected, the best soils chosen, and care
taken to protect the berries and trees from pests and diseases. Like
grapes and wine, coffee cherries need processing before they reach
the consumer. The beans must be separated from the cherries,
cleaned, dried and roasted. Often they are blended to secure the
best characteristics of different origins. They must then be roasted
or transformed into soluble (instant) coffee before reaching the
consumer. Finally coffee must be brewed and served properly to
take full advantage of its aroma and flavour.
To know about coffee we may therefore need to know about
agronomy, food technology, chemistry, microeconomics, macro-
economics, transportation, packaging, brewing and marketing. We
might also like to know a bit about the fascinating history of coffee,
dating back to the seventeenth century, and the many works of art
and literature that it has inspired.
Information resources on coffee are accordingly rich and varied.
A number of News Groups exist, of which rec.food.drink.coffee and
alt.coffee are probably the best known. A number of Web Sites also
exist: a cursory search of Internet sources in mid 1997 (Posnett, N.W.
- Feasibility Study for a Global Network for the International Coffee
Research Community. London, International Coffee Organization,
1997) showed 15 categories and 1454 site matches.
Many of these are US based: for instance http://www.coffeeuniverse.com
contains a wide range of consumer-oriented information on coffee;
http://www.coffeescience.org is a resource established by the National
Coffee Association of U.S.A. to provide information on questions
related to coffee and health; whilst http://www.scaa.org is the Web
Site of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, providing not
only substantial general information on coffee but also extensive
links to suppliers' Web Sites, allowing users to identify sources of
supply and order their favourite coffees.
Probably the most comprehensive and professional Web Site is at
http://www.iCoffee.com, a Site developed by the International Coffee
Organization (ICO) together with Dow Jones Newswires. The ICO is
an intergovernmental organization based in London, which deals with
coffee issues on the basis of international cooperation between
Member countries. Apart from a range of information services and
publications, it sponsors coffee development projects to address
issues such as protection against pests and diseases, quality
improvement and improvement of marketing structures. At the time of
writing projects worth over 30 million US dollars have been approved.
The iCoffee Web Site offers as its core the combined strengths of
Dow Jones' fast-breaking daily coffee market news, weather and
prices and the ICO's central collection and dissemination of
statistics and analysis relating to coffee. In addition, it offers a
secure communication platform dedicated to the coffee industry,
allowing subscribers to market and network in a broad or targeted
manner across the world of coffee. iCoffee has two areas: a public
free access area and a subscription area offered at an initial price
of $100 per month. The latter will include the ICO's Coffeeline
bibliographic database, formerly available through Dialog, which
includes published information on all aspects of coffee going back to
1973. It also includes detailed statistical time series on coffee,
including data on production, consumption, prices, exports and
imports, going back to 1963. Finally it provides electronic access to
a number of ICO Newsletters, technical studies and country studies.
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Pablo Dubois is Head of Operations at the International Coffee
Organization and a Member of Council of the Institute of Information
Scientists.
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AUKML - THE ORGANISATION FOR MEDIA INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS
Are you an Information Professional working for a newspaper, magazine
or broadcasting organisation? Are you interested in media
librarianship? Then why not join the AUKML (Association of UK Media
Librarians) for only 20 pounds pa. This entitles you to attend regular
meetings, visit specialist libraries/suppliers, and to receive our
quarterly journal Deadline. There is also a popular annual conference.
For more details visit http://www.aukml.org.uk/ or tel 0171 873 3920
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FREE PINT FACT
We manually track every new subscriber's occupation, location and how
they heard about us. As we get 50 new subscribers every single day
this takes us five hours per week. That means we have now committed
over 235 hours solely to understanding our subscriber base better.
Not many publications can boast they know their subscribers
this well ... but then not many quality publications are free!
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FREE PINT FEEDBACK
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Subject: My favourite site: A Mamma of a search engine
From: Richard Creak
Date: 16th September 1998
You have talked about search engines. I find "Mamma" is ideal since
it 'searches' search engines and is a quick way of finding more
sites, but I expect you know about it already!
The address is http://www.mamma.com/ and I heard about it either
from the Daily Telegraph supplement 'Connected' or the equivalent
Times supplement. I find the DT one useful, since it is not
complicated!
I like Mamma because:
a) It seems to search all the other engines faster than if I accessed
them directly. (Perhaps it has faster links to the other engines,
because they are all in the States??)
b) I will only have to learn only one protocol, i.e. the other search
engines have different ideas about looking for all words, or only one
word in the phrase. For example, should I be using 'and' or '+' or
goodness knows what!
c) it saves time.
I shall be interested in your comments, bearing in mind that much of
the time I am not certain what I am doing!
Richard Creak
William Hann, Managing Editor, replies:
I'll be honest and say that "Mamma" is fairly new to me too. Therefore
I would love to hear from other people who are using it at the
moment - can you tell us how to get the most out of searching "Mamma"?
Does it have any limitations? Write to me here by email to
william@freepint.co.uk and I will summarise the responses for the
next issue.
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Subject: Free Pint No.22 - Searching Backwards
From: William Hann & Various
Date: 17th September 1998
A number of readers have pointed out an extra facility offered by
AltaVista which I didn't mention in my article in the last issue about
trying to find sites which link to those you already know about.
Here are some of the responses:
"Gday William,
Thanks for publishing Free Pint - a find it a great newsletter and read
it because it's short and sweet, unlike other more verbose publications
which I usually dump when I'm busy.
In your article about reverse searching, you mention the AltaVista
meta word "domain" but not the meta word "host", which functions in
the same way as Infoseek's "url". Thought you might like to know
about "host" as I use it a lot and it does work.
Regards,
Linda McDonald
Net Intro: Internet Training and Support Services"
"I believe you can use "host:" to do this on AltaVista, eg.
link:ocms.ox.ac -host:ocms.ox.ac
to find pages linking to our OCMS web pages but excluding our own pages.
yours sincerely,
Lindsay Battle, Information Officer
Oxford Centre for Molecular Sciences"
"If I want to find links to a particular Web address, I use HotBot,
enter the desired Web address in the search box, and select "Links
to this URL" from the drop down box. This is VERY simple, I think,
but it was not mentioned in your article.
Regards
Belinda Weaver
Library Liaison for Education and Journalism, Social Sciences
and Humanities Library, University of Queensland Library,
Brisbane, Australia"
I was aware of this facility but didn't include it because you can't
subsequently exclude pages from the site itself or a parent site.
However it certainly is a very useful and easy tool and well worth
a mention.
Thank you to Linda, Lindsay, Belinda and others for taking the time
to write and highlight these useful tips - that's what Free Pint is
all about.
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Subject: Free Pint No.22 - Web Splash Pages
From: Mike Choroszewski, AMCHO Computer Services
Date: 18th September 1998
>>I'm looking for a way to have a splash page only show for 3 to 5
>>seconds then move the user on to the home page.
You could try using the meta refresh tag as in the example below:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;URL=http://www.freepint.com/">
This will load the Free Pint Community page after 5 seconds,
but using this method you may redirect the visitor before the splash
page finishes loading. This may be interesting when your visitor
visits for the first time but unless you change it on a regular basis
it could get a bit boring.
PS. Thanks for an interesting newsletter once again.
Mike.
AMCHO Computer Services Ltd
http://www.amcho.com/
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WHAT DO YOU LOVE? -|- WHAT DO YOU HATE?
PLEASE TELL US WHAT YOU THINK OF FREE PINT
If you have a comment, suggestion or favourite site then why not
contact the Free Pint team now by email to feedback@freepint.co.uk
remembering to include your name, title and company or organisation.
Please note, if you write to us we may publish your letter in whole
or part for the interest of our subscribers unless you request
otherwise at the time of writing. Please let us know if you wish
your contact details to be withheld.
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Thank you for reading Free Pint. We hope you will forward this copy
to colleagues, friends and journalists, or ask them to visit our Web
site soon at http://www.freepint.co.uk/
See you in two weeks!
Kind regards,
William Hann, Managing Editor
william@freepint.co.uk
(c) Willco 1998
http://www.willco.co.uk/
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FREE PINT FUTURE ISSUES
15/10/98 #24 - Modems and Medicine
29/10/98 #25 - Business Sources & Publishing/Journalism
12/11/98 #26 - Cookies and CD-ROM and the Web
26/11/98 #27 - Innovation
17/12/98 #28 - Christmas Tips and Review of "Online 98"
[Provisional]
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CONTACT INFORMATION
William Hann, MIInfSc, Managing Editor
e: william@freepint.co.uk
t: +44 (0)1784 455 435
f: +44 (0)1784 455 436
Rex Cooke, FIInfSc, FRSA, Editor
e: rex@freepint.co.uk
t: +44 (0)1784 455 435
f: +44 (0)1784 455 436
Jane, Administrator
e: jane@freepint.co.uk
Address (no stamp needed)
Willco "Free Pint", FREEPOST (SEA3901), Staines
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Web - http://www.freepint.co.uk
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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.
To subscribe, unsubscribe, find details about contributing,
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Please note: The newsletter is published by the information
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will NEVER make the subscriber list available to any other company
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The opinions, advice, products and services offered herein are the
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publishers cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions.
This publication may be freely copied and/or distributed in its
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Product names used in Free Pint are for identification purposes only,
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- Publication Date: 30th September 1998
- Plain text
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