Newsletter No. 58
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Free Pint
"Helping 27,000 people use the Web for their work"
http://www.freepint.co.uk/
ISSN 1460-7239 16th March 2000 No.58
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IN THIS ISSUE
EDITORIAL
TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
"Portals"
By Martin White
BOOKSHELF
"Net future: the 7 cyber trends that will drive your business,
create new wealth and define your future".
Reviewed by Lesley Robinson
FEATURE ARTICLE
"WWW.OED.COM - A New Home for the Dictionary"
By Simon Collery
FREE PINT BAR SUMMARY
by Simon Collery
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>>> ABOUT FREE PINT <<<
Free Pint is a community of business professionals who use the Web
for their work. Members receive this free newsletter every two weeks
packed with tips and articles by information professionals who share
how they find quality and reliable information on the Internet. The
Web site at <http://www.freepint.co.uk/> gives free access to the
substantial archive of articles, book reviews, industry news and
events, with research questions and answers at the "Free Pint Bar".
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EDITORIAL
I have been very privileged lately to have been asked to talk
alongside some of the "big boys" at some recent Web strategy
conferences, including QXL, Lastminute and Scoot. I've heard about
how much bigger B2B (business-to-business) commerce will be over
B2C (business-to-consumer), the excitement surrounding C2C auctions
and how some companies are "refocusing on the customer with a shift
in the paradigm to C2B". Hmmm.
Put this alongside our discussions with investors on the future of
Free Pint, and I now feel reasonably well versed in new
technologies (WAP and interactive TV) and buzz-words like mCommerce,
clicks-and-mortar and defensibility. As a result, people have been
asking me if I've invested in the latest tech stock offerings.
For my investments I look at long-term fundamentals, and there aren't
too many companies which excite me on that front. There is one private
company which springs to mind though ...
Saga. That's right, the people which market products to the over 50s.
I'm not even allowed to join (due to my age you understand) but it's
certainly a company that excites me with it's strategy for making the
most of the Web.
For instance, they already have the brand and channel in place with
some 5.5m people in their database (yes, 5.5 million!). This is
40% of the ABC1 over 50 market in the UK, and almost half have made
an enquiry or purchase within the last two years. Their monthly
magazine has a circulation of one million, making it the second
largest consumer monthly in the country.
In advance of the imminent relaunch of their site they have been
running focus groups around the country. They've been finding out
what people like and dislike about Web sites and they know the
colours and navigation systems that work. They don't bang on about
the qualification for joining, they just provide appropriate content
with an appropriate slant for their audience.
It is this kind of company which I believe will offer a long term
and viable proposition for eCommerce. This is what clicks-and-mortar
is all about - effectively linking the offline and online business.
The focus is clearly on finding out what the audience wants and
offering them top quality products and advice whilst leveraging
their buying power to offer great prices. Keep an eye on their site
over the next few weeks to see the transformation, but I bet they
won't join the hype in the media surrounding this industry.
This is what excites me about the opportunities presented by new
technologies. Being invited to speak about my vision for the future
of Free Pint allows me to shout about the importance of focusing on
our user's needs, and on the fundamentals of quality, utility and
value for money. Building on the foundations we have put in place
over the last two years makes Free Pint a viable proposition in the
longer term and that is very exciting.
To add to this excitement we bring you another packed issue today
as we take a look at where portal sites are going and the new
Web-based Oxford English Dictionary. We roundup all that's been
happening at the Bar over the last couple of weeks, as well as
highlighting some of the forthcoming industry events.
If you enjoy today's issue then please do support us by spreading the
word to your colleagues and friends. Why not forward this issue to
them now? Thanks also for all your letters of encouragement.
Kind regards,
William
William Hann BSc MIInfSc
Founder and Managing Editor, Free Pint
e: william@freepint.co.uk
t: +44 (0)1784 455435
f: +44 (0)1784 455436
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TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
http://www.freepint.co.uk/issues/160300.htm#tips
"Portals"
By Martin White
Over the last year or so the term 'portal' has suddenly come centre
stage. There are now references to corporate portals, enterprise
information portals and vortals, and at the Online Information
exhibition in London in December 1999 quite a significant number of
companies providing knowledge management software were also listing
the development of corporate portals as one of functions of the
software. Before embarking on a survey of sources of information on
portals it might be useful to try to offer some definitions.
Portals
-------
At the basic level a portal site provides access to a structured
collection of information resources. The important word here is
'structured'. The archetypal portal is Yahoo!, with its
hierarchical array of indexing web sites, and I would argue that
search sites that are primarily text-search based are not portals.
Also important is the concept of a collection of information. Rather
than just providing access to the entire web a portal service should
be taking responsibility for the quality of content. The concept of
an information portal is not new, as their origins can be traced back
to the online services such as the Lockheed Dialog and SDC Orbit
search services that began operation in the 1970s. In the consumer
market the definition is usually broadened to include a range of other
sites that provide a comprehensive collection of information and
entertainment services. There are three first-tier services that
dominate the market in terms of usage, and these are AOL, Yahoo! and
Microsoft MSN. The next level includes Lycos, Excite@Home, Amazon and
About.com. The Disney site Go.com has been a member of this group, but
Disney are now planning to make it exclusively an entertainment site.
There are indications that these second-tier sites are going to find
it very difficult to maintain growth in advertising support.
Advertisers either want the colossal audiences that the first-tier
portals provide, or the niche vertical portals that specialise in
sports, entertainment and home shopping.
All these sites function on advertising income, so there is a
constant interest in the number of hits on the sites. A
comprehensive service monitoring the usage of the US sites, and more
recently sites in Europe and Asia is provided by Media Metrix
<http://www.mediametrix.com>. The Traffick site
<http://www.traffick.com> monitors developments in the consumer
portal business, and offers an email news service to complement the
comprehensive range of information on the site itself. A very good
report on the European consumer portal business has been prepared by
the Digital Observatory, a research group funded by USWeb, and their
report can be downloaded from <http://www.digitalobservatory.com>.
The report contains a very useful list of European portal sites.
Vortals and vertical hubs
-------------------------
It is in the business sector that definitions become more of a
problem. Here one of the fast emerging business models is that of the
vertical portal, or Vortal. These are sites that provide access to
information that is organised along vertical market sectors, and often
include the opportunity to join virtual communities in order to share
information, and also to develop e-commerce trading relationships. As
a result they are also sometimes referred to as 'vertical hubs'. The
largest of these sites has been developed by VerticalNet
<http://www.verticalnet.com>. This company announced in February 2000
that it was setting up a joint venture with British Telecommunications
PLC to bring its business model to Europe. Another site supporting
vertical industry sectors has been developed by Powerise
<http://www.powerise.com> who were an exhibitor at the 1999 Online
Information Exhibition, and also clearly have plans for Europe.
Vortals are a precursor to electronic trading and there have been a
couple of reports that provide a perspective on e-commerce
developments with a portal perspective, and these can be obtained
through <http://www.netmarketmakers.com> (Digital marketplaces:
enabling the Internet economy) and <http://www.icongo.com> (Business
to business vertical hubs on the net). In both cases the reports
cannot be downloaded directly over the web, but ask for visitors to
register for subsequent delivery by email.
Corporate portals and Enterprise Information Portals (EIP)
----------------------------------------------------------
The main focus of portals and vortals was the provision of external
business information, almost exactly the role of the original online
services. Corporate portals and Enterprise Information Portals (EIP)
put the emphasis primarily on effective access to internal
information. Both terms are used rather loosely, but in general the
term 'corporate portal' seems to have been coined to replace the use
of 'intranet' to describe an internal information and communications
network. As Tracy Beverly, the Intranet Manager at
PricewaterhouseCoopers remarked at the Corporate Intranet 2000
conference in London in January, to many managers the term intranet
has connotations of 'internal' and therefore an overhead cost. An EIP
is something rather more all-encompassing, and usually includes a
powerful information retrieval application that works across all files
and platforms in the company to provide sophisticated information
search functionality, often built around the creation of individual
profiles for each employee using the system. The first report to look
in detail at the EIP market was prepared by Christopher Shilakes and
Julie Tylman of the Enterprise Software Team of Merrill Lynch in
November 1998. Their definition was that an EIP is an application that
enables companies to unlock internally and externally stored
information and provide users a single gateway to personalised
information needed to make informed business decisions. Their forecast
was that the market for EIP software would be worth $15bn by 2002, and
eighteen months after their forecast this looks to be an
underestimate. The 64page report can be downloaded as a large pdf
file from the Sagemaker site at
<http://www.sagemaker.com/company/whiteppr.htm>.
Over the last year a number of other useful briefing papers have
appeared on the subject of EIP applications and market prospects, and
among the best of these are Corporate portals for business
<http://www.visible.com.au/papers/ten06.htm>
15 rules for enterprise portals
<http://www.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/99-Jul/49ind.html>
Defining the Enterprise Information Portal
<http://www.dkms.com/EIPDEF.html>.
There is also a good white paper on the Plumtree site
<http://www.plumtree.com>. Plumtree were one of the first companies to
offer bespoke corporate portal software.
Of the various IT market analysis companies the Delphi Group has been
probably the most active in researching the market, though most of its
major reports are not available for free. <http://www.delphi.com> A
summary of one of the Delphi reports is given in an article in
Datamation <http://www.datamation.com/intra/9908port2.hrml>.
Many of the papers at the Intranets 2000 conference that took place in
San Jose in February deal with various aspects of portal development,
and most of the PowerPoint versions of these papers can be downloaded
from <http://www.intranets2000.com/presentations/>.
EIP software providers
----------------------
The EIP software industry is expanding rapidly, and many of the
established providers of knowledge management software are positioning
themselves to take advantage of the opportunity. I am trying to
maintain a comprehensive list of these on my own site
<http://www.intranetfocus.com>, and you will also find a paper in the
development of EIPs from an information industry perspective.
Among those who seem to be the most active at present in Europe are
Autonomy <http://www.autonomy.com>
Dataware <http://www.dataware.com>
Insight Technologies <http://www.insighttechnologies.com>
Verity <www.verity.com>
Two companies with a strong focus on providing access to external
information through an EIP are the Dialog Corporation
<http://www.dialog.com> and the French company Mediapps
<http://www.mediapps.com>. One company well placed to provide EIP
solutions is the German software company SAP, who launched their MySAP
product last year <http://www.mysap.com>. A number of information
industry companies are also recognising the need to provide a platform
for the integration of their content with internal corporate
information, including Factiva <http://www.factiva.com> and a number
of the divisions of Thomson Publishing.
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Martin White is Managing Director of Intranet Focus Ltd.
<http://www.intranetfocus.com> a company providing consulting services
to providers and users of intranet and EIP software. He presented a
keynote paper on portals at the Online Information Conference in 1999.
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Related Free Pint links:
* Read this article online, with activated hyperlinks
<http://www.freepint.co.uk/issues/160300.htm#tips>
* Discuss this article with the author now at the Free Pint Bar
<http://www.freepint.co.uk/bar>
* There have been various discussions on this topic at the Free Pint
Bar. Search for "portals" using the site search facility at
<http://www.freepint.co.uk/search>.
* Martin White is a regular contributor to Free Pint. Search for his
other excellent contributions using the site search facility.
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Knowledge Management & Intranet Solutions exhibition - discover how KM
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4-5 April 2000, offers you the only dedicated opportunity to explore
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FREE PINT BOOKSHELF
http://www.freepint.co.uk/bookshelf
"Net future: the 7 cyber trends that will drive your business,
create new wealth and define your future".
Reviewed by Lesley Robinson
Seven seems to be a magic number and it works it's magic again in
this book by Chuck Martin. He talks us through the seven trends he
has seen emerging over the last few years in the Net revolution which
he aptly calls "this electronic El Nino", transforming customers,
careers and relationships. Martin keeps his language simple and tries
to look at all these trends simultaneously and shows us how they work
in concert to turn accepted business thinking on its head.
The starting point for the book is for the reader to realise that
having a company Web site does not mean that you are automatically an
E-business. The Net Future is truly about E-business, which goes far
beyond electronic commerce. It is about the ultimate end-to-end
electronic business where the wired consumer and the wired
organisation function in harmony. Impossible? Not really.
It's all about being prepared.
I see the book as a survival guide, giving an excellent overview of
how to prepare for change by seeing the overall picture. Changes in
consumer buying patterns will affect which products get developed.
The products that are developed affect the operations side of a
company. A change in operations affects the way a company relates to
its business partners and what is needed from its workforce.
Workforce requirements affect corporate training needs and employment
patterns. Employment patterns affect consumer buying.
This approach helps to tell a story about the Net Future and gets you
thinking about your own company's position. I would say that the book
is a starting point for thinking about the key trends but it does not
deal with any issue in great depth and already seems a bit dated.
But hey, it was written in 1999 which is about 12 light years ago
in Net time.
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Lesley Robinson has worked in the information industry for a number
of years, for organisations such as Bain & Co, KPMG and the FT.
Previously, an independent consultant, Lesley now works for Free Pint
on business development and raising finance.
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Related Free Pint links:
* Related eCommerce strategy book reviews on the Free Pint Bookshelf
<http://www.freepint.co.uk/bookshelf/strategy.htm>
* Read customer comments and buy this book at Amazon.co.uk
<http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/007041131X/freepint0c>
or Amazon.com
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/007041131X/freepint00>
* Read this book review online at the Free Pint Bookshelf
<http://www.freepint.co.uk/bookshelf/seven.htm>
To propose a business-Web-related book for review, send
details to <bookshelf@freepint.co.uk>.
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FEATURE ARTICLE
http://www.freepint.co.uk/issues/160300.htm#feature
"WWW.OED.COM - A New Home for the Dictionary"
By Simon Collery
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a masterpiece of lexicography.
The decades of study and research that went into it, the amount of
scholarly material used and the sheer brain power involved must make
it the richest reference work ever published. As the elephant
appeared differently to each of the six blind men, the OED may appear
differently to each reviewer, depending on how they approach it.
Users of the dictionary should have a similar experience until they
have become familiar with it. And reviewers are all destined to be
just a little bit right, at most. Far from reviewing the entire
dictionary, this article has the more modest aim of examining a Web
site that contains some of the most sophisticated content on the whole
of the World Wide Web.
The Web itself is also elephantine in its proportions, and technology
is trying to keep up with the diverse uses which people find for it.
Indeed, technology has greatly enhanced the development of the OED,
and should play an even bigger part now that it is online. In the
past it has been limited in size, for several reasons, including cost.
But ultimately, there is a limit also to how much data users can
assimilate.
In electronic form, data can be sorted and filtered in ways that would
never have been thought possible in the past. Size ceases to be such
an issue. And there are other aspects of the Web that will lend
themselves to a project such as this. Linguistic and lexicographical
resources of all kinds could develop around the OED Online. The OED
Web site [1] already gives access to some of the best material
available on the history of the project, how you can get involved or
make comments, how to use the dictionary and lots more. The OED
should continue to grow and develop in this new home and it will
expand from its present twenty volumes, perhaps to double that size.
But what is so different about the OED? Well for a start, it is a
scholarly, historical dictionary. It is not a desk dictionary, such
as the Encarta World English Dictionary, or the New Oxford Dictionary
of English, the type we might all use on a day to day basis. It takes
quite a while to become familiar with all the things the OED can do
and it is of most value to people carrying out scholarly research.
However it is also of great use to anyone who wishes to find out more
about the history of a word.
It lists words and senses of words no longer used and words and senses
of words used in limited contexts, obscure words, common words,
foreign words, slang and possibly even some words which never existed
anywhere outside of dictionaries. It follows their history from the
earliest forms to the latest, going through all recorded changes in
meaning and use. It draws distinctions so fine one may never have
noticed them, distinctions made on a number of grounds, including
syntax, semantics, register and subject area, depending on what
evidence there is.
The etymologies are very comprehensive where the historical evidence
is available. There are nearly fifty variant spellings for the word
'scissors' and nearly seventy for 'cushion', though only one of each
is standard at present. If you are just looking for the definition of
a word, then you will get a lot more that you bargained for.
The OED is seen as an authority on the English Language, the final
arbiter in matters of usage. But people learn English, speak it,
write in it, play games with it and do all sorts of other things
without checking the OED to see if they are doing it right. Rather,
whatever is done with the English language, the OED aims to record it.
When you check something in the OED you are checking to see if there
is a precedent for it. You are not checking to see if some
lexicographers decided that it is right or wrong. So it is not an
authority on the language because it lists all these definitions,
spellings, etymologies and whatnots. It lists these because there is
evidence that they reflect what exists or existed at one time in the
language. It is an authority in the sense that it has examined how
each word has been used in the past and how each is being used at
present. Every entry is based on a set of quotations.
Quotations are the primary ingredients for what is, in one sense, a
huge corpus of English, sorted, analysed and categorised by
lexicographers. Using their skills and experience, they put together
a story about each word, the story being its history. The quotations
illustrate the word's history and they are condensed into a
definition. Each time the story wanders off the point enough, it
becomes another chapter, another sense of the word. Information on
spellings, pronunciation, etymology, usage and almost everything else
too, is gleaned from the quotations, their dating, creator, source and
whatever else can be brought to bear.
The chief editor of the OED, John Simpson, attempts to lay to rest
some misconceptions about the dictionary in the preface to the third
edition, under the heading 'Distractions' [2]. Some expect the OED to
list every word in the English language, perhaps every word that ever
existed, and every sense too. This will always be impossible, and
doesn't even seem desirable. Some feel that a word is not part of the
language unless it is in the OED. This too is untrue and anyone can
find words that are not yet covered by the OED. Even the OED must be
limited by some constraints, whether they be pragmatic or otherwise.
But now that the dictionary is online, there should be scope to
collect data and make it accessible to interested parties, even though
it might not be deemed ready for inclusion in the dictionary.
Judging by the one thousand new entries, we should soon be seeing some
Internet generated words, such as mirror, MP3 and MIME, if those words
go the distance. Existing words will continue to take on new meanings
too. And as well as adding new words and senses over the next ten
years, every entry will be revised in the light of research carried
out in the field of language over the decades since the first edition
was published. Many definitions will be rewritten in a style more
familiar to present day readers. Words or senses excluded to protect
Victorian sensibilities will now be included. Happily, the original
text will remain available to those who wish to study it and enjoy it.
Though we don't want a dictionary written in dated language, sometimes
written by someone with too many scruples to define a few words as
clearly as we would now, we don't want to lose the original dictionary
entries. After all, we haven't thrown away Johnson's dictionary of
1755 yet. Many still use this fine dictionary, for it is of immense
scholarly value. Earlier editions of the OED are of equal scholarly
value, and thanks to advances in electronic publishing, all this
material is accessible to more people that ever before.
In 1992, when we thought CD-ROMs were the future, the second edition
of the OED on CD-ROM was an award-winning milestone in electronic
publishing. Those who have used it may well see it as a little dated
now, though a second version came out in 1999, with many improvements.
Whichever way you look at it, it was a stepping stone to the
production of the online version. As well as helping researchers in
their work, it demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses of an
electronic version of the dictionary. It made the OED much more
widely available, partly because it cost far less than the printed
version and partly because it was networked throughout many major
libraries.
The OED online could be made available from every terminal in
subscribing libraries and the cost, a maximum of about 2000 pounds a
year, seems like very good value. For individuals it would be about
350 pounds a year, but this is rather expensive. Having said that,
some discounts have been negotiated for institutions already [3]. The
online version is quite like the CD-ROM in terms of what you can do.
It is simple, being designed for the ordinary user rather than for
the experienced researcher. But once the text has been fully
revised it should be possible for different levels of searching to
be added, if that's what users want. The online version is at a very
early stage, but now that it is up and running, those involved in
its development can start to cater for the needs of a vastly
increased number of users. Some might argue that the only
appropriate medium for reference works, especially large works, is
an electronic one. Whether you are using a reference work or
creating one, you should be able to do it most efficiently in
an electronic environment.
The content of the OED is advancing in size and scope, in accuracy and
consistency. Its structure is becoming more complex, and at the same
time technology is developing to allow more sophisticated treatment of
data. The Web is getting to the stage where it can support such
complexity. An increased number of people using the OED will mean
that editors and developers will receive more feedback on omissions,
errors, bugs, and anything else users feel could improve the
dictionary. Since the idea of creating a historical dictionary was
put forward, the project has depended on innumerable voluntary
contributions and suggestions from members of the public, and this
should continue at a much higher rate.
The Web too was developed by innumerable parties and is also a
collaborative work, with some people developing it as a way of life
and some working on the periphery. One of the many benefits of having
the OED online should be an increase in the number of people
contributing to it. OED.com should allow us some advantages over the
six blind men as we explore the home of this most excellent
dictionary.
Interesting Links
-----------------
<http://www.oed.com>
This is the site of the Oxford English Dictionary Online. Here you
will find all the prefatory material to the OED, which is very well
worth reading. You will also find a history of the OED project, a
guide to using the dictionary, and lots of other interesting things.
This material is freely available and requires no subscription.
<http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/rbeard/diction.html>
Web of Online Dictionaries, a site which directs you to online
dictionaries in numerous languages, subject areas and specialisms.
<http://www.nupedia.com/>
A recent project which attempts to create an 'open' encyclopedia, one
created by volunteers and free to all.
<http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/hel/hel.html>
Substantial set of links to resources for studying the fascinating
history of the English Language.
<http://www.m-w.com/>
Useful, interesting and entertaining things to do with words,
including the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
<http://www.britannica.com>
A very different model for making large amounts of content available
on the Web.
Acknowledgement
---------------
I would like to thank Yvonne Warburton, Editorial Publication Manager
at OUP, for her help in putting together this article. After talking
to her about the OED project I rewrote almost everything, I hope for
the better.
Notes
[1] <http://www.oed.com> This is the site of the Oxford English
Dictionary Online.
[2] <http://www.oed.com/public/guide/preface_6.htm#distractions>
[3] EARL, the Consortium for Publis Library Networking, has
negotiated a discount of 30-40% and a one month free trial for
EARL partners. Details available at
<http://www.earl.org.uk/news/consortium/oed.html>.
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- Publication Date: 16th March 2000
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- Link: https://www.jinfo.com/go/newsletter/58
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