Newsletter No. 7
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Free Pint
Helping you find quality information on the Web
ISSN 1460-7239 5 February 1998 #7
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Welcome to Free Pint Number Seven!
Here is the seventh issue of Free Pint, once again packed full of
practical information to help you make the most of the Web. In the
Tips & Techniques section we cover how to incorporate the information
you find on the Web into reports, proposals, etc. Then we have a
fantastic Feature Article about how and where to find the best
Engineering resources on the Web. This includes plenty of examples
and pointers to some great Web sites.
As you know, Free Pint can only be free to you with the continued
support of advertisers. However, these advertisers want to know what
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say what percentage of subscribers are based in which countries
by looking at the last part of email addresses. However, if you have
an international address ending in ".com" or ".net" then we do not
know which country you are in. If this is the case, then next
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overview of our 4500 subscribers based on country. Please remember
that we are providing this information for potential advertisers so
that Free Pint can remain free. Your specific email address or
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Since its my birthday this Sunday (8th Feb) here is a mini
competition ... why not send me an ELECTRONIC birthday card to
birthday@freepint.co.uk created using one of the free services on the
Web?! You'll find a list at Yahoo! under "Business and Economy:
Companies:Gifts:Greeting Cards:Electronic". The most inventive,
imaginative or humourous card will get a mention in the next issue of
Free Pint. Please note: I won't be able to reply personally.
I hope enjoy this issue as much as we've enjoyed putting it together.
Please feel free to pass it on to anyone you think may also like to
receive their very own "Free Pint".
William Hann
Editor, Free Pint
PS: If you do not already automatically receive your free copy of
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IN THIS ISSUE
TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
"Fabricating Information"
by William Hann
FEATURE ARTICLE
"Engineering resources: examples and sources"
by Roddy MacLeod
LETTERS
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TRAINING COURSES FOR THE INFORMATION PROFESSION
TFPL, the premier training organistion in business information,
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Internet for Market Research 12 February
Intranet: Anarchy to Sanity 17 February
Internet Tools for the Advanced Searcher 23/24 February
Intranet & Groupware Re-visited 3 March
Write & design WWW Pages - the Basics 12 March
For further details please contact sarah.sheldon@tfpl.com, visit our
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TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
"Fabricating Information"
by William Hann
In the last issue of Free Pint I made it quite clear that I know very
little about medicine (except for perhaps playing Doctors and Nurses
when younger ... much younger!). Well, I also used to have a train
set and Lego building bricks, and this is about the extent of my
engineering experience.
However, if you use the Internet regularly to find information to
help your work, then you will have to know a fair bit about
engineering ... namely "fabricating information".
No, I am not saying that you should falsify or change the information
you find. What I mean is that often you may want to incorporate the
information into your reports, articles, training courses, proposals,
or whatever.
The Foundations
---------------
The simplest and easiest way to take textual information from your
browser into another application is to use Copy and Paste. You
simply highlight with the mouse the information you want, select the
Edit menu and choose Copy. Then go to the application you want to put
the information in and choose Paste from the Edit menu there.
This is fine if there is a little text, but if there is a whole page
of text then you most likely will save the text to the hard disk by
selecting the File menu and choosing "Save As". You can save the file
as plain text or keep all the HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language)
codes. Most browsers will not save the graphics on a page
automatically, and so you need to save those separately. To do this
you simply click on the image with the right mouse button and then
choose "Save Picture As" or "Save Image As".
Tabular Data
------------
With textual information, things get a lot more complicated if the
information is presented in a table which you would like to transfer
to a spreadsheet program. A recent example of this I came across was
the where somebody wanted to use company filings information from the
SEC Internet EDGAR Databases (http://www.sec.gov/edgarhp.htm) in an
Excel spreadsheet.
The filings contain tables of information which have been created in
plain text, with columns aligned using lots of space characters. The
difficulty comes when you try to load this into a spreadsheet and the
program gets confused with all those spaces. This problem has been
overcome by the more modern spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel:
Basically you save the table as a plain text file. Then in Excel you
choose "Open" from the File menu, highlight the file containing the
table, and in the "Files of type" box choose "Text Files". On the
next screen you select "Fixed Width" and click on the "Finish"
button. You now have a spreadsheet where all the tabular information
has been entered into separate cells.
Some Web sites convert material for you into a more useful format and
offer a hypertext link. When you click on the link you will asked by
the browser what you want to do next, and you simply need to save the
file to your computer.
The other important thing to note is the difference between a
proportional and non-proportional font. A proportional font (like
Times New Roman or Arial) is one where all characters take up
different amounts of space depending on their size. For instance, a
capital "M" is obviously a lot larger than a lower-case "i",
therefore it takes up
more space in a line of text. A non-proportional font on the other
hand (like Courier) is one where all characters (including spaces)
take up the same amount of space regardless of their size. This
newsletter for instance should be read in a non-proportional font
because otherwise you won't see the formatting (such as indents)
which have been created using spaces characters. If you read a table
which has been created using spaces (rather than Tabs or other
formatting) in a proportional font then all the columns will not
align properly.
Problems with Frames
--------------------
Some Web pages are split into different "windows" which are called
"frames" (hence the need for a glazier and carpenter). Problems
can occur if you want to save or print information in a particular
frame. The way to do this is to click somewhere inside the frame you
want to save or print. When you do this you may see a thin black
line around the frame window (this doesn't happen in all browsers).
By clicking in the frame you have ensured that it has the "focus",
and that its contents (and not another frames) which are saved or
printed.
In some browsers, when you give the frame the focus you will then
find different options in the File menu such as "Save Frame As..."
and "Print Frame..." which makes it much clearer that you will be
saving or printing that particular frame.
I don't know of a browser where you can print the whole page (and
all the frames) rather than just the contents of an individual
frame.
Printing Blank Pages
--------------------
Have you ever printed a page and just got a blank print-out? This
usually happens if the page you are printing contains text which
is a light colour or white (for instance white text on a black
background). Printers generally won't print background colours
and so then tries to print white text on the white paper! To
overcome this problem in certain browsers you need to go to the
File menu and select "Page Setup". Then put a tick in the box
which says "Black Text".
Summary
-------
Hopefully this has given you an introduction to some of the ways in
which you can re-use information you find on the Web in your current
projects. It is important though that you make sure you are not
breaking copyright law by reproducing somebody else's work, and
always get written confirmation from the original author/producer
that they are happy for you to reproduce their work.
Happy fabrication!
William Hann
PS:
Lego is a trademark of the LEGO Group. Microsoft products referenced
herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft
Corporation.
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William Hann is a professional information scientist who runs the
information consultancy "Willco". The company provides Internet
consultancy, training, and Web site services. Full details can be
found at http://www.willco.co.uk/
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FEATURE ARTICLE
"Engineering resources: examples and sources"
by Roddy MacLeod
I've lost count of the number of articles I've read which extol the
virtues of the Internet, which then give a couple of often bland
examples of web sites, and continue by stating that everything else
of interest can be found through judicious use of the large search
engines such as Alta Vista or HotBot. Whilst such search engines are
extremely impressive information retrieval tools (indeed I use them
more often than any other index), they are best for locating
something very specific, for example the home-page of a known
company or service. They are not so useful if you want to find or
browse similar web sites (for example e-journals in mechanical
engineering, or companies producing software for civil engineers).
The Northern Light search engine (http://www.northernlight.com/) with
its Custom Search Folders which 'dynamically group' together similar
sites is rather better for this purpose, but still has many
limitations. Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com/) is an extremely popular
index to web sites, but its coverage of engineering resources is
relatively poor, with, for example, less than 350 sites being listed
in its United Kingdom: Engineering directory
(http://www.yahoo.co.uk/Regional/Countries/United_Kingdom/Science/Engineering/).
As a result of the limitations of the popular search engines and
directories, many users of the Internet are unaware of the range of
engineering resources which are currently available. In the
following paragraphs I will attempt to rectify this in a small way by
looking at a few examples of some of the many different types of
engineering resources. As it is normally easier to find examples of
US resources elsewhere, I will concentrate mostly, but not
exclusively, on UK sites.
As with other sectors, thousands of engineering companies now have
their own web sites. Some are humble and some are grand. An example
of the former, selected at random, is that of Dieline / Rykel Ltd, a
manufacturing engineering company
(http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/DIELINE/homepage.htm)
This home-page is one of many similar sites that have been created
using the free space made available by various Internet Service
Providers (in this case CompuServe). The site is small and contains
brief details of the company's expertise, its location, and an email
contact address. Most importantly, the Dieline / Rykel Ltd web site
can be found through the big search engines mentioned above. I focus
on Dieline / Rykel Ltd for no other purpose than as a typical example
of thousands of similar sites. Many of these are listed in such
directories as the U.K.Directory, in its Business: Manufacturing
subsections, (http://www.ukdirectory.co.uk/business/index5.htm) and
the Yellow Web directory in its Engineering section
(http://www.yell.co.uk/yell/newweb/scitech/engnrng/index.html) and
the UK Industry Directory in its engineering section
(http://www.ukindustry.co.uk/ukidir.htm#Engineering).
An interesting example of a regional directory of engineering
companies is Engineering Ayrshire. This is an association of
companies located within Ayrshire in Scotland which have grouped
together to create a unified web site
(http://www.engineering-ayrshire.org.uk/). One example of the many
directories which concentrate on a particular engineering sector is
UK Building Resource Pages which includes a categorized index for UK
Construction Industry web sites (http://www.ukbrp.co.uk/index.html).
Large companies can afford to create and maintain substantial web
sites. I have chosen AEA Technology plc (http://www.aeat.co.uk/) at
random from the many available examples. The AEA site contains a
considerable amount of information about this international science
and engineering services business, including an extensive product
catalogue and detailed financial indicators. An example of a smaller
company, but one which has its own domain name and a web site which
also gives a large amount of company information, again chosen at
random, is Bison Structures Ltd (http://www.bison.co.uk/).
Given the name of such companies it is easy to locate their web sites
using the large search engines. However the best way to find lists
of similar companies with substantial web sites, or companies within
various engineering sectors with large sites, is to use a gateway
such as EEVL (Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library) which lists,
amongst other things, over 800 quality commercial engineering sites
(http://www.eevl.ac.uk).
Engineers look to their scholarly societies and institutions to
represent the interests of their profession, safeguard and encourage
standards of professionalism, and promote their career prospects.
Many of these institutions have developed exemplary web sites.
Leading the way in the UK is the Engineering Council
(http://www.engc.org.uk/), the national representative body of the
engineering profession. The Institution of Electrical Engineers
(IEE) maintains a large and useful site giving information about
the Institution, its organisation and groups, activities,
publications, some of which are available in full text, access to
its library catalogue, and various files under the heading of
professional and career development (http://www.iee.org.uk/).
Another impressive site is that of the Royal Institution of Chartered
Surveyors (RICS) (http://www.rics.org.uk/) with over 2,000 pages
including a searchable RICS Directory and the full text of Chartered
Surveyor Monthly. Other notable sites include the Institution of
Mechanical Engineers (http://www.imeche.org.uk/), the Institution of
Civil Engineers (http://www.ice.org.uk/), the Institution of Chemical
Engineers (http://www.icheme.org/), and the Institute of Materials
(http://www.instmat.co.uk/). As well as a Combined Index search
engine which searches several institutional sites simultaneously,
(http://www.muscat.co.uk/cgi-bin/fx?DB=EC/all), the Engineering
Council provides a list of web servers operated by engineering
institutions (http://www.engc.org.uk/welcome/inst.htm). Many more
can be found through the EEVL gateway which I mentioned above, and
the appropriate sub-sections of the University of Waterloo Electronic
Library Scholarly Societies Project
(http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/society/subjects_soc.html).
There has been a rapid growth in the number of published engineering
e-journals. Apart from those published by some professional
societies, they are mainly of two main types; scholarly journals,
and trade journals. Few of the former are freely and completely
available on the Internet, but those which are include Optical
Diagnostics in Engineering (http://www.ode-web.demon.co.uk/),
Terra-Nova: the European Journal of Geosciences
(http://www.gly.bris.ac.uk/WWW/TerraNova/terranova.html), Journal of
Corrosion Science and Engineering (http://www.cp.umist.ac.uk/jcse/),
Bell Labs Technical Journal
(http://www.lucent.com/ideas2/perspectives/bltj/main.html),
Electronic Journal of Information Technology in Construction
(http://itcon.org/), and Journal of Technology Education
(http://borg.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/jte.html). Engineers do rather
better in terms of the provision of freely available trade journals,
and useful UK titles include The Engineer Online
(http://www.theengineer.co.uk/), Energy in Buildings & Industry
(http://www.insidecom.co.uk/eibi/), Hot Echo: the Journal of the
Scottish Software Community (http://www.hotecho.org/), UK
Construction and Civil Engineering On-Line Magazine
(http://www.contact-net.com/cce/), and Enterprise Manufacturing
(http://www.gdspublishing.ltd.uk/enterman.html). Titles from
outside the UK include Chemical Processing
(http://www.chemicalprocessing.com/), Solid Waste Online
(http://www.solidwaste.com/), Plant Services Magazine
(http://www.plantservices.com/), and Chemical Week Magazine
(http://www.chemweek.com/index.html). More titles can be found
through EEVL (mentioned above), and through other engineering
gateways such as Engineering Electronic Library, Sweden (EELS)
(http://www.ub2.lu.se/eel/eelhome.html). Lund University maintain a
comprehensive list of civil engineering journals on the Internet
(http://www.ldc.lu.se/lthvbibl/tidskr-www.htm).
Bibliographic databases are costly to produce and as a result are
normally available through traditional online hosts at commercial
rates. However, for a variety of reasons, some very useful
engineering databases are freely available on the Internet. In the
US, the Water Resources Scientific Information Center allows access
to its water resources database containing over a quarter of a
million abstracts and citations
(http://www.uwin.siu.edu/databases/wrsic/index.html). The ASCE's
Civil Engineering Database
(http://www.ascepub.infor.com:8601/chrhome2.html) which indexes over
80,000 civil engineering publications; the Copper Data Center's
databases, (http://cdc.copper.org/), the SPIE Publications Abstracts
database giving details of 90,000 publications,
(http://www.spie.org/web/abstracts/abstracts_home.html), and the
Recent Advances in Manufacturing database
(http://www.eevl.ac.uk/ram/) can all be searched at no cost.
Finally some gateways to engineering information. These are usually
excellent starting points for further investigation. Some, like EEVL
and EELS, I have already mentioned. Other good general ones include
the WWW Virtual Library: Engineering
(http://arioch.gsfc.nasa.gov/wwwvl/engineering.html), Internet
Connections for Engineering (ICE) from Cornell University
(http://www.englib.cornell.edu/ice/ice-index.html), and Engineering
UK (http://www.engineering-uk.co.uk/). For examples of subject
specific gateways, try Sourcerer: Gateway to the Chemical Industry of
the United Kingdom (http://www.sourcerer.co.uk/), or Chemical Industry
Home Page (http://www.neis.com/).
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Roddy MacLeod is Senior Faculty Librarian at Heriot-Watt University.
He edits the Internet Resources Newsletter
(http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/irn.html), and is the
Project Manager for EEVL: the Edinburgh Engineering Virtual
Library (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/).
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Would you like to see a certain topic covered?
Drop us a line to letters@freepint.co.uk
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RBA Information Services
For publications and training on how to use the Internet more
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Tel: 0118 947 2256, E-mail: enquiries@rba.co.uk http://www.rba.co.uk/
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LETTERS
Thank you for all your emails and letters, and we have reproduced a
selection here. If you would like to send us a letter, question or
feedback, then please send us an email to letter@freepint.co.uk
We will not publish your email if you do not wish us to, and cannot
guarantee a reply to all letters. Letters may be edited for content
and length, and we will withhold your contact details if you wish.
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William Hann writes:
We had an email from Christopher Pirillo, the editor of the free
Windows 95-98-NT e-mail newsletter "Lockergnome". If you are not
currently one of the many subscribers to the newsletter then I would
strongly recommend paying a visit to http://www.lockergnome.com/
Chris informed us that he has reviewed Free Pint in the latest issue
of Lockergnome, and his review is reproduced here with permission:
"There are tons of e-mail newsletters on the 'Net. Each one is
different (at least, we all hope so). While I was doing a search
for free stuff the other day, I stumbled up on Free Pint--a new
newsletter that is (honestly) refreshing. It tackles current
topics in-depth, and a growing subscriber base. The host is
knowledgeable on a variety of issues and has only begun passing
along information to people who are looking for it. Past
newsletters have revolved around medical sites, search engine
results, and Internet frauds (to name a few). Subscribing is
free--you can't beat that price. Tell him Lockergnome sent ya! :)"
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As you know, Free Pint's success is largely dependent on you the
subscriber spreading the word. We received a great email after the
last issue, part of which reads:
"... I'd like to express my compliments and thanks for the Free Pint
newsletter. I "discovered" it only yesterday--linked from a link from a
link--and have already subscribed to it, devoured all the back issues,
and forwarded Issue No. 6 to the 200+ employees of my company ..."
What wonderful support! Why don't you follow this lead (yes, now), and
tell all your friends, colleagues and family about Free Pint.
Its over to you!
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As well as numerous other messages of support, we also received our
first from China. It reads:
"dear ser,
I'm from China, today I received my first issue of it since subscribe.
It's really an excellent newsletter i'have ever seen!
A little request: How can I get the passed issure of freepint? I want
to have "every bit". my current freepint is <22 January 1998 #6>
thanks,
May be I should say sorry for my poor english--if my english teacher
see this letter,she will cry :)"
We have witheld the authors name (to circumvent any problems with the
teacher!), but actually think the English is great since we
understood every word. In answer to the question, you will find a
complete archive of past issues (which is fully searchable) on the
Web site at http://www.freepint.co.uk/ Whilst there, you may also
like to post messages, questions and feedback, and interact with other
subscribers and authors on the "Free Pint Forum".
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Promotional gifts supplied by Riverside Promotions
Tel: 01784 454785 Fax: 01784 466157
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Well, we hope you have found Free Pint to be informative and useful.
Please remember to send an electronic birthday card if you have a
spare moment, and continue to support us by spreading the word.
Kind regards,
William Hann, Editor
w.hann@freepint.co.uk
(c) Willco 1998
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 at http://www.freepint.co.uk/ or call +44 (0)171 681 1653
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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About this Newsletter
- Publication Date: 5th February 1998
- Plain text
- Link: https://www.jinfo.com/go/newsletter/7
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