Facebook Graph Search - Disruptor to the Internet Giants?
22nd January 2013

Penny Crossland reports on last week's launch of Facebook's much anticipated search engine, Graph Search. The feature will come as welcome news to searchers frustrated by Facebook's cumbersome search engine, since discovery of information is made easier by category indexing using natural language searching. The big internet businesses, however, and especially Google, are likely to view the new feature as a major disruptor, since in the long-term it will enable users to search for jobs, products and local businesses. This will affect the likes of Amazon, LinkedIn and Yelp.

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Dealing with Digital Addiction
21st January 2013

2013 has only just started and a number of websites are already talking about digital addiction clinics. This can't be a good thing, surely? What is it about social media that so many people find so addictive? James Mullan asks how information professionals can help individuals suffering from digital addiction.

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Mini Review: Infotrieve Mobile Library Rx
15th January 2013

Aileen Marshall reviews Infotrieve's Mobile Library Rx™, the iPad-based ePrint delivery solution for pharmaceutical professionals/sales representatives/marketing, interacting with healthcare professionals or other external organisations. Unlike some other products, it does not focus on internal document delivery but rather on sharing ePrints with external clients while complying with all applicable copyright/digital rights regulations.

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Mini Review: Cortera PULSE
14th January 2013

This review covers Cortera PULSE™, a credit risk monitoring and intelligence database that is a disruptive presence in the otherwise staid and conventional world of credit reporting data. Cortera brings a focus to payment variables and B2B buying behaviour that has been somewhat overlooked by the credit world. The database is colourful and user friendly, but not overly simplified, offering a variety of communities, tools and report options to suit a range of business needs.

Update: A new review of this product is available here »

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Nothing is Certain Except Death, Taxes... and Compliance
14th January 2013

Even when times are tough, opportunities continue in regulatory compliance. Thomson Reuters has just launched its FATCA solution and LexisNexis has acquired regulatory information specialist Knowledge Mosaic. Although much of the current focus - in Britain, the United States and Europe - is on tax avoidance, a recent Virgin Media Business survey brings corporate tweeting to the fore again, and there's also growth in due diligence, fraud investigation and insolvency work. There's evidence, too, that some of this is being brought in-house.

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Reconnecting with Your LinkedIn Connections
11th January 2013

The New Year means different things to different people, but if you're serious about professional networking then it should be a time when you reach out to your connections on LinkedIn to ensure they're not "gathering dust" and that you and your connections are continuing to provide value to each other. But how should you go about this? James Mullan provides some useful tips for LinkedIn novices as well as those more au fait with the tool.

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Easier Broadcast News Searches - Both Sides of the Pond
10th January 2013

The latest smart devices combine with increasingly sophisticated streaming technology to make it easier for us to consume broadcast news wherever we are. Our appetite for TV news online is increasing and watching news on televisions is declining in favour of a mix of computer-based devices. Creating easy access to archived broadcast news is now a vital part of information professionals' roles as searching video news becomes an important part of the search strategy.

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Yippy Acquires Highbeam to Boost Online Offering
9th January 2013

Yippy, the family and student-friendly search engine has acquired Highbeam, the academic and business information database. Highbeam had been part of Gale, and ultimately Cengage Learning, since 2008 and has become known as an affordable and reliable business information and research tool. Yippy acquired the Clusty search engine in 2010 and markets itself as a safe metasearch engine that filters what it deems to be unsuitable results.

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Upgrading to a Resource Discovery Interface
8th January 2013

Jonathan Jacobsen outlines just what constitutes a resource discovery interface and explains why many public and academic libraries have been adopting these interfaces over the past three to four years. He highlights some of the most popular commercial and open source systems and explains why smaller libraries and cultural organisations should also consider introducing them. The article includes useful pointers for selecting and implementing a discovery interface - there are many factors to consider.

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And Then There Were Two - Thomson Reuters' Acquisition of PLC
8th January 2013

What will Thomson Reuters' acquisition of the Practical Law Company mean for customers in law firms? Can they expect cost savings, or - bearing in mind that the company has fallen foul of European Commission antitrust rules recently - might TR become too dominant among legal information providers? Survey data from FreePint suggests that, after expenditure on the Big Three - TR, LexisNexis and PLC - there's currently little left over for content from other players such as Bloomberg or Wolters Kluwer.

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