Q&A with Acquire Media: Giving Companies a "NewsEdge"
25th November 2013

Sophie Alexander interviewed Larry Rafsky of Acquire Media to find out more about the real-time multimedia news specialists; their technologies such as taxonomy-based filtering; and NewsEdge, their flagship product. The interview covered areas such as how Acquire Media delivers value to its users, how the news analytic and reaction cycle now demands ever-quicker results, and the changes they expect to see in the way news is delivered to organisations in the future.

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Taking Information Out of Email Silos & Into Activity Streams
25th November 2013

Managing email and reducing the amount of time we spend reading and answering emails is a challenge facing almost all organisations. We're also spending more and more time on social media sites, leading to a feeling of "information overload". James Mullan considers whether activity streams, already used in social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn, can transfer to an enterprise setting to help us become more productive.

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Mini Review: FirstRain
22nd November 2013

Perrin Kerravala reviews the latest developments from FirstRain, an analytics company based in Silicon Valley which delivers targeted intelligence on businesses, industries and executives. New licensing options include Customer Insights and Market Insights. Forthcoming improvements, including Mandarin and Portuguese language developments are also discussed along with custom options such as an executive dashboard.

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Product Review of Northern Light SinglePoint: Sources, Content and Coverage
22nd November 2013

The second part of Sophie Alexander's review of Northern Light's SinglePoint strategic research portal considers the sources, content and coverage that can be included. A typical SinglePoint research portal will contain 5-40 licensed external research sources, an internal primary research repository, Northern Light Business News as well as a licensed news feed and custom harvesting of content from the government databases and the web.

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Product Review of Nexis: Executive Summary
22nd November 2013

Nexis is a comprehensive global business information research tool, providing access to thousands of sources all via one interface, reports Anne Lonergan in her executive summary. Its key strengths are breadth of content; ease of use; authoritative, licensed content; strong archive; advanced search and alerting functionality; and training and support.

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

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Cost Conscious SharePoint Training
22nd November 2013

When introducing SharePoint to your organisation for the first time, or upgrading, it's essential to train users and then to offer ongoing user support. Sarah Dillingham introduces some cost-effective options, from using pre-existing training materials from Microsoft to choosing selected materials or packages from specialist trainers or even creating your own materials from scratch using software such as Camtasia and Lectora.

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Stirring the Cookie Mix: Google and Data Protection
22nd November 2013

With the European Parliament recently passing a vote on the future of privacy and data protection rules in Europe, this article examines some of the shortcomings of the proposed rules such as their ability to be bypassed by national security and the various transatlantic agreements between the UK and US. It also looks at the implications of Google’s latest data protection concessions in the form of its new data processing agreement for European users of Analytics and speculation over its anonymous online identifier system called AdID.

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FreePint News Survey 2013. Results: Key News Suppliers and Satisfaction
22nd November 2013

Which are the preferred premium aggregator products used for news awareness, which are secondary or supplemental and how satisfied are information managers with the service and functionality they receive? Continuing her analysis of data garnered in FreePint's Sixth Annual News Needs & Preferences Survey, Robin Neidorf reports on these issues and also examines which products are held in particular high regard for functions such as ease of search and overall value-for-money. We also asked respondents what they would change about their preferred product, with comments ranging from "improve functionality around group alerts" to "more foreign language content".

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Product Review of Northern Light SinglePoint: Introduction, Value and FreePint's View
21st November 2013

The first part of Sophie Alexander's review of Northern Light's SinglePoint strategic research portal introduces the solution and gives FreePint's view of this fully customisable portal which aggregates news from the web, secondary research and a client's own internal market research. She also examines the value offered along with examples of return on investment from client case studies. Clients include Hewlett-Packard and Verizon along with other Fortune 100 market leading companies.

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Cookies Headed for Waste Bin as Europe Gets Tougher on Privacy?
21st November 2013

The testing by FICO of its new Proximity Location Service may be good for fighting fraud but also raises privacy implications. However, new findings by Forbes Insights indicate that customers are less worried by privacy than sellers imagine, but still highlight the serious consequences for businesses of privacy missteps. Meanwhile Britain’s Information Commissioner has warned companies such as Google and Microsoft that the more effective replacements for cookies on which they are reported to be working will not escape regulation. And as the European Parliament votes for a complete overhaul of data protection rules, there are signs in the wake of the American spying scandal that Germany may insist on new privacy standards as part of the current European Union and United States trade talks.

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