Tag Archive for 'Sources'

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Copyright as an Asset – UK

Published on September 29, 2008 in Due Diligence, Intellectual Property Rights, Sources and United Kingdom. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

A copyright may represent a substantial asset for a person or company. The UK does not have a formal copyright registration process as in the U.S.A. — in the UK, creating the work creates the copyright.

The British National Bibliography (BNB) is the single most comprehensive listing of UK titles. UK and Irish publishers are obliged by law to send a copy of all new publications, including serial titles, to the Legal Deposit Office of the British Library; hence, the BNB is a list of copyright registrations. The British National Bibliography, was originally a weekly catalog which which became a  reference for book selection, cataloging, and for retrieval.

A Free BNB Web service to be launched in January 2009 will make the BNB available through the British Library Integrated Catalogue web pages. At that time, the CD-ROM version of BNB will be withdrawn. The current consolidated catalogues available on the BL website certainly correspond to a large part to the BNB. The British Library Automated Information Service (BLAISE), allowed a BNB search back to 1950, but I do not know if those catalogue records were transferred to the current BL website’s Integrated Catalogue, but it appears that the the new Web service will include these records.

Surfing Is Not Searching

Published on August 20, 2008 in Methods, Search Strategies and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Google and Yahoo! have fostered the belief that if you can type, then you are a researcher. In my experience, the DIY researcher’s greatest failings occur in the following areas:

  • poor source selection
  • not understanding that a hierarchy of authorities may exist for the research topic
  • not understanding the relationship between time, money, and value
  • not understanding how error and bias may appear in search results; and finally, terminology.

Most DIY searchers do not prepare for the search by collecting the synonyms and antonyms, thesauri, dictionaries, and the British and American spelling differences. They don’t take time to consider appropriate terms and phrases then make a list to work through.

Finding Corporate Owned Internet Domains

Published on June 6, 2008 in Company Research, Competitive Intelligence, Search Engines, Search Strategies and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I was recently asked how to find the domains owned by a particular company. Here is what I recently unearthed on this topic.

Whois

You can still search RIPE (Regional Internet Registry for Europe), which contains registrations for most of the European countries. The US server at InterNic no longer allows this.

Databases

Domain Names database on Dialog includes information on registered domain names with Top Level Domains (TLD) of COM, NET, ORG, BIZ, and INFO as well as those that use country codes, e.g., AT. it can be searched by owner name. This database was last updated in September 2004.

DomainTools offers a rather expensive solution which is like an updated version of the Domain Names database. According to their web site:

…currently indexes all domains in the .COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, .BIZ, and .US TLDs. That is 103,042,578 domains as of today. In addition to indexing every active domain, it also knows about the 334,835,604 inactive domains that have been registered and deleted since the early days of the Internet. Great names are deleted daily so it is important that we keep track of them.

The partial word searching ability of Name Intelligence is unmatched by any other engine. We allow more options and faster results then anything else on the market and we continue to add new functionality monthly. In an information world a company can only focus on so many problems at one time. We dedicate our time to making domain searching faster and more efficient so our partners can dedicate their time to their own core technologies.

Every month Name Intelligence actively probes every domain name in its search engine to figure out the domain’s status. Our search results not only reflect active and deleted domains but domains with websites or not. We have taken searching for domains very seriously.

… DomainTools has leveraged the power of its Registrant Search engine to provide notifications whenever a person or company registers a new domain, has one transfered to them, or transfers a domain out of their control.

They report on two Richard McEachin names for $57. When I search on Scarborough, the city for the registrant address, it finds two records for one domain for $57. When I add Canada as a limiter, they says they have no reports.

Searching the name McEachin returned 248 records in 147 domains and a report cost of $147. When I add Canada as a limiter, they again say they have no reports. When I search on Scarborough, the city for the registrant address, it finds four records for one domain for $61.

Not exactly what I call a stellar performance.

Proxy Registrations

Many domain registrants are now are concealed by registrars such as Domains by Proxy.

Long List of Social Networking Sites

Published on January 8, 2008 in Social Sites and Sources. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Here is the updated long list of social sites at Hybridsem.

Rumors

Published on April 30, 2007 in Company Research, Dirty Tricks, Reputation Management, Social Sites and Sources. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I’m a firm believer in letting other people do my research. Why should I do ‘original’ work that has already been done. When we do research to assist reputation management a lot of work has been done for us by rumourmonger and rumor debunking sites like Snopes. However, some malicious rumors originate with jealous competitors and radicals and require extensive research to identify the source, intent, and motive.

For instance, rumors that one company or other is owned by the KKK or one CEO or another donates money to the Church of Satan have circulated for decades. However, the Internet have given such rumors wings.

Companies can be destroyed by malicious rumors. A soft drink marketed to minorities in northeastern US cities, was almost bankrupted by a rumor that the drink contained a chemical that would make black men sterile.

Rumors can put lives at risk. In 2005 a rumor spread by cell phone text messages caused violent riots in Pakistan. The rumor was that men would loose their manhood if they shook hands with a foreigner.

In Rumor in the Marketplace: The Social Psychology of Commercial Hearsay (Auburn House Publishing, 1985), the authors suggest a public and forceful denial of the rumor as soon as possible by using solid evidence backed by experts. Sometimes the expert evidence is expert research that debunks the rumor.

Ships at Sea

Published on September 28, 2006 in Sources. 0 Comments Tags: .

This database contains only a small fraction of the ships worldwide, those that participate in the World Meteorological Organization’s program of voluntary at-sea weather reporting. The database also contains vessels with US radio licenses. For the most part military vessels are excluded, but occasionally a Coast Guard ship will make a report.

The US Coast Guard maintains another database of ship names, callsigns, and inspection reports. The French Marine Meteorological Center maintains a database of VOS reporting vessels.

Ship reporting for the large North European seaports of Antwerp, Bremen, Hamburg, Rotterdam and Amsterdam may be found at Europort.