There has been a lot of activity in the world of news search lately, which can only be good for us. It is true that some news organisations are moving towards registration, probably to be followed in due course by subscriptions or pay-per-view. We shall see if that works.
In the meantime, it's a real nuisance to have to remember your password every time you want to search the Daily Telegraph site. What's more, it's a gross invasion of your privacy: and this from an organisation that campaigns for individual liberty. Ho-hum. No wonder people use false names, writes Winged-Eel Fingerling.
Anyway, plenty of people will still let you look at their headlines without unnecessary form-filling, and Google has joined those sites that offer a news headlines and search page. Unusually for Google, there doesn't seem to be any great ingenuity at work here. The main headline page is all US stories. A search for "Consignia" brought in half a dozen stories from the obvious British sites. Others (RocketNews, NewsNow, DayPop) do it better.
All the news that fitsTo find British newspaper sites, especially the locals and regionals, I usually got to The Paperboy. It's not the most elegant piece of design, but it works, and it also has good foreign coverage.
Now there's a rival, in the shape of DailyNewspaper.co.uk. This is an exceptionally comprehensive set of links to national and regional newspapers, magazines, news agencies and much more. It also has a set of regularly updated headlines from national and local papers. So far, so good.
Unfortunately, the site has been designed for those with large empty screens. I use a laptop, and many reporters I know use older computers with extremely modest specifications. If that's the case, you simply won't be able to see a lot of what's on offer here. One whole menu full of stuff simply didn't appear on my screen. What a waste, when the raw material is so strong. Of course, if you have a big screen it may be work well for you, although I did not find the Search facilities at all convincing.
News agencies in the UKEver wondered where all those peculiar human-interest stories you find in the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph originally come from? Often it's from local and regional news agencies, combing their local patch for something they can sell on. Now a group of them have combined to give themselves a web presence as 2dayUK. It includes some brief extracts from their recent triumphs, plus contact details should you want them to do a job for you. That would almost certainly work out cheaper than sending one of your own people, although only you can decide whether you are likely to get the results you want. It's a well-made site that editors should keep in their Bookmarks.
British journalism linksIf you'll excuse a bit of back-scratching, Journalism UK is a very thorough set of links to all sorts of online resources both about journalism and of use to journalists. The back-scratching comes in because it has just kindly included this site among its links.
Anyway, the site has a rather cunning structure. There's a big menu on the left, but everything goes straight from there to one continuous page that takes a while to load. But you only have to do it once and it's worth it. I also enjoyed the slightly exasperated FAQ that deals with a lot of the questions every journalist has had to answer at some time or another. The authors are a working journalist and a techie, and I must say I share their views on such topics as glitzy award ceremonies, which do our modest and traditionally anonymous trade no good at all.
The old ones are the bestA warm welcome for the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, which has just appeared on the web. It's free, and the people who have scanned it in promise one day to check every page against the original. It really is a fine resource, perhaps because it dates from a time when reference books were assembled by scholars and enthusiasts rather than marketing departments. Encarta? Nein Danke.
Obviously, you will need to use it with caution. It's an accurate reflection of the world, attitudes, and the state of knowledge in 1911. Apart from that, the scanning process is a little rough and ready, so you'll want to check things. Still, this really is the Britannica.
Brief livesIf you want basic biographies on famous people, you would do better to go to one of the sites that specialises in that kind of thing rather than to Google. There is a good list of specialist biography sites in a recent edition of SearchDay, the daily update from Search Engine Watch, although it must be said that the bulk of these sites are American. You will find your British prime ministers and popular entertainers, but you'll look hard for Binkie Beaumont and Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling. Especially the latter.
Are you still worried about the reliability of information you find on the Internet? Those of us for whom information-gathering has sometimes meant chatting to people in the pub are less anxious about it than librarians, but it is a serious issue. LLRX, a research site for lawyers and librarians, has just produced an excellent guide to the subject. The tests it suggests are stringent, but not always applicable. JournoList fails on some counts, not least because it has no copyright notice. But, American readers please note, under British and European law, copyright material is copyright material, © or no ©. In any case, I don't mind anyone copying anything they find on this site, as long as they don't start charging for it. Maybe I should have a copyright policy.
Did you know you can use Google as a US telephone directory? Just use this search syntax phonebook:name, place or, if you want to be clever, use rphonebook: for residential and bphonebook: for business numbers. Like this: bphonebook:Disney, Orlando FL or rphonebook: Bush, TX. Hours of fun, and another triumph for Google.
Get out of pop-up hellAre you sick of pop-up adverts on the websites you visit? Or worse, the dreaded "pop-under" that appears just as you are starting to relax and use the site? I know I am, though I can understand the desperation of the site-owners who are increasingly employing them. What a pity it is so counter-productive: they risk destroying the actual value of their sites in the process. Anyway, sermon over: we're probably going to have to live with them until the next craze sweeps the online world (What happened to Smack the Monkey?).
You can get software to remove these irritants, but a simpler method goes like this: just use the "close window" keyboard shortcut at the moment the advert starts to appear. In Windows, CTRL-W, on the Mac Apple/Command-W. Simple, painless and instant.
Who can you really trust on the Internet?Are you still worried about the reliability of information you find on the Internet? Those of us for whom information-gathering has sometimes meant chatting to people in the pub are less anxious about it than librarians, but it is a serious issue. LLRX, a research site for lawyers and librarians, has just produced an excellent guide to the subject. The tests you apply are stringent, but not always applicable. This site fails on some counts, not least because it has no copyright notice. But under British and European law, copyright material is copyright material, © or no ©. In any case, I don't mind anyone copying anything they find on this site, as long as they don't start charging for it. Maybe I should have a copyright policy.