Sadly, nothing to do with the great Aretha, but valuable all the same. Break the Chain is a site that stores examples of the endless email chain letters that do the rounds. Some, as you know, are harmless, even mildly amusing. But others are disturbing or obnoxious.
Anyway, if you get something like that in your email and you're wondering whether there might, just might, be something in it, go to this site ... and read the official denial.
I have been out of action for a couple of days because I forgot to renew my domain name. Whoops! Things seem to be working again now.
This is about as minimal a site as I have seen, but as the current catchphrase has it, it does exactly what it says on the tin. UK Self Help Groups is a list of 780 self-help groups for people with medical and psychological conditions. All have telephone numbers and many also have a web page or email address. Potentially extremely useful, if you don't succumb to latent hypochondria.
I'm currently working on a page about US and world journalism as a counterpart to my UK journalism material. This time there is masses to go through, but in the meantime, take a look at The Journalist's Toolbox, which is a lovingly produced set of links to useful pages on most areas of journalistic interest.
The creator, Mike Reilley, is a highly experienced American newspaperman, and the site is elegant and loads quickly. There's also a useful email list for tips and discussion.
You don't have to be a privacy nut to be alarmed at the UK Government's plans to extend its surveillance of email, phone and web traffic. The case is put best in the Foundation for Information Policy Research press release that brought it to everyone's attention.
That page also has a link to the proposed new Government order. And here's the original act.
Basically, everyone from your local council to the Office of Fair Trading will be able to get records of your online activity (though not the actual messages), providing they claim you are doing something criminal or threatening to public health or the national economy. It's an extraordinary development, but it seems likely to proceed, since it comes wrapped in a lot of stuff about national security. It means email will be about as useful as a postcard for sensitive communications.
This was a good strong page of links to Journals with Free Archives on the Web, created by Information Today magazine.
Unfortunately, it appears that the page was only intended for subscribers to the magazine, which costs $65 a year, so it has been withdrawn. What a shame. I've left the link up in case it reappears later, but I can't quite imagine that happening.
RocketNews is one of the best of the news search engines, but now it has felt compelled to give itself a new name and a dreary new "corporate" look.
Here's the direct link: Rocketinfo - Search Engine. But the old www.rocketnews.com URL still works, and everything else seems much the same. It is worth stressing that RocketNews, sorry, Rocketinfo, carries no "paid-placement" content at all. That places it in a small but priceless sector of the search market.
Food scares in perspectiveNext time there's a food scare, and we are due for one any day now, you'd do well to look at the Institute of Food Research. These people are scientists, but funded by the Goverment's research council rather than industry, and they are charged with both conducting research and making that research widely available. The site works well and the content is admirably clear and well presented.
The other iToolsThe name will confuse Apple users, but iTools has a lot going for it if you want a straightforward one-page set of search and reference tools: search engines, dictionaries, translators, biographies, quotations and so on.
The South Asian Journalists' Association, SAJA, has put together a site with useful background and contacts for those covering the continuing tension over Kashmir. The instigator is sreenath sreenivasan, a professor of journalism at Columbia University. You might like to take a look at his site, the lowercase world of sreenath sreenivasan.
Government press releases for Britain now come from a new site called GNN, which stands for Government News Network. The site boasts three separate examples of corporate BS on its front page: a mission, a vision and some values. That breaks new ground.
Once inside, you are taken straight to the database of press releases previously hosted by the Central Office of Information's site. The Central Office of Information site now contains nothing of any use: it doesn't even tell you where the press releases have gone. More communications expertise from the people at Number 10.
A peek at SnewpAnother twist on news searching. The Snewp says it indexes 6,000 sources of news, and updates its indexes several times a day. There are no buttons, no options, no preferences, you just type your subject in a box and click Search. Sadly, the first stories I found were at least five days old. Maybe I'm doing it wrong...
I spend a lot of time pushing the idea of using the Internet to let news come to you. One aspect of this is tracking web pages so that you are notified when they change.
For a long time, I have recommended SpyOnIt, but now I have come across InfoMinder, and I have to say I think it does the job better. The free version lets you choose 10 sites to monitor. When they change, you get an email including the changed passage and a link to a page that has the changes highlighted.
Not as wide-ranging as Spyonit, perhaps, which has a range of pre-assembled "spies" and lets you search for specific changes of wording, but if you want a simple job done properly, Infominder may be a better bet. Unfortunately, it does not have such a memorable name, so bookmark it.
Newspapers, but onlineThe Internet is all well and good, but it doesn't make a great job of representing the look and practicality of a real newspaper. Until now.
Take a look at Olive Software and you will see a system called Active Paper that places an exact visual copy of a newspaper on screen. Click on an article and it appears, as text or a visual copy, in a window. There are a couple of demonstration editions on that front page and they really are very impressive. Or you could go straight to The East Valley Tribune's demo page and try it there.
What a pity this wasn't around when the librarians were busily trashing the world's printed newspaper archives. I've just been reading Nicholson Baker's Double Fold, and I recommend it.