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The announcement of the annual BUDDIE award for Best Unknown Database is often a light, even frivolous, event. But the context for this year's award, unfortunately, allows no room for [...]

Google and Google-like search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com dominate web search with, collectively, more than 95% of the market share. There are of course hundreds (or maybe [...]

The internet age has been very tough on newspapers. They have suffered the loss of print ad and circulation revenues to the web as the internet has changed media consumption [...]

In June, Measure of America and Opportunity Nation released the 'Historical Report of Opportunity,' an important new study on the status of Americans. The report investigates Americans' opportunity to achieve [...]

Most of us struggle to do well in one career, but Nate Silver has done very well in two. Silver, an economist by training, first succeeded as a sports analyst, [...]

SYNOPSIS BuzzFeed's mission is to capture everything that's viral on the web, using member-submitted, staff-curated content that very often is genuinely funny, clever, and creative. BuzzFeed also has a serious [...]

SYNOPSIS Statista and Statistic Brain aggregate statistics on a wide range of commonly researched topics, but the resemblance ends there. Statista's content is well-selected, well-organized, and up-to-date. Statistic Brain's content [...]

O'LEARY ONLINE columns are usually systematic affairs. They start with a discrete topic, move steadily through the research, and finish with a tightly written column. This one is different. It [...]

It's self-evident that most Web content is ephemeral, and its disappearance will be neither noted nor missed. But not all of it--what about Web content that does indeed have enduring […]

This service aims to distribute an enterprise's information where it's needed It used to be that information professionals dealt with things like Boolean connectors, field searching, nesting, and proximity operators. […]

Grown-up companies in the content business that actually show profits are now the ones with the magic touch. throughout the late 90's, the dot corns were flying high, buoyed to […]

Northern Light is good at beating the odds. It started out in 1997 as a full-size research service, when there were already several other large, well-established companies in that market. […]

Dialog I may benefit from a renewed interest in pay-per-view content Please take this quick quiz to assess your knowledge of Dialog's end-user search products. Examine the following list, and […]

This is not the End of Days, but is instead the end of a cycle that brings us back full circle to where we started. Aterrible thing is happening on [...]

New Academic Information Model Bypasses Libraries The 'New Economy' looks a little like vaporware as the dot coms and their newfangled ways come crashing down. There is one market, how [...]

Why replace two of the greatest brands in information? The question can be answered in one word: integration. try this quick quiz. Which of the following brands is the least […]

These science news and reference sites can bring nonexperts up to speed It seems like everything we encounter these days is somehow a science lesson. Energy production, climate change, missile-defense […]

nexis.com shines in Web research Odds are not great that you are a user of LexisNexis, but you nevertheless have notion of what it is: a large collection of legal, […]

We are one year into the Great Web Dot.com meltdown. The NASDAQ has been halved, dot-com stock prices are in single digits, and Internet IPOs are being stuffed into drawers. […]

The winner of this year's Best Unknown Database Award is finally revealed In recent years, we've had to deal with monetary inflation and grade inflation, but these are minor annoyances […]

We may be at the point of diminishing returns with these mega-databases; they stretch the envelope so far that we may be better off contracting it instead of expanding it [...]

Partnerships, such as the Cisco-led Content Alliance, are working to make the technologies speak to each other. We've all seen streaming video on the Internet. Most of the time, however, […]

'We are not an ebook company...We're not a bookseller...We are a software company with a killer app.' One of the new century's most confusing new technologies is the ebook, with […]

This service aims to be an alternative to the conventional college library Questia is finally here. The new online research service has had a long and well-publicized gestation, with ads, […]

What more can you say about news on the Web? Everywhere you go there's news. A portal isn't complete without top news headlines. There are dozens of excellent, thorough news […]

This site's numerous problems often overshadow its strengths It's a good thing that Steven Brill, the founder of Contentville, is a lawyer. Starting soon after it was introduced last summer, […]

If you're interested in one type of ebook information--news, publishers, opinions--you can turn to a single site to meet your needs. The ebook race is on. They'll soon be at [...]

Three companies are in the forefront of forming a distribution standard There are so many models for e-book delivery that it's difficult to keep up with them. E-book providers offer […]

'The key thing to understand about DRM is that it is not the system; DRM is a component of a larger commerce system.' When it comes to digital rights management, […]

By now you've probably heard the term "vortal," but you may still be a little shaky on just what it means. You can think of vortals as solutions to information […]

This new government portal suffers a bit from its hurried development Who says it takes the government forever to do anything? For example, consider FirstGov (http://www.firstgov.gov), the new portal to […]

If you haven't already, do yourself a favor and read Don Hawkins' excellent 'Electronic Books: A Major Publishing Revolution' (a two-part series in the July/August and September/October 2000 issues of [...]

This new site might redefine the nature of a successful business portal The name 'Business.com' is one of the best known on the Web, but not for the usual reasons. […]

The Gale Group ... has gone over to the free side. One of the Web's great accomplishments (along with animated ads and worldwide viruses) has been to reinforce the notion […]

If you're reading this magazine, and especially this column, you've probably caught the buzz on business portals. Business portals are at the top among high-interest, high-growth Web trends as we […]

New nexis.com service blends old-style depth with new-style ease NEXIS has gone dot-com! NEXIS has be en Yahoo!-ed! It's hard to imagine, but one of the online age's creators is […]

The democratization of the Web is not just an occasion for diversity high fives. It is critically important to all sorts of people. What is the most significant Internet statistic [...]

One of today's biggest Web trends is the portal. Whether it's the battle for the top consumer portal, the portal as the medium of B2B ecommerce, or the proliferation of [...]

This site provides access to the latest reference books and classic literature We've heard a lot about e-books lately: Stephen King's Riding the Bullet, the purchase of NuvoMedia and SoftBook […]

Sometimes reference books can be just plain fun. They're the ones that you look forward to consulting when the occasion arises, or that you just browse on your own. It's […]

CPI...PPI...housing starts...leading indicators...consumer confidence. They're like mantras, these economic statistics. We encounter them on the radio, in the newspaper, and on the Web. Data that is so widely reported must […]

This newly made-over service fills an important information need It wasn't that long ago (although it does seem like it) when the comprehensive online services--the so-called 'supermarket' services--reigned supreme. Today, […]

You may be fed up with the ubiquitous cell phone, but get used to it. Not only are they becoming ever more commonplace, they are merging with that other unavoidable [...]

Poll Sites Catalog Nation's Opinions For all of their importance in American politics, business, and culture, public opinion poll data have not been widely available online. Poll results are of […]

10K's, 10Q's, IPO's, Annual reports... these are the raw material for thousands of critical business decisions every day. Whether it is a corporation investigating a merger, a fund, manager deciding […]

Distance learning is a very big trend, and is steadily and quickly growing. Distance learning--taking courses and training over the Internet and other media--is radically altering the ways in which [...]

All libraries face a great challenge in the age of the Web: how do you respond when you've lost your monopoly? The Web now does very well many of the [...]

This site offers comprehensive, consumer-oriented health information It seems that every month some new medical/health Web site appears--Dr.com this, Medical.com that, or something of the sort. It's nice to have […]

You might think that there is nothing new to say about news on the Web, but don't forget that the Web is a hothouse environment, where new sites sprout and […]

Old-media publishers can be successful in a new-media world During the (recently battered) honeymoon period of e-commerce, it seemed possible that new, Web-based businesses and retailers might take over from […]