The Online World resources handbook

Getting an edge over your competitors http://home.eunet.no/~presno/bok/11.html
APPLE + COMPUTERS is a better phrase since the words can appear
anywhere in the story, and not necessarily next to each other.
ENS carries an hourly surcharge over base connect rates.
Other clipping services
Dow Jones' Interactive has a comprehensive clipping service for business users. Sources
include Financial Times' international business reports grouped within primary industry
segments.
Filtering may also be used when retrieving news through QMail gateways on
BBSes. For example, I use the 1stReader program for communications with a Norwegian
PCBoard BBS that carries hundreds of newsgroups and mailing lists from Usenet,
Internet, BITNET, and other networks. By having 1stReader upload a list of keywords
through the BBS' QMail door, all new messages containing these words or phrases from
given conferences will be selectively retrieved, compressed, and downloaded. A
powerful feature!
There are also clipping offerings on a host of other free and commercial services.
When clipping is impossible
Many services do not offer clipping. On these, you can use various methods of regular,
selective reading.
Many conferencing systems let you select messages to read by keywords.
CompuServe's forums have efficient 'read selective' and 'quick scan' commands.
Another trick is to limit your reading to specific message sections.
The high forum message volume is a special problem on this service. Old messages
are regularly deleted to make room for new ones. (Often called "scroll rate.") Some
popular forums do not keep messages for more than a couple of days before letting them
go. You must visit often to get all new information.
Many bulletin boards can be told to store unread messages about given topics in a
compressed transportation file. This file can then be retrieved at high speed. Special
communication programs (often called offline readers) and commands are available to
automate this completely.
Powerful scripts and offline reader programs (see Chapter 12) can do automatic
selection of news stories based on the occurrence of keywords (for example, a company
name) in headlines or the messages' text.
Subscription services
It is useful to dig, dig, and dig for occurrences of the same search words, but digging is
not enough. Unless you periodically scan "the horizon," you risk missing new trends,
viewpoints and other important information.
It can be difficult to find good sources of information that suits your needs. One
trick is to watch the reports from your clipping services. Over time, you may discover
that some sources bring more interesting stories than others. Take a closer look at these.
Consider browsing their full index of stories regularly.
If your company plans exportation to countries in Asia, check out MARKET: ASIA
PACIFIC on Brainwave for NewsNet. The newsletter is published monthly by W Two
Publications, Ltd., 202 The Commons, Suite 401, Ithaca, NY 14850, U.S.A. (phone:
+1 607 277 0934). Annual print subscription rate: US$279.
The index itself may be a barometer of what goes on. Here is an example. Note the
number of Words/Lines. Do these numbers tell a story?
July 1, 1993
Head # Headline Words/Lines
1) THE PHILIPPINES IS AT A TURG POINT 616/78
2) CHINA AND KOREA WILL LEAD REGIONAL ECONOMIC BOOM 315/41
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