Margaret Berkland is the president of Data Vision Design, Inc., which specializes in providing IT solutions to the legal community. Founded in Fredericksburg, VA in 1989, Data Vision Design, Inc. provides services that include: applications development, business process design, applications integration, electronic file tracking and, access expedition. Prior to becoming the president of DataVision Design, Inc., Margaret was the Info. Resources Technology Specialist for McKenna & Cuneo, where she still performs those duties on a contract basis. Margaret is the Web Master for McKenna & Cuneo’s Web site.
This website provides “a comprehensive list of job cuts and closures among Web-related companies, with links to relevant articles. You can browse alphabet groups or by category. The alphabetical chart from The Wall Street Journal is divided into three categories of information for each company: Company Name (which includes a phrase describing the type of business), Status (which includes backers or owners, whether public or private), and Action (which includes the date of the action and the type of action). Wall Street Journal subscribers can follow links to relevant articles about the company news.
TheStandard.com’s Flop Tracker claims to help you keep track of who is no longer in business in the dot-com world. The user can search by company, time frame, sector and/or number of companies. The site began tracking company failures in December 1999 and updates its information daily. The Flop Tracker “includes confirmed reports of Net companies that have ceased operations, sold their assets or filed for bankruptcy.” U.S. and foreign firms re included, but small firms such as those on the NASDAQ bulletin board are not included.
The main pages of HeadlineSpot are News by Media, News by Region, News by Subject, Opinion, Cool Tools, Fun Stuff, Behind the News, Resources For. Each main page has links to subcategories. You can use pull down menus to find headlines by city, state, or country. The homepage of the site provides links to the day’s top headlines, and Top News by Media Type, Top News by Subject, Answers on the Spot, and On the Lighter Side (offbeat, humor, crosswords and games).
Room 102 admits that it is not as powerful a search engine as Yahoo or Google, but it is unique in that it provides its search results in slide show format or text plus thumbnail images. The user can also view the results as text only. The slide show results may be viewed in high bandwidth (56+ kbps) or low bandwidth (28.8+ kbps). The site claims that its slide show technology is best for surfing. When you see a site of interest, you click on its picture and go directly to the site. The Room 102 search engine searches its database of two million websites, not the entire Web. The screenshots are updated every 10 to 15 days with the goal to soon be updating every day or two. You can use your own terms to search the site or use the Room 102 categories and subcategories for browsing.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
The SEC website has been revamped. There are seven main sections displayed on the homepage with links to the most important items under each section plus and link to more items. The sections displayed are About the SEC, Company Info on EDGAR, Regulatory Actions; Staff Interpretations, Investor Information, News & Public Statements, and Litigation. The user is able to link to searching EDGAR, fin Proposed Rules, Final Rule Releases, Staff Accounting Bulletins, the News Digest, Press Releases, Testimony, Litigation releases and much more. There are links to Headlines and Hot Topics, the SEC Divisions, and special links for access to more technical information for groups such as accountants and EDGAR filers. This is a visually clean, crisp , easy to use website .
Sabrina Pacifici’s Featured Site for February 26, 2001:
This very cool site is about commuter, rather than Internet, traffic. It offers real time data for travelers, via the Web or wireless access, 24/7, for 10 major cities, with additional cities on the way. The site will calculate travel time from point A to point B, along with the average speed of the traffic on the route. Choose from a drop-down list of cities, and receive up-to-the minute travel information including maps, accident reports, advisories, alternative routes, construction, and transit links. You can “pan and zoom” to view specific areas on the map to further identify trouble spots.
Featured Site for March 5, 2001:
According to their own stats, Yahoo has 54 million visitors each month, and a large portion of them must be taking advantage of the extensive free news links the site offers. The main news page abstracts top stories from a selected group of major national newspapers, wire services, broadcast news sites and high profile issue oriented sites. Topical areas covered include: Business, Technology, Politics, Entertainment, World and Local News. Within each of these news areas, stories may be viewed according to source. Links are also provided to earlier stories, opinion & editorials, and related news stories. Users may create an email alert that includes the headline, a summary, and links to the stories.