Tara Calishain is the co-author of Official Netscape Guide to Internet Research, 2nd Edition, and author or co-author of four other books. She is the owner of CopperSky Writing & Research.
In This Issue:
“Oil and Gas on the Internet” Released 18Q Update
Hoover’s Announces Advanced People Search
New Liquidated Companies Database in New Zealand
Reg Aubry Discovers Undocumented Google Syntax
LLRXBu zz Tour of 50 State Web Sites
LLRXBu zz Archives : April 3, 2000 – Present
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No FirstGov review this week — I decided to hold off until the new search engine was in place.
A searchable database of federal contracts between 1992 and
2000 is online at
http://www.campaignfinance.org/fpds/index.html. You can search for information by a company name or from a drop-down list of countries.
There is no apparent order in the record listings, but you do have the option of sorting by contractor name or transaction amount. There’s no count for the search results but a search for “Enron” brought at least three pages of results. The summary of search results provides company name, contractor city and date, action date, transaction amount, and contracting parent agency. Click on the company name and you’ll get a few more details about the company, including address, principal company of performance, and company type. There’s also a link to a searchable database of the company’s campaign contributions. (You will have to accept a disclaimer before viewing campaign contribution information.)
Click on the transaction amount and you’ll get the contract details, including the contract number, product/service details, competition details, and contract details. There’s also a link to search for that contract number in contract
actions. There’s plenty to see here but if you’re new to federal contract records I recommend using
http://www.ire.org/datalibrary/databases/fedcontacts/layout.txt as a cheat sheet — it contains helpful information.
This site, at http://www.policek9.com/Case_Law/case_law.html, is sponsored by Eden & Neys Associates Inc., operator of the K9 Academy for Law Enforcement. It addresses the Fair Labor Standards Act and how it applies to K9 handlers providing care for the animals while not “on call.” It also provides state statutes protecting the dogs from harmful intent.
Case Law Archives are grouped under topic headings such as Narcotic Searches of Persons, Train Sleeper Cars and Use of Detection Dogs at Roadblocks. Case information includes the Court, date and brief description. All of the case files are publicly available from law libraries.
This site features an extensive legal page with updates and opinions of interest to the K9 officer. The page includes Supreme Court Decisions and a updates from the Court of Appeals. Records include suspect violation, decision factors and court rulings. Interesting site.
Ornel, Inc. sponsors a Human Resources Law Index online at http://www.hrlawindex.com/. Categories include Company & Personal Background Checking, Immigration, Non Competition Agreements and many more. This site is fee-based ($95 a year), but offers registration for a 24 hour free trial period with unlimited access.
After you’ve registered (you’re required to provide a lot of information, including phone and fax number and address) pick a category and you’ll get a list of links. A few of the links I saw go offsite (for example, there’s a direct link
to the Age Discrimination In Employment Act.) I wish those would open in a new window but they don’t.
Most of the other links are internal and lead to readable summaries of relevant cases — for example, “Federal Bank Examiner Wins $723,533 In Damages Under Federal Whistleblower Statute.” The case is sourced at the end of the article so you can look it up if you like.
“Oil and Gas on the Internet” Released 18Q Update
Competitive Analysis Technologies has released the 18th quarterly edition of its “Oil and Gas on the Internet” database providing Internet resources for the oil and gas industry. This edition contains over 3600 upstream sites and more than 2900 downstream profiles. The information is available as hard copy or electronic format. Database demos can be viewed at http://www.catsites.com/demo/.
PRESS RELEASE: http://library.northernlight.com/FC20020305070000260.html
Hoover’s Announces Advanced People Search
Hoover’s has launched its Advanced People Search tool for Hoover’s Online subscribers. The new search software offers searching by 20+ criteria, including age, job title, location and salary. Get more information in the press
release at http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020305/damtu01_1.html.
New Liquidated Companies Database in New Zealand
The New Zealand Herald
(http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=1090836)
recently reported about a new database of liquidated companies available at http://www.nzcfi.org/nzcfi/.
After accepting a disclaimer, you’re allowed into the site which lets you either enter a new liquidation or view a current list of liquidations (there are only about thirteen at this pint.) The list includes the company, name of the liquidator, date of liquidation, and a link to view the listing. The listings include contact information for the liquidator and a list of creditors, with contact information and how much they claim to be owed by the company. An asterisk denotes if the creditor is willing to attend a creditor’s meeting.
Reg Aubry Discovers Undocumented Google Syntax
Normally I identify readers only by their initials but Reg Aubry wanted full credit for bringing to my attention the phonebook: syntax. So I bow to Mr. Aubry (no relation, I presume, to either the Flying Aubrys or Reg Shoe, zombie constable of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series) for letting me know about this cool feature.
The phone number feature, as you may already know, allows you to enter a phone number or name and get phone book lookups in your Google search results. For example :
smith, boston ma
Finds people and businesses named Smith in Boston, Massachusetts .
starbucks, boston ma
Finds Starbucks in Boston .
Now, when you search the phone book like that you’ll only get two results at the top of the page, with the rest of the results being Web listings. You can search only the phonebook by using the “More phonebook listings” link, but
why bother? Instead, you can go directly into a phonebook search on Google by using the phonebook: syntax. For example :
phonebook:starbucks, boston
will get you a listing of the two dozen odd Starbucks in Boston, all on one page . Information listed includes business name, phone number, address, and links to two map generators for that location.
Let me give you an example of a phone book search that doesn’t appear to work except when using the phonebook: syntax. If you search Google for — smith, springfield — you will not get any phone numbers. But if you search for — phonebook:smith, springfield — you will get two sets of results. The top set is business results: 5 out of 134. The bottom set is residential results: 5 out of 600. Phone numbers listed on the front page are from both Massachusetts and Missouri.