Numerous databases are online that offer this information. We like using the free look-up included in the suite of free lookup databases from Melissa Data.

IP Address Location Lookup

The Melissa Data service is powered by IP2Location that also offers a free service (max. 20 lookups per day). More for a fee.

Caveat: As you know, these databases are not always 100% accurate. For example, a user might be using an address that is not tied to the specific location where the person is located. Nevertheless, they can sometimes help.

Other Sources include:
+ MaxMind GeoIP Demo also available via SEOMoz

+ GeoBytes

Just Released: Phishing Activity Trends Report (June 2006)
7 pages; PDF. Includes numerous tables and charts.

Previous reports linked on Anti-Phishing Workgroup Home Page

See Also: Phishing Archive

…examples of phishing attacks submitted to antiphishing.org. For a thorough and up-to-date phishing archive please visit our partner millersmiles.co.uk.

Source: Anti-Phishing Working Group

Just Released: Income Climbs, Poverty Stabilizes, Uninsured Rate Increases

Real median household income in the United States rose by 1.1 percent between 2004 and 2005, reaching $46,326, according to a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Meanwhile, the nation’s official poverty rate remained statistically unchanged at 12.6 percent. The percentage of people without health insurance coverage rose from 15.6 percent to 15.9 percent (46.6 million people).

Also released were tabulations of economic data from the 2005 American Community Survey (ACS), a powerful new tool that provides timely and updated information about the nation’s changing and diverse population every year. The data are available for nearly 7,000 areas including for the first time all congressional districts, and counties, cities and American Indian/Alaska native areas of 65,000 population or more. Without the ACS, this type of information — previously gathered just once a decade — would not be available for communities until 2012.

Highlights and Important Background Data ||| Direct to Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005 (PDF)

Direct to Income, Earnings and Poverty in the United States: 2005 (PDF)

Direct to 2005 American Community Survey (ACS) via FactFinder

See Also: Key Resources on Health Coverage and the Uninsured (via Kaiser Family Foundation)

DocuTicker is ResourceShelf’s sister site and is updated daily with a wide variety of new full text reports on many topics from government agencies, think tanks, ngo’s and many other organizations. Shirl Kennedy is the managing editor of DocuTicker. Here’s a small, very small, sample of what we’ve posted during the past week. Btw, the new DocuTicker Full Text RSS Feed is at: http://www.docuticker.com/?feed=rss2

+ World Drug Report 2006

+ User’s Guide to Computing High School Graduation Rates

+ 2006 School Lunch Report Card

+ Report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict in the Sudan

+ Analysis of Ready.gov

+ Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure

+ Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2010

+ U.S. Nuclear Reactors

+ National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS): Operations 2005

TOXMAP Have More Accurate Appearance
TOXMAP offers a visual look at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and Superfund Program.

Also New at TOXMAP:
+ TRI releases summary table for each TRI facility showing all years and chemicals in table format;
+ Larger default maps (with the option for small maps);
+ Enhanced homepage map;
+ Auto-completion of chemical names in text entry fields (like Quick Search);
+ A “For Teachers” page

A personal note from Gary.

A few week’s ago we linked to a wonderful article about search engine expert (guru if you like) Danny Sullivan. My 18 months working with Danny (I was news editor at SEW) and chatting with him MANY times (understatement) each day was both hard work (Danny always told me to “take it easy” and go offline, I didn’t always listen) but also pure joy.

I said it a few weeks ago and I’ll say it again, he’s the real deal. A true professional, a wonderful person and, I’m honored to say, a very good fried. He’s someone that I can count on be it search related or not. I have to say the same is also very true for Chris Sherman. It was Chris (we wrote a book together) who brought me to SEW. I was thrilled that they decided to bring on someone who came from a non-SEM background.

Today, Danny announced that he is leaving both Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies for a number of reasons that he explains here.

While SEW and SES are Danny’s babies and he’s moving on, it’s an understatement that Danny’s future is very very very bright. The world is truly his oyster. I’ve told him that he’s likely going to need an agent or at least a staff to field all of the big opportunities that are going to be coming his way. Remember, Danny is also a journalist and I wouldn’t doubt that we will see his byline in top publications, his voice on the radio (and his podcast, of course) and his face and voice on television. He even notes that we might be seeing his name in the bookstore.

I could go on but we can save that for later. For me, while Danny’s knowledge of the search industry is the best and he is loved by many, I am thrilled and honored to call him both a trusted colleague and friend. Thanks, D.S.

Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections

The Digital Formats Web site provides information about digital content formats. An initial offering is being compiled during 2004 and 2005, and the analyses and resources presented here will increase and be updated regularly. Digital formats will continue to evolve in the coming years and this or a successor site will also evolve to keep pace.

This section: Format Description Categories offers info about various formats. For example, this guide to the WMV format.

Source: LC/The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program

We’ve been posting a lot in recent months about searching directly from an IM tool. Some of the posts are listed at the bottom of this one.

Recently, we learned that we’ve failed to mention one job metasearch service, Indeed.com.

Indeed.com IM is more an alert tool than a search engine. This page has all that you need to get it up and running. The service works with:

GTalk
AIM
Yahoo Instant Messenger (coming soon)
Microsoft Messenger

Begin by sending a “hello” message to the service and then tell them the type of job, company name, location, etc., that you’re looking for. As new jobs are found that match your criteria, you’ll receive an IM.

To stop receiving alerts (at any time) send a STOP message to the Indeed IM service. Again, this page has the info.

Btw, Indeed.com also powers the job search at Clusty.com. Here you’re able to use Clusty’s dynamic clustering capabilities to find potential jobs. The clusters can also serve as an info discovery tool, helping you identify jobs and companies that, without the dynamic clusters, you might miss.

See Also: Kozoru, IM Answers, and Search Encarta via MS Messenger Today
Also I’ll mention AOL and Yahoo IM Web Search options.

See Also: SearchforVideo.com Via IM

See Also: Search Web, News, and Images via MSN Messenger

Tiger Eye Reading Room- Wayne Wiegand Interview
Two library educator legends chat.

Charley Seavey and Wayne Wiegand talk about the place of reading in libraries and library education.

Dr. Seavey is an Associate Professor
University of Missouri-Columbia, School of Information Science & Learning Technologies

Dr. Wiegand
F. William Summers Professor of Library and Information Studies
Florida State University

Listen online (QuickTime) or Download (MP3). The interview lasts about 30 minutes.

Source: LISRadio (University of Missouri)

New Papers and Presentations in Library and Information Science (via E-LIS)
+ Evaluative study of major Internet bookshops

+ Quality measures for libraries and information services

+ Strategies for tailoring web contents for specific devices : the case
of usable and accessible contents for assistive technologies of web mobile devices

+ Augmenting interoperability across scholarly repositories

Full Text: Digital Libraries and the Need for a Universal Digital Publication Format

From the abstract:

Reports have revealed low uses of e-books and other lengthy texts held in digital libraries. In this article we claim that one of the main reasons for the lack of interest is the current multitude of end-user text formats, some oriented towards print, others proprietary, and few optimized for sustained reading of text-intensive publications. We note IDPF’s reluctance to develop a common digital publication format, discuss requirements for a universal, open-standard end-user format, and present the effort to establish such a format by the OpenReader Consortium. The main objective of the article is to examine the pros and cons of a universal, reader-oriented text format for different types of critical text editions and digital libraries.

Source: Journal of Electronic Publishing

Thanks to Basement Tapes for the news tip.

Mobile Site of the Week: Mobile Hoover’s
Access the free version of the Hoover’s business info web site optimized for your mobile device.

Search for a company by name or ticker symbol and get back basic company info like you would get on the Hoover’s free site or the free Hoover’s UK site.

Over the past few months we’ve posted links to the Hoover’s 100 (the most searched for companies on Hoover’s). Now available are more lists:

+ Most Viewed Companies by Country (From Algeria to Zimbabwe)

+ Most Viewed Companies by Industry
Hundreds of industries are listed.

+ Lycos and BlinkxTV Announce Deal
BlinkxTV (a variety of video content, video blog content and more) will power the new video channel on Lycos. Blinkx also maintains its own site. Look for the video search option linked from the Lycos search box on their home page. Here’s a sample video search. Btw, video news on Lycos comes via a feed from the Associated Press.

+ Yahoo’s New Mortgage Shortcut
The Yahoo Search blog points to a new “shortcut” that offers current mortgage rates for any city in the United States. Simply enter [city names] mortgage rates. For example, Seattle mortgage rates. You’ll also find links to STATE mortgage trend graphs from Yahoo Real Estate. More real estate shortcuts:
+ [city] real estate; San Mateo real estate
+ Also, Yahoo Real Estate has a new design that takes advantage of Yahoo Maps.

NOTE: We’ve noticed that for some cities the mortgage rate shortcut doesn’t work. For example, Springfield, IL mortgage rates does not offer a shortcut but Springfield, MA does. Simply entering, Springfield mortgage rates does not trigger the shortcut or offer a list of cities named Springfield where mortgage rates are available. Another example, mortgage rates for Kansas City, MO are available but no help finding mortage rates for Kansas City, KS is available. Searching for Kansas City, KS mortgage rates turns up nothing.

UPDATE: You can also use Zip Codes to trigger this shortcut. Note: While we couldn’t find rates for the Kansas City, KS search we did find them using a Zip Code search.
Thanks to Barry for the info

+ Testing Windows Live Search (via MSN Search Weblog) `
Make sure to browse the Live.com Collection of Search Macros.

Two weeks ago we wrote an overview of the many (free) web-based Zoho services. It’s linked here. Today, Marshall reviewed a new service called ZohoProjects, a web-based project manager. More good stuff.

That said, we want to make sure all of you have taken a look at Zoho Show. We grow more impressed with it each day. It’s a totally web-based app that makes creating presentations (PowerPoint like) very easy. Heck, you can even import your PowerPoint or Open Office presentations, create a unique URL and you’re ready to go. You can also embed charts from Zoho Sheet and text from Zoho Writer.

What else?
+ Create and build presentations using a WYSIWYG editor

+ Integrate Flickr images

Take a look here to see a presentation. You can even demo the software without having to create an account. Here’s an entire presentation about Zoho built using Zoho Show.

With school getting back in session, here’s a tool that will not be only of value to info pros but also to students, faculty, and staff.

Recently Reviewed and Updated: Fact Sheet Response to Inquiries about Journal Selection for Indexing at NLM

Also Updated: Journal Selection for MEDLINE

+ EBSCO Publishing and ABC-CLIO Announce New Partnership

+ Institutional Repositories on Target: ARL Survey and Scopus/Scirus Features

+ Hoping to Overtake Its Rivals, Yahoo Stocks Up on Academics (via WSJ)

From press release: “Information about World Bank loans previously available only to borrowing countries is now public and online at a new website, Country Aggregate Reports. The new site details World Bank financing for countries including loans, credits, and grants, disbursements and repayments, types of financial instruments, and lending by sector.”

Direct to Country Aggregate Reports Database

Source: The World Bank (via DocuTicker)