Archive for the ‘Business and Economics’ Category
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
From Reuters:
The announcement on Tuesday comes after several rounds of bids by various private equity firms and publishers. Bloomberg was long seen as the most likely winner of the auction.
[Snip]
Bloomberg would keep the magazines separate after the purchase. BusinessWeek journalists also would work as separate groups, but with much “cross-pollenization,” said [Bloomberg Chief Content Officer Norman] Pearlstine.
[Snip]
Other bidders included an investment firm run by Strauss Zelnick, chairman of videogame publisher Take Two Interactive Software, private equity firm OpenGate Capital and Boston Properties (BXP.N) co-founder and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman.
From BusinessWeek:
Bloomberg LP, the global financial data and news empire created by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, is the winning bidder for BusinessWeek. Terms of the offer will not be disclosed by Bloomberg and BusinessWeek parent McGraw-Hill Cos.
[Snip]
If the deal closes as anticipated by Dec. 1, it will be unprecedented for both buyer and seller. For Bloomberg, buying BusinessWeek will be its first major acquisition ever and a significant departure for a 28-year-old company nurtured on a “build, don’t buy” culture.
[Snip]
BusinessWeek, launched 80 years ago, will give Bloomberg entrée to a much larger business audience of corporate executives and senior government officials, beyond what has been its sweet spot of catering to Wall Street and the professional investor community.
[Snip]
BusinessWeek, whose logo will eventually incorporate the Bloomberg name in some still-undetermined way, will continue to publish weekly in print and around the clock online. The goal will be to substantially boost the magazine’s editorial pages. It still hasn’t been decided whether Bloomberg and BusinessWeek will maintain separate Web sites or be morphed together as one
Sources: Reuters, BusinessWeek
Hat Tip: Library Stuff
Posted in Business and Economics, Information Industry, Print Publications | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
CNN/Money.com is online with three new lists that might be of interest to you and potentially business researchers you work with.
1) 50 Best Places to Launch a Business 2009
+ Direct to Complete List
Click on city name to access a profile of that location.
++ Users can Narrow the list to Top Large Places, Top Midsize Places, Top Small Places, Top Metro Areas
+ Clicking the “Near You” Option Lets You Sort the List by State or Cities
+ Selecting “Find Loans” Allows You to See Where SBA 7(a) Loans are Being Made
View Lending Hot Spots ||| Cities
+ Clicking Business Climate Provides Five Options
Fastest Small Business Growth ||| Educated Workers ||| Low Crime ||| High Income ||| Growing Economy
+ Clicking Areas that Have the Highest Wages Provides
Low Wages ||| Best Tax Climate ||| Affordable Rents ||| Fewest Foreclosures
Finally, note that 2008 data is also available. Look for the drop down menu on the top right of any page.
2) Best Jobs in America 2009
Again, several lists are available along with 2008 rankings. Data is provided by PayScale.
+ Full List
Narrow by Top 50 ||| All 100 ||| Top Sectors
+ High Paying (Click on a job for a complete profile)
Sort by Median Salary ||| Top Pay
+ Job Growth
+ Quality of Life
Sort by Low Stress ||| Security ||| Flexibility ||| Future growth ||| Satisfaction ||| Benefit to Society
+ Sectors
Source: CNN/Money
Posted in Business and Economics, Lists and Rankings, Reference Tools, Resources | No Comments »
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
This web-based Flash tutorial runs approximately 10 minutes (depending on how fast you click). The content was developed by Angela Wilson, a Business Reference Specialist at the Library of Congress.
Access Tutorial: Finding Census Data for Business Research
According to this page, expect more web tutorials from the Business Reference Section, LC:
Lbrarians in the Business Reference Section, in cooperation with the Cooperative and Instructional Programs Division of the Library of Congress, are creating a series of interactive online instructional modules
Source: Business Reference Services–Science, Technology & Business Division–Library of Congress
Posted in Business and Economics, Resources, Webcasts and Podcasts | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
Access FoodEssentials.com
There motto is, “what are you really eating?” For an in-depth overview, visit this page.
FoodEssentials has the most comprehensive food comparison criteria available. No matter what you’re specific requirements are FoodEssentials.com has the potential to be able to help you find foods that suit those requirements. One can compare foods by specific ingredient, allergens, additives or nutrients making the FoodEssentials database the most comprehensive in existence.
Simply enter a food type, product name, company name, etc.. compare lists, and then view complete nutrients, allergens, and additives. Here’s a search for ice cream. Btw, directly below the search box you’ll find links to popular product categories.
You’ll see that the results page provides a list of ice cream categories and links to specific products. Click a product name, and your provided with a list and drop down menu with many data points to find out the nutritional make-up of the product. Here’s an example.
Access Info About:
+ Cholesterol
+ Calories
+ Fat Calories
+ Fiber
+ Protein Saturated Fat
+ Sodium
+ Sugars
+ Total Fat
Other Data Points
+ Additives by Presence
+ Allergens by Presence
+ Ingredients by Presence
Users can also build comparison lists. Instructions can be found by clicking, “My Lists.”
Don’t feel like searching? You can also browse by category. Look for the category listing located on the right side of product info pages.
FoodEssentials comes from a company based in Chicago. More about the company here. You can also learn about there fee-based products. FoodEssentials.com is a free service.
Finally, you can learn a bit more about the company and the web site by taking a look at this news release (worth reviewing).
Access FoodEssentials.com
Posted in Business and Economics, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Reference Tools, Resources, Science | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
Why Big Books Still Matter
Dan Gross, my colleague at Newsweek and Slate, pinged me the other morning after he had read the reports that Sarah Palin’s new book—suddenly announced for next month—would not be available as an e-book. Gross, a pioneer in e-book publishing long before Tina Brown, had noticed that Palin’s publisher was following Ted Kennedy’s by holding off on the e-book format. Ever alive to a budding trend, Gross figured two important instances presaged something more than a coincidence. Could I, Dan wanted to know, provide a third case, and was this preference on the part of publishers for withholding the e-book on the biggest titles an economic issue? (Gross’ column on this point can be found here.)
I replied that I did have a third example that proved the rule—Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol—but the principle it revealed was less about the digital format and more about the role physical books play in the publishing industry.
Dan Brown’s publisher had been happy to supply the title in digital form. That allowed The Lost Symbol to sell more digital copies on the first day at Amazon than physical copies. This is because the thing of great value on the first day of sales was actually reading the book. (Merely owning it was not enough.) That’s something you can do whether you’ve read the book on paper or your Kindle.
With a big personality book, however, having read the book is far less important than owning it. These books are talismans, powerful objects that carry the aura of the person they’re associated with. That aura doesn’t attach to an e-book. You need something more substantial, at least something physical. When you buy a Kindle edition of a book, no one knows you’ve got it, no one can see you read it across an airplane aisle, and no one can admire it on your coffee table.
Source: The Big Money (Slate)
Posted in Consumer Issues, E-books, Search News | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
Access SAGE Journals Online
The complete database and all of its content is free for the month of October.
You’ll first need to register. This link should get you started. You’ll be asked for an email address, name, and a few other data points. You will also be asked if SAGE can contact you. Select yes or no.
SAGE Journals Online contains more than 260,000 articles from more than 500 SAGE journals* with content available from 1999-current.
Quick Search and Advanced Search interfaces are available. You can also browse by journal title.
* Some of the many disciplines include:
+ Communication & Media Studies
+ Engineering & Computing
+ Geography
+ Information Science
+ Management & Organization Studies
+ Pharmacology & Toxicology
+ Politics & International Relations
+ Research Methods & Evaluation
+ Sociology
A complete list of disciplines that Sage Journals Online covers is located on the opening registration page.
Access SAGE Journals Online
Source: SAGE
Posted in Arts and Humanities, Business and Economics, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Geographic, Information Industry, Reference Tools, Resources, Science | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
Pinellas County to sue online travel sites to make them pay more taxes
Tax Collector Diane Nelson contends the Internet companies shortchanged Pinellas $1.4 million last year from tax money — a claim a growing list of Florida counties have made with tax revenue dwindling.
Online companies strike deals for blocks of hotel rooms and pay taxes on wholesale room rates. They sell the rooms at a higher rate but don’t pay the difference in sales and tourism taxes, saying their services as middlemen are exempt.
“It’s nothing short of fraud in my opinion. We need to pursue it,” Commissioner Susan Latvala said.
Source: St. Petersburg Times
Posted in Business and Economics, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Monday, October 5th, 2009
The FuelEconomy.gov web site now offers mileage estimates for 2010 cars. You can find estimates for 2010 here. Other years accessible here.
FuelEconomy.gov also provides a mobile version of their site at: fueleconomy.gov/m. The mobile site provides:
+ Fuel economy ratings for all cars and light trucks sold in the U.S. back to model year 1985
+ Annual fuel cost estimates
+ Annual petroleum use (barrels of domestic and imported petroleum)
+ Carbon footprint (tons of carbon dioxide emitted annually)
Source: U.S. Department of Energy / EPA
Posted in Consumer Issues, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Resources, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »
Monday, October 5th, 2009
Resource of the Week: 50 Free Ivy-League Lectures on the Economy
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
Another one of our serendipitous finds, this collection comes to you from Online Classes.org, which regularly features nice topical collections of lectures, tips, hacks, etc., via its blog.
The economy has taken central stage in world news for the past few years due to rapidly failing markets the world over. Even with so much attention focused on economic issues if you’re not familiar with the field, or simply want a more in-depth look at things, it can be hard to follow just what’s going on. These lectures, given by scholars from some of the most prestigious educational institutions in the United States and around the world can help give you that foundation of knowledge and help you better understand the financial crisis that’s been building over the past few years.
If you follow business and economic news, you will recognize the names of some professors here. The lectures, which also include panel discussions, are grouped by category:
+ General Economics — examples:
- Beyond Freakonomics: New Musings on the Economics of Everyday Life: University of Chicago professor and economist Steven Levitt further explains his theory on everyday economics in this lecture. [Princeton]
- Financial Markets: This lecture series from professor Robert Shiller will teach you about the basics of the economic system and how each part fits together. [Yale]
+ Understanding the Economic Crisis — examples:
- Understanding the Crisis in the Markets: A Panel of Harvard Experts: Get an explanation of the financial crisis from some of the best and the brightest by watching this panel discussion at Harvard. [Harvard]
- Jeremy Siegel: Snapshots of the U.S. and Other Markets: Get a handle on what events precipitated the market fall with this lecture that addresses the sub-prime market, the stock market and foreign markets. [UPenn]
+ Proposed Solutions to the Economic Crisis — examples:
- Preventing the Next Financial Crisis: Pay close attention to this lecture series that brings together numerous scholars, researchers and experts to discuss how future financial disasters can be averted. [Columbia]
- Will the Stimulus Actually Work?: Billions of dollars were pumped into failing U.S. businesses, but will it make any difference at all in the long run? This lecture from professor Steven Kyle discusses the issue. [Cornell]
+ Future of the Economy — examples:
- Once the Market Has Fallen 50% Your Future Returns are Even Better: Here you can learn why now may be a good time to invest. [UPenn]
- One War We Shouldn’t Avoid: A New Approach to Reducing the Cost of Future Catastrophes: In 2005, three major hurricanes battered the southern United States, costing billions in repairs and with thousands of lives lost. This lecture addresses how we can be better prepared both for the weather and the financial ramifications of it. [UPenn]
+ International — examples:
+ Business Focused — examples:
- Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making: David Rothkopf discusses his book by the same name in this lecture and how a few powerful people are pulling the strings in worldwide business and economics–usually to their advantage. [Columbia]
- Business, Knowledge and Global Growth: Learn how the MBA degree has changed the way business is done in the United States and the world over and the impact it has had on the economy as a result. [Columbia]
Depending on the individual lecture, the links will take you either to the university websites or iTunes U. A few open up as direct links to media (e.g., QuickTime).
Posted in Business and Economics, Education, Online Education, Resource of the Week, Source File, Web 2.0, Webcasts and Podcasts | No Comments »
Saturday, October 3rd, 2009
Muckety is one cool information visualization resource that’s potentially very useful for several types of research including business and current events.
In Muckey terms they, “map relationships between people and organizations.” By the way, the maps are interactive. Look to the right of a map for an explanation.
Here are two examples of a Muckety maps. First a map for White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. And for something completely different, a Muckety map for American Idol.
We first posted about Muckety in August. The post provides a brief overview about some of what the site has to offer users.
Again, congrats to the Muckety team.
Spend some time and get to know precisely what the site provides. Becoming a “power” Muckety user is useful, interesting and dare we say, fun.
Posted in Business and Economics, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Information Industry, Reference Tools, Resources, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
If you like your business news “personalized” there are numerous fee and free tools to use. However, it’s likely you’re always on the lookout for new and hopefully better services. Here’s one that you might want to take a look at that exists in the free resource category.
Portfolio.com is the sister publication of BizJournals.com and they’re beta testing (and looking for feedback) on a new feature named bizWatch before they add the service to the many city/regional business journals Bizjournals.com offers.
bizWatch tracks 9,000 public companies with info from “thousands” of news sources.
You can find bizWatch on the upper-right side of the of a Portfolio.com web site, a little bit below the search box.
This “getting started” page offers a complete overview (with illustrations) on how to get rolling with up and running. According to this page, no registration is required to use bizWatch.
If you feel like sharing your feedback with bizWatch team, you can click this feedback link.
Source: American City Business Journals e-Newsletter
Posted in Business and Economics, Information Industry, Media, Resources | No Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
From the Pro Publica Web Site:
This list [it's also searchable] shows a breakdown of where the Treasury Department, authorized by Congress, has directed taxpayer money in the ongoing bailout of the financial system. It accounts for both the broader $700 billion bill and the separate bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to which Treasury has set a limit of $400 billion.
This is a list of companies that have been allocated funds.
Go here to see a complete list of Treasury’s programs – including those for which no recipient data is available.
Access the Bailout Recipients List
See Also: Refunded Bailout Money List
See Also: Dividends and Interest Paid on Bailout Investments List
See Also: Snapshot: Performance by Mortgage Servicers
See Also: Bailout Timeline (Latest Entry September 25, 2009)
Source: Pro Publica
Posted in Business and Economics, Chronologies and Timelines, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Government Documents and Political Information, Resources | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
From the Article:
Government-appointed watchdogs debuted on Monday the much-anticipated overhaul of Recovery.gov, featuring sophisticated pictorial representations of spending data, advanced search functions, multimedia tutorials and some downloads.
[Snip]
The financial data that is available on the site comes from the Federal Procurement Data System and USASpending.gov, a database containing federal contracts and loans, and weekly financial activity reports from agencies. The recipient data will be fed from FederalReporting.gov, an online inbox through which companies, nonprofits and states will submit quarterly spending reports beginning Oct. 1.
[Snip]
The site offers translations in more than 50 languages, a handful of tutorials, basic and advanced mapping capabilities and feeds from the Federal Business Opportunities Web site and the application site Grants.gov.
Visitors can enter their ZIP codes into a text box on Recovery.gov’s home page to view street maps and aerial views of the locations of the projects in their neighborhoods. Colored maps indicate the concentration of contracts that have been awarded in a certain locale by the intensity of color.
Currently, the site does not have the ability to let users search pages by contractor name, although officials plan to make that functionality available in a couple of months.
Much More in the Article About What’s Planned for the Site in the Future
Access Recovery.gov
Source: Nextgov.com
See Also: A Review of the New Site from the Sunlight Labs Blog
See Also: Retooled Recovery.gov site praised, panned (via FCW)
Posted in Business and Economics, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Resources | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
From the ACM TechNews Summary:
Researchers from Carlos III University of Madrid (UCM3), the University of Murcia, and the Business Institute have jointly created SONAR, a new search engine that examines financial news using semantic technology. The researchers say the program offers a more limited Web search based on specific terms. SONAR also can use logic to link news, prices, and share valuations. The search engine gathers information from Internet and intranet sources, compiles the data in an archive according to category, and then retrieves the information for individual searches. SONAR uses both an interference engine and a natural language processor, which prevents the search results from being too broad and disorganized. The researchers say that because SONAR analyzes a wealth of financial data in a short amount of time, it will prove a useful tool for industry professionals. UC3M’s Juan Miguel Gomez Berbis says that SONAR “will be especially useful to the finance departments of banks and saving banks or to add to an existing search engine added value over its competitors.” The researchers are adding more features to the program and have been asked to develop other industry-specific search engines, such as ones on transportation or biotechnology.
Much More in this Announcement from Carlos III University of Madrid
Posted in Business and Economics, Information Science, Search News, Search Tools, Semantic Search | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
The complete article package can be accessed here. On the page you’ll find links to several profiles, videos, and slideshows (what Forbes calls “In Pictures” of list members for various list categories. The slideshows contain profiles of those featured.
Slideshows Include:
Finance & Investments
Technology & Medicine
Service & Retail
Media
Real Estate
Food & Manufacturing
Energy
The Forbes 400 (Profiles for Almost All List Members)
Access the Complete List
Sort by Name, Net Worth, Age, Residence, Source. Click on a name for a profile of that person.
You’ll also find:
Fun Billionaire Statistics
How Much Is $300 Billion?
Forbes 400 Near Misses
Top 10 List
1] William Gates III
2] Warren Buffett
3] Lawrence Ellison
4] Christy Walton
5] Jim C. Walton
6] Alice Walton
7] S. Robson Walton
8] Michael Bloomberg
9] Charles Koch
10] David Koch
Methodology
Source: Forbes
Hat Tip: S.C.
Posted in Business and Economics, Lists and Rankings, Resources | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Data Mining the Mint.com Demographic
Last week we reported on Intuit’s acquisition of personal finance site Mint.com. Now Mint Founder Aaron Patzer is lifting the curtain on a few fantastic new features–for businesses.
The most significant: Mint is now aggregating data from its 1.5 million users and mining it for personal spending trends. To demonstrate the concept, Mint launched its Trends page three weeks ago with some teaser data, like graphs about the decline of the newspaper industry and the most frugal cities in America.
Right now, access to the aggregate data, which is anonymized, is closed to the public. “Eventually, we’ll do this for researchers,” says Patzer, who hopes to create a streamlined for-pay service allowing businesses to mine the spending habits of the Mint demographic. For now, he says, Mint is open to running custom trends research on a case-by-case basis; if you’re interested, you can contact him at data[at]mint.com to get started.
Source: Fast Company
Posted in Business and Economics, Consumer Issues, Privacy, Search News, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
From the Announcement:
Thomson Reuters today announced the 2009 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates — researchers likely to be in contention for Nobel honors — in anticipation of this year’s Nobel Prize winners in the sciences and in economics to be announced from October 5-12.
Thomson Reuters is the only organization to use quantitative data to make annual predictions of Nobel Prize winners.
Each year, data from ISI Web of Knowledge is used to quantitatively determine the most influential researchers in the Nobel categories of Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, and Economics. These high-impact researchers are named Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates and predicted to be Nobel Prize winners, either this year or in the near future, based on the citation impact of their published research.
Since 2002, 15 Citation Laureates have gone on to win Nobel Prizes.
[Snip]
The Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates typically rank among the top one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) of researchers in their fields, based on citations of their published papers over the last two or three decades.
See Also: 2009 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates Website
See Also: Essay: The Methodology Behind the Predictions
Source: Thomson Reuters (via PR Newswire)
Posted in Business and Economics, Information Industry, Scholarly Publishing, Science | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
The sites motto: “Quick perspectives on the changing face of marketing. Watch. Engage. Debate.”
From the Site:
Marketing is in the midst of a complex transformation. As consumers become more technologically sophisticated and choices multiply, marketing must adapt. Tune in to viewpoints from industry and academic thought leaders to acquire inspiring, empowering and actionable insights.
Google and The Wharton School have partnered to gather and provide quick perspective on managing the change in the marketing landscape. As we explore what will define success through marketing’s continual evolution, we aim to share ideas and lessons learned to help keep us all better informed and effective as the game – and conversation – rapidly progresses.
Categories of Content Include:
+ Videos (Browse by All, Latest, Theme, Individual, Company)
Clips from people at companies including Google, The New York Times, and SocialMedia.com.
+ Trends (via The Barometer)
Using Google search data and other public data sources, The Barometer offers perspectives on a variety of telling consumer trends.
+ The Future of Advertising
+ Free Tools (Primarily from Google); You’ll also find links to access Twitter Trends and Facebook Lexicon.
Access Fast Forward
Source: Wharton School of Business, Google
Posted in Business and Economics, Multimedia Search, Resources | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
From the Article:
Pioneer Institute, a nonprofit policy think tank, has organized reams of data on state spending into a free online database that includes state worker salaries, public pensions and vendor contracts.
The database, MassOpenBooks, is part of an institute mission to promote transparency in government.
Source: The Patriot Ledger
From the MassOpenBooks Web Site
Data Available:
+ Retiree Pensions
+ Employee Salaries
+ Disbursements
+ Suggested Analysis
…the data used in this website are public records obtained from the State Comptroller’s Office and the State Retirement Board. It was at one point entered into the system manually, so we cannot guarantee 100% data accuracy or completeness.
See Also: PIbuzz.com Offers a Massive List of Government Employee Pay Database Links
…a directory of links to federal, state, county and municipal government salary and employee name databases. These searchable databases of salaries, pay, overtime and compensation of government workers are compiled by news organizations, open government advocates and government agencies.
See Also: This ResourceShelf Post Has Links to Many of the Other States that Provide Salaries of State Employees. Be sure to note the two links at the bottom of the post labeled one and two.
Posted in Business and Economics, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Government Documents and Political Information, Reference Tools, Resources | No Comments »
