The Glossbrenners’ New Cyber-Guide
Corrections or additions?
These articles were published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on March 18, 1998. All rights reserved.
Directory Days
Someday all the banks will figure out that their clients
don’t like to call 800 numbers, that they want to speak to an actual
person at their very own branch. Summit Bank learned that. In years
past it provided only a standard number but now if you look in the
telephone book, specific branch numbers are printed as well. PNC has
not learned this lesson.
So look in the U.S. 1 Business Directory, one of the few places
you will find the branch numbers of many banks. But for complete
information
statewide turn to a directory distributed by the New Jersey Bankers
Association, the New Jersey Financial Institutions Directory,
by Thomson Financial Publishing. The 1998 edition is 248 pages and
costs $23.32 postpaid. Call 609-924-5550.
In addition to a town-by-town listing of all the banks, plus an
alphabetical
index, the directory has officers for a multitude of banking
organizations,
reams of regulatory agency information, and pages of affiliate members
with everything from investment banking firms and attorneys to armored
car services. Plus the branch numbers of all the PNC Banks.
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Factory Direct
A list of manufacturing firms, say the sellers of the
New Jersey Manufacturers Register, can help you analyze trends in
the New Jersey industrial community, establish statewide sales and
distribution areas, and serve as a supplier source for your purchasing
department. Not to mention the primary use: as a lead source for sales
calls and mailings.
The New Jersey Manufacturers Register costs $105 in the 672
paper version and is available on diskettes and CD-ROM. Published
annually in Evanston, Illinois, by Manufacturers News’ Inc.
(http://www.manufacturersnews.com),
it profiles 10,957 industrial firms in New Jersey and lists 17,070
executives of which 7,745 are presidents.
Checking the zip code for Mercerville, the Register had two firms,
Congoleum and Creative Machining Systems. The Register had the SIC
codes "vinyl tile" and "precision machining job shop"
while the more loquacious U.S. 1 directory told how many employees
Congoleum had in Trenton and nationwide. Information on revenues and
employee numbers and square feet was slightly different in the U.S.
1 Directory.
The Register did not have four manufacturing companies listed with
Mercerville addresses: Tech Mate, East West Service Company, Princeton
Microwave Technology, and Laser Energetics.
The Register depends on SIC categories. At U.S. 1 the directory
editors
think the SIC categories are outdated, and they devise their own
categories
pertinent to the mix of Princeton businesses.
Different books, different information gathering methods, different
purposes. But the biggest difference is the categories.
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Reverse Phone Book
It will raise the hair on the back of your neck to read
Princeton’s listings in the Hill Donnelly cross reference
directory.
If political boundaries are important to you will be taken aback to
learn that Hill Donnelly thinks all of the 08540 zip code belongs
to Princeton, including Princeton Forrestal Village and MarketFair.
What’s really interesting though, to both the marketer and the casual
observer, is the way Hill Donnelly denotes income levels. Do you live
in a one star or a four star neighborhood, with four being the most
affluent? Park Place in Princeton merits just two stars but Alexander
Street gets four. It’s detailed: the university side of Nassau Street
gets four, the other (even side) gets two. Some of the newer areas,
such as Canal Pointe and Fox Run, are not defined by income levels.
What you really use this book for is for telephone marketing. Street
by street it gives the name of the telephone listing and whether the
listing is a business. It also has "reverse numbers," so you
can look up who called you and left the number. It indicates new
listings
and the year that each listing first appeared.
The directory can also be used, its promoters suggest, to reduce
credit
losses. Merely ask a new customer "to confirm identification by
providing names of neighbors or business establishments near the
address
he gives." Or contact former neighbors of clients that skipped
town in the hope they will tell you where to find them.
Call 813-837-1009 or fax 813-839-8420 for a $121.55 copy of
Hill-Donnelly’s
Trenton/Trenton Suburban Directory. For $183 you can buy a CD with
up to 500 labels that can be printed.
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More Directories
<B>New Jersey Directory — the Insider Guide to
New Jersey Leaders, by Don Linky of Joshua Communications, costs
$95.16 including shipping and tax. Due out this month it includes
updates on the new area code, home pages, and E-mail addresses. The
full-text disk is $295 and the mailing list is $150 on a floppy.
Linky identifies the movers and shakers and their public and private
roles, including the insider networks and family relationships. Other
chapters are on higher education (college presidents), the arts,
science
and technology (scientists and research leaders), government and
politics,
and minority leaders.
The Insider Guide to New Jersey Movers and Shakers, another
Linky publication, lists over 1,000 of the state’s top government,
education, and industry leaders. The 1998 edition will come out in
May. Cost: $45.
This summer Linky will also publish The Insider Guide to New Jersey
Healthcare, with hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care
services and facilities for everyone from consumers to industry
suppliers.
Cost: $65.
For a copy of any Linky book, call 609-452-7799; fax 609-452-2803.
The mailing address is: Joshua Communications, Box 7183, Princeton
08543-7183. E-mail: njlink@aol.com.
Denver-based
Grants Guide in cooperation with the Center for NonProfit Corporations
at 15 Roszel Road, costs $149 plus $6.95 shipping. In 738 pages it
offers profiles of foundations and corporations with examples of whom
they give to and what their giving policies are. It also lists
government
funding sources for nonprofits.
Indexed in 129 ways, including areas of interest, geographic location,
and officers and trustees, it includes such details as financial data
on assets, examples of recent grants, application deadlines, contact
names, and how much to apply for. It also has "step by step
advice,
from that first call to the grantmaker through turning in a winning
proposal." All book purchasers receive free updates six months
after publication, but an additional quarterly newsletter and fax
service costs $29 to book owners.
The founder of the Denver-based company, Rich Male, is a former
1960s civil rights worker. Call 888-247-2689 or fax to 888-248-4339.
for business, was released in January by the Rutgers Faculty of
Management. It’s nicely done and nicely indexed, with about 120
faculty
profiles complete with photos, resumes, and areas of interest. Topics
range from artificial intelligence to women and business. Need an
expert on downsizing? Choose from James Bailey, who cares about how
individuals understand and adapt to organizational change, or Eric
Gedajlovic, who is interested in the effect of ownership on profits
and firm performance. Call 973-353-5177.
for an annual subscription of $230 including shipping, is a 562-page
volume that seems to compare favorably with its competitors,
Burrelle’s
and Bacon’s. It’s strictly for public relations purposes and has no
ad rates.
Of course any directory is only as good as the response it gets, but,
says Steven Gubernick, his seven-person firm follows up every
unanswered request for information by phone. In addition, says
Gubernick,
"We call every phone number every six months."
We checked the most recent edition and it seems pretty accurate. It
did not show that, at Dow Jones, Jennifer Fron Mauer has moved
from the transportation beat to the medical/pharmaceutical beat (Mauer
was on a panel last week for the Biotechnology Council of New Jersey
last week, that’s how we know). They’ll catch up with her in the
edition
due this month.
NYPO takes 13 pages to list all the contacts at the New York Times.
It tells which people are writers only and not editors, which are
critics, and so on, and it specifies when someone prefers snail mail
to faxes or E-mail.
for the greater Princeton area because it includes more than 5,000
company listings from all three area codes, including contact names,
fax numbers, number of employees, E-mail and URL addresses, and
revenues
where available. It’s particularly useful for jobhunters, sales reps,
and small business owners. The 1998 edition is available now and sells
for $15.95, including postage. Send check payable to U.S. 1 Directory,
12 Roszel Road, Princeton 08540. Or stop by the office and pick it
up in person for $12.95. Or get it from a bookstore.
Business Directory, listing 27,000 companies for $265 plus tax and
shipping. The listing includes the same elements that the U.S. 1
Business
Directory has, but it has the names of additional executives.
Order the Mercer County version through the Mercer County Chamber
of Commerce for $57 including shipping, handling, and task. On a disk
it is $316.70. It has more than 3,250 businesses, service and
manufacturing
companies only; it won’t have Plainsboro, for instance, which is in
Middlesex. Call 609-393-4143. The Mercer Chamber’s own
Roster/Directory
and Fact Book is available by calling 609-586-2056.
Corfacts’ 1998 Human Resources Directory, was published in
January
and has 5,000 of the largest companies with human resource contacts;
it costs $145. Corfacts also publishes directories for each of New
Jersey’s 21 counties, plus the Delaware Valley Business to Business
Directory for $195, and the $145 TriState Plus Directory,
which lists companies in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut with
100 employees or more.
To order any of the above directories call 800-331-5076, fax
973-326-9188,
E-mail rescommgrp@aol.com, or write Corfacts, 39 East Hanover
Avenue,
Morris Plains 07950.
an inexpensive but useful government handbook issued by the Center
for National Independence in Politics in Oregon, 541-754-2746
For more directory listings see
http://www.princetoninfo.com/sgbooks.html.
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Tax Help
<B>The Rapid Finder Weekly Tax Deduction Tables,
published by the New Jersey Business and Industry Association in
January, provides
payroll processing assistance to small businesses that handle their
own weekly payroll and is a handy reference for payroll managers.
It covers both state and federal deductions and is $23 for members,
$33 for non-members.
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Banking
Teleconference
Find out how to comply with the law doing internet
banking
— and more on the latest in bank regulations — at a
teleconference
on Thursday, March 19, from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Marriott,
sponsored by the New Jersey Bankers Association on North Harrison
Street. The live teleconference airs 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 to 4:30
p.m., but registration starts at 9 a.m. Call 609-924-5500 for $260
reservations.
Additional topics include Y2K liability (credit risks and vendor
support),
electronic benefits transfer, data matching (Welfare Reform Act),
Bank Secrecy Act, privacy policies and procedures, common problems
of flood insurance, and more.
John Byrne will moderate a symposium that features Bobbie
Jean Norris of the FDIC, Steve Cross of the OCC, Rich
Fischer of Morrison & Foerster, Howard Amer of the Federal
Reserve Board, Nessa Feddis of the ABA, Richard Small
of the Federal Reserve Board, and Richard Insley, bank
technology
expert.
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The Glossbrenners’ New Cyber-Guide
Most cybersurfers would probably frown on a book about
search engines. Why waste the paper? All you need to do, really, is
type in a query in plain English, hit return, and you’ll get thousands
of hits, most of which you won’t even need.
But the fact is, most cybersurfers probably don’t use one-quarter
of the functionality of search engines. Yes, some tricks can be
discovered
by clicking around in help files — if they’re not too carefully
hidden. But the fact is, most cybersurfers don’t even know what they
don’t know.
Enter Albert and Emily Grossbrenner‘s latest book, "Search
Engines for the World Wide Web." Published by Peachpit Press (228
pages, $16.95, http://www.peachpit.com), this unassuming
little book manages to put the hum back into search engines. It
reveals
multitudes of quirks, idiosyncrasies, and innate functionalities for
each of the major search engines — Alta Vista, Excite, HotBot,
Infoseek, Lycos, and Yahoo!. Plus, it has tips on how to find the
right keyword, how to find legal resources, and how to use Liszt (the
mailing list directory) and other specialized find-it sites like Argus
Clearinghouse, Four11, and the Zip2 Yellow Pages.
The Glossbrenners, who live and work in Yardley, co-wrote "The
Little Web Book," "The Computer Sourcebook," and
"Making
More Money on the Internet." With "Search Engines," the
Glossbrenners again have demonstrated a knack for making cyberspace
seem more fun than it actually is. "The good news is that things
have improved dramatically since 1995," they write, "when
Clifford Stoll‘s lament about the problems of finding useful
information on the Internet first appeared — at least in terms
of the tools available for dealing with what he referred to as the
Internet’s `wasteland of unfiltered data.’"
While the publisher rates the book as beginner to intermediate-level
reading, those receiving the maximum benefit from the book are
probably
the advanced cybersearchers, not those who think that a search engine
has something to do with a drive shaft. It’s a must for those who
use search engines often. It also dispels illusions, quells
favoritism,
and creates an appreciation for the fact that there are so many ways
to find things on the Web. In quick, easy English, the book reveals
that each engine has its own uniqueness and that keeping a sentimental
favorite is tantamount to irrationality. Here are some observations:
powerful database created by a Web "spider" that explores
three million Web pages per day and is updated every 24 hours. It
is almost too powerful for the generalized search. "Unless you
construct your Alta Vista queries carefully, you’re likely to be
overwhelmed
with far too many hits," they write. "You’ll need to spend
some time learning the rules of simple and advanced searches to take
full advantage."
"concept-based
searching" that intuitively assumes the searcher’s intention and
spits out lots of related sites onto the hit list. "Excite doesn’t
take your query literally as most search engines do," the
Glossbrenners
write. It seeks out "not just what you asked for but also its
best guess as to what you really want to know."
(http://www.hotbot.com) will probably have a strong opinion
about it, just like most people seem to have a strong opinion of its
parent company’s flagship publication, Wired magazine. But, the
Glossbrenners
say, those with Netscape Navigator 3.0 can actually change HotBot’s
"bilious" background. To do that, click on options, then
general
preferences, then colors; set background to custom and choose a color
(the Glossbrenners prefer white).
The most remarkable thing about HotBot, though, is its speed. HotBot
has the ability to deliver hits within the blink of an eye, with super
simple search syntaxes. "Instead of typing your queries with
special
punctuations and Boolean operators, you can click on drop-drown menu
selections and radio buttons to conduct even the most complex
searches."
plain questions with zillions of hits. The Glossbrenners got
"hooked"
on Infoseek shortly after it was introduced in 1995, when it helped
them get tickets for the 1996 Summer Olympics. With 50 million pages
in its Web database, searches can be made for Web pages, E-mail
addresses,
company profiles, frequently asked questions, and Usenet articles.
There is also a Yahoo!-like directory, arguably "the Web’s
largest."
The Glossbrenners like Infoseek for its set searches — the ability
to conduct a search within a search. "It’s a great way to zero
in on Web sites containing just what you need." However, a
possible
drawback is that Infoseek does not permit the use of Boolean operators
(and, or, not, near).
engines,
and is quickly becoming one of the most aggressive promoters, say
the Glossbrenners. While its help files for Boolean indicators or
search terms are buried deep, it is adept at finding multimedia files
— graphics, video, and sound files. "With a properly equipped
Web browser, you can even view or listen to the files as they are
being downloaded to your computer." The Glossbrenners also adore
Lycos’ "Top 5 Percent" directory. a system that rates the
hottest websites, per category. (Five percent is probably an
understatement:
Lycos rates only 25 sites per category — compared to thousands
of possible websites, we’re probably talking .25 percent.) The Lycos
address is http://www.lycos.com.
superlatives
for Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com). "From the very beginning,
what has set Yahoo apart from other search engines is its hierarchical
approach to organizing the information on the Internet and the World
Wide Web," they write. While its database of sites is far smaller
than that of the other search engines and it doesn’t index the full
text of the Web pages, its classification system is "second to
none," they write.
But perhaps the most endearing aspect of Yahoo! is that is compiled
by reviews and recommendations from Web users "instead of relying
on automated search robots or spider programs."
— Peter J. Mladineo
Corrections or additions?
This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com
— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
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