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:
Federal Contracts Database
Police Dog Case Law
Human Resources Law Index
"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.
Federal Contracts Database
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.
Police Dog Case Law
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.
Human Resources Law Index
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.
