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Informationized

Industry Search on Informationized

April 14, 2009

I’ve added an industry search page to this blog. It uses Google Custom Search (CSE) to search hand-selected groups of websites across ten industry verticals.

There is an incredible amount of industry data and research spread across the Web. Collectively, it paints a huge, interconnected picture of the world we live in and provides valuable insights for people conducting business research.

Lots of data is published by international organizations like the OECD and various parts of the UN. Lots of data is published at national and regional levels through government agencies, national statistics offices, central banks, and local government municipalities.

There are also thousands of industry-specific organizations, trade associations and individual companies that publish research and data on companies, customers, products and industry trends.

The primary function of many of these organizations is not the collection and publication of information. As a result, industry data remains fragmented, difficult to find and is often buried in online databases and spreadsheets.

Some broader technological solutions for integrating and improving discovery of Web data have been proposed and seem to have come together under the linked data initiative. There is also at least one company – Swivel – that is trying to make sharing data online easier.

They are valiant efforts and I hope they both succeed because connecting data that essentially measures and helps us understand the world we live in is too valuable to not be fully realized.

It’s a problem I’ve given a lot of thought to because industry data is so valuable and so hard to discover or find compared to company data and other types of business information.

Traditional search is probably the most rudimentary way to tackle discovery of industry data. But, I wanted to collect together and share the websites I’ve used to find industry information in the past and work on ways to improve on it from there.

The custom search engines usually produce a more refined set of results than a Google for business information searches. Although, over time I have seen a definite improvement in Google results for business information searches across all industry sectors for some standard searches that I use to test.

I already have some ideas for improvements within and outside of Google Custom Search that I plan to implement over time and I will blog about them here. First, I want to concentrate on adding more sites to each industry sector because I’ve only just begun in some sectors.

I’ve created an FAQs page which provides more of a background on the search engines and what sites are included in each industry sector. If you have any feedback, questions or suggestions, please let me know by email at: phillip.d.baker@gmail.com. Otherwise, stay tuned to posts tagged ‘Industry Search‘ to get the latest updates as they happen.

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Posted on April 14, 2009

Welcome to Informationized

March 5, 2009

This is the first post on this blog. Congratulations, you made it to the start! Welcome, and thanks for stopping by. My name is Phillip Baker and at the time of writing I’m awaiting approval of my thesis in order to graduate with a Masters degree in Management & Systems from New York University. Prior to NYU, I worked in the financial information industry at a large content company that sells information and a large financial institution that buys it.

I don’t want to dwell too much on what this blog will be about, I’d rather just get started and let it be defined by the themes that emerge over time. That said, I obviously want to give you a reason to care about what is written here so I will briefly talk about why I decided to start this blog.

It’s pretty simple really: I am fascinated by information and people. I’m interested in the ways we find information and the ways it finds us, the ways we use it in our work and our lives and the ways we create it, change it, and pass it on. I enjoy thinking about the ways technology and innovation fundamentally change markets and marketing for information. By extension, it’s hard not to also take an interest in how these trends affect and can improve education and all facets of government.

I decided to start this blog to share my thoughts on information in these contexts and I hope to be able to trade ideas with you, here and elsewhere on the Web. I’d like to take this opportunity right up front to encourage comments. I am here to learn from smart and engaged people and I will do my best to make this blog a two-way conversation.

I can be reached by email at phillip.d.baker@gmail.com if you want to contact me or comment privately on anything written here. This blog is powered by Wordpress and the impressive Magatheme by Brian Helmig amazing Thesis Framework. Since it’s a new blog there might still be some changes to the layout, please bare with me, I just couldn’t wait any longer to start posting.

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Posted on March 5, 2009