SecTrainer
10-29-2008, 12:56 PM
1. Most consultants need to stay current on both general and specialized news sources for a variety of reasons. Along those lines, I'd like to recommend a dandy search engine that has so many different features it will take you awhile to explore them, but I'm sure the potential for your business will immediately become apparent. It's called Silobreaker (http://www.silobreaker.com/) and it provides both contextual and graphical search results. Graphical results are great for letting you visualize relationships and quickly providing an intuitive look at a mound of results that might be overwhelming otherwise. The 360-degree view is very interesting.
You can also set up a search and then click on "RSS" at the very top of your results page to get the URL for importing that search into your feed reader, which will then give you regular automated updates on that search.
Of course, there's text search like you do with Google, but there are also pre-established categories and subcategories of special interest. For instance, hover your mouse over "Global Issues" and "Business" in the horizontal menu near the top left of the page, and look at the subcategories that drop down. Today I quickly scanned a subcategory and saw an article on community bank security that was quite interesting. By scanning subcategories regularly you'll see articles that you probably would not have thought of searching for by the usual text search method.
(Incidentally, this is a basic principle of searching - using both search and browsing methods. This is much like the public library where you can search in the card catalog for a preconceived specific subject, or you can browse subject sections among the shelves and discover topics that you might not have thought of otherwise in your catalog search. The organization of library shelves into subjects is specifically designed to promote this kind of serendipity in your research. "Silobreaker" provides you with both methods - browsing the items in subcategories of interest, and specific text search.)
I think once you look it over you'll put this search engine in your tool kit - and don't forget to set up some of those regular RSS feeds to maximize the usefulness.
2. Another tool we're exploring is a $50 software product called Personal Knowbase (http://www.bitsmithsoft.com/) - a free-form organizer for every imaginable kind of information that uses your own keywords to permit complex searches on the information you have gathered. Information is collected in a data file that you set up for, say, a particular consulting project. This data file can hold text notes, web pages, documents produced by other software like Word, URLs, emails, etc. You then assign keywords to these items for later searching - say, SUPERMARKET ROBBERY STATISTICS.
One problem with keyword-based organizers traditionally has been trying to remember your keywords later. This problem is solved with Personal Knowbase, because when you open up a data file all of the keywords you have created for items in that file are listed in the left-hand pane. These can then be easily imported into a query with a mouseclick and you can combine them with traditional boolean operators like AND and OR in order to search for specific "articles" (which is what your data file documents are called).
So, if you do much in the way of OSINT intelligence of any kind on the Web, or you need to organize documents in an easily-located way, or you have a lot of notes to keep track of, download the 30-day full-function trial version and give it a whirl. It's priced very reasonably compared to some similar products that don't have nearly the features (or have features you don't need).
You can also set up a search and then click on "RSS" at the very top of your results page to get the URL for importing that search into your feed reader, which will then give you regular automated updates on that search.
Of course, there's text search like you do with Google, but there are also pre-established categories and subcategories of special interest. For instance, hover your mouse over "Global Issues" and "Business" in the horizontal menu near the top left of the page, and look at the subcategories that drop down. Today I quickly scanned a subcategory and saw an article on community bank security that was quite interesting. By scanning subcategories regularly you'll see articles that you probably would not have thought of searching for by the usual text search method.
(Incidentally, this is a basic principle of searching - using both search and browsing methods. This is much like the public library where you can search in the card catalog for a preconceived specific subject, or you can browse subject sections among the shelves and discover topics that you might not have thought of otherwise in your catalog search. The organization of library shelves into subjects is specifically designed to promote this kind of serendipity in your research. "Silobreaker" provides you with both methods - browsing the items in subcategories of interest, and specific text search.)
I think once you look it over you'll put this search engine in your tool kit - and don't forget to set up some of those regular RSS feeds to maximize the usefulness.
2. Another tool we're exploring is a $50 software product called Personal Knowbase (http://www.bitsmithsoft.com/) - a free-form organizer for every imaginable kind of information that uses your own keywords to permit complex searches on the information you have gathered. Information is collected in a data file that you set up for, say, a particular consulting project. This data file can hold text notes, web pages, documents produced by other software like Word, URLs, emails, etc. You then assign keywords to these items for later searching - say, SUPERMARKET ROBBERY STATISTICS.
One problem with keyword-based organizers traditionally has been trying to remember your keywords later. This problem is solved with Personal Knowbase, because when you open up a data file all of the keywords you have created for items in that file are listed in the left-hand pane. These can then be easily imported into a query with a mouseclick and you can combine them with traditional boolean operators like AND and OR in order to search for specific "articles" (which is what your data file documents are called).
So, if you do much in the way of OSINT intelligence of any kind on the Web, or you need to organize documents in an easily-located way, or you have a lot of notes to keep track of, download the 30-day full-function trial version and give it a whirl. It's priced very reasonably compared to some similar products that don't have nearly the features (or have features you don't need).