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Archive for January, 2010

Tone has moved from a 5-point scale to a 3-point scale

Posted by Jennifer Stein on January 29, 2010

We have converted our Tone ratings from ta 5-point scale to a simpler 3-point scale.

The system previously allowed a document to be Toned as Strongly Positive, Positive, Neutral, Negative, and Strongly Negative.

Tone choices - current

The former 5-point tone scale

The new 3-point scale has values of Positive, Neutral, and Negative.  Any existing ratings attached to your saved documents will be collapsed from the old scale to the new one (e.g. both “Strongly Positive” and “Positive” would end up with a Positive tone).

One of the main reasons for this change is to use a scale more appropriate for graphical analysis.  We would like to enhance the appearance and utility of our Media Analysis reports.  The former 5-point tone scale created a Tone graph like this:

Tone by region - current

The previous 5-point tone scale in a graphical summary

As you can see, this is very difficult to interpret.

A 3-point (Positive, Neutral, Negative) tone scale lends itself more naturally to graphical representation, and both simplifies and clarifies the Analysis process.

tone by region - new

The new 3-point tone scale, in graphical format.

Furthermore, many common Media Analysis programs (such as MR2P) use a 3-point scale.  Our switch to a compatible scale will make it easier for those of you using an external analysis system to interpret your data.

We hope you find the new 3-point tone scale easier to use!

Posted in Features | Tagged: | Comments Off

Follow changes to any website [via Official Google Reader Blog]

Posted by Jennifer Stein on January 29, 2010

Want to follow updates on a site that doesn’t offer RSS feeds?  A new post from the Official Google Reader Blog describes a feature which will allow you to follow changes to any site, whether or not they offer an RSS feed.

Whether you need to know if a company has made changes to their corporate homepage, or you read regularly-published articles on a site that just doesn’t have a feed, this feature can help you stay up-to-date in a medium that’s always changing.

I’m a big fan of RSS.  The ability to be alerted to new information from multiple sources, in one interface, is inherently valuable.  Using an RSS reader centralizes knowledge-gathering into one environment, even if your sources are widespread.  Google Reader offers an excellent soltion, though there are many others available as well.  You can even read your FPinfomart results with your RSS reader.

This type of feature meshes nicely with our new Import tool, which allows you to add information about external content to your FPinfomart Folders.  Discovered something you need to share with your end-users?  Import the link to FPinfomart and place it in a Shared Folder, or add it to your next Newsletter.

Posted in General | Tagged: , | Comments Off

Four regional newswires now available

Posted by Jennifer Stein on January 28, 2010

Canwest News Service (CNS) is a newswire source which provides ongoing updates to FPinfomart throughout the day.  CNS has recently launched four regional wire feeds, each of which has been added as a source on FPinfomart.

If you’re looking for regionally-focused, regularly-updated news, you might want to check out these new sources.

Coverage began January 14, 2010.  You can browse the feeds in Latest News, or add them as additional sources in your Personal Profiles.

Posted in Content | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Scheduled Service Window – January 30 and 31

Posted by fpinfomart on January 27, 2010

Pleased be advised that FPinfomart.ca will be unavailable due to scheduled system maintenance on the following days and times:

  • Saturday, Jan 30, 2010, 15:00 – 17:00 Eastern Time
  • Sunday, Jan 31, 2010, 12:30 – 14:30 Eastern Time

You will be unable to access FPinfomart.ca during these times.

We thank you for your understanding.

Posted in Maintenance | Tagged: , | Comments Off

Three new features now LIVE!

Posted by fpinfomart on January 25, 2010

We’re pleased to announce that the three features we described last week are now live:

Click, explore, let us know what you think in the comments!  We hope you find these changes as exciting as we do.

Posted in Broadcast, Features | Tagged: , , , | Comments Off

TV results to be integrated with news results

Posted by Jennifer Stein on January 22, 2010

UPDATE:  This change is now live!

Please note:  This feature will launch at approximately 9:00 pm on Monday, January 25th!

Since we launched TV monitoring in 2006, your TV results have always been segregated from your other “News” results.  You had to visit one part of the site to view your TV hits, and another area to read all other content (newspapers, wires, etc.)  We are truly excited to announce that as of Monday night, the wall between media types will has come down – TV and news results are now will be integrated into a single list of hits.

We believe this change will radically improve your ability to get a holistic view of your media coverage.  You’ll see all your results together, regardless of medium, sorted by their arrival time in our database.  You’ll see this new intermingled content in your Profile results, as well as in Quick Search.  You’ll no longer need to visit two separate results pages, or run separate searches.  We’re certain you’ll encounter content that you may not have discovered previously.

TV and News results together

(Click for a larger view)

Note that your subscription may not include access to TV content.  If you are unable to see TV results and cannot add the TV sources (as described below), please contact your sales representative for more information and pricing information.

Despite all the benefits inherent in this new multi-media results view, there will be times when you’d like to view results from only certain media types.  There are two ways you can go about this:

  1. Use our new Media Type Navigator
  2. Create Profiles or run Quick Searches that exclude particular content types

1.  Our new Media Type Navigator

The column to the right of your search results houses several tools to help you navigate within a set of results.  In addition to the People, Places, Companies, and Keywords navigators, we’ve implemented a new Media Type navigator which will help you to narrow your results by medium.

You’ll find a more detailed description of  this new Media Type navigator in greater detail in a separate blog post.

2. Editing your Profiles to include (or exclude) specific content

You may be familiar with the process of editing Profiles to add or change keywords, but you can also edit the sources that you search.  If you wish to modify a Profile so that it searches only print media, or only TV content, or perhaps even a subset of each of these content types, you may do so.

Open your Profiles page, and click the “EDIT” link on the line next to the Profile you wish to modify.

Edit Profile

Edit a Profile

You can make any keyword modifications at this time, if you wish, or, scroll to the bottom to the source selection section of the page.  Click the radio button next to “Show me my current list of sources.”

Profile Source Selection

Choose Show me My Sources

You’ll then see the complete list of sources available to you.  Scroll to the Television Monitoring section.  To turn TV Monitoring on for this Profile, select at least one of the channels.  You may also use the “ALL” link at the top right of the source category to quickly select all the channels for monitoring.  Or, use the “NONE” link to disable TV monitoring for this Profile.

source selection screen

Source Selection screen

Posted in Broadcast | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

New Media Type and Region Navigators

Posted by Jennifer Stein on January 22, 2010

UPDATE:  This feature is now live!

Please note:  This feature will launch at approximately 9:00 pm on Monday, January 25th!

The column to the right of your search results houses several tools to help you navigate within a set of results.   Several “Navigators” reside there, each of which helps you to understand the make-up of your results set.  We’ve been providing you with four entity Navigators (People, Companies, Geography, and Keywords), along with Publications, and Bylines.  You can click on any Navigator to narrow your results set to include ONLY those hits containing that particular Navigator.

We are making two additional Navigators available:  Media, and Region.

Media Type and Region navigators

The new Media Type and Region navigators

Media Navigator

Use the Media navigator to narrow your results set by a particular media type.  You’ll notice a number in brackets to the right of each navigator – this is the number of documents in your results set that are of that particular media type.  The top-level Media are:

  • Print
  • Wires
  • Online
  • Blogs
  • Broadcast

Click on “…more” at the end of this list of Media navigators to expand the list to include several sub-categories of (narrower) navigators, such as dividing Print into Newspapers, Magazines, and Trade publications; or dividing Broadcast into TV and Radio.

This navigator is especially useful now that TV content is integrated completely with other news content.

Region Navigator

Use the Region navigator to view the subset of results that was produced or published in a specific geographic region.  As with Media navigators, there is a top-level list of Region navigators, but clicking “…more” will show you a list containing sub categories (for instance, each of the provinces within Canada).

In the example below, we see the result set we’d retrieved earlier with 43 hits (see screenshot above) has been narrowed to five hits by selecting Broadcast from the Media navigators, and Ontario from the Region navigators.  These five hits are (as expected!) all broadcast hits from within Ontario.

Navigators in use

Example of both a Media Navigator and Region Navigator in use.

Note that once you have selected a navigator, you can remove the filter by clicking the minus (-) sign that appears next to the navigator that is in place.

We hope that you will find these two new navigators useful in gaining a better understanding of the makeup of your search results, and in “slicing and dicing” the content into sets for various purposes.  In future, we’ll be incorporating these navigators into Media Analysis graphs.  Stay tuned for more information!

Posted in Features | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

New Feature: Add links to external content to your Saved/Shared Folders

Posted by Jennifer Stein on January 22, 2010

UPDATE:  this feature is now LIVE!

We mentioned this feature briefly in early January, in our preview of upcoming features for 2010.  We’re thrilled to announce that the ability to import details about external content is launching at approximately 9:00 pm on Monday, January 25th!

Although FPinfomart covers over 4,500 news sources across almost all media, we know that there is additional content available online that you’d like to incorporate into your Newsletters, your Media Analysis Reports, and your monitoring activities. To assist you, we now offer the ability to add information about, and a link to, non-FPinfomart content to your Saved Folders.

We envision two typical scenarios where this feature will become an essential part of your workflow:

1.  Creating more robust Media Analysis reports.

2. Including a more complete picture of the news to your end users, through our Intranet Toolkit, including the Newsletter Publisher.

To take advantage of this feature, install our handy bookmarklet in your Browser’s toolbar folder.  Customized Bookmarklets are available for all major browsers (including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera).  When you visit our “Import” page we’ll detect which browser you’re using and show you the appropriate instructions step-by-step instructions for saving the bookmarklet.  The general idea, though, is that you’ll end up with a button in your browser’s links or “favourites” toolbar labelled “Save to FPinfomart.”

FPinfomart bookmarklet

The bookmarklet in the Links toolbar (Firefox)

To use your new bookmarklet, locate content online that you’d like to add to your Folder.  This may be content you specifically seek out, or perhaps you’ve discovered it through regular reading, other monitoring activities, or serendipitously on the web.  Once the article or page you wish to clip is in your browser, you can use your mouse to highlight a section of text you wish to use as the description for this item.  Now,  click on the FPinfomart bookmarklet.

Content to be clipped, with descriptive text highlighted

Content to be clipped, with descriptive text highlighted (Internet Explorer)

Once you’ve clicked the FPinfomart import bookmarklet, you’ll see a form where you’re asked to categorize the content on some data points such as geography, Tone, medium, etc., so that we can help you build accurate reports.  You must also select which of your FPinfomart Saved/Shared Folders you wish to use for this content.

Import Form

Content Import form. Note that the text we highlighted in the previous screen has been automatically placed in the "Description" field.

Click the Import button, and you’re done!  The content you’ve located is now described, and linked to, in your selected Folder.  You may now create Media Analysis reports which include details about this content, or include this information in your Intranet or your Newsletter.

imported story in folder

"Peek" for clipped content in a Folder.

While the bookmarklet is certainly the most convenient way to import information about external content into your FPinfomart folders, we realize that some of you may have IT and security-related reasons that you cannot install or use the bookmarklet. If this applies to you, don’t despair – we have a solution!   Once you’ve located your external content, open your FPinfomart Folders screen in a new tab or window.  To the right of the name of each folder, you’ll see an “Import” link.  Clicking this will bring up the Import form within FPinfomart.  You’ll need to fill in all of the fields manually (it is unable to detect Title, URL, etc. the same way the bookmarklet can).  However you’ll still be able to use the data the same way once you’ve filled in the form and saved it to your Folder..

Import link in Folders

If you can't use Bookmarklets, use the Import link next to the name of each Folder.

Posted in Features | Tagged: , , , , | 3 Comments »

Canadian Who’s Who now available on FPinfomart

Posted by Jennifer Stein on January 18, 2010

The latest addition to our FP Advisor suite of content is the the well-known directory “Canadian Who’s Who.”

The Canadian Who’s Who database contains biographical sketches on over 13,000 Canadians.  You’ll find precise information on distinctions, degrees, names of kinship, occupations and professional history for these individuals.

You can search Canadian Who’s Who in four places:

  1. Listed as its own source under “Additional Databases”
  2. As a source in our Lead List Generator
  3. Find results in “Person Search”
  4. Find results in “Global Search.
FP Advisor Menu

Areas where Canadian Who's Who can be searched

For the most robust search interface, click “Additional Databases” from the FP Advisor menu, then choose the link to the Canadian Who’s Who database.

There are two possible ways to use the Canadian Who’s Who:

  1. You are researching a particular individual who’s name you already know.
  2. You are looking to create a list of individuals who meet a set of specific criteria.

If you’re seeking information on a specific person, enter as much information about him or her as you know.

Who's Who search form

Who's Who search form

Partial Who's Who record

Partial Who's Who record

Once you’ve clicked “Search,” a list of results will appear.  You can click the name of the individual if you believe you’ve found your research target.

If your goal is to create a list of individuals who meet a certain set of criteria, you can use the same search form but do not enter a person’s name (unless of course you’re trying to create a list of individuals with the same first or last name!).  Your result set will meet the criteria you set out.

In this second scenario, where you’re creating a list of results, you may also wish to try searching this database in our Lead List Generator tool.  You’ll get the same set of results, but using Lead List Generator will allow you to export your results to Excel.

Posted in Content, FP Advisor | Tagged: , , | Comments Off

Keeping up with a continuous news cycle

Posted by Jennifer Stein on January 15, 2010

When FPinfomart first evolved from an archival research tool to a media monitoring solution, our primary focus was on daily newspapers, and reviewing results mirrored the publication schedule of a newspaper:  once per day.  Just as our product has evolved, so has the news cycle.  Daily and weekly newspapers are still essential sources for monitoring, but so are newswires, blogs, and online content.  The problem is that these “newer” content types update throughout the day.

How do you keep up with a continuous news cycle without being overwhelmed?  You may already receive the Personal Profile morning e-mail, but by the time you read it, many more results may have been added to our database.  And, the news just keeps coming all day long.  There are three ways that FPinfomart can assist you with this conundrum.

The first, and most manual is to visit the site multiple times throughout the day.  Each time you visit your Profile Results page, it will be refreshed with the latest content.  To assist you in determining if anything new has been added to your list of hits, we show you (in red font) how long ago each item was added to our database.

Time added in peeks

The Peek of each document shows how long ago it was added to FPinfomart

The next option for keeping tabs on your results is to subscribe to them by RSS.  If you already use an RSS reader, simply add the RSS feed for any of your Profiles (or Shared Folders!) to your reader.  You can use an online reader, like Google Reader, or a software-based reader.  If you like the idea of a news ticker, there are many free applications available that can scroll RSS-based content across your screen all day!

Any item with an orange-coloured “RSS” link next to its title can be subscribed to by RSS.   Feeds are available for Personal Profiles, Current Events, Industry Profiles, and Folders (including Shared Folders).

RSS link in Profile

RSS link in Profile

Please note that this RSS feed is available only to you, and you must be logged into your FPinfomart account to view the full text of content.  (If you need to share FPinfomart content by RSS, please consider our Intranet Toolkit product).

The third, and most automated way to follow a continuous news cycle with FPinfomart is to subscribe to Alerts for the topics you need to keep up with throughout the day.  Alerts allow the news to come to you by e-mail, whenever new content matching your search criteria arrives on FPinfomart.  You can choose to have either summaries or the full text of documents delivered by Alerts.

Manage your Alerts from the link in the Settings menu (bottom of the left-side navigation menu).  For more details on how to set up Alerts, and the various options available, please see our Alerts Help Topic.

Alerts in the Settings menu

Alerts in the Settings menu

Whether you prefer to visit FPinfomart multiple times throughout the day, follow your results by RSS, or subscribe to our e-mail Alerts, it is important to keep up with the news throughout the day.   You never know when critical news will break!

Posted in General | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

 
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