The rules: the first person to enter the correct answer in this post’s comments will be declared the winner. Please follow the answer format below so that we know you’ve used FPinfomart to find your answer!
The town of Ingersoll in Southern Ontario once laid claim to the world’s biggest something.
What thing did Ingersoll set out to make the world’s biggest?
In what year was this feat accomplished?
How big was it?
What town broke their record, and in what year?
Provide a citation for your answer – headline, publication, and date.
FPinfomart monitors 50 Canadian radio stations in near-realtime. This means you can browse and search for radio content broadcast 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, within about 30 minutes after it’s been aired. The ability to access the complete contents of these channels, search the content by keyword, and instantly access audio clips through a self-service interface makes our service valuable.
The text attached to audio clips (transcripts) is generated using speech-to-text technology. It is this computer-generated text which allows us to offer the complete contents of the monitored channels, as well as get the content online so quickly – there is no waiting for a human transcription service, or need to monitor only “high-priority” programs. However, because the transcripts are generated automatically by computer, there can occasionally be unintended transcription “errors.”
The accuracy of the speech-to-text engine is actually quite good. Mitigating factors which decrease the accuracy of transcripts include:
Poor audio quality (e.g. an interview conducted over a static-prone phone connection)
Heavily-accented speaker
Use of words not in a dictionary (unusual names, less-common company names, slang, jargon, acronyms)
Speaker using poor diction, or talking too quickly (making words run together)
Knowing this, and keeping in mind that there is no copy-editing of the automated transcripts, it is necessary to use different strategies when monitoring for radio content than you might use when monitoring the more strictly-controlled text in print and other “traditional media” sources.
You’ll want to use variations on spellings of the words you’re searching. You’ll also want to think carefully about other English words that your keywords or phrases might sound like to a computer – especially if you’re searching names of people, places, corporations, or other entities.
The following video demonstrates two examples of the types of strategies you can employ to mitigate speech-to-text mistranslations in radio monitoring.
The rules: the first person to enter the correct answer in this post’s comments will be declared the winner. Please follow the answer format below so that we know you’ve used FPinfomart to find your answer!
Apologies for the hiatus of this weekly feature. We’re back, with a hunt for the world’s biggest hunt!
An event calling itself the world’s largest scavenger hunt is held annually by an American university.
Which university organizes this event?
How many items were participants asked to retrieve in the year you read about?
Give 3 examples of items on the scavenger hunt list.
Provide a citation for your answer (headline, publication, date).
Our next virtual training session has been scheduled for Thursday, October 28th. The “Navigating FPinfomart.ca” class will be held from 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. (Eastern Time).
For course description and registration details, please see our Training Schedule page. Virtual Training is conducted using WebEx.
The fiscal year begins September 1st around here, so we’ve been up to a lot of “year-end” counting, summarizing, and analysis lately.
One remarkable statistic we’ve come across is the volume of content consumed by FPinfomart users over the past 12 months. Between September 1, 2009 and August 31, 2010, our voracious readers have accessed a total of 9,094,275 documents on FPinfomart.ca.
That’s a lot of reading!
(For those of you wondering, the FPinfomart database contains over 70,000,000 documents, and we add over 35,000 new items every day.)
Note that we are leaving behind the weekly numbering of the scavenger hunts and will begin instead to include some information about the topic in the post title.
The rules: the first person to enter the correct answer in this post’s comments will be declared the winner. Please follow the answer format below so that we know you’ve used FPinfomart to find your answer!
There are two traditional match-ups held annually by a total of four CFL teams on Labour Day weekend.
Name the CFL teams involved in these two annual football games.
Who was the winner of these matches last year (in 2009?)
Provide citations for your answers (headline, publication, date).
We’re pleased to announce the 2010 release of the annually-produced FP Corporate Connection product.
The FP Corporate Connection database simplifies client prospecting and company research to help you boost sales, increase profits and grow your business. FP Corporate Connection includes extensive financial and operational information on over 4,500 Canadian companies, and provides access to over 19,000 executive contacts from … all in a convenient electronic format.
Companies include Canada’s top 800 private & public companies (FP800), plus the 100 top subsidiaries.
Geographical data supports detailed segmentation
Industry breakdown by GICS® codes
FP 500 Rankings for Revenue – Assets – Income
Contact names and titles
Easy to build personalized mailing lists
Customize and manipulate data with Microsoft Excel
the answer format below so that we know you’ve used FPinfomart to find your answer!
