We all know that the Lexis Nexis, News service is the best, the gold standard, the cream of the crop. But, is it? As part of my job I have been looking into the new kid on the block, Newsbank.
Newsbank is from a US company but has a surprising number of British news sources at its disposal. Lexis is so expensive that many organisations are now looking elsewhere for their news needs. Does your company really need up to the second access to news? Or can you survive with it being a few hours to a day old? Maybe you need variety or local news. It all depends on what you need as a company. Are you researching over a time scale, need to find out what is going in your specific area? Whatever your needs, as an organisation you should review what is actually required, not what you would like.
The search interface for Newsbank is surprisingly versatile. Boolean searching is available with AND, OR, NOT commands and of course you can restrict your search by date. What is nice is that you can search within the last couple of years or from a certain date but not after another one. How advanced your search query is up to you.
From testing the service I must point out that you have to be flexible with the way you search for something. If you can’t find anything straight away then try a different approach. But then again that’s good advice for whatever search engine you are using!
A good example would be if you are searching for a phrase within quotes. I use this feature a lot in Google, but when I searched using this facility within Newsbank, there were no results. I tried again without the quotes, and there were a significant number. The phrase I searched had both words together in the articles that were brought up so this must have been a glitch.
Another handy feature of Newsbank is the Alerts. You can set up an alert for your company and it will email you the results to your email address. With Lexis this will cost you more money but with Newsbank this is part of the service. This is a good time saver. Never feel out of the loop again!
Of course with Nexis, you get up to the minute sources, and with Newsbank it is behind – sometimes by 24 hours. But then it can be half the price. The other niggle is that you cannot send yourself more than ten results at a time. This can be really frustrating if you have a 100 results which you simply must have a look at. You can just click the link to email more, but this is a hassle.
Lexis Nexis may have more newspaper resources, but Newsbank has their own selection of exclusive content. For local news, I believe Newsbank is better.
If you live in Wales and belong to a public Library, you can access Newsbank for free. This may not last for ever in this world of cutbacks, but while it lasts, it is useful for A evaluating the resource and B keeping up to date on Library related issues.
I have also used the Proquest Newsstand service and this was my favourite until I discovered Newsbank. Newsbank by far is an improvement on the Proquest offering but it still lags behind Lexis Nexis with usability. With everything taken into account – I prefer Newsbank. It is versatile, easy to use and has a really good selection of newspaper sources.
I love Google Mail, but when it comes to Android Mail apps, I hate to say it but the Yahoo Mail App is miles better.
I could give you a myriad of reasons why Google mail is superior as an email service but the Yahoo app has surprised me so much I am posting this.
The Yahoo Mail app is clear and easily navigable but where it stands out from the crowd is the ability to make the email larger for those of us with sight problems. This is something the Google app is severely lacking in. I use it simply to notify me that I have mail. If I want to actually look at an email through the native Google app, the type is far too small. I have to use the browser and then go to the online version, then give the screen the two finger salute to make it bigger.
Yahoo has clearly thought about accessibility and a quick tap on the + button and the type gets larger. Personally I would have preferred to be able to use two fingers but what can I say.
The only other niggle with the Yahoo app is that I would have liked to have had the ability to select a few emails and then apply an action to them. For this, like with Google, I had to go to the online version. Still. well done Yahoo – I love what you’ve done with it so far. Keep up the good work !
Tags: Reviews
Well, I’ve finally broken into my own site. Don’t you just hate it when you forget your password?
I don’t usually use WordPress, Drupal is my weapon of choice, so I was a little confused when I logged in. Then to my horror I saw 960 odd comments. Cool, you might think. Get a coffee and start reading – until you realise that all the comments are spam and you can only bulk delete 20 at a time.
Aargh, still it’s done now, if I delete every time I post, it shouldn’t be that bad.
My pet hate for those comments was the awful English. If you are going to try to trick me into buying somthing at least try and make it look believable. You may as well use red text and paste a picture with SPAM written on it.
I realise that they were probably all robots/crawlers but really? really? Someone must have written them in the first place. I may have to go to trusty Drupal if this persists – I can set up a honey trap then. I managed to catch a couple of Russians with one of my other sites.
Yeehaaa
