To everyone coming to the blog having heard my commentary on Slashdot Review, here is the white paper (in PDF) I mentioned: Getting the Most from the Internet and the Deep Web.
I wrote this white paper in the summer of 2005 based on my own experience and research doing market and competitive intelligence on the Internet. At some point I would like to revisit the topic and update the document. If you have a search method you would like to recommend please give me a shout at august at augustjackson dot net.
The Competitive Intelligence Podcast is at http://www.cipodcast.com. The RSS URL is here. Comments on the blog and audio comments are always welcome.
The blog post about the State Depertment’s troubling use of Google I mentioned in the commentary is below (posted on 11 December) but also available via this link: State Department Uses Google.
Posted in Search
Tagged OSINT, sdr, Search
In today’s Washington Post there is an article about the State Department using Google to identify Iranians to sanction for their role in developing the country’s nuclear capability. This article is an example of the poor application of Internet searching, and the potential application of the results of said poor searching is a cause for concern. If you’re going to use the Internet as part of your sourcing strategy it is worth your time to learn how to do it right.
Frustrated, the State Department assigned a junior Foreign Service officer to find the names another way — by using Google. Those with the most hits under search terms such as “Iran and nuclear,” three officials said, became targets for international rebuke Friday when a sanctions resolution circulated at the United Nations.
…
An initial Internet search yielded over 100 names, including dozens of Iranian diplomats who have publicly defended their country’s efforts as intended to produce energy, not bombs, the sources said. The list also included names of Iranians who have spoken with U.N. inspectors or have traveled to Vienna to attend International Atomic Energy Agency meetings about Iran.
The potential for open source secondary research for government intelligence and security research is significant. That potential is only going to realized if you apply appropriate techniques in your searching and then conduct the appropriate analysis to place your results within the context of the situation or subject.
Technorati Tag: Competitive Intelligence
Anybody of a certain age who knows me well knows that I have a love of mobile text messaging matched only by Japanese teenage girls. So it’s only inevitable that I should love this new feature from Google.
Google have rolled out a new feature that allows users to submit queeries using SMS messaging on their phone. Examples include lookups of telephone numbers in specific cities either by city and state or zip code, measurement conversions, product pricing from Froogle, mathematical calculations and snippets from web sites. The list goes on and on. Sweet sweet sweet!
Three thouhgts that come immediately to mind as great additions to this functionality could be hotspot locations in a given locality, a movie listings feature and perhaps some snippets of the very latest news stories on a given topic.
This is a longshot from the systems integration side of the house, but if the wireless carrier could also send along some location information in case the customer doesn’t know where they’re located that would be sweet and perhaps even make a functionality like directions a possibility. Now, the downside to that could be if you can send the location along with an SMS to Google, significant others could somehow turn that around to discover they’re better half’s text message from a boys’ or girls’ night out is really a cover from a clandestine booty call on the side. I know AT&T Wireless already have a “find your friends” option for GSM customers who can get a general view of where other AT&T Wireless customers are located… I wonder how many people have signed up for this.
Posted in Search
Tagged google, Search, SMS
