I’m back at work from an extended break only to find that my favourite statistics  portal OFFSTATS is no more ???? https://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/about-us/collections/decommissioned-databases I received an email from them explaining that they no longer have the resourcing available to maintain and develop the database. Also, as much of the content can now be discovered through other … Continue reading RIP OFFSTATS →

Google has made a major change to search and it does not bode well. Results are now based on your current location. So what’s new?  Google has always looked at your location, even down to city/town level, and changed the results accordingly. That is fine if you are travelling and want to find the nearest … Continue reading Google makes it harder to change location for country specific research →

Please note: a regularly updated version of this posting is now on the main website at http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/brexit.htm  Those of us living and working in the UK are constantly bombarded with news and information of varying quality on Brexit. I regularly run workshops on sources of business information and,  inevitably, these now include a section on … Continue reading Brexit – sources of information →

This posting is for those of you who receive articles from this blog by email, and I am sure that many of you within the EU will have received similar notices from other organisations. On the 25th May the General Data Protection Regulation comes into force and as part of that we need to know … Continue reading Receiving blog postings by email – GDPR →

So the wait is over. When it was announced that Verizon was to buy Yahoo! there was concern as to what was going to happen to Flickr. Yahoo! never did much in terms of developing Flickr and what it did do was rubbish. Trying to add the location of your photo is an interesting experience … Continue reading SmugMug buys Flickr – should we stay or should we go? →

I didn’t think Google News (http://news.google.co.uk/) could get any worse but I was wrong. The previous revamp was bad enough: no more advanced search, useless and irrelevant personalisation options, and don’t even think about trying to set up sensible alerts. Alerts were never that good at the best of times but were not improved one iota … Continue reading Somebody, please put Google News out of its misery →

Edited highlights from my recent workshop on search tools for research information are now available. Please note that not all of the services, search tools, examples or issues covered in the workshop are included in this version. Slides can be viewed on Slideshare  or authorSTREAM. 

Google has been omitting terms from searches for several years.  For me, the matter came to a head wayback  in November 2011 (see Dear Google, stop messing with my search).  Many of has had noticed it happening for a while but what suddenly made it more frustrating was that one could no longer prefix a term … Continue reading Google offers to include missing search terms – sometimes →

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Parents of high schoolers are now the most powerful force in higher education.

While researching "The Boy Crisis," I interviewed a young man from Mill Valley, California, a city with deep Democratic ties. As the interview concluded, he said, "I wish I hadn't been born male."

The president-elect and vice president-elect undoubtedly understand that until they are inaugurated an existential threat shadows both of them.

Most election postmortems highlight the issues that played badly for Vice President Kamala Harris and were advantageous to President-elect Donald Trump: inflation, chaos on the world stage and uncontrolled immigration.

Amid the smoldering wreckage of last Tuesday's elections, Democrats must ask themselves a simple question: Who is in charge?

An underreported aspect of President-elect Donald Trump's victory last Tuesday night was how his historic alliance with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will shift our health care landscape.

It's been a week since President-elect Donald Trump's landslide reelection, and some Democrats are using words such as "realignment," "self-reflection" and "regret."

President-elect Donald Trump is to return to Washington with the distinct advantage of having previously served in the Oval Office. He is wiser.

President-elect Donald Trump's resounding victory may spell doom for the anti-freedom, anti-prosperity international movement that is the push for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

The numbers are trickling in, and between the presidential elections of 2020 and 2024, President-elect Donald Trump saw dramatic increases in support at the ballot boxes from Hispanics, youth and Black people -- traditionally all voters who stick with Democrats. This has the Democrat Party trembling in its big black boots.

Last week, a majority of Americans voted for common sense. It was a repudiation of the outrageous - a call for the restoration of policies that serve families not the special interests of politicians.

There's a reason we heard so much about extreme heat deaths over the summer.

Latinos left the Democratic party in a mass exodus last week, costing Kamala Harris the presidency.

If senators exhibit political courage, the incoming U.S. Senate has a unique opportunity to cut off the spigot of funds to Ukraine and find peace for the war-torn country.

The hard-left billionaire George Soros and his heir apparent son Alex have championed, with donations, defunding the police movement, open borders and soft prosecutors.

The biggest difference between Donald Trump's victory in 2016 and 2024 is Sherlock Holmes' "dog that didn't bark."

Kamala Harris's defeat runs deeper for Democrats than its surface appearance. Even at first sight, it was stunning: Ms. Harris didn't just lose the presidency but, unthinkably, the popular vote too.

In the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, pollsters predicted that Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton would win comfortably.

I imagine the past few weeks have been stressful for you and Dr. Jill. I noticed that on election day, she was dressed in red - not blue. Was her Freudian slip showing?

Stocks are reasonably priced and are a good place for ordinary folks' long-term savings.

No matter how you slice it, we are a divided nation. Our country is morally adrift in a sea of confusion. I know at least half the country is partying like it's 1999 because the GOP just won in a landslide, but am I the only one who thinks that we are just whistling past the graveyard?

When one party dominates all three branches of government -- the executive, the legislative, and the judicial -- there is even more reason to worry.

Perhaps no issue has motivated more Democratic voters than abortion access.

Millions of uninvited guests have shown up at the U.S. border since President Biden was sworn in.