This lens contains a wide variety of databases, software and other information that might prove useful to an intelligence analyst in the business, law enforcement or national security arenas.
Web-based News
- Google News
- Outstanding free site for accessing news on a near real-time basis. Google News has the ability to send alerts when a new story in an area of interest breaks or to deliver an RSS feed to either Onfolio or some other aggregator.
- News Now
- This seems to be a very good site for accessing news articles from a number of unique sources. There is no RSS feed and alerts cost extra.
- Janes.com
- Janes is the oldest and perhaps the most reputable commercial intelligence agency in the world. Its products are pricey but excellent if you need that sort of coverage. They do provide summarized versions of some of their articles on their main web-page, however.
- Environmental News Network
- Aggregates news on environmental topics from mostly traditional news sources.
- Digg
- Digg is a participatory news site. You get to rate the stories as they occur. As a rating goes up, it becomes more likely to appear when someone does a new search. It is becoming increasingly popular and has added some new features (such as the ability to monitor stories as they happen) that makes it an interesting place to get, at least, the conventional wisdom of the web literate, particularly in a crisis or when a hot news story breaks.
- Videoblogs
- An enormously useful site for finding and producing video blogs (or vlogs).
- ClandestineRadio.com's Country Page
- ClandestineRadio.com tries to track all of the clandestine or subversive radio stations in the world. Their intelligence reports on these activities are useful background. Since the stations are aimed a local populace, they are in the local language.
- The Power And Interest News Report
- The Power and Interest News Report claims that it is an "independent organization that utilizes open source intelligence to provide conflict analysis services in the context of international relations. PINR approaches a subject based upon the powers and interests involved, leaving the moral judgments to the reader." I find the analyses to be always worth reading but the coverage is sometimes fairly thin.
- The Institute For War And Peace Reporting
- Simply one of the best sites around on the crises that they cover. Their reports are always detailed and well-written.
- NewsVoyager
- A comprehensive list of local newspapers worldwide.
- See.TV
- See.TV is a fascinating website. It allows you to view hundreds of television stations from all over the world through its website. This is an excellent oportunity to improve language skills and to gather local news and video. The site is a bit buggy, however. I found that it worked better with Internet Explorer and I found that a number of the stations would not come up for me.
- World News Map
- This amazing program overlays news as it happens onto a Google map. The amount of news indicates that it takes much of its information from traditonal news services but the fact that it originates in Hungary gives the news a interesting twist.
- BBC News
- Frequently updated news from all parts of the world.
- Today's Front Pages
- This section of Newseum displays hundreds of daily newspaper front pages in their original, unedited form. See how others approach a topic!
- ABYZ News Links
- Index of World Newspapers and News Media. Links to news from different countries and regions.
- GlobalInfo.org
- Daily updated source of news from developing countries.
- OnlineNewspapers.com
- Links to websites of newspapers in different countries.
- World News
- The interesting and comprehensive source of news about world affairs.
Web-based Databases
- The World Bank's Doing Business Database
- This amazing and amazingly user-friendly database catalogs a variety of details relevant to actually doing business in a country.
- Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index
- Transparency International (TI) is the number one corruption NGO in the world today. The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) is its attempt to rank order all the countries in the world by level of corruptness. While the CPI is the best known tool from TI, there are countless other good articles and a few great databases available through TI as well.
- The International Telecommunications Union Free Statistics
- This link takes you to the International Telecommunications Union's (ITU) free statistics page. The numbers here are OK, but the real power of the ITU lies in its detailed (and reasonably priced) reports and databases. The ITU is a part of the UN so there are usually versions of most reports in multiple languages.
- The Virtual Private Library
- Marcus Zillman's incredible blog discovers and indexes hundreds of useful web sites for researchers. With over 25 years of experience in the field, the sites he finds are always worth a look and the range of topics covered is excellent.
- BBC News Country Profiles
- Like the CIA World Factbook but a bit better designed. A good place to start research about a particular country.
- Energy Information Administration Country Analysis Briefs
- Understanding energy is critical in understanding virtually any country. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) does an excellent job of compiling tons of stats into a variety of easy to use websites. While the country analysis briefs are probably the most useful to national security intel types, business intel professionals will probably want to go back to EIAs home page to get info on energy use in the US.
- USGS International Minerals Statistics and Information
- While some of the data is out of date, the US Geologic Survey's international statistics website is still a first rate site to begin understanding anything having to do with minerals or mining in a country. There are often very good leads here concerning everything from new energy sources to new roads -- anything that could impact the mining or minerals industry is covered. There are also links to the country specialists at the USGS. I have contected some of them in the past and they have been uniformly helpful.
- JounalistExpress.com
- This is a very good site that has links to numerous news, stats and other reference sites. Some of the links lead to password protected or otherwise proprietary sources.
- The Center For Strategic And International Studies
- Provides a good selection of background papers and policy recommendations that covers the entire world.
- The Strategy Page
- Jim Dunnigan, along with a few others, pretty much singlehandedly invented commercial table-top wargaming in the 70's and 80's. Table top gaming gave way to the computer but there are still a few die-hards out there that play. This is a website that is mostly for them. It is listed here because of the spectacular work that Dunnigan and crew have done over the years in quantifying and ranking the elements of military power. Look for the Armed Forces of the World and other databases near the bottom of the page. This is also an excellent alternative news and analysis site regarding military affairs.
- They Rule
- This is an excellent (and extremely cool) site for gaining an understanding about how corporate America governs itself. The site allows you to visualize the relationships between the Boards of Directors of a large number of US companies. The intent of the site is to demonstrate how interconnected the US business world is at the highest levels. The site also, however, provides a way to do simple social network analysis on various corporations. The data is current as of early 2004.
- The Human Security Report
- The Human Security Report provides a good overview of war and other issues that impact the personal security of the average human. There are a number statistical charts and data available.
- The Internet Archive Featuring The Wayback Machine
- Ever try to find old footage or unusual music or the content of a web site that is now dead? The Internet Archive is the place to start your search. In addition to all sorts of archived file footage and audio files, the Archive also features the Wayback Machine that allows you to access many websites that are no longer in operation.
- CrisisWatch Database
- Put together by the International Crisis Group, one of the best crisis monitoring NGO's in the world, this database has a little bit of everything.
- How To Find The Best Photos On Flickr
- Some decent advice for how to get the most out of the social network photo sharing service Flckr.
- OpenCourseWare Finder
- Though it is largely dedicated to technical courses, OpenCourseWare Finder does include audio, video and lecture notes from some of the best colleges and universities in the country (including MIT). If you are looking for additonal study materials for languages or other courses or projects, this is place.
- Textbook Revolution
- Looking for someone else to explain that difficult concept to you? Look no further. The Textbook Revolution stores dozens of free textbboks for download. While they may not be the exact texts you need for your course or project, they might provide helpful, addtional study material.
- ResearchPro Web Guide
- An excellent list of links that should help you start virtually any research project.
- International Market Research
- This is Canada's version of the STAT-USA site sponsored by the US Dept. of Commerce. Why use the Canadian version of an American site? Becasue the Canadian interface is clean and intuitive while the US interface is clumsy and hard to understand, eh?
- RefDesk.com
- Reportedly Colin Powell's favorite site, RefDesk aggregates a number of useful sites and tools into a single location.
- IDRC's Research Programs
- Sponsored by the Canadian government, this site provides links to some useful resources regarding a variety of development activities around the world. It is particularly strong in telecommunications research.
- American Fact Finder
- Put together by the US Census Bureau, this site allows you to explore US census data for every area of the US. This is a fantastic tool for Business Intelligence or for anyone doing research into the US.
- SIPRI's FIRST Database
- The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has done a magnificent job with its FIRST database. This is actually a metasearch utility that allows you to search mutliple databases from multiple reliable sources regarding a wide variety of national security issues. While the profile the FIRST database creates is by no means complete, it (coupled with the World Bank databases above) is an excellent starting place for someone doing a country study.
- Nuvvo.com
- Nuvvo offeres free or for-fee online learning courses. The course selection right now is small and eclectic but should expand in the future. It is a good place to look for information/education that is off the beaten track.
- Africa Research Central
- This site contains links and information concerning repositories of African information and primary sources. Some sites have information embedded in them while others contain information about the archive without any online access to the documents.
- World Dialogue On Regulation
- Focused on telecommunications regulation worldwide, this site has a variety of background papers and statistics on the impact of regulation worldwide.
- VisualComplexity.net
- This is a wonderful collection of data visualizations. Link charts, food webs, social networks -- if you can link it, a picture of it is here (or will be soon). An excellent idea page for anyone interested in link/network analysis.
- Nationmaster.com
- An excellent place for one-stop shopping on all sorts of figures about any country in the world.
- Gallup's Worldwide Corruption Index
- Gallup recently launched its own corruption index of 101 countries. This ranking broadly follows similar corruption rankings such as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.
- Worldwide Incident Tracking System
- The National Counter Terrorism Center's incident tracking site, covering terrorist incidents world wide.
- Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments
- The public CIA webpage that tracks the heads of government of the world. Updated weekly.
- Gapminder World
- Gapminder World lets you explore the changing world from your own computer. Moving graphics show how the development of all countries of the world by the indicators you choose.
- Eurostat
- The main website which displays statistics from the Statistical Office of the European Communities.
- UNESCO Institute for Statistics
- Valuable source of UNESCO data.
- The World Bank
- Statistics and research from the World Bank.
- OECD.Stats Extracts
- OECD Country Statistical Profiles. Very useful, easily searchable database of facts related to particular countries.
- Questia Library
- The world's largest online library of books. An easy (unfortunately paid) access to thousands of publications.
- InfoNation
- View and compare statistical data for countries that are a part of the United Nations. A really good source of useful information, very interactive, facilitates a convenient selection and an effective presentation of variables.
- License Plates of the World
- Everything what you can say about license plates in particular countries!
- Rulers
- This site contains lists of heads of state and heads of government of all countries and territories, going back to about 1700 in most cases.
- Ethnicity and Race by countries
- Convenient summary from Infoplease.com.
- Eurominority
- A comprehensive website that presents information on minority groups in Europe.
- Population Reference Bureau
- A reliable well-prepared source of information on population, health, and environment related issues.
- GeoHive
- Primarily, populational statistics in relation to regions, countries, provinces and cities. Also presents information on the natural environment, economy, and energy. The link "by Country" allows to quickly navigate between data from particular countries. Frequently updated, the site exploits a wide range of statistical resources.
- Directory of Internet Resources on Central and Eastern Europe and Russia
- A very good list of interesting links categorized by countries. Prepared by the University College of London (UCL).
- Russian, East European and Eurasian Center
- The next list of interesting regional resources. This time from the University of Illinois.
- UrbanRail.Net
- Metros, subways, and other urban rail transit systems around the world.
- Sister Cities
- Learn more about the international initiative of "Sister Cities." Who is willing to cooperate with whom?
- Largest Cities of the World by population
- The list of 100 largest cities from the WorldAtlas.com.
- Ministries of Foreign Affairs
- Links to national websites of Ministries of Foreign Affairs.
- Governments on the WWW
- Comprehensive database of governmental institutions on the World Wide Web: parliaments, ministries, offices, law courts, embassies, city councils, public broadcasting corporations, central banks, multi-governmental institutions etc. Includes also political parties. Contains more than 17000 entries from more than 220 countries and territories.
- Constitution Finder
- The database of constitutions, charters, amendments, and other related documents. Prepared by the University of Richmond.
- Elections Calendars
- Frequently updated. The current version is the Election Calendar 2008-2009. Previous versions (since 2004) are also available. Prepared by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.
- Web Sites of National Parliaments
- From the Washington University in St. Louis.
- Official Diplomatic Representations in Foreign Countries
- From Governments on the WWW.
- Armed Forces of the World
- A collection of charts that evaluate the quantity and quality of each nation's armed forces. The quantity of each combat unit has been derived from various open sources. Quality has been determined by evaluating historical performance. Prepared by the StrategyPage.com
- Encyclopedia of Banking & Finance
- Helpful when some economic related issue is difficult to understand.
- Internet Country Codes
- Do you know where does a particular web site originate?
- Airline & Aviation Global links
- A collection of links to major airline websites, as well as some aviation related entities.
- A-Z Airfreight Directory
- For each country, it lists Airports, Airlines, Airlines General Sales Agents, Associations/Authorities/Alliances, Cargo Agents/Freight Forwarders, Cargo Handling Agents, Charter Brokers, Express Operators/Couriers, Services and Suppliers to Cargo Agents/Operators and Services and Suppliers to Freighter Aircraft Operators.
- Political Resources on the Web
- Listings of political web sites sorted by country, with links to political parties, organizations, governments, media etc.
- The University of Michigan Documents Center
- Links to statistical resources on the web, sorted by categories.
- The Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence
- The Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence provides chronological indexes, case studies, analytical contributions on socio-political violence in a given country, a glossary of the terms most often used in genocide studies as well as theoretical papers written by the most representative authors in the field.
Web-based Maps
- Perry Castaneda Map Library
- One of the best online map libraries.
- UNHCR Map Page
- The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) usually has the best publically available maps for crisis areas.
- ChicagoCrime.org
- This is a wonderful mashup (i.e. combination of two pieces of software to create a third). In this case, the site proprietors have combined the power of Google maps with a database of Chicago crime. Though limited to Chicago, it is an outstanding exmaple of what can be done quickly and relatively easily.
- Google Maps Mania
- For the best in Google Maps mashups (like the Chicago crime mashup above) go to this blog. Check the "mashups and tools index" in the right hand column for a list of all of the google maps out there.
- CommunityWalk
- CommunityWalk is an easy to use mashup that allows you to put markers and other data onto a Google map. The designer went out of his way to make the interface user-friendly and the product is of enormous use to anyone who wants to display the geographic nature of their data. It is also a powerful collaborative tool. Creating small communities is free but larger communities require a modest fee.
- NASA World Wind
- from a Mercyhurst grad student):
NASA's World Wind program is similair to Google Earth, but combines satelite radar topography with Landsat 7 imagery making it real useful for terrain analysis (you can even superimpose topo maps or view terrain features in 3-D). Another neat fetaure is the infrared spectrum imagery that allows the evaluation of biomass density in a given area (at around 3,000M/pixel and allows for the evaluation of crop/plant health). Only major US cities are mapped at 15M/pixel, but like terrain features, you can look at everything in 3-D. On the down side, its not nearly as user friendly at Google Earth and it doesn't have the same kind of community support, but hey, it even maps the moon in 3-D. If you try it out, I would recomend viewing the flash how-to videos that the installation wizard asks to send you to in the last instal window. - Maplandia
- Maplandia is a gazeteer. You enter the name of a town or city into it and it locates the town or city on a map. It uses Google Maps as its base.
- Google Maps Directory
- This is a huge, well organized collection of Google Maps mashups.
- Zeemaps
- Zeemaps allows you to create a variety of maps using the Google Maps interface. Its main strength is that allows you to import comma separated valu files in order to plot massive numbers of point. The site's main weakness is that there is no "about" page so that you can have some idea of who you are giving your data to.
- Earthtools
- Earthtools is more than a gazetteer. It also instantly calculates local time, sunrise/sunset, lat/long and elevation.
- Gchart
- Weather, currency exchange rates and videos from all over the world in an easy to use Google Maps interface.
- Remote Sensing Tutorial
- Originally put together by NASA and now hosted by the Federation Of American Scientists, the Remote Sensing Tutorial has a wealth of information on the history and application of remote sensing (such as satellite imagery) systems.
- Google Earth Basics
- If you are having problems with Google Earth or just want to advance your skills, this series of tutorials will help. Hosted by the Google Earth Blog, the tutorials cover everything from layering to 3-D buildings.
- National Interagency Fire Center Maps
- This Service, sponsored by the US Forest Service shows the location and other info on large forest fires in the US and Canada. The information is not as user friendly as you might like and I had problems accessing some info.
- Maplecroft Maps
- Maplecroft provides a series of interactive maps on a wide range of topics and countries.
- Google Maps Nightime
- An excellent combination of Google Maps and the famous 128 megapixel nighttime shot of the earth from NASA.
- Poverty Maps
- An excellent collection of maps with data on poverty and development from around the globe.
- World Economic Forum Maps
- This is an excellent series of maps generated by the good people at Maplecroft (see above). The maps on this page, designed to support the World Economic Forum, include a variety of visual representations of existing indices. It is an excellent way to see how country(s) stack up against each other in a number of different categories.
- MeHere
- A neat little software program that allows you to easily transfer data generated by a GPS receiver to GoogleEarth.
- Loki
- Another neat piece of software that integrates with local wifi to give you a fairly exact location on a Google map. It also allows you to locate specific businesses or other addresses in your area (Need a copy center in DC, for example; Loki can find the one nearest to you). It works everywhere but only has a limited number of cities that have wifi data incorporated.
- Worldmapper
- An interesting program that takes data in 24 different areas and builds it into maps. Provides a little different perspective on the data but needs to be seen to be understood.
- Geographic.org
- Not only maps, but also information on countries, climate, country codes, airport codes, and a lot more!
- About.com:Geography
- Blank outline printable maps of every country worldwide.
- About.com:Geography
- Blank outline prinatble maps of all American states.
- National Geographic Maps
- Especially interesting features include: MapMachine, Atlas Explorer, as well as "New Views of the World."
- Global Gazetteer Version 2.1
- A directory of world's cities and towns together with helpful maps.
Web-based Tools
- The Foresight Exchange Prediction Market
- From financial futures to political events, you can use the data on the Foresight Exchange to get a good idea what the 8000+ members of the Exchange think are the odds of any particular event happening. You can even join and set up your own "claim" to track. In case this sounds familiar it is essentially the same idea behind the now defunct Total Information Awareness idea.
- The StrategyPage Predictive Market
- Like the Foresight Exchange, the StrategyPage gives you a sense of what it members thinks the odds are concerning a wide variety of political, military and economic events. The market does not allow you to resell shares, though and, while it is currently free, the plan is to begin charging for the service.
- Scirus
- A science specific search engine.
- Talk Digger
- This metasearch engine specializes in what bloggers are saying about a specific site. Type in a URL and the Talk Digger looks up what blogs have linked to a particular site and what they have to say. It seems to be a great way to stay on top of a rapidly developing story.
- scanR - Mobile Scan, Copy, Fax
- This online program is designed to take cameraphone pictures of documents and whiteboards, clean them up so you can read the text and turn then them into PDF files and email them to you.
- retrievr
- Retrievr (that's how they spell it) is a specialist search engine that allows you to draw a sketch of what you want and then search for pictures that fit the sketch.
- Springdoo
- Springdoo is a new service that allows you to "talk your e-mails". In other word, you call a number, record a message and the Springdoo system sends it to an e-mail adress. The service is currently free but you have to register for it.
- One Acorn
- A good starting place for information on critical and creative thinking skills.
- Windows Live Safety Center
- This site gives your computer a check for viruses and gets rid of junk on your hard drive. Particularly useful if you have an out of date anti-virus subscription.
- Blogging 101
- Blogging is a tool that can be used for collection and production purposes. Understnad this relatively new technology is the first step to using it. Ken Yarmosh, a fellow lensmaster, has done a pretty good job of assembling a wide variety of sites, books and advice to new bloggers.
- Blogging Starter Checklist
- Another good lens on blogging. This time the lens focuses on the things you need to do to get your blog up and running in the most successful way. Coupled with Bloggiing 101, you have a very good starter kit as a new blogger.
- Visual Thinking School
- A excellent lens that lays out much more than the basics of using visual thinking to improve virtually any process. A great place to start to learn about this analytic multiplier.
- Library Thing
- This site allows you to catalog your personal library online.
- Google Search Tips
- Some simple tips to help you search better and faster in Google.
- The Invisible Web
- Some neat sites and tricks for exploring the so-called deep or invisisble web.
- Internet Tutorials
- Don't think you are getting all you can out of the Internet? Not sure you understand all of the concepts? Check out these.
- MailBigFile.com
- This site allows you to upload a large file (up to one gig) and then sends an email to those who need to download it. I am a little hesitant about sending my files to a site like this and would not do so if it were proprietary in any way. It could be a very useful tool for a large, graphic intensive file or in an emergency.
- Picturecloud.com
- Picturecloud allows you to take pictures of an object from multiple different angles and then have them "sewn" together to form a seamless 360 degree image that can be viewed on any web page. For a small fee you can download the image for use in other applications. Potentially great tool for adding to a blog or making a presentation.
- ExpressPDF
- This is a wonderful service with a terrible flaw. There is no information about the organization that sponsors this site on the site! The "contact us" button has no info, the "privacy policy" has no info and there is no "about us" information. In some sense this makes me more comfortable as a real honeypot would, presumably, have at least bogus data to fool the less wary. In short, it is great way to create fast, good pdf files but use at your own risk.
- Programmable Web
- This amazing site lists a wide variety of available "mashups". For those of you not familiar with the term, a mashup is when you combine two web applications to get a new application. A good example of this type of thing is a combination of Google maps and Chicago crime stats, for example. This site keeps a list of many of the web-based applications and with what they have been combined -- all in an easy to navigate database.
- FeedYes.com
- If you like your news delivered as RSS feeds (is there any other way?) and hate it when a site does not provide a feed, then FeedYes is the answer. FeedYes gives RSS feeds to sites without feeds.
- The World Clock - Time Zones
- Do you know what time is in Tokyo now?
- World Time Zones
- Current time of 1000 world places, time zones of the world, date and time calculations.
- 10,000-Year Calendar
- The question whether your birthdays in 2045 are during the weekend is no more a problem!
- Distance calculator
- Quick way to find a distance between two places on the world.
- Metric and US Measurement Converter
- Easy convertion of measurements and metrics.
- Arabic search engines
- Helps to discover the Arabic world.
- Country Flags
- Flags of all countries in an alphabetic order.
- Search Me
- An interesting search engine that instead of usual text information about web sites displays their images. Very effective and interesting internet searching.
- International Zip Codes
- A source of zip codes and postal codes from around the world.
- Phonebook of the World
- A collection of phonebooks from different countries.
- Guide to Effective Searching of the Internet
- Shows how to easily and quickly find things in the World Wide Web.
- World Airport Codes
- Easy search of airport codes all over the world.
- iTools
- Quick access to a collection of different internet-based tools.
- BlogPulse
- Blogger Profiles allows users to find essential information about a specific blog or blogger. Find out who bloggers are and how much influence they wield.
- BlogPulse Conversation Tracker
- When a blogger publishes a post and other bloggers link to it, the original post (or "seed") becomes part of a conversation. What happens next is fascinating. From those seeds sprout other links, and so and and so on, until it creates an entire conversation. The nodes of the graph are posts and the arcs of the graph are permalink citations from post to post. BlogPulse Conversation Tracker provides a missing element to the blog world: a tool for assembling snapshots of weblog "conversations." It creates a threaded view of the conversation by performing a depth-first traversal of the conversation graph, starting from the seed post and visiting each node only once.
Language Tools
- Babelfish Translation Service
- Babelfish comes recommended by a couple of my favorite bloggers, Pritt and Kerti over at Shanghai, China (http://www.hiina.pri.ee/en/). Babelfish automatically translates a large number of languages including Chinese.
- Google Translate
- Google Translate does not cover quite as many languages as Babelfish but it does have the advantage of being immediately available in a Google Search.
- Free Online Translation Tools And Resources
- Another lens created with Squidoo that lists a number fo sites that offer free machine translation.
- Learn Mandarin Chinese
- A very good lens for anyone wishing to attempt a self-study course in Mandarin.
- Reading Tips
- 10 Tips to Improve Reading Speed & Reading Comprehension.
- American Sign Language Browser
- Translate english language words to American sign language symbols with full motion video for examples.
- Mango Languages
- Free, on-line language courses in 12 languages.
- Your Dictionary
- More than 1800 dictionaries for more than 250 languages. YourDictionary gives you definitions, thesaurus entries, spelling, pronunciation, and etymology results for your word. Alternatively, you can browse the English dictionary alphabetically or by related terms to find meanings and synonyms. In addition, YourDictionary provides resources to help you find the best dictionary and translation sites for French, Spanish, Italian, German and hundreds of other languages.
- Language Translation
- English, French, German, Danish, Spanish, Finnish, Czech, Italian & Portuguese
- Free Translation
- Easy and quick translation from/to English to/from Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portugues, Russian, Norwegian, Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese.
Speaking And Presentation Tools and Advice
- The Media Coach
- A lens on public speaking by a guy who makes a living at it. The podcasts are the best part of the site.
- Bad Charts
- This is a web page dedicated to showing what good and bad charts and graphs look like. I don't agree with all of the advice but there are a number of useful observations here.
- Powerpoint. Presentation. Design
- A well designed lens on Powerpoint presentations.
- How To Get A Standing Ovation
- Some decent advice on giving a presentation.
- Where You Can Find Good Images
- A good list on where you can find free or cheap stock images for your presentations/reports.
- Color Theory Overview
- There is nothing worse than a presentation where the colors are off. This site offers a good, basic tutorial in colors.
- Presenting Under Fire
- An excellent link list of good advice on how to deal with difficult siutations that commonly arise during a presentation.
- t\Typenow.net
- This site contains a number of movie-themed fonts available for free downloading.
- Eight Types Of People In Meetings
- This site contains an interesting analysis and some guidance on 8 different types of "problem" people who you can find in meetings.
- 250 Free Office Templates & Documents
- A list of 250 free MS Office templates and documents that you may find useful in your next project
Software
- Onfolio
- Onfolio was purchased by Microsoft and is now incorporated into their toolbar. Not only has the program lost some of its functionality, it no longer works with Firefox. If you have the old Onfolio keep it. If you are a Firefox user you will have to be satisfied with Scrapbook for now.
- Google Earth
- This is a must-have desktop application. It allows you to fly all over the earth, examining either terrain data or, where availaable, satellite/aerial imagery. The professional version ($$$) allows you to even create movies of your fly-over.
- The I2 Product Line
- I2 is famous for Analyst's Notebook, a program designed to help you visualize structured data in a number of useful ways. The company actually has a number of products available to help the analyst understand his or her data, however. While most of these products are pretty expensive, if you need this kind of power, this is the place to get it.
- Firefox
- Firefox is the only browser to use if you are serious about web based research. It is nearly completely customizable. The real power in the browser comes from adding extensions and scripts. You can add extensions easily and directly through Firefox. To add scripts you need the Greasemonkey extension and then follow the links to the hundreds of scripts that let you customize Firefox.
- PB Wiki
- PB Wiki is a very good, simple online wiki creator. Designed to be easy to use, it is an excellent place to start should one or several people see the value in pulling together a wiki on a certain subject.
- Blog Software Comparison Chart
- This is not software but rather a website that has comparisons of current software used in blogging.
- Google Pack
- Google has bundled a number of essential tools into a single package and then, to top it off, added an automatic updater. The package includes Google Earth, Picasa (the best photo organizer and simple photo editor out there), the Google Desktop (not as good as Yahoo's but still good), AdAware spyware finder, Adobe Reader 7.0 and more. If you have just purchased a new computer (particulary if it is a stripped own one), you could do far worse than immediately uploading the Google Pack.
- Portable Applications
- This site seeks to host a variety of open-source applications designed to fit onto a flash drive. Including Firefox and OpenOffice, these compact applications allow you to take all of your favorite applications and data with you on a flashdrive. To access the data or the applications, you simply plug the flash drive into a computer and all of your preferences, bookmarks, etc are right there. Using such a system also increases your security as the data you save is stored to your flash drive and not to the computer you are using. The site is good now but it has just been launched and will likely get better in the future.
- Fireant
- Fireant allows you to search, find and play videos from all over. It also allows you to subscribe to video blogs (or vlogs) directly through Fireant. It claims to have a built in BitTorrent program for fast downloads of large files and it is supposed to work with virtually any type of video file. My own experience with it is that it is slow but maybe I just need to tweak it some more.
- ACH 2.0
- The good people at the Palo Alto Research Center are making a user friendly version of a Java based ACH program available for free. If you understand ACH, you will be able to use this tool instantly. If you do not understand ACH, the tutorial will walk you through the basics of this classic intelligence analysis method.
- Many Eyes
- Free, on-line service which allows you to create interesting visualizations.
- Picnik
- Easy and very effective online image editing tool.
Hardware
Want a 1 Gig flashdrive for $30? Dealhack.com (which generates this feed) is the way to find it. Dealhack scans the big and not-so-big hardware providers for special deals and then puts the list out as an RSS feed. This section of the lens is set to pick up that feed and update it every 12 hours so check it often if you are looking for a particular piece of hardware.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byby kwheaton
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Intelligence Studies at Mercyhurst College (www.mciis.org).
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