I love lists of free/cheap directional resources [sites/approaches] because they expedite my secondary searching, allowing me to more effectively move on to whatever combination of primary research / humint / synthesis / analysis / recommendations etcetera a project calls for. I listed a few more foundational/functional ones already, but wonder what areas readers would more be most interested in seeing uploaded / maintained...
It's not like there aren't lists for many of these out there -- but they each have their own spin, and miss pieces... [Not that I would claim to be all inclusive, either..] And some are out of date. BUT... many lists focus on the "category" of the information like newspaper or directory -- as opposed to the need the source fills. Today, what originally would have be classified as a newspaper site now also offers shopping, or interest group communities, etc. The old boxes don't really provide adequate boundaries to capture what's out there.
Here are some I have planned -- albeit not all at once. I have the
basics, but I want to update them...
- Company rumor / employee venting
- Patents / intellectual property
- Other [non-IP] legal / regulatory information
- Reputation / brand / advertising etc
- Country-specific information
- Industry/Product -specific information
- Indentifying HUMINT sources & biographical background on same
- Private companies / subsidiaries / NGOs
- Specialized & meta-search engines, also consolidators
- Sources of free or inexpensive market research or extracts
- Web site monitors
- Publicly available data collected by government organizations -- which is not the same thing as government information. Ditto data from NGOs.
- Great widgets
- Financial information
- Ratings / Rankings
- Benchmarks & best practices
- User-generated content that actually has business applications
- Demographic data
- Statistics, not elsewhere classified -- especially when times series / trending available...
Maybe I'm a bibliographer at heart... But really, what really comes to mind is that old perfume commercial. My version would go something like this....
I can find all the info...
Synthesize it concise ....
Add analysis & insights so nice...
'Cause I rock research -- hire me!
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