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Title:
Mining For Gold On The Internet: How to find investment and financial information on the Internet
Review:
The book's subtitle, "How to Find Investment and Financial Information
on the Internet", tells it all. This is an exhaustive source for all
kinds of financial information, covering everything from saving for
college to day trading. Mary Ellen Bates is an expert searcher of
long standing, and offers clear explanations every step of the way.
This book is aimed at people who are already using the Web, although
they need not be experts to understand it. There are explanations of
general directory sites such as Yahoo and About, repeated in capsule
form throughout the book for those who dip in here and there. Unlike
many other Internet guides, this book also describes helpful
proprietary sites on services such as AOL and Compuserve.
The first chapter provides generally useful tips, such as how to
search back up through the directories at Yahoo (find a known site,
see what directory it's in, and look at other things in that
directory). Bates also mentions a few things that everyone should
keep in mind when searching, such as considering who would care about
a topic enough to create a Web page about it, and evaluating a Web
site for bias.
When she arrives at the main purpose of the book, i.e., finding
investment and financial information, Bates is very specific. She
says, "When you get to this site, click on this, scroll down until
you see that, click on it, and read the section headed thus." Most
financial information sites are fairly stable, so this should be
useful, but could be confusing if the site has changed since this book
was published.
The second chapter covers broad sources of financial information such
as portals, and recommends some fantasy investing sites for practice.
In ensuing chapters, both free and for-pay information sources are
discussed, comparing them and explaining why a for-pay source might be
worth the money. There are chapters on choosing and analyzing stocks,
and information on bonds, mutual funds, and other investments.
Bates doesn't stop there, though. There is information on monitoring
investment-related news, finding company-specific information, and
discussing these with other investors via chat rooms, mailing lists,
discussion groups, and message boards. Specific information on
finding funds for college covers non-Web resources such as one's own
membership organizations or alma mater, school counselors, military
service, and much more. There is a chapter on investment fraud which
could be worth the price of the book all by itself to those who tend
to believe everything they see on the Web, and finally, a chapter on
choosing an e-broker to handle all these details for you.
The book ends with a useful list of all URLs mentioned by chapter, and
a well-organized index.
Much of this is US-centric. Some might be useful to investors in
other countries, but everything on government information sources and
laws and regulations concerning investment is based on US practices.
With that caveat, however, this book should be useful to people
wishing to use the Internet to manage their finances.
Free Pint Reviewer:
Caryn Wesner-Early is a librarian, contracted to the US Patent and Trademark Office Scientific and Technical Information Center. Her interests include reading and cats, and she maintains a list of
Christmas-related mysteries at <http://www.321website.com/members/home/data/caryn/chrismys.html>.
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