How to share your Personalized Google (Legal Competitive Intelligence) News Page with Others - Free Share of Google Redeemable for Law Firm Competitive Intelligence

Yesterday, Google released a customizable Home Page, which Tim Stanley reviewed in a prior post on this blog. This may be the first time that I've been disappointed with a Google product because it just wasn't customizable to the degree that I expected. Specifically, I was looking for customized news feeds—like the ones I can set-up on Google News.

In the screenshot below, you will see a baker mckenzie news module on the left-hand side and a "medical devices" patent module on the right-hand side. Howeer, I cannot customize or remove the Top Stories module.

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I've scrolled further down the page and took another screenshot. On the left-hand side, the law firm theme continues with stories on jones day and skadden arps. On the right-hand side, my practice area theme continues with stories on trade secret and "center for devices and radiological health".

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This is another way to gather competitive intelligence on law firms and news affecting your practice areas. As for the free share of Google, you may be asking what's that all about. Well, at the bottom of the customized Google News page, there's a link to Share your customized news with a friend.

So, instead of just sharing screenshots, I will freely share of My Google News. If you want to edit any of the modules, click on the Make this page your customized news link at the top of page. Now, if anyone really has a free share of Google, let me know.

Google Releases Beta of Personalized Google Home Page - Google Local Marketing

Hi Friends,

Google released their (your) personalized Home Page today, allowing you to add your GMail subject lines, "personalized" Weather, Stocks, News and of course recent Slashdot posts.

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Google's interface is nice (better than MyYahoo!) for moving things around or editing individual modules on your actual personalized Google home page.



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The content choices are sparse. Stock, Weather and News - the basics. Google does not allow you to add in RSS or ATOM feeds (yet) like Ken's version of his MyYahoo! legal desk top from his legal competitive intelligence post. But just give Google time... :)

To a certain extent, the personalized Home Page can be seen as a way for Google to get local information about you for localized advertising. One more move into the Yellow Pages market by the number 1 Internet Company. Your zip code for the weather is really the key personalized information for localized ads, allowing Google to send local ads to your searches, just like Yahoo! does to MyYahoo! users (although Google is not currently using your weather zip code for that purpose... yet).

For law firms it is one more reason to update your local Google listing at the Google Local Business Center.

Here are the Google Blog posts on the new Personalized Home Page Post 1 | Post 2 and here is the link to the Google Personalized Home Page.

Peace - Tim

iTunes :: The Train Song, Hot Burritos! - The Flying Burrito Brothers Anthology 1969-1972 by The Flying Burrito Brothers

Justia Free Sixty: 60 Essential Free Law Firm Competitive Intelligence Resources 45-60

Competitive Intelligence for Transactional Lawyers

Venture Capital

  1. Yahoo! - Venture Capital. Offers venture capital news. As I've discussed in a prior tip, you can even set-up a customized news feed to target a specific venture capital firm. For example, here's an RSS news feed for Draper Fisher Jurvetson. addyahoo.gif
  2. MoneyTree Survey Report. PricewaterhouseCoopers compiles a quarterly study of venture capital investment activity in the United States.
  3. BusinessWeek Online - Deal Flow. BusinessWeek blog on venture capital and startups. Also available by RSS. addyahoo.gif

Mergers & Acquisitions

  1. Yahoo! - Mergers & Acquisitions. M&A news feed.
  2. CNNMoney - M&A Databank. Features reports on recent M&A deals, including transaction details and information on the target and acquiror.
  3. BNET - Mergers and Acquisitions. Features RSS feed of mergers and acquisitions updates. addyahoo.gif BNET also provides an RSS feed for mergers and acquisitions white papers. addyahoo.gif
  4. Onecle - Mergers Agreements. Features mergers and acquisitions agreements that were disclosed in SEC filings.

Initial Public Offerings

  1. MSN Money - IPO Center Offers IPO filings, highlights and news.
  2. Yahoo! IPOs Features latest IPO pricings, filings, withdrawals and news.
  3. Hoover's Online - IPO Central Features IPO filings, calendar and more.

Think Globally, Act Globally

Despite the election-year demagoguery over outsourcing and Benedict Arnold CEOs, the wave of globalization has continued unabated. As companies continue to augment their existing workforce with lower-cost help from overseas, law firms are frequently needed to help their clients deal with legal, business and compliance issues in an international marketplace. Here are some resources to help you keep in touch with your overseas branches or clients.

  1. Yahoo! - International News. Features financial news.
  2. CNN/Money - World Business. Features international business news. CNN.com International - Business News also offers international business news with different stories than the CNN/Money web site. Here's an RSS feed for CNNMoney - News/International addyahoo.gif
  3. Yahoo! - European Business & Economy. Features an RSS feed of European business news. addyahoo.gif
  4. BBC News - Business. Features international business news, as well as an RSS feed. addyahoo.gif
  5. International Herald Tribune - Business. Features international business news, as well as an RSS feed. addyahoo.gif

WaRSSington DC

A few years ago, the Supreme Court finally joined the other branches of the US Government with their own web site, which was a big breakthrough for that conservative institution. Nowadays, government web sites are more or less taken for granted. The latest technological push is towards implementing RSS feeds for press releases or other government announcements. Can't wait until the Supreme Court starts offering an RSS feed for court opinions. Until then, here are some teasers to whet your appetite.

  1. U.S. Food and Drug Administration Features RSS News Feeds from the FDA and the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). Includes feeds for CDRH Recently Approved Devices, FDA Talk Papers, FDA Recalls, Withdrawals and Alerts.
  2. U.S. District Court - Eastern District of New York This court offers an RSS feed for judgments, orders and complaints. I hope this is a preview of things to come for all courts. However, you need a PACER account to view the underlying documents. Also, for some reason, this feed isn't working with My Yahoo right now.

For more US Government RSS feeds, be sure to read Robert Ambrogi's LawSites, in which he recently introduced us to FirstGov's U.S. Government RSS Library. Thanks for the tip!

This completes the Justia Free Sixty. I hope this resource was useful for all of you. We will be creating a new law firm competitive intelligence web site that includes all of these resources, as well as other useful sites that didn't make the original list.

Justia Auto Recalls Center - RSS Feeds of Recalls for Every Car Make Model and Year

Hi Friends,

We officially released our brand new Justia Auto Recalls Center this week (legal blog readers of course had advanced notice - Bob Ambrogi's LawSites [ Post ], Sabrina Pacifici' BeSpacific [ Post ] ).

The Justia Auto Recalls Center URL is: http://auto-recalls.justia.com

For the Auto Recalls Center, we took the 50,000+ recalls and broke them down by make-model-year for each recall and then added RSS feeds for the auto recall database as a whole, each auto make, each auto make-model and each auto make-model-year.



Justia Auto Recalls Center

Finding recalls for your car is easy. Starting from the Justia Auto Recalls Home page browse to your auto's Make, then Model and then Year.



2002 Honda Accord Auto Recalls

For example the 2002 Honda Accord's there are two recalls.



2002 Honda Accord Auto Recalls

To track any new Auto Recalls for the 2002 Honda Accord, I could subscribe to the 2002 Honda Accord RSS Feed with a news reader, or another RSS tool (RSS readers and tools) or add the RSS feed to....



MyYahoo! - with Justia Auto Recall Feed

...MyYahoo!. If there is a new recall, it will show up in my 2002 Honda Accord Recall module. Of course there are thousands of other RSS feeds for auto make-model-years, so feel free to track the recalls for your car(s) :)

Peace - Tim

Here is our press release "New Justia Web Site Enables Consumers to Easily Track Auto Recalls: Auto Recalls Center Provides RSS Feeds for Recalls of Every Auto, Make, Model and Year".

iTunes :: Pink Cadillac, 18 Tracks by Bruce Springsteen

Justia Free Sixty: 60 Essential Free Law Firm Competitive Intelligence Resources 40-44

If you have been following Justia's Free Sixty: 60 Essential Free Law Firm Competitive Intelligence Resource, by now, you should have realized that I love My Yahoo, RSS feeds and inside competitive intelligence. Previously, I had written about using job listings and material contracts from SEC filings for competitive intelligence analysis. Today, I will share with you another great web site with tons of inside competitive intelligence.

Have you ever scoured a competitor's web site to look for product or personnel information? As companies have grown wise to this practice, they've increasingly restricted the amount of information that is being publicly disclosed on their corporate web sites. Even some law firms had adopted this practice and have removed their associates from the firm's web site to deter recruiters from poaching their human assets. However, there is a way around this corporate firewall.

  1. LinkedIn. A while back, social networking web sites were the latest fad. A number of them sprouted up for various purposes: career advancement, business networking, dating, etc. LinkedIn falls into the business category and offers registered members access to a network of business contacts. The basic premise of LinkedIn is that each member has a list of trusted friends, who are members. In turn, each of your friends will also have a list of trusted friends, who are members as well. So, when you are looking for a person with a particular interest or skill set, LinkedIn will match you with your friends or friends of your friends who meet your criteria.

    Now, for the inside competitive intelligence. Because each LInkedIn member may also provide a resumé, you can view all contacts from a certain company to see what products their employees are working on. LinkedIn will also tell you if your proposed contact is open to employment opportunities elsewhere.
  2. Greedy Associates Board. The Greedy board is the destination for those seeking the latest law firm gossip and rumors. Associates on this board frequently talk about law firm culture, salaries and other issues.
  3. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Here's a 2-for-1 deal. Patent filings are another source of inside competitive intelligence. See what products your competitors have in their pipeline. You can also visit the web site of the European Patent Office to see what folks are filing across the Atlantic. And, I won't even count this one as part of the free 60 law firm competitive intelligence resources.
  4. FreshPatents.com. FreshPatents.com offers an RSS feed of "patent application highlights." Of course, this is not a complete feed of all patent applications, just those that are "popular, interesting, innovative, weird and/or kooky"— whatever that means. addyahoo.gif
  5. Moreover Technologies - IP and Patents News. Moreover Technologies offers an RSS feed on intellectual property and patents news. If you want something more targeted, you can always set-up a customized IP news feed based on targeted IP keywords using Yahoo News. addyahoo.gif

Stamps.com Photo Stamps Return! - Market your Law Firm with official US Postage Photo Stamp

Hi Friends,

Let's take a small break from the incredibly useful free stratrgic intelligence resources for law firms that Mr. Ken Chan is providing, and get back to the important things in life - puppies and photo stamps... and the implications for actionable legal marketing.

Stamps.com is relaunching their personalized US postage photo stamps. You can once again use your own photos to make custom official US postage photo stamps. Law Firms can use photo stamps as an inexpensive way to market their services (the stamp cost is about 1.6x - 2.3x the price of postage, with additional higher volume discounts (see photo stamps pricing)).

Sheba wearing a Justia Shirt Stamp

We of course use photo stamps to show off our puppy, Little Sheba the Hug Pug (in a Justia t-shirt :). There are many different Sheba stamps (see Sheba Stamps) made during the trial period last year of the Stamps.com's photo stamps service. We will be making more Little Sheba photo stamps soon!

Law firms (or legal service companies) may want to use their law firm logo, pictures of their attorneys, or maybe even their own office dog (will we see a VersusLaw Rex or PaperStreet Saki dog stamp, soon? My guess is yes :).

In any case, Stamps.com Photo stamps is an inexpensive way for law firms and legal service companies to promote their brand to their clients and potential clients.

Peace - Tim

Also Stamps.com Photo stamps are great for non-legal marketing personal use as well... use them to send postal mail to mom and dad :)

iTunes :: Good Morning Starshine, The Sunshine Collection by Oliver

Justia Free Sixty: 60 Essential Free Strategic Intelligence Resources for Your Law Firm 25-39

Last month, I had written about GoogSpy in I Spy Competitive Intelligence for Law Firm Marketing Consultants. At the time, I had reviewed GoogSpy's features without offering some insight on how you can use their data in your strategic planning. Let me share some of my ideas now.

  1. GoogSpy. GoogSpy offers a tremendously powerful strategic intelligence tool. The Ranks in the Top 10 on these Search Terms section tells you where a web site currently ranks for certain keywords. So, instead of manually entering keywords into Google to see how your web site or a competitor's web site ranks, a simple search using GoogSpy takes care of this tedious task. Another advantage of using GoogSpy is that you may discover that your web site is ranking highly for certain keywords that you did not intend to target. The disadvantage of using GoogSpy is that its data set is not complete. So, not all web sites or keyword combinations appear in the GoogSpy database. You may also consider optimizing portions of your own site to capture your competitor's higher ranking keywords. Just be careful that you don't end up de-optimizing your site for your existing keywords in the process.

    The Pays for these Google Adwords section tells you which keywords are valuable to a web site—at least valuable enough that the web site is willing to part with cash in order to buy that traffic stream. Now you know where your competition's product focus and attention resides and what audience they are targeting. How you choose to respond is up to you.

My Yahoo—Your Legal Desktop

The reason why I'm a huge fan of My Yahoo—besides the fact that it is free—is because My Yahoo truly allows me to customize my legal desktop. At this point, you may be scratching your head and wondering, "When did Yahoo become a legal portal?" And, you are right. Yahoo is not a legal portal or a medical portal or a venture capital portal. However, My Yahoo does offer such a customizable system that I can configure the content to be focused on any topic that I want, whether that is law, medicine or even venture capital. Furthermore, I'm not locked into just using their proprietary content sets. So long as a third-party web site offers an RSS feed, I can incorporate that feed into my legal desktop.

Legal News

A number of free legal news sites are available. I've also provided a button so that you can easily add their RSS feeds, if available, to My Yahoo.

  1. bizjournals.com - Legal Services Features news about the legal services industry from local business journals. addyahoo.gif
  2. JURIST - Legal News and Research. JURIST offers separate RSS feeds for legal news, legal documents, and videos. I've provided a link to add the legal news RSS feed to My Yahoo. addyahoo.gif
  3. Law.com. Features legal news and information. addyahoo.gif
  4. LexisNexis Mealey Publications - Legal News via RSS. LexisNexis offers free (gasp!) RSS feeds for legal news. They also provide individual feeds for different practice areas, including insurance, products liability, litigation, intellectual property and more. While reading the news headlines and summaries is free, you do need a paid subscription to view the full-text of any articles or cases.
  5. Moreover Technologies - Law News. addyahoo.gif
  6. Virtual Chase Features RSS feed of current news. From Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll LLP. addyahoo.gif
  7. Yahoo! News - Full Coverage. Yahoo offers news stories, feature articles, opinions & editorials and related web sites on Personal Bankruptcy Law, Corporate Governance, Intellectual Property and Labor & Workplace. While Yahoo does not offer pre-set RSS feeds for these topics, you can set-up a custom RSS news feed. Yahoo does offer a Supreme Court RSS feed though. addyahoo.gif
  8. CNN - Law Center. CNN also has a Supreme Court News page, but no RSS feed for Supreme Court news only. addyahoo.gif
  9. NPR - Legal Affairs. NPR provides RSS feeds of law-related radio programs. addyahoo.gif
  10. Jaffe Legal News Service - Law Firm News. Offers RSS feeds for top stories addyahoo.gif , law firm news addyahoo.gif and breaking news addyahoo.gif .
  11. C-SPAN - America and the Courts. Features videos from recent programs, court documents, news and more.
  12. Online NewsHour - Supreme Court Watch. Watch segments from NewsHour with Jim Lehrer online.

Lawyer Blogs

Of course, fellow lawyers are also great sources for legal news, especially if they blog. Here are two examples. One covers the U.S. Supreme Court and the other covers New Jersey law.

  1. SCOTUSblog. Commentary and news on the U.S. Supreme Court. From Goldstein & Howe, P.C. addyahoo.gif
  2. New Jersey Law Blog. Provides timely information on recently published court decisions, enacted legislation and news which impact businesses in New Jersey. From Stark & Stark. addyahoo.gif

Remember, if you can't find a relevant RSS feed, you can always create it. I've just come across an even easier way to create RSS news feeds on Yahoo. Start from the Yahoo! Search page and enter your keywords. I entered "California Supreme Court." The News Stories column on the left-hand side displays matching news stories. On the right-hand side, there is an Add your news search to My Yahoo link and button. Clicking on either will add the RSS feed to My Yahoo.

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Justia Free Sixty: 60 Essential Free Actionable Intelligence Resources for Your Law Firm 12 - 24

What is actionable intelligence? For strategic planners, actionable intelligence means insight into the future business plans of a competitor. Imagine being able to see your competitor's product road map months or even years before their product is ready for release. During this period, you have time to properly assess the competitive threat and defend your business kingdom accordingly by widening your competitive moat or erecting higher barriers to entry. However, there's a big difference between offering buzzwords and offering solutions. Unless you have an insider working for you, how will your law firm get its hands on actionable intelligence?

  1. Yahoo! HotJobs. Many people visit employment web sites to explore new career opportunities. And, that's how employers and recruiters would like you to use them. However, savvy strategists have long realized that job listings provide a trove of actionable intelligence regarding a competitor's future plans. What projects are your competitors staffing for? Which companies are developing products similar to yours? Yahoo! HotJobs knows, and it'll even compile an RSS feed of the results for you. I guess you do have an insider working for you after all.
  2. Work.com. Like Yahoo! HotJobs, Work.com also offers an RSS feed of job search listings. However, you have to copy and paste the URL instead of having a handy button to just add the feed to My Yahoo. You can experiment with targeting a specific company, combining a company name with a job title, or even focusing on a unique set of keywords specifically relevant to your own products.

Industries

If your practice is focused on serving a particular industry, staying up-to-date on industry trends and challenges could not be simpler.

  1. Yahoo! - Industry Center. For background research, Yahoo covers industry news, statistics and profiles, as well as top performing companies within the industry. Yahoo also provides an earnings calendar to track upcoming events.
  2. bizjournals.com - Industries & Communities. bizjournals.com aggregates news articles by industry from different local business journals. They even offer a My Industries custom page where they will display news headlines from industries you have selected.
  3. MSN Money - News by Industry. MSN offers a basic news feed of industry news.

RSS Feeds

  1. BNET - White Papers RSS Feeds by Job Function and Industry. BNET offers white papers that span a broad range of job functions and industries. This is another great resource that you can feed into My Yahoo. You have to register in order to read the white papers though.
  2. Moreover Technologies - Free RSS News Feeds Listing. Moreover offers news feeds by industry.
  3. bizjournals.com - RSS Feeds. bizjournals.com also offers RSS feeds of local news and industry news. They've conveniently included an Add to My Yahoo link to simplify the process of adding content to your My Yahoo page.

On this page, I'm tracking jobs that include the keyword section 508, commercial real estate development white papers, consumer non-durable news, Atlanta local business news, and accounting and consulting headlines. You can customize your My Yahoo page to match your industry, location, and competitors too.

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Most Favored Nation

When you are preparing to structure a major transaction, you would really like to know what terms your negotiating partner has offered other parties before. This time, you can't count on the HR Director to post actionable intelligence online to tip you off. You need a different insider.

  1. SEC - EDGAR Company Search. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission offers real-time filings by company name, ticker symbol, location, and SIC Code.
  2. Onecle- Sample Contracts and Business Forms. Onecle has compiled a database of material contracts extracted from SEC filings. This collection is both searchable and browsable, and includes employment agreements, services agreements, license agreements, manufacturing agreements, severance agreements and more. This is the insider source for corporate contracts and other actionable intelligence.
  3. PwC - EdgarScan PricewaterhouseCoopers offers a different twist on SEC filings. Their focus is on financial data, which they've extracted and may be displayed as an MS Excel spreadsheet or as a chart.
  4. SEC Info. SEC Info offer yet another spin on SEC filings. This site includes both SEC EDGAR and CSA SEDAR securities filings, and also includes SEC-deleted filings. Why would a company request that the SEC delete a filing? Because there was either an error in the filing or the company inadvertently disclosed something that it now wishes to redact. So, even when the SEC deleted a copy of a filing from its own site, you may be able to find an archival copy on SEC Info.

RSS Feeds

  1. EDGAR Index - Free RSS Feed Filing Alerts. EDGAR Index offers filing alerts for IPOs, quarterly reports, annual reports and insider trading.

Well, this concludes today's edition of the Justia Free Sixty: 60 Essential Free Actionable Intelligence Resources for Your Law Firm. I hope the web sites that I shared with you will prove useful in your practice. Stay tuned because I have 36 more law firm actionable intelligence tips on the way.

Quick Tip: Using Custom News Feeds to Compile Strategic Intelligence

In a previous post, I had written about setting up a custom RSS news feed through Yahoo News. I'll lead you through the set-up process since it isn't entirely intuitive.

Starting at the Yahoo! News - RSS page, scroll down until you reach the Create your own RSS news feeds field. In the snapshot below, I've highlighted it in yellow to help you locate it.

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In the search field, enter the keywords for matching news articles you wish to retrieve. I've entered age discrimination in employment act in my example. Clicking on the search button then takes me to an XML data page. Copy the entire URL of this XML data page from the address bar.

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Return to My Yahoo! and look for the Add Content link.

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Clicking on the Add Content link takes you to the Add Content page. Look to the right of the Find button for the Add RSS by URL link.

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This takes you to the RSS Add Page. Paste the URL from the XML data page into the URL field and click on the Add button. This takes you to a confirmation page which displays a sample of your customized news feed. Click on the Add to My Yahoo! button and you're done.

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Now, I can glimpse the headlines for news articles involving morrison foerster and age discrimination in employment act every time I launch My Yahoo.

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Justia Free Sixty: 60 Essential Free Competitive Intelligence Resources for Your Legal Desktop 1 - 11

To succeed in today's business environment, you must know more about your own business than your competitors do. And, you must understand more about your clients' businesses, than your clients do. So, how can you keep abreast of changes in your competitive business landscape?

The first challenge is identifying sources of competitive intelligence. Thankfully, the amount of business intelligence available on the internet continues to grow. However, you must be able to effectively channel this flow of information to avoid drowning in an ocean of data.

To help you harness the power of the internet, Justia has compiled a list of 60 essential free competitive intelligence resources. We'll introduce you to new sources of actionable intelligence, as well as new twists on ways to use web sites with which you are already familiar.

  1. My Yahoo. My Yahoo heads this list because it offers a tremendous breadth of customized content with a clean interface. Furthermore, you can now place additional content modules into My Yahoo—beyond the default set provided—by taking advantage of RSS feeds, some of which we will discuss below. With customized stock quotes, business news and RSS feeds, there's no reason why My Yahoo shouldn't be your legal desktop.
  2. Google. Google your company, Google your competitors, or Google your clients. With over 8 billion web pages indexed, Google will likely provide you with some tasty morsel of information.
  3. Yahoo News. If you're just skimming the headlines of Yahoo! News, you haven't fully tapped into this essential resource. Yahoo News - RSS allows you to create custom news feeds based on search terms you've identified. You can then read these in an RSS reader or view them on My Yahoo!. Look at my Morrison Foerster news feed module on My Yahoo. This is an easy way to keep up with press coverage of your company, your clients or even your competitors.

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  1. Google News. Google News doesn't offer RSS feeds, but you can set-up a Google Alert, which is similar in concept to the e-mail-based Yahoo Alerts. Given a choice though, I much prefer updates by RSS feed instead of e-mail. Don't like seeing too crowded an inbox.

Company Background Reports

The first four web sites are great starting points. Let's now turn to specific data sets for more in-depth intelligence. The first category is company background reports, which includes corporate profiles and financial data. Here, a number of web sites provide this basic data for free.

  1. Yahoo! Finance For publicly-traded companies, Yahoo offers stock quotes, stock charts, news, company profiles, competitor data, industry data, analyst coverage information, ownership data and financial statements—all for free.
  2. Hoover's Online Hoover's provides company fact sheets, news and financials on selected companies for free. Hoover's also offers additional business data, such as officers and employees, D&B reports and corporate family trees on a subscription basis.
  3. CNNMoney - Company Research CNNMoney offers stock quotes, stock charts, earnings estimates, insider trading data, SEC filings, financials and news. It also provides news feeds from CNN/Money, Dow Jones, press releases and Fortune.
  4. MSN Money Offers much of the same content as above in a less attractive interface.

RSS Feeds

  1. BNET - Company Updates RSS Feeds BNET features news updates for selected major companies.
  2. Yahoo - Company News via RSS Generates an URL for publicly-traded companies in the RSS format. My Yahoo already allows you to subscribe to company news as a default feature. This alternative lets you see the same content using an RSS news reader.
  3. Moreover Technologies - RSS News Feeds Moreover features news feeds by company.

11 down. 49 to go. Stay tuned for the next installment.