Phil Bradley trawls the internet to find the answers to this month's readers' queries.
Q Do you ever make up the questions in your column?
A I have lost count of the number of times that I’ve been asked this question, so I suppose it’s time I answered it! No, I don’t make up the questions; I usually get sent one or two a month to the email address at the bottom of the column. I also get asked a lot of questions on the courses that I run, or sometimes people just write to me with some and I’ll use those as well, so I never need to make any up. I do try and answer all the questions sent to me, though they don’t always make it into the column for various reasons.
Q I’ve discovered that someone is using a logo that I created without my permission. They’re using it on eBay to promote their own products, and have ignored my requests to stop. Is there anything I can do?
A First, contact eBay and let them know that this is happening. They may ban that particular user for copyright violation, but in my experience eBay isn’t always as quick off the mark as they should be. Since this individual is also using their eBay auctions to publicise their site, and that site is included in the Google index, you could also approach them with a view to having it removed (more information on this at www.google.com/dmca.html).
Finally, a quick search on their domain identified that it was hosted by NTL, so you could also talk to them. I wish you good luck though – in my experience it can be quite time consuming to get a satisfactory result.
Q What are the top search engines in the UK?
A It’s difficult to be precise, since it does depend on how you define ‘top’. However, if we use ‘most used’ as our criteria, NetImperative (www.netimperative.com/2005/03/16/top_10_search) did some research on this (unfortunately about a year ago now, but I think the results will still be valid) that has the top engines as: Google (both .uk and .com versions) with 71.03 per cent; MSN UK with 7.86 per cent; and Yahoo UK with 5.5 per cent.
Site of the month
My site of the month is ArchSearch – The Defence of Britain database. I was watching a series on television about the ‘real Dad’s Army’ and got quite intrigued about how many pill boxes etc are still in existence and found this site at http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/resources.html?dob
It’s fascinating and has a comprehensive database of the 20th-century military landscape of the UK. It’s worth pointing out to any local history users of your library, and also fun to check out your local area.
Updated: 28 March 2006