The Elsevier Business Intelligence Investments in Innovation Show (I 3) held last week in Boston, MA (June 23-25, 2009) was impressive with early-stage medical device, healthcare and diangostics companies from all over North America present.  But what was not impressive was the skimpy and unconvincing "markets and competition" section in the show handout. Market size measurements is the standard measurement ruler against which all of a company's activities should be measured, yet in many cases, there were no authoritative sources identified in the company summaries and in most cases no segmentation or real thought.  This certainty was an eye-opener, especially since the real purpose for most of the firms was to attract investment.  More critical analysis would have been thought appropriate.

Social media continues ... A few of the many new search related innovations exclusively devoted to Twitter:

Tweetmeme: Link searching via Twitter.  As its name suggests, this UK-based Tweetmeme only searches Twitter, looking at keywords, article relevance, level or retweets and a tweet's timestamp ... http://www.tweetmeme.com. Use Tweetmeme to easily learn how to add twitter to your blogs and websites..

Twazzup: Twitter search plus some extras.  Like many of its competitors, Twazzup focuses on creating a real-time stream of tweets, but it gives a few extras like widely shared links and photos.  It also suggests influential Twitteres.  http://www.twazzup.com is the place to visit.

Social media monitoring and management dashboards are being developed to help companies seeking assistance with customer intelligence and market segmentation.  It is often too labor-intensive to attempt to search blogs, podcasts, and other social media sites looking for keyword of interest, on one's own.  There are more than 75,000,000 blogs.  Yet given the need to not only monitor your constituencies, influencers and end-users, social media sites are rich in content, editorial and opinion. Aggregation of multiple sources and sites combined with (human) analysis can be revealing, and helpful in planning or revising strategies and to ensure proper messaging and branding.

How would you search for a missing person?  A famous case ....

It depends so much on what kind of information you have to go on.  If only a name, it can be very, very difficult. If you have a social security number, a date of birth, a last known address, it helps alot.  If the name is uncommon, you're much more likely to find a person.  A few years back there was a most unusual case involving Stanford University and its need to find the heirs of Willima Saroyan, the author.  No one knew his heirs, but this was found in his will in Fresno County.  A break came in the search when it was learned the granddaughters' names: Strawberry and Cream Saroyan.

There were only a handful of Strawberrys in the United States and only three Creams.  They had not changed their last names through marriage. 

Most of the time using the Web is a waste of time, even with the likes of www.pipl.com and other names search engines.