September's Research Helpline covers private company research, new product development and an article from MD&DI (Medical Devices & Diagnostics Industry) on Research Essentials, and more!

Managing information is not given the same prominence in organizations, as say, managing finances or managing staff.  Data and information are considered the cornerstones of knowledge, yet analysis of information is fleeting; this is the case even if knowledge has been replaced hard assets as the basis of competitiveness. 

Research Helpline is the monthly e-mail bulletin with helpful information on topics of interest.  This month, International business information you can use plus Newsworthy medical information you may have missed are the topics.  

Blog research is primary research, useful for business, industry and competitive intelligence-gathering, though often overlooked.  Blog research is primary research, since you're reading the original author's writings, thoughts, analysis, commentary.  Blogs vary in quality, content, accuracy and frequency.  Much like other portions of the Internet, the best advise when doing research through blogs, is to check the source to make sure it is authoritative, relevant and verified.  Blog research should be used as one source and not the only source. 

Fee or free ?  Why would anyone purchase content when so much is available for free, just a click away?  There's never been a time where there's so much information available, or provided by anonymous and/or helpful strangers in social networking sites, through search engines, government sites, Wikipedia, etc. ...

Reliable online resources from the Middle East are few and far between.  A new service from Infosphere, a Swedish information firm (www.infosphere.se) provides reports and databases that help fill this void.  (see inside, for more including new healthcare choices, and political initiatives ...)

China's Medical Device Market .... U.S. exports to China in medical equipment and supplies have had a 34.6% growth rate from 2002 to 2003, compared with a 9.39% growth rate in the export of these goods to the rest of the world.  The rate is also faster than the growth rate of total U.S. exports to ......

If you find information storage and retrieval to be a challenge, you're not alone.  The problem of "can't find it when you need it"  is well-documented by IDC, Reuters, LexisNexis, Working Council of CIOs, and others.  Information management - the organization, reorganization and effective retrieval of information - is a universal problem and getting worse.   But there is help!

(see inside)

The top four countries in medical devices are United States, Japan, Germany and France.  But learning about the Japanese market is no small undertaking. 

Access to Japanese publicly and privately traded companies is often listed only in Japanese ...

(see inside for more information Japanese and Chinese company research, research on practical applications for what matters most in the VC funding decision, and more ...

March 6, 2008 (Franklin, MA). When a leading Massachusetts-based contract manufacturer, Optimum Technologies, Inc. needed a preliminary assessment of a market entry point for a new light-emitting optical cancer detection technology, CEO & Founder, Randy Chinnock, turned to Richard Halpern at Halpern Info Services to assemble a team of expert information research professionals to do the project. (cont'd)

Shhh!  Somebody may be listening!  Well, now there's a Search engine for Message Boards from SeattlePI.com ( an online-only Seattle magazine) and it's known as Dipity - www.dipiti.com/.

Dipiti indexes over 2300 communities and almost 29 million conversations organized into health, (cont'd) ....

This month in Research Helpline the focus is on public opinion, polling services and attitude research.  It's essential to know the perceptions, values and beliefs of consumers, if you plan to reach them in your communications.

Public relations firms create "buzz" around a product to get media attention, to get customers talking and thinking.....

Information that is not public record is not necessarily private.

Two subjects are covered this month -- Public records research for business and individual research, and two alternative search engines -- one that uses natural language queries and the other that is very visual and creative. 

Information might become public through several legitimate means.  Two such means are disclosure in a public record as in a bankrupty and divorce. The EDGAR database (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval system), from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) contains public company filings.

Further proof of the explosion of content -- According to PQ Media (Stamford, CT), there are now at least 21 platforms for accessing content (Video on Demand, instant messaging, e-mail, game console, blogs, PDA, MP3, etc.).  Ten years ago there were only eight (newspapers, TV, radio, etc.). Multi-tasking amongst the different media platforms seems to be the norm for some age groups ...

When Ray Tomlinson, principal scientist at BBN (Cambridge, MA) sent the first email message in 1971, little did he know that the Internet would become a shoppping mecca for millions of browsers and buyers worldwide.