Software tools for technology watch

On Nov. 19 I had the pleasure of attending the day Software for strategic intelligence and surveillance: A critical analysis which offered Infocenter. Organized by REDIT, with the collaboration of AIMPLAS where the activity took place, Oscar Maranon Infocenter systems manager, made the technical part of the Network of Technological Institutes of the Valencian an introduction to the main software tools for that we can serve during the development of Technology Watch (VT).

During the talk, besides the traditional brief explanation of what the VT and its main objectives, influenced the importance of the human part of the monitoring, analysis of data collected, the flight of seeking to make an extensive collection information and the need to focus the searches on specific aspects of what you want to monitor. The day was the sight of Vigilance where a small financial investment in software can perform a task very efficiently, avoiding the large investments in software products more complex and with greater functionality.

Although, obviously, there is a fairly wide range of software that perform similar functions, Oscar stopped in the following programs to perform various monitoring tasks:

• Website-Watcher. Essentially, it aims to search for updates and changes within the websites of any kind, highlighting the changes and can point out various aspects of the changes to warn when they occur.
• Patent Hunter. Although it works best on the U.S. base USPTO, this functionality through software downloaded from the possibility of patents in various formats without having to resort to the tedious web environments patent office.
• EndNote. Software for the treatment of citations belonging to Thomson Reuters and pay, is not quoted Zotero free and open alternatives that might be interesting in a not too distant future.
• Bibexcel. This small application developed by Olle Persson is focused towards the treatment of citations and the development of bibliometric reports. Under a grim appearance, it has very interesting features that surely makes bibliometric delight.
• Patent Matheo. This is the data processing software patent par excellence from which one can make various reports and charts the impact on various aspects of them.