Web sites worth the click - Brief Article

American Demographics, Nov 1, 2001

www.ipsos-reid.com/us/services/little_net_book.cfm

Take a peek at the whole world online - some 400 million people around the globe - according to The Little Internet Fact Book. The Fact Book, offered by Ipsos-Reid, part of the Ipsos Group market research firm, provides key facts about Internet usage in the U.S. These findings are based on interviews with 740 American adults conducted in May 2001. The results of these interviews provide information on subjects ranging from online commerce to interactive recreation to downloading music. In addition, data was culled from the company's annual "The Face of the Web Study," conducted in November and December 2000. This study is based on individual surveys with adult Internet users in 35 national markets, with 500 to 1,700 interviews per country. But use the information wisely - according to the study, 57 percent of Americans report receiving spam on a daily basis.

www.coldwellbanker.com/

You just learned that a client with whom you're meeting lives in Indian Hill, Ohio. Sounds like a posh suburb, right? But if you want to be sure, log on to Coldwell Banker's Web site and use their Neighborhood Explorer function - found on the site under Concierge, then Neighborhood Info - to do your own due diligence. Turns out the median income in Indian Hill is $149,450! The site can also help homebuyers and other information seekers who're curious about a particular neighborhood. Along with average neighborhood income, the site shares maps, school district ratings, climate patterns and housing unit types.

www.stat.fi/index_en.html

OK, so you can't locate Finland on a map (it's up there by Sweden and Norway). But it's been a part of the European Union since 1995, so it's time to take note. Statistics Finland helps you keep up-to-date on the latest facts and figures on the country's 5.2 million people and their $783 billion economy. And you can bank on the reliability of the numbers found on the site, which operates under the Finnish Ministry of Finance and produces two-thirds of the country's governmental statistics. While you're on the site, be sure to browse through Finland in Figures, a collection of key statistical data on 25 different topics. And if your Finnish is up to par - or you want to try and wing it - check out the World in Figures package, which contains 28 easily downloadable Excel tables of nation-by-nation data on everything from religion to livestock.