• Demographics Daily
• EQuill

DEMOGRAPHICS DAILY

Bizjournals (http://bizjournals.bcentral.com/) has a section called Demographics Daily. This houses a mine of information for researchers, if you are willing to do a little digging. Some articles and information are free and some cost money. A lot of the articles are teasers for fee-based detail and charts, but you can usually get some good stuff from the freebies.

For instance, this month we discover that Colorado's economy is the best in the country - good news for development offices there, I'm sure. Demographics Daily rates all the states, the District of Columbia and 224 metropolitan areas, based on population, income, employment trends and other key economic indicators. Click on State Economic Ratings or Metropolitan Economic Ratings to see how your state or state's big metro is faring. Hopefully, it will tell you it's time to step up your fund raising efforts.

http://bizjournals.bcentral.com/journals/demographics/

In addition to these monthly ratings and daily articles, there are tons more helpful articles. Browse through the archives from 1994 to the present for all sorts of interesting articles.

http://bizjournals.bcentral.com/journals/demographics/doc/

In February, 2001, there was an interesting article called "Centers of Brainpower," areas where education levels are at least 50 percent above the national average. See the 10 largest areas for free and see the other 36 and details about them all for a fee. This past May, there was an article about high-tech areas as money magnets. Again, some free information and the rest you have to buy.

EQUILL

Here's a tool that can make distributing information from the Web easy and it's fun to boot. You need the latest version of Internet Explorer to run the full nine yards. And it won't work on Netscape (sigh).

But what a gem. This tool allows you to highlight, mark-up and edit Web sites and append virtual sticky notes, then e-mail 'em to anyone. You can also collect the sites you send, complete with your markings, in your very own private folder. Great for when someone misplaces what you send them (oh wait, that never happens!). You can also use captured text to send just a portion of a page to someone.

Simply register and download EQuill. They recommend installing it so it runs from the current location, not your drive. Whenever you open Internet Explorer, the EQuill toolbar pops up on your screen. Just click on the mark-up tool you want to use and when you are finished, click send to open the e-mail function. As with any e-mail, you can send it to multiple recipients. When they get the e-mail, all they have to do is click on the URL to go to your marked up page. They don't need EQuill at all.

What a breeze.

http://equill.com/

Chris Mildner