Journalists, have you ever spent hours searching through federal court websites or government databases for a story? What if you could use a website that could cut that time down to just mere seconds? That’s what Sqoop promises to do.
Launched last year in March, the free website currently searches through the databases of the United States Patent and Trademark office, the Securities and Exchange Commission and most of the federal court websites. Bill Hankes, founder and CEO of Sqoop Bill Hankes, founder and CEO of Sqoop Founder and CEO Bill Hankes said the idea behind Sqoop is to help reporters find out about news before it’s news.
Hankes, who previously worked at Bing, said as he watched some of his reporter friends spend hours searching through databases, he realized there was a “search problem.”
“It’s really time consuming for a reporter to dig into information on certain companies, the Patent office and databases,” Hankes said. “Most vehicles to find this information don’t track (information) and there’s no way to set an alert. Sqoop does the work for you.” Continue…
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