The simplest news search is for keywords related to your topics of interest. Let's say you're a virtualization software vendor. A search for virtualization is a good place to start, or you can get more specific ("desktop virtualization"). You might also try searching for competitor names like VMWare or Citrix, or specific products like Xen. Try pausing after a word and the system will suggest some frequently occurring phrases which begin with that word.

To limit results, you can choose from one of our preset timeframes (the default is the past three months) or set a custom date range.

One of the best ways to get quick insight is the dashboards that appear at the top of any search results page. These show which authors and sources show up most frequently in your search results, and which companies get mentioned most often (the top 10 are listed by default, but you can expand this up to a maximum of 250 per dashboard). Click on an author or source's name to see details about it.

You can also sort the dashboards by "Reach" instead of "Results," which will show you the most influential authors and sources in your results regardless of how often they appear.

Below the dashboards you will find the actual content items which matched your search. By default, the best matches will come first, but if you are more interested in seeing the latest content items you can sort the results by "Most Recent". Clicking on the title of any item will take you to the original content in a new browser window.

Select a few items using the checkboxes and then click the "Save Selected" button in order to save them to a project for later reference. You will be given the option of saving the content items, the authors, the sources, or a combination of the three.

You can search for content from specific authors and sources using the Advanced Search interface. When typing an author or source's name, try pausing after a few letters and using the autocomplete menu, which will give you a list of recognized authors and sources in our system. To exclude content from a specific author or source, precede the name with a dash (-) or NOT

When choosing a source from the autocomplete menu, you will also have the option to include associated sources if they exist. For example, if you're searching for "The New York Times" you'll be given the option of additionally including the Bits blog in your search.

Clicking on an author or source name from search results (including the dashboards) will display details and contact information at the top of the page. From here, you can add notes about this author/source, save it to a project, or see what projects it already belongs to.

Particularly influential authors and sources will appear with a star next to their names in the search results.

When viewing the details for an author, source, or company, you can add or edit notes for future reference. These notes can be shared with other users on your account using the "Share" and "Unshare" links. You can also toggle between showing or hiding notes shared by coworkers using the talk bubble icon in the lower-left corner of the notes interface.

Be sure to enclose search terms containing special characters (# @ $ % - / &) in quotes, otherwise the special characters will be ignored when matching, e.g., "del.icio.us" "Google+" "#ces" "I/O" "@pogue"

Use double quotes (") to search for a phrase, e.g. "software as a service" Multiple words without quotes will be matched independently, i.e., software might match in the first paragraph and service in the last paragraph, but they are used in completely different contexts.

To search for words in close proximity to each other but not necessarily an exact phrase, use the tilde (~) operator followed by a number to indicate the distance allowed, e.g., "mobile apps"~3 will match "mobile productivity apps" or "mobile games and apps"

Precede a word or phrase with NOT in order to exclude it from search results, e.g., marketing NOT "social media" NOT facebook. Capitalization of the NOT operator is required.

Searching for multiple terms will only find results where all terms match. If you want certain terms to be optional you can use the OR operator, e.g., "software as a service" OR SaaS. Capitalization of the OR operator is required.

You can use parentheses to group search terms, e.g. (wimax NOT sprint) OR (lte NOT metropcs)

The asterisk (*) can be used as a wildcard, e.g., a search for git* would match items with "git" or "github" The question mark (?) can be used for a single character, e.g., a search for ?G Network would match "3G Network" or "4G Network" but not "Big Network"

Use the title: prefix to narrow your search to only the headline of content items, e.g., title:pinterest title:funding will only show results where the words "pinterest" and "funding" appear in the headline.

To create a new project, visit the 'Projects' page from the main menu, enter a name for the project at the top of the page, and click the 'Create Project' button. You can also create new projects on the fly while saving items by selecting 'New Project...' from the dropdown menu.

To view an existing project, visit the 'Projects' page from the main menu and click on its name in the projects list. You can use the sorting options ('Name' or 'Last Updated') to re-sort the list for faster browsing.

Once you're viewing an individual project, you can browse the items in your project using the table at the bottom and the menu above it. To remove items from a project, check the box next to the items you want to delete and click 'Delete Selected.'

You can also add notes to the project using the 'Notes' dialog. Any notes on a project will be visible to other users within your organization with whom you've shared the project.

You can export a project by clicking on the 'export' link on the Projects page or an individual project's detail page. Projects can be exported into Excel (.xls) or PDF format and include names, contact information, and notes for everything in your project.

You can copy, share, rename, or delete a project from the Projects page or an individual project's detail page. If you share a project with another user in your organization, that user will be able to view and edit the project, including your notes on it.

Visit the 'Login' Page and click on the 'Forgot Password' link in the lower-left corner.

If you're an account administrator, you can add new users for your company by selecting "Account Users" from the "Settings" menu in the upper-right corner.

Currently you can see most authors' geographic locations in their contact details (open an author's details by clicking on his or her name from anywhere in the app). We're working on a "Search By Location" feature for a future release.

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