SEARCH TOOLS
Backto 1997 EDUCATIONAL LINKS... by Nanis
The extensive WWW Virtual Library is a powerful search toolthat allows you to find information on almost any of the world'sWeb servers through user-friendly key word searches. Make surethis vital address is in your hotlist.
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http://www.whoopie.com/
Establishing a directory of sound and video files on theInternet is an intrinsically Net-like nerdy thing to do. Whatpossible use is searching out stuff to download, watch and listento, regardless of what it is? Believe me, two hours and one filmtrailer later, the novelty begins to pale but, regardless,Whoopie is in the 'Why do it? Because we can,' Web site genre,and is probably as useful a way as any of getting to film, TV,radio and 'other' miscellaneous whizz-bang sites. But pushing theedges of the envelope? Not!
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http://mediavillage.mediatel.co.uk/
The Media Village is a Net community populated by leadingmedia organisations and top industry bods. Everything a mediamogul could wish for is here: a place to order industry data andpublications, a mechanism for finding out more about careers andtraining, a way of tracking down email addresses and a dicussionforum. A fair amount of information is available to proles butmagnates who've made their millions may want to subscribe to thein-depth service for £7400 pa. Like most villages, it's easy tofind your way around and the atmosphere is friendly. Absolutelyfabulous darling but Ü take it from one who knows Ü not apreparation for the bitching, backstabbing cut 'n' thrust of thereal media world.
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http://www.search.com
More c/net product and several bookmarks in one. Search.comcombines the type-in 'go get it' boxes from all your favouritesearch engines Ü Alta Vista, Excite, Yahoo, Lycos, Infoseek,Magellan and sister software library, Shareware.com. It alsocollates specialist search tools for specialist subject areas,which makes everything a lot easier in the long run. Hurrah!
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http://edit.my.yahoo.com/bin/login
The personalised Web comes a step closer with My Yahoo.Currently in beta, the site offers to make a personalisedselection from all of Yahoo's categories and the selectionprocess is obviously based on these. It's pretty quick to set upand we found that the selections made were interesting anduseful. A nice clean design takes you through the configurationprocess. Well worth a look .
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http://metacrawler.cs.washington.edu:8080/
How to justify another review of another search engine. Well(yawn), why not? Metacrawler is the newest of bunch, still inbeta but with more features than you can shake a stick at. Notthat shaking a stick at it would do much good! It simultaneouslysubmit search terms to the big guys Ü Infoseek, Yahoo, Excite,Webcrawler, Open Text, Inktomi, Galaxy, Lycos and Alta Vista Ühence the 'meta' bit. (How long before this really gets the big'ssearch facilities' goat?) Not only that, but it also lets youlimit your search in a number of ways. This works either byletting you limit precious seconds online by saying search onlyfor a specified number of minutes, or you can choose by region(the world, your continent, country, domain) or type of Web site(any, com, edu, org and so on) to help narrow things down. Thisis useful, if you already know what you're looking for and itmeans you'll never spend more than a few minutes trawling throughthe results. One more to add to your bookmarks. Let's play hideand seek!
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http://inktomi.berkeley.edu/
Whether its the native American name and its overtones or thefact that Inktomi does its job very well, it's become kind ofcool to use this particular search engine. You can search usingup to 10 words and Inktomi returns those documents that containthose words. The results are then ranked in order of how many ofyour search words each document contains. Phew!
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http://www.einet.net/galaxy.html
Seldom mentioned but holding its own, Galaxy's Web directoryis both an engine that searches for your request and a listingsdirectory of Web addresses. When Lycos and Point combined aredoing so well, it gets harder to recommend other searchapplications, but it's really about finding something that meetsyour own needs. This one might be it.
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http://www.god.co.uk
The Global Online Directory. Big build up, monster domainname. It promises so much and then fails to deliver. The barebones are there, for example you can search geographically (greatidea) but in practice much of the information is not available.Why pretend that searching on Afghanistan, Albania or Algeria isan option when in reality it actually isn't? How useful is it topick four relevant letters from the alphabet in order to searchfor a title, description or URL of an HTML page? Sometimes thewhole process is a little confusing Ü search on 'universities'and you get one match but in the singular you get 224. Obviouslythis needs some fine tuning Ü perhaps some slightly moresophisticated query options? G.O.D. may be in his heaven butthere's a long way to go before all's right with the onlineworld.
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http://www.mailbox.co.uk/esp
Short for email (address) search program, this offers asimple one box interface search engine for sniffing outsomebody@large on the Net. Pathetic pleas for sympathetictreatment are no excuse for poor results, and they were poor, butif your message is destined for a regular user of Usenet, then itmay actually come up trumps. Then again, you could always trysearching newsgroups y'self!
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http://www.altavista.digital.com
The mainstream success of the Internet will ultimately dependon how good its search tools, directories and engines are and, ithas to be said, they keep on getting better. Alta Vista is anexcellent device from Digital for finding references or documentsin Web pages and for trawling through thousands of newsgroups.Its super spider dispatches ilittle spider babies to crawl andcollect data from all over the Web. Queries can either be simpleor sophisticated (by date, results displayed in a pre-selectedranking order, using phrases and, or, not or near). There's alsoa random destination button under the name Surprise!
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http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/lib/address.html
An absolute top, very well executed idea that offers directlinks and handy tips for searching out the email addresses ofdifficult -to-get-hold-of colleagues or long-lost friends. It hasan educational bias, so finding academic types is presumably abit of a breeze. Otherwise, it suggests specific directories,searching newsgroups and other 'finding email addresses' pages torefer to when embarking on a particularly elusive acquaintance.It's not always easy and you should be prepared for it to take awhile. In fact it takes at least an hour to fully digest theinformation on this site, and that's before you even start to goelsewhere.
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http://wyp.net
Cor blimey! A Californian-based company has placed the entireUS Yellow Pages online. Fully searchable by name, state, zip andtelephone number, it also includes links to other Yellow Pagessearch engines around the world. Any American organisation notincluded can add their own details and create a page for free.
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http://www.europages.com
Only by using directories like this will these services evenbegin to meet your needs. This is a list of European businesscontacts, allowing you access to 150,000 suppliers in 25 Europeancountries. Searchable in English, German, Spanish, French andItalian...shortly to include Dutch, Hungarian, Polish, Portugueseand Russian. The structure is in place to make it a whollyreciprocal arrangement and Euro-opportunities could beckon foryou.
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http://www.excite.com
Using a search engine is about finding the best one for you .Excite's Netsearch actually uses Architext Software and so workson the principle of both keyword and concept searches. It can bedirected towards Web documents, Usenet discussion groups orUsenet classified ads Ü in the unlikely event that you'd want tosearch them that is.
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http://www.webcrawler.com/
Internet has been highly remiss in not listing this before asit's one we use often in the office. If you're not alreadyfamiliar with WebCrawler's super-speedy way of searching onwords, then the main point to mention is its total simplicity. Gouse.
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http://www.Four11.com/
This works on the principle of 'you show me yours and I'llshow you mine'. Once you have added your own email address or Webpage to the directory (including details of hobbies, old schoolsand stuff like that), you can search for other peoples' addressesand/or their Web pages. Simple and effective Üævoila!
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http://barrichello.ucr.edu/okra/
OKRA helps you find email addresses for both individuals andorganisations. It's not infallible but you can elect to haveyourself included on the database. Otherwise, the search on namesand addresses must be related to those who have at one time usednewsgroups, so if you're a little paranoid you know not what todo.
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http://www.ukdirectory.com
This has been touted as one of the best places to search forUK sites. It uses simple category headings and is reassuringlyeasy to use, partly because the volume of information is still,just about, at a manageable size.
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http://www.fultech.com/
Already adopted by the Microsoft Network, FulcrumTechnology's Web server software is a full-text search andretrieval system. It's special oh-not-so-standard feature issomething called 'intuitive' searching which, in a prettysophisticated fashion, allows users to get hold of documents abit like the one they're already reading.
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http://www.pls.com
Searching across a selection of personally chosen databasesis just one of the benefits of PLWeb. Adopted by America Online,Prodigy, Pathfinder and, more recently, The Well, it allows usersto look at local as well as remote servers and offers a widevariety of searches. Concept searches take a word, phrase orquery and find words that are 'conceptually' related by virtue ofhaving a similar distribution in the database you're looking at.A dictionary search lets you know how many times a word is usedin a database and the fuzzy advisor minimises problems with badspelling or typographical errors. However, running a copy ofPLWeb is probably only really useful for the business userbecause, although it does work with a 14.4 or 19.2 kbpsconnection, something rather more speedy is recommended.
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http://www.atext.com
Architext's Web server software has a few features worthmentioning. Firstly, it allows you to do concept-based searches.Secondly, you can then ask it to find documents 'more like this'and thirdly, it'll group the retrieved records by subject.Voil½! Demos are available on a rather miniscule 5Mb databasebut a more comprehensive test is offered if you ask.
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http://www.dejanews.com
Marvellous method for trawling through Usenet, if you'relooking for past postings. Search on the complete newsgroup name,look for certain characters or words in the name, search by dateor even postings from particular people. It's so simple and itworks.
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http://www.NeoSoft.com/internet/paml/
Stephanie da Silva's massive Publicly Accessible MailingLists directory is available here in hypertext. This is far moreconvenient than the text version as you can click on the emailcontacts, cut and paste the subscription request and mail itdirectly to your browser. There are thousands of specialist listsorganised by name or subject, with ample details on theirtraffic, content and joining instructions.
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http://www.ukindex.co.uk
Firm and business-like but in no way intimidating, UK Indexis a manually compiled, and hence high-quality, database of sitesabout, or located in, the UK. Users select the areas they'reinterested in by clicking subject boxes and relevant addressesare returned with a one-line description and a hotlink.
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http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~dreiling/smartform.html
This handy search tool queries other search tools on yourbehalf, in real time. All you have to do is type in one or morekey words and Savvy Search does the rest.
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http://www.albany.net/~wcross/all1srch.html
There's more than one way to skin a cat and using that Yahooor Infoseek can get to be a bit of a habit. These perfectlyformed pages should be seen to be believed. They're an A-Z ofInternet search tools, all combined in one consistent, convenientinterface. There are engines for Web search sites, file findersand heaps of subject-based specialist material. It's a chance totry out new tools and compare them with regular faves Ü if onlyto find out that the dependable, much relied on regulars are thebest. The only problem is running out of things to lookfor.
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http://www.u-net.com/develop/intdev/ukweb/ukweb.html
A new and welcome addition for when What's New: Yahoo is atotal log jam Ü a page devoted entirely to recently launchedBritish sites on the Web. And for every UK research institute,academic resource or business presence on the Internet, there's awarped individual with an even more warped home page. Whateverhappened to...only in America?
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http://www.mit.edu:8001/activities/safe/notsee.html
If you're looking for Web sites brimming with controversy,sex, politics and anarchy, step this way.
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http://www.uwm.edu/Mirror/inet.services.html
Like Yahoo, this exceptional list breaks down Web sites andother Internet resources into categories, making it anothervaluable navigational aid.
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http://www.infoseek.com
Infoseek allows to you can search a database of WWW pages,the most recent 6 week's Usenet, Newsbytes InternationalComputing Industry News, Cineman Reviews, FrameMaker 4.0 HelpNotes, Hoover's Masterlist of U.S. Companies, Wire Services,Computer Select, InfoWorld and Hoover's Company Profiles. Unlikemuch of the competition it is always accessible, can searchthrough the entire body text of Web pages and Usenet, has anultra-forgiving interface and can give you a report on all thenews postings from a single email address instantaneously. Youcan try it for a month free, but after that it costs aboutUS$10.00 per month. Step aside, Lycos!
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http://www.cityscape.co.uk/users/wwwdir.html
Cityscape's free Web pages offer has produced this mixedbasket of the mildly commercial to the indulgently personal.
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How to get the sort of stuff listed at Yahoo orWWW.emap.co.uk without paying someone to tell you where it is.It's amazing how alluring that word 'free' is. A rip-off of thehighest order.
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http://www.yellow.com/
Yes, yes, yes. This is what we've been waiting for - acentralised business registry. It means you only have one placeto look, rather than scouring every corner of the Net. Itambitiously sets out to be the 'Yellow pages for the next 100years'. It's looking good so far, let's hope it can handle thetraffic.
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http://web.city.ac.uk/citylive/pages.html
Not what you'd think, but the WWW Virtual Library's directoryof individual home pages. Add your own, using the form, if youthink you'll be heard above the noise.
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http://www.galcit.caltech.edu/~ta/cgi-bin/revdoor-ta
You can add your favourite URL, delete a URL or visit onealready on the menu. This makes it an ever-changing andquasi-democratic hot list maintained entirely by visitors.
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http://www.lib.umich.edu/chhome.html
This guide provides links to subject-orientated Internetresources by providing a menu from which to start your search.It's like a stiffer, less attractive, version of Yahoo but justas useful.
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http://www.lib.ox.ac.uk/internet/news/
This automatically compiled list works like a Gopher menu andallows you to browse news FAQs accompanied by brief descriptions.However, you'll need to configure your WWW client to point at asuitable NNTP server to take advantage of the hyperlinks.
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http://www.limitless.co.uk/inetuk/
This is the best set of UK Internet resource lists you willfind anywhere. If you're shopping for a connection, you cancompare Internet access provider's details here, and then link totheir home pages. There are lists of Internet consultants,training courses, publications and a hotlist chock full of linksto useful information, guides, tools and services.
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http://gnn.com/netizens/
Create a link to your own home page or browse this GNN listby name and choose one randomly Ü it's a bit of a lucky dip.
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http://www.yahoo.com
This is another indispensible addition to your browsingtoolbox. Apart from the excellent menu-based browser, there arelinks to new, cool and popular sites. Menus may be several layersdeep and can hyperlink you to Web sites, Gophers, news and FTPs.You can search by keyword or add your own URL. Some sites arerated and new entries are tagged to give you extra guidance.
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http://harvest.cs.colorado.edu/
Another excellent WWW keyword browse and search tool withless duplication than others such as Lycos and the WWWW. Thereference database is collated from content summaries, anchorsand HTML strings and contains over 22,000 WWW home pages. Makesure this is in your toolkit.
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You have the choice of sensitive map or hypertext link tosearch for servers in this regionally sorted list. It's great forfinding country specific information or just surfing the globe.
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http://www.cs.colorado.edu/home/mcbryan/WWWW.html
Based at the University of Colorado, this server offersseveral good ways to search the Web. The examples given show howto search with multiple references.
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http://www.netgen.com/info/growth.html
Apart from cryptically coded statistics on Web growth, thissite provides links to thousands http sites, sorted by country.However, other than the site code, no other information issupplied, so it's a bit like throwing a dart. However, it'suseful if you're after regional information or just want tobrowse randomly.
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Gopher:gopher.scs.unr.edu
Veronica (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Netwide Index toComputerised Archives) allows key word searches of Gopher menus.
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http://cool.infi.net/
If your site is listed here it will guarantee a traffic surgeof at least a few thousand.
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http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu/
This massive index maintained by Carnegie Mellon Universityis the best place to start a Web search. This Web crawlergenerated index searches, document titles, headings, links andkeywords, usually returning more hits than any other tool.Whether they will be useful ones is another matter, though.
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http://www.gnn.com/gnn/gnn.html
Make this top Web server an essential addition to yourhotlist. From deep in the heart of Californian wine country, GNNhas carefully organised links to a host of useful places. Thisincludes access to the inimitable Whole Internet Catalogue, alarge classified directory of what's on the Web, Digital DriveIn, a section about movies, and NetNews, a weekly roundup ofInternet news. The Market Place, a growing source of commercialpractices setting up on the Internet, What's New, and theexcellent Personal Finance section are also well worth a regularscan.
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http://cuiwww.unige.ch/
Excellent textual browser maintained by the CentreUniversitaire d'Informatique in Geneva which allows you to searchsummaries of several Web catalogues to produce detailed links.The catalogue currently contains 12,308 entries.
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