Productive Surfing

Now that the air is getting crisper and the leaves are starting to fall, why not spend the change of seasons indoors, surfing the net?

There are websites on virtually anything, if you know where to look.

A good beginning is with a search engine. Everyone knows about Yahoo and Lycos, but the faster, more productive sites IMHO (in my humble opinion) are Google at www.google.com, Dmoz at www.dmoz.org and Ask Jeeves at www.askjeeves.com.

Google is by far the fastest search engine available, with no advertising and mercurial response time. Northern Light is well-detailed and neatly categorizes your query into different folders. Dmoz is the Open Directory Project, and it is a search engine designed by ordinary surfers where the editors do a sort of quality control on the sites they represent (only the crème de la crème). Ask Jeeves is a cute search engine that tries to resemble a human (a virtual one, anyway). You type in your subject or query in the form of a question and replies are returned. It is also fun to use since it has a British feel which is nice when you are feeling over-Americanized. (We are Canadian, after all.)

For those days when you are missing long lost friends and family, the perfect pick-me-up is sending a friend an e-mail or e-greeting. If you don't have their e-mail address, you can search for it on www.findaperson.ca. You can also discover old high school classmates on www.classmates.com if you dare. There are many places to send an e-greeting, with the most popular being www.bluemountain.com. You can even send animated cards and personalize them any way you wish on sites like www.americangreetings.com.

How famous are you on the internet? Just type your name at www.egosurf.com and see what is out there about YOU!

Think the techie world is too overwhelming? There are loads of definitions on www.whatis.com and they are in readable English, with just a bit of computer jargon to sift through.

Finally, I saved the best for last, www.mythologic.net/end, where all good WWW journeys end.