Overview |
The main problem with the WWW is that it is so vast that it
can often be difficult to find what you are looking for (needle in haystack
syndrome). Consequently, several search engines have appeared on the WWW that
makes finding things a little easier. |
Suggestion | To be productive, you must have a good idea what you're looking
for. Although "browsing" may be interesting, it is not very
productive. The more specific your keywords are, the quicker you'll find what
your looking for. If searching for hurricane news, search for hurricane
update news Edouard not just weather. |
What's out there? | Although much can be accessed via the WWW, a lot of it is crap
(IMHO). A few of the items that are well worth searching the net for are:
- As you might guess, computer stuff, including all types of software and
support for software (both commercial and that via
USENET)
- Commercial product descriptions, not necessarily computer related.
- Academic and government sponsored activities.
|
What's not? |
- Journal articles: Although there are a few free journals on the net, most
don't have a presence or require subscription fees. You still have to go to the
library to copy/read articles. However, you can access most library catalogs.
|
Search Engines |
Overview | Software tools known as robots, agents, webcrawlers and spiders
are used to grab every web page they can find, then parse the words in the pages
into a database. When you specify a keyword, a search engine cross references
this database and returns all references that match your keyword(s). |
|
A good set of hyperlinks to search engines on the net.
Because Nescape can get very busy at times, it is useful to access the search
engines directly (i.e., put them in you bookmark file and bypass Netscape). |
| Seaches many of the above search engines automatically and gives
one long output. |
| A very complete site of search engines. |
| Software. |
| Searches FTP sites. |