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Finding stuff on the Internet

Where Do you Find this stuff?

Read internet magazines like Yahoo! and .Net
They list tons of links each month, in different categories.
With useful descriptions, I can often scan through the magazine
as I eat my dinner, and pick out things, I want to check out in
more detail.

Don't be afraid to explore
When searching I will sometimes come accross
something that I wasn't even looking for,
but looks interesting and I will bookmark it to come back
to later.

Look through newsgroups with services like Dejanews.
It's surprising how often the same questions are asked.
The answers give clues to whole other ways of
thinking. It's always useful to see how other people
solve a paticular problem.

Understand the differences between search engines & Directories
They handle information differently. Search engines
(also called: crawlers, spiders, and bots)
have larger indexes maintained by the computers.
directories are smaller better organized and maintained by humans.
Meta Searchers, use more than one search engine or directory,
and compile the results for you.
    Everybody has their favorite search engines, I don't have the space
    to list all of them here, further down I will mention places
    to find search engines. Personaly, I use Yahoo!
    for companies, places, famous people, or specific narrow searches.
    For wider, more general searches, I use Google, Fast Search,
    or Raging.com.For more info I'll then play with other directories,
    searche engines, or bots.

    Google looks at how many other pages link to a page.
    Google also keeps caches of dead pages. If I'm looking for
    something obscure I'll try google, and if I run across a dead page,
    sometimes the cache will show me more information. It's also one of
    the largest indexes on the internet.

    Yahoo!, DMOZ, and About
    are directories organized and maintained by humans.
    It's easier to find larger resources herethan on a search engine,
    though some directories like Yahoo! plug the search results
    into a search engine for you if you want more.

    Many groups will have their own search engines and directories.
    For instance, if you wanted robotics stuff, you could go to Robohoo!
    or if I wanted a quick summery of a medical condition or drug
    I could go to Yahoo Health! or for genetics I could go to @Genetics,
    sometimes you may find more than one directory like for trekies,
    Yahoo! has A list of them. To find search engines and directories easier,
    there are directories of directories like Beaucoup! or Invisible Web,
    you can also check periodicly to see whose ahead in the
    Search Engine Show Down

    There are also meta search engines, to save time.
    Meta search programs allow you to check several search engines,
    at once, and organize the results for you, like Ask Jeeves or
    MetaCrawler or you can get your own meta searcher like Copernic

    There are also sites that keep searching for you
    in the background and mail the results back
    The Karnak Library is a useful example.

Look at the links pages of the sites you visit, once you get a good list of links,
you can find information much more efficiently. Even if your in a hurry, it only takes
a minute, to jump into a site, take a quick look around, if it's good, bookmark it,
if not go back. Take a quick list of their links, use the color coding, to zero in on
the sites you haven't been to. Look for other names and synonyms of what your
looking for. Also keep an eye out for web rings, usualy at the bottom of the page.
Some sites like HotLinks maintain searchable
indexes of other peoples links rated by the members.

Organize your bookmarks, don't just have a long list of a 1000 bookmarks
to scroll through. ("I know it's here somewhere"). There are tools to help you
organize and transfer bookmarks from one browser to another, though it's a good
idea to use one main browser for web browsing (and others if your a web master,
for checking compatibility, but thats off subject.) The search button is also customizable.

Seek out those who might know. Talk to people in chat rooms, related to the topic, and join online communities and mailing lists.

Understand how sites are layed out by looking at the address. Often you will
end up on somebodies subpage, look for a back button on their page to see
what else they got. If they don't have one or you've ended up on a dead page
(404 error), go up to the address bar and go up a directory.

use the text search tool thats in your browser, If you end up on a big page
with lots of text you don't want to spend time on. (hint: it's in the edit menu)

Spy on the search engines (might give you ideas)
Search Engine Watch has a nice list of links for watching other people search.

Use Logic and other symbols, most search engines allow you to use
Bolean logic and other symbols for special searchs, Like AND(+), NOT(-),OR, complete phrases("..."), etc.

for more specific places to find stuff check out my internet resources page.
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