Window on the Webby Daniel FrielThe goal of this column is provide readers with relevant information available on the Internet. The first WoW column was devoted to surveying readers on their current Internet usage. Publication schedules were such that there was only limited response to the first article. The results will be more fully explored in the next column. An electronic version of the survey remains available through the NABE Web site at http://www.nabe.com/WoW/index.htm. The updated/ongoing results of the survey and the entire WoW column are available on the Web site at the same address (with the appropriate "hot links" to all web sites discussed). A special thanks to Bruce Kratofil, the NABE WebMaster, for his technical skills in making this information available on our Web site. FRIEL’S FAVORITES Your favorite sites are solicited. If you come across a particularly useful site, please e-mail the link to me along with your critique. Some of my favorites include:
FRIEL’S FLOPS Your flops are also solicited. If you come across a particularly disappointing site, please e-mail the link to me along with your critique. Be careful what you type. A minor slip of a finger could get you to whitehouse.com (instead of the Clinton administration’s WhiteHouse.gov, which is a very useful site). Suffice it to say that whitehouse.com is not a government sponsored site, and it comes with an adult rating. Feedback is the foundation of this column. You can contact the author: via e-mail at daniel.friel@nationsbank.com or through the NABEtalk section of the NABE Web site @ http://www.nabe.com. SUPERIOR SOFTWARE: METASEARCH ENGINES In the first WoW column, I described a new site "search engine" called Headliner. Headliner, as the name suggests, is designed to search primarily news sites (although the user can define any pages to be searched). As suggested last month, the most disturbing aspect of the Internet is the time it can take to find relevant information. I received an e-mail from one of our colleagues at the Canadian Association for Business Economics, Paul M. Jacobson. He indicated that a useful set of links with a distinctly Canadian flavor is available at http://www.cabe.ca/Cabelnk.htm. In addition, he suggested that I look at a new piece of software called Copernicus (see http://www.zdnet.com/products/content/cshp/1802/268201.html)—a metasearch engine for both a review and downloading capabilities. Curiously enough, another NABE member listed an unusually eclectic search utility under favorite tool in the WoW survey (see http://us.imdb.com/M/title-exact?imdb-title-120198). Both the e-mmail and favorite tool listing led me to explore other metasearching capabilities within the Web. Popular search engines are numerous (for a short review see http://searchenginewatch.com/major.htm). Simply clicking on the search button of your browser brings up the major search engines. However, searching utilizing many of the search engines can be very time consuming. A solution: use metasearch engines or metacrawlers. Metasearch engines are more comprehensive: they send your search request to several search engines contemporaneously and organize and blend together search results. Useful background information can be found at searchenginewatch.com/major.htm. A listing of popular metasearch sites can be found at http://www.nabe.com/WoW/metasearches.htm. Short descriptions of major sites I have tried are listed below (I am sure the list is not comprehensive and look forward to hearing from Business Economics’ readers about other searching tools): Each site was searched for "fly fishing." All-In-One Search Page (http://www.albany.net/allinone) Not a metasearch site per se, but a window to a fairly comprehensive listing of Web search engines and metasearch sites. Ask Jeeves (http://www.askjeeves.com/) An interesting English language query system. In response to our search, returned a link to fly fishing pictures. Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com) A metasearch of thirteen WWW search engines. In response to our search, it returned almost too many sites to count (literally hundreds of thousands). Each result was limited to individual search engines. The site does offer a metafind utility that sorts the results from all the search engines alphabetically and eliminates redundancies. I would highly recommend starting with the metafind search. Highway 61 (http://highway61.com<) A metasearch of seven Web search engines. In response to our search, it returned forty-five discrete hits with duplication eliminated. Inference Find (http://www.inference.com/ifind/) A metasearch of several Web search tools. It merges the results, removes redundancies, clusters the hits into neat understandable groupings. Number of hits was more limited, but the information was arranged in a more useful format. JumpCity (http://www.jumpcity.com/start.shtml) Not a search utility, but a useful review of Web sites. Internet Sleuth (http://www.isleuth.com/) A metasearch that allows you to select up to six search engines. The results are displayed by search engine. Mamma (http://www.mamma.com/) A metasearch of seven major search engines. The results are combined with redundancies eliminated. In response to our search, it returned ninety discrete hits Metacrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com/) A metaseach of major search engines that collates results and eliminates redundancies. In response to our search it returned thirty-nine hits. ProFusion (http://www.designlab.ukans.edu/profusion/) A metaseach of twenty-five search engines that collates results and eliminates redundancies. In response to our search it returned eighty-three unique hits. SavySearch (http://guaraldi.cs.colostate.edu:2000/form) A metaseach of twenty-five search engines that collates results and eliminates redundancies. In response to our search it returned more than fifty hits. SearchOnramp (http://search.onramp.net/) A metaseach of major search engines that collates results and eliminates redundancies. In response to our search it returned ranked hits. Starting Point (http://www.stpt.com/) A metaseach of 160 search engines that collates results and eliminates redundancies. In response to our search it returned more than 313,000 hits. How does it work for me? At this point I remain an eclectic user of metasearch engines, i.e., I sometimes use a plain old search engine (Hotbot is my personal favorite) or select from a list of metasearch sites. In the democratic spirit of the Internet, please fill in the survey available through the NABE Web site at http://www.nabe.com/WoW/index.htm (see MetaSearch Survey). |