n The ability to find material quickly and accurately is at the root of the internet experience whether the user is a rookie surfer or a research scientist. The search vehicles we use depend largely on the kind of information we are looking for and, to some degree, on how we like that information to be presented on-screen.
For those who like a simple search giving a huge number of accurate hits, AltaVista is one of the most popular. (It also offers a superb translation service for several European languages.) Of the directories - facilities which link subjects in groups for users who are struggling to think of a key word or words - Yahoo is a world leader. Indeed, recent research showed it to be the most visited site on the Net (ahead of, would you believe it, Pokemon.com).
Then there are the metacrawlers which, unlike search engines, do not actually crawl the web themselves; rather they facilitate simultaneous searches on several engines with the results being blended on to one page.
I particularly like Inference Find (www.infind.com) which taps into AltaVista, Excite,
Infoseek, Lycos, WebCrawler, and Yahoo. Unlike many metacrawlers, it doesn't group results by search engine or in one giant list, but clusters results in subject groups so you can quickly see which documents are relevant and which are irrelevant. If you are interested in search engines, how they work, or how to use them more efficiently, go to Searchenginewatch.com. This site explains and reviews a vast number of search facilities and, for the anoraks among us, offers subscription to a monthly newsletter on search engines which will be fired into your
e-mail inbox.
Martin Sheach
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article