Search & You Shall Find

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Search & You Shall Find

These days the Internet is used by an increasing population for a number of reasons such as communication (email, voip, sms, chat, and blog), commerce or e-services, entertainment, education and research. It has meanderings, bifurcations, circuitous pathways and blind alleys but a few tips when navigating this complex web yields desired, up-to-date, accurate information on the fly. The Internet makes books, journals & whitepapers accessible, eradicates distance and speeds up data gathering making it an indispensable tool to modern educators.

Oftentimes when you search the net some files downloaded cannot be "read". While your computer may "read" the more common documents, pictures (jpeg, bmp, gif), movie files (avi) and sound files (wav) readily, it may not recognize those with the following extensions swf (Flash), mov (Quicktime), mp3 or pdf (Adobe). Free, downloadable players for Flash & Quicktime (Apple) and pdf reader (Adobe) are available from product websites and also from download.com. E-book reader is likewise available from Microsoft. It is also advisable to have WinZip as some files or programs come in "zipped" form. The Internet also informs you of automatic updates and debuggers for your programs and drivers for your hardware.

When surfing the net it is essential to have up-to-date virus protection that can detect, clean, destroy or isolate malicious virus on existing files on your drives and email attachments. AVG is free but you can opt for McAfee or Norton (Symantec) for greater security. The effect of computer viruses range from innocuous to downright fatal to your system and stored files, hence protection cannot be ignored or left out-of-date.

The Different Search Engines and Metacrawlers
Search engines help you find information focused on your topic or query by examining its database and lists sites that match the search criteria or is related to the keyword. Results may be too numerous to handle so it is better to use precise phrases or use special commands (Boolean operator) that link two or more key search terms to ferret more detailed information on a subject area. Not all search engines use the same Boolean commands but most of them do. Some of them have special features - for instance Google has an "Am feeling lucky" button that should be the closest match to the keyword. Some searches can be narrowed down to country of choice and some have local versions. Some search engines have an "advanced search" button that allow for greater specificity or you can opt to use subject search instead of keyword search for a greater number of "hits" or relevant topics found. As in conventional media, defined goals yield better results and it is prudent to use an engine that gets updated regularly.

Examples of Search Engines:

• Ask Jeeves (http://www.askjeeves.com)
• Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.com)
• AOL (also try http://aolatschoolsearch.com)
• Excite (http://www.excite.com)
• Fast Search (http://www.alltheweb.com)
• Google (http://google.com) also (http://scholar.google.com)
• Hotbot (http://hotbot.com)
• Infoseek (http://infoseek.com)
• LookSmart (http://looksmart.com)
• Lycos (http://www.lycos.com)
• WebCrawler (http://www.webcrawler.com)
• Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com)

Metacrawlers or meta search engines are for the Internet users who require more comprehensive search by simultaneously scanning the database of multiple search engines. As in search engines, the value and drawbacks depend on how refined or narrowed down the query is.

Examples of Metacrawlers:

• Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com)
• Go2Net (http://www.go2net.com)
• Mamma (http://www.mamma.com)
• Metacrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com)
• Vivisimo (http://www.vivisimo.com) with a "clustering engine" function

Other sites:

• C/Net's Search.com (http://www.search.com) results can be classified by source, relevance or date
• Argus http://www.clearinghouse.net/ (topics are by experts in the field)

Sample Search:

For instance if you want to search for "biodiversity" using the Google engine, you can choose between going through the web or just the Philippines for hits. Your browser will look like this in sequence after you type your keyword:

1. Google site

2. Phil Search

3. Hits

When searching for "English pronunciation video" using vivisimo, your browser will look like this:

There are many hits using the standard search but you can also use the clustered search results.

The chosen site contains a demo requiring a Flash player.

A few Boolean operators:

1. The symbol + before a keyword with no space directs the engine to ferret results with that keyword. For example: The command +General Chemistry +Syllabi will search all sites with the words General Chemistry and Syllabi.
2. Placing - before a keyword with no blank space directs the engine that the results are devoid of that keyword. Example: +General Chemistry-Syllabi searches for all site with the word General Chemistry but not the word Syllabi.
3. If multiple words are entered without special commands, the engine is directed to yield all results showing at least one of the key words.
4. If open and closed quotation marks are used to define a phrase or keywords ("General Chemistry Syllabi") the engine is directed to look for results containing the words in the same sequence. Try this on Yahoo or Google.
5. An *before or after a keyword instructs the engine to look for results that contain this word either as a beginning or ending of an extended word.
6. If the command title: is placed before a keyword without space in between, the engine searches for any site containing that keyword as part of its title
7. If the command image: is placed before a keyword with no space in between, the engine searches for all images referring to that particular keyword (Ex. image:Boracay)

Recommended reading:
How to Conduct Research on the Internet
By Terry Brainerd Chadwick
http://www.tbchad.com/resrch.html

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