Internet resources

Free Pint http://www.freepint.com/ A free e-mail newsletter on using the Web more effectively. It is possible to subscribe from the site which also contains archives of all issues.

Internet Detective http://sosig.ac.uk/desire/internet-detective.html An interactive tutorial on evaluating the quality of information found on the Internet.

Internet Resources Newsletter http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/irn.html The newsletter aims to raise awareness of new sources of information on the Internet, particularly those which are relevant to research interests at Heriot-Watt University, including engineering, science, and social science.

Internet Scout Project http://scout.wisc.edu/ A guide to the best resources on the Net, chosen by librarians and teachers. The various Scout Reports can be searched and browsed on the site, and also subscribed to in e-mail format.

CNET Shareware.com http://shareware.cnet.com// Searchable library of shareware for downloading.

NetLingo http://www.netlingo.com/ Dictionary of Internet Terms.

Tonic http://www.netskills.ac.uk/TonicNG/cgi/sesame?tng An interactive course on using the Internet. Free, but registration required.

UK Online User Group Database Training Resources http://www.ukolug.org.uk/links/training.htm Links to demonstration and training materials and documentation for end-users of commercial databases.

Search engineS and other search resources:

Resources for searching the Invisible Web.
Much of the information available on the Internet is not indexed by ordinary search engines. This includes material presented in non-HTML format, the contents of databases, and information on sites which require a log-in.

Direct Search http://www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm "a growing compilation of links to the search interfaces of resources that contain data not easily or entirely searchable/accessible from general search tools like Alta Vista, Google, and Hotbot"

InfoMine http://infomine.ucr.edu/ Scholarly Internet resource listings

InvisibleWeb http://www.invisibleweb.com/ Listings of thousands of databases and searchable sources that contain highly targeted and valuable information, and whose content is not seen (indexed) by traditional search engines. This includes databases, specialized search engines, archived material, and interactive tools (such as calculators and dictionaries)

WebLens http://www.weblens.org/invisible.html This part of the WebLens site provides links to resources for accessing the invisible web, with academic and scholarly resources listed in a separate section.

Search engines and web directories (a non-exhaustive list of personal favourites):

Pandia http://pandia.com/ At Pandia you can learn how to search the Web more efficiently, read about search engines, search engine optimization and sites devoted to searching, and gain easy access to all the best tools and SE resources on the Internet.

Web Lens http://www.weblens.org/ WebLens features dozens of embedded searches and links to thousands of the Net's most popular search engines, directories, metasearch tools, music and image searchers, people finders, company locators, reference tools, job databases, recipe archives, scholarly research resources and more.

Searchenginewatch http://searchenginewatch.com/ Information and comparative data on some of the major search engines.

Search Engine Showdown http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/ Very detailed reviews and comparisons of search engines.

AltaVista http://www.altavista.com/ http://www.altavista.co.uk/ The Advanced Search page contains a box into which it is possible to enter complex Boolean searches. The supported operators are listed at http://uk.altavista.com/help/adv_search/syntax Underneath that is the "sorted by" window, which supposedly allows you to list your preferences for the order in which the search results will be displayed and thus allow you to override the search engine's algorithm and specify your own relevance criteria. However, it appears instead to exclude all documents which do not contain the word entered in the "sorted by" box.

FAST http://www.alltheweb.com/ Fastsearch has recently added more features, which now make this a very useful results. Searches on Web, News, Pictures, Video, Audio, and FTP files. The presentation of search results now includes clusters, which groups together topically related resources, separate categorization of multimedia retrieved by the search and suggestions for further related queries .

Google http://www.google.com/ Allows searches on Web, Images, Groups (Usenet), Directory (ability to browse by categorized topics), and News, with further choices available through Google's advanced search features and by using its advanced search operators listed at http://www.google.com/help/operators.html . Google has expanded the number of non-HTML file types searched to 12 file formats. In addition to PDF documents, Google searches Microsoft Office, PostScript, Corel WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, and others. The new file types appear in Google search results whenever they are relevant to the user query. The Google cache presents a "snapshot" of the web page taken when it was crawled by the Google spider, with your search terms highlighted. The cache is also used for the "display in HTML" option.

Ixquick http://www.ixquick.com A meta-searcher which selects the most relevant results. Good for searches when it can be assumed that a lot of information exists on the topic. Separate searches for web, news, mp3 and pictures. Ixquick prioritises results by relevance of keywords and deletes duplications. Ixquick supports sophisticated search features such as Boolean operators with parentheses, wildcards and case sensitivity. It translates your search into a format suitable for each search engine to which it submits the search. The results that appear most frequently in search engines appear at the top, along with the name of each engine that has retrieved them. Each engine and result will get a star. More stars indicate that more engines have found the exact same result. The very useful highlight feature displays the retrieved web pages with your search terms highlighted throughout. As opposed to Google cache highlighting, it appears that Ixquick highlights the active page.
NB: The country-specific versions of Ixquick will influence the search engines that are chosen. Selecting "English" will result in different search results than those obtained by selecting "English UK"
The search engines used are displayed with the search results, and suggestions for related searches are offered.

Teoma http://www.teoma.com In addition to the displayed search results, Teoma gives suggestion for related searches under the Refine heading. Under Resource, Teoma lists sites which have a collection of links about the topic of the search.

Vivisimo http://www.vivisimo.com Vivisimo uses the search capabilities of a number of engines, and then clusters the results into topical groups. A number of other resources can be searched through Vivisimo, including Medline (PubMed@NIH), news and patents (Delphion).

Wisenut http://www.wisenut.com Clusters results into topical categories. Presents only one page from each site, but with a "see more pages from this site option". The very useful "Sneak a Peek" displays the web site within a small scrollable window that opens as an integral part of the Wisenut page.