Toolkit
Addition
Toolkit:
Go-Pher Phone Numbers
Need more
numbers? Try The PhoneBook Gateway.
It's just
what its name says. The Gateway is a list of about 300 sites (mostly
US) that have phonebooks and directories. Most are universities,
technical colleges, labs, or hospitals.
There's a
Web interface, but that's about all that is typical at this site.
The interfaces
all look the same, but each place you're searching may use slightly
different technologies. This affects how you need to search.
The quickest
way is to search for first and last name. But, if you don't know
who you're searching for, that's a problem. Not insurmountable though.
If you try
searching only for *, invariably you'll get an error message.
It says your query was rejected as being too broad. So, use a common
name such as john and follow it with a single letter followed
for an asterisk. This works.
What you'll
get back is a list of names, email addresses, and sometimes phone
numbers.
You can also
try a search for department names, although results for this only
occur in some servers.
Using the
Phonebook Gateway takes patience-lots of it. And you won't get a
directory you can just browse. But, with a bit of perseverance and
imagination, you will find names and addresses-lots of them.
And, once
you've mastered the Phonebook Gateway, try the Gopher
Server that lists the membership of several worldwide organizations.
Or, try the
Gopher directory of Asian
institutions.
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Search Tips
Search
Tip: Dogpile
Search
Dogpile
Some of you
have asked recently what we think of Dogpile. Although we cannot abide its name,
this meta-search engine from Unusual Solutions is a reasonable tool
for general searches. It can also be used to gain familiarity
with which search engines are worth an individual look.
Dogpile searches
a plethora of indexes.
- The
Web
Yahoo!,
Lycos' A2Z, HotBot, Excite Guide, Go2.com, PlanetSearch, Lycos,
Thunderstone, What U Seek, Infoseek, Magellan, WebCrawler, AltaVista,
and Excite
- Usenet
HotBot,
Reference, Dejanews, AltaVista, Dejanews' old Database.
- FTP
- News
Wires
Excite,
Infoseek, and Yahoo
Dogpile supports
the common Boolean operators of AND, OR, NEAR, and NOT. But, not
all of the engines it searches do. This creates interesting and
oftentimes frustrating results.
For instance,
a query of resume.html AND computer produced the expected
results from Yahoo and AltaVista. It gave no results from Lycos
A2Z or Thunderstone.
From Excite,
it produced the "top 100 computer magazines" and "New URL for the
Political Participation Project". From Planet Search, which in our
estimation ought to be wiped off the face of the Internet, there
were more than 33,000 matches. Most were from resume writing companies.
What U Seek
found more than 18,000 pages. Its top listing was "Motorcoach -
Eagle Bus (Converted) For Sale".
The main
page search at Dogpile is good only for general knowledge. If you
want a quick glimpse of what's out there, go ahead and use it. If
you want specific information, bypass it.
Use the Custom
Search instead. Here you can control which of the 25 indexes
you want searched and in what order. You can also save these preferences,
as long as your browser is set to accept cookies. The drawback,
of course, is that setting these preferences takes time.
Dogpile isn't
a bad starting place. However, it is not designed for sophisticated
searching. Until search engines use compatible query formats, a
mega tool like this just can't be as good as what you can do with
each individual engine.
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