From crispen@INTERNIC.NET Thu Sep 11 23:02:09 1997 Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 17:48:21 -0400 From: crispen@INTERNIC.NET Reply-To: TOURBUS-Request@LISTSERV.AOL.COM To: TOURBUS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Subject: TOURBUS -- 11 SEPTEMBER 1997 -- METAFIND This post contains inline ASCII graphics which look best in a monospace font like Courier. Text-to-speech readers should turn off punctuation now. /~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~|~\ | "Why | Surf When / You Can | Ride The | Bus?" / | \ |__________|__________/__________|__________|___________/ | \ / /______|----\ Jump start your Web pages with the best-selling |//////| | | "Creating Cool HTML 3.2 Web Pages" by guru |//////| | | Dave Taylor. For info and FREE online HTML lessons, |//////| | | visit |//////| | | |//////| | ~~~/~~~\~~/~~~\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~\~~~~ \___/ \___/ T h e I n t e r n e t T o u r B u s \___/ TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPIC(S): METAFIND TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S): http://pw2.netcom.com/~sleight/rabbit1.html http://www.metafind.com/ Howdy, y'all! :) There are 2 signs of impending old age. The first is memory loss. The other is ... umm ... umm ... There are 2 signs of impending old age ... :) Seriously, though, I made a little "oopsie" in my last post. You may remember that I wrote that You might want to bypass [the British Monarchy] page altogether and instead send your condolences [for Princess Diana] through the British Foreign Consulate Office at http://www.fco.gov.uk/feedback/ Well, at least the address is right. Unfortunately, I totally blew the name of the site. For the record, the FCO is the British "Foreign and Commonwealth Office," not the British "Foreign Consulate Office." [A special thanks goes to John Burgess, the Information Officer/Press Attache' at the US Embassy in London for catching that.] Now for the new stuff. I want to welcome back one of TOURBUS' oldest sponsors, and to thank them for helping keep our little bus of Internet happiness on the road week after week . . . *------------ FLYING NOODLE PASTA OF THE MONTH CLUB ---------------+ Only $19.95 plus shipping - 2 Gourmet PASTAS, 2 SAUCES and recipes. A great gift or a small indulgence for yourself. +---------------- -------------------+ Before we start today's tour, I have a little diversion that will probably give you a chuckle. The following comes to us from Mary Smith, a friend of mine here at the University of Alabama (Mary was the one that I sent all those Moon Pies to when she was in Spain this summer). If you are a big fan of magic tricks, especially card tricks, you really need to check out http://pw2.netcom.com/~sleight/rabbit1.html My first reaction to this trick was identical to my reaction when the clock on my VCR automatically set itself: "THIS IS THE WORK OF SATAN!" I'll let you draw your own conclusions. [Seriously, though, this trick isn't much of a trick after all. You'll probably figure it out in a minute or two. If you can't figure it out, though, look for the "answer" in next Thursday's TOURBUS.] Now for the _real_ TOURBUS stop . . . My love of the Dogpile search engine (http://www.dogpile.com) isn't much of a secret anymore. We first visited Dogpile back on March 27th, and Dogpile was even one of TOURBUS' Top Ten sites back in July. [By the way, you can find both of these posts, as well as all of TOURBUS' previous posts, in the TOURBUS archives at http://www.tourbus.com/] Well, Aaron Flin, the guy who created Dogpile, has a SECOND search engine called "Metafind." You can find Metafind on the World Wide Web at http://www.metafind.com/ Metafind is, on the surface, a lot like the other meta search engines that we have visited in the past. You type in your search term and Metafind sends that search term to several different search engines at once. According to Aaron, Metafind searches through six major search engines in parallel, then returns the links and organizes the results. In particular, Metafind retrieves 10 links from AltaVista twice [in other words, 20 links], 10 from Excite twice [ditto], 50 from HotBot, 25 from InfoSeek, 10 from OpenText, and 50 from Webcrawler. Now for the neat part. While most meta search engines like Dogpile sort and organize their results based on the search engine that generated the results (you get 10 hits from Yahoo, 10 from AltaVista, 10 from Lycos, etc.), Metafind lets you sort the results: 1. Alphabetically; 2. By domain; or 3. By keywords. In other words -- and this will make no sense to you unless you have been on the bus since May -- Metafind is a combination of Dogpile's sheer searching power and Inference Find's capability to "cluster" the results together into relevant groups. Why is this important? Well, let's say that you are interested in seeing if the Crispen family has their own homepage. Let's also say that all that you know about my family, outside of the fact that they spawned me, is that they *might* live in the state of Alabama. Searching for the keyword "Crispen" in Dogpile might work, but I can guarantee you that all of the irrelevant hits will make such a search downright frustrating. With a keyword search for "Crispen" on Metafind, sorted by domain, you can easily weed out the irrelevant links. How? Well, a search for "Crispen" will generate hits from Web pages in counties like Australia, Canada, Germany, and France (we're a popular family). If we're looking for the Crispen family's homepage in Alabama, it is pretty safe to assume that that homepage won't be located on a server in Australia, Canada, Germany, or France. So we can ignore all of the hits in those domains. While "clustering" doesn't make the process of finding what you are looking for fool-proof, it does make your searches a tad bit easier by giving you the opportunity to ignore large clusters of hits not directly related to what you are looking for. [By the way, if you are _really_ interested in finding my family's homepage, here is a hint: my family has a .NET address.] :) There's not much more that I can say about Metafind, so I'll end it here. As you can probably guess, Metafind is a _wonderful_ tool to use when all other search engines fail you. By clustering its results alphabetically, by domain, or by keywords, Metafind lets you easily throw out unrelated clusters and find the search term that you are looking for. TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPIC(S): METAFIND TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S): http://pw2.netcom.com/~sleight/rabbit1.html http://www.metafind.com/ -------------------------------- TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE DAY -------------------------------- THANK (verb) - The ability to cognitively process. Usage: "Ah thank ah'll have another Moon Pah." (Special thanks to an anonymous TOURBUS rider for today's wurd) YOU CAN FIND ALL OF THE OLD SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY ON THE SOUTHERN WORD HOMEPAGE AT http://ua1ix.ua.edu/~crispen/word.html [By the way ... that's "you-ay-won-eye-ex"] =--------------------------------------------------------------------= For info on my new book "Atlas for the Information Superhighway" Visit http://ua1ix.ua.edu/~crispen/atlas.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- =====================[ TOURBUS Rider Information ]=================== The Internet TOURBUS - U.S. Library of Congress ISSN #1094-2238 Copyright 1995-97, Rankin & Crispen - All rights reserved Archives on the Web at http://www.TOURBUS.com Join: Send SUBSCRIBE TOURBUS Your Name to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Leave: Send SIGNOFF TOURBUS to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM PROMOTE your business on the Internet TOURBUS. Reach over 80,000 people in a Net-friendly way. Our sponsors say "It works!" Make it work for you - contact BobRankin@MHV.net for details. Editors: Reprint TOURBUS in your publication for free - Ask me how. Send this copy to 3 friends and tell them to hop on the Bus! ===================================================================== .~~~. )) (\__/) .' ) )) Patrick Douglas Crispen /o o \/ .~ Network Solutions Inc. / The InterNIC {o_, \ { Business E-mail: crispen@internic.net / , , ) \ Personal E-mail: crispen@brigadoon.com `~ '-' \ } )) http://www.brigadoon.com/~crispen/ _( ( )_.' '---..{____} Warning: squirrels.