I am more of a bookworm, and I was wondering if anyone could tell me how to find information on the internet. For example, I asked the board a question about an obscure song from the early '80’s and within no time I had the title, artist, and the words. I know how to get basic information, but how in the heck does one find those “gee, I wonder…” sites? I notice a lot of them on this site are highlighted in blue. But they don’t seem to be the stumble across type of areas. 
for standard questions, i usually use www.ask.com or www.google.com or www.dogpile.com
i haven’t used yahoo in a year or two…
for music lyrics and related, i like(d) to check out www.lyrics.ch (if it’s still around…i lost track after a court case they had)
I think a lot of them are just collected by folks who spend too much time on the net (myself included). Others are just givens, such as if you have a movie question, the International Movie Database is a likely first place to look. Still others are simply there because people either have an interest in the subject or because it is their forté. I have some bookmarks to reference sites about subjects most people don’t bother with, so those are questions I can more easily answer.
Finally, there’s always the ole search engines. My favorite is still the vernable Alta Vista>, but there’s always Infoseek (or Go.com or whatever in the hell they’re called these days) and shudder Yahoo!. Ask Jeeves is a nice middle ground to the lot of them (though it doesn’t search Yahoo! for you). Knowing how to format a good search is something of an art, but it’s a good art to learn.
“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
That is, of course, the
Internet Movie Database
Did I get that right?
<font color=#FCFCFC>rocks</font>
No, of course not. Try this:
Internet Movie Database
<font color=#DCDCDC>Dang UBB
rocks</font>
Well www.alltheweb.com hasn’t been mentioned yet. It will allow you to search specifically for pictures or music files etc. The only problem I’ve had is that occassionally I can’t seem to access that site at certain times of the day.
Usually I use google, altavista or alltheweb. For the hardcore search nut though here is a directory of some search engines…
http://www.netstrider.com/search/directory.html
For the “Nicole” question, most of my answer did come from a book, namely Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles 1955-1996. Billboard is very careful about controlling its chart information, so I don’t think it will ever be available, at least for free, on the internet.
At that point it was on to the search engines. www.google.com is best for sorting through topics where there is a lot of information, but for obscure stuff search engines like www.alltheweb.com are better, since they catalog more sites. A search for “Point Blank” “My Sweet Nicole” on www.alltheweb.com turned up exactly one match, a page with the lyrics for the song.
If you’re looking for a song and don’t know the title and artist, think of one line from the song. Now go to altavista and type that one line into the search engine with quotes around it. It’ll probably turn up a page with the title, artist, and lyrics to the song you’re looking for.
Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages.
For lyrics, I most just type “artist lyrics” on Lycos. There’s usually about a dozen fan sites that have lyrics listed.
Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded. You’ll find it an effective combination.
Thanks everyone. SDr’s are the best.
I usually just leave the question on a slip of paper under a shallow bowl of milk on my back steps. In the morning, the milk is gone and the Internet Brownie has left me a URL.
For any kind of search at all, especially if it’s kind of specific and you don’t know where to start, I always go to www.metacrawler.com. It has only failed me once, and that’s because I discovered that what I was looking for doesn’t exist.
Metacrawler is better than just using Lycos or Excite, because it searches those (plus a bunch of other search engines) all at once. It’s like 15 searches in one!
Sucks to your assmar.
And there are the online encyclopedias like www.britannica.com and the online dictionaries like www.m-w.com . Britannica.com not only gives you their own articles, it also finds relevant websites and recommends books and provides links to articles from magazines like Discover.
>< DARWIN >
__L___L
Or, you could be like Nickrz and just make shit up. 
You not only have to use the search engines, but you have to know how to phrase things. Biggest help is knowing that a plus requires a term be used and a - skips over that term. Thus “-smashing pumpkins” will find information about pumpkins without giving information on the rock group.
A nice little free utility is Copernic (at http://www.copernic.com ), which performs a metasearch for you.
Some engines are better than others. I currently like Google (fast and easy – and you can look at pages once they’ve been deleted), Alltheweb (fast, with the best listing of non-U.S. sites), Northern Light (groups results by category – very useful), Altavista, and Yahoo (which is best if you’re looking for a website dedicated to a subject insteat of those that merely mention it).
Worst, bar none, is Ask Jeeve (or ask). I’ve never gotten a useful search out of them, and all too often the results are wildly different from what I entered. It seems to work more on random processes than any logic. Snap.com isn’t very good, either.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman
Of course it is. It’s also a valuable lesson about sleeping once in awhile if I’m goiing to be posting.
“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
For pop music questions, a good resource is http://www.allmusic.com
Another one that groups hits like Northern Light is Inference Find, http://www.infind.com/ . It looks OK, but I’ve never used it much; it’s listed on the library’s page here at work.
For page searches, Google seems to sort out relevant sites better than others I’ve tried. Altavista does have the search for specific kinds of files (images, sound, video), so that’s handy if you need a particular resource.
Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”
Just to add another reference, the one I usually use is Dogpile - http://www.dogpile.com . It’s another of the metasearch engines.
“Drink your coffee! Remember, there are people sleeping in China.”