The web has become my #1 source of information....whether it's news, weather, health, sports, a word that I don't understand....the need to find someone....interest in a new musician, rock band or song......something I see on TV, hear someone say or read & wonder, what the heck is that?????.....the internet is the first place I look. Soon, almost everything will be available here......the entire known universe at your finger tips.....but if you don't know where to go & how to look, all that info is just one big mess.

To find a business or corporate site, try using the company's name.....www.verylargecorporationofamerica.com.......my insurance company's site is www.allstate.com ........ www.honda.com is where the people who made my car are located...... pretty easy to find, eh?.....knowing this saves time, but some businesses have been slow to get on the web and have had to alter their internet addresses because the more obvious choices for URLs have been taken by some early birds.......so, you can't always count on this method.
 

Search Engines

These are the programs that are supposed to find what you want.....*l*.... but they can be endless nightmares if you don't know how to use them......The most important thing to remember is to keep your choice of search word(s) as specific as possible......Most search engines have the ability to 'spider'....they search not only for sites containing your query, but for pages & files within sites that contain your word or any of your words. If you type a phrase with "The" in it, you will get responses from every site containing the word "The"....always look for the total number of responses to your query.....that will give you an idea of just how good your search was, especially if what you seek is not among the top responses.......The results of a search are usually placed in the order of most relevance to the query.....so, as you move on down the list, the pages & sites have gradually less to do with your subject......

Yahoo is really the only one of the major search engines that you need to know. It's simple to use .......responses are listed alphabetically by category.....& if they don't have what you want, then you are automatically referred to Altavista's listings of individual web pages......At the bottom of each Yahoo search are links to all the other popular search engines.......just click one of them & the search is continued.

Starting Point connects to more than 160 internet search resources......it's a good place to go if you are hunting endlessly & getting nowhere.......sometimes the big search engines are just not the best places to look.

For people new to the net, Hot Sheet is a great place to find links to the most popular sites on the ineternet......if you are tired of searching & surfing, they have sites arranged by category, a very simple idea........and even for those not new to the net, this is a good site to have bookmarked.

Oh.......and don't forget to search for things in Geocities.....this place has gotten so big since I started my page ......it contains a wealth of info... Many times I have looked all over the net for something, only to find it here after just one try.....this should be one of my 1st stops.....not a last resort.

Finding people on the net

I have moved all over the US and trying to find the people that I've left behind is one of my net obsessions......they say, sooner or later, we will all be in the net, whether we want to be or not, but for now, the best lists of people are confined to telephone directories.....if you are in a current phonebook, you can be found on the net. In the United States we move so often that a phonebook is only about 80% accurate the day it is published....therefore, directories on the internet are no more accurate than the paper directories that we have in our homes and if the person you seek does not have a phone, has an unlisted #, or for whatever reason is not named in a phonebook, then they cannot be found this way.....but, the net is still a very convenient & fast way to look for people, if you know the right places.

The Ultimates is a collection of directories from all over the web.....if you can't find the person you seek here, then that person probably cannot be found on the net......at this site you can search several directories at one time and they have reverse searches......if you have a phone #, you may be able to use it to find where the person lives......or who the person is, if you don't know.....or if you have some mysterious number on your caller ID, this would be a good place to find out who the mystery caller is....probably a telemarketer..:)....
The most accurate directories are 411, Infospace and Yahoo.....
There are places on the net where you can post a person's name & information about them.....there is usually a fee for doing this......the idea is that the person or someone who knows the person will see the name & contact you.....sounds kind of like putting a message in a bottle & throwing it in the ocean, but who knows.....stranger things have happened....

There are sites that create directories.....each person willingly contributes info about him/herself....but these are much smaller listings than the ones that use telephone directories....but, I have found one such place that is kind of interesting. Sixdegrees is based on Marconi's theory that telecommunications would join all people on Earth....there is a play, Six Degrees of Separation and a movie taken from the play (which is very good, BTW) based on this same theory.....that each of us is separated by no more than six people.....You don't just join Sixdegrees......you get everyone you know that has net access to join also, and they get everyone they know to join, and so on....until you have a very large database of your friends, friends, friends....To date, Sixdegrees has more than 1,000,000 members.....I think I have about 50,000 in all six of my degrees combined.....that's alot of contacts!

 At ClassMates you may be able to find people that you knew in high school.......if you really want to find them, or want to be found...;)......this site is free....there are others similar to it, but I've noticed that most have a fee for registering.....and I'm not sure this is a great way to find people......so far there are only 2 people (including me) registered from my graduating class. With our 20th reunion looming on the horizon, I expected more......may be no one wants to be found......*l*....

"S.O.S" - ABBA
 

 

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