Phil Bradley trawls the internet to find the answers to this month’s readers’ queries.
Q Many students who use the internet are finding it difficult to obtain the information that they need because they can’t spell their search terms. Can you suggest anything that will help them?
A Most search engines, and certainly Google, are intelligent enough to look at the words being typed into the search box and provide alternatives. Google is particularly good at this with its ‘did you mean?’ feature, so I’d pay particular attention to this when running any teaching sessions.
However, Exalead’s advanced search function (http://beta.exalead.com/search/C=0/2p=1) has a very useful option to search on approximate spelling or do a phonetic search. I’ve used this myself in the past (for medical terms particularly) and found it better than the Google offering.
Another resource is the Reverse Dictionary (www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml) This is a very clever utility, because you can type in words that describe the concept that you’re interested in (either because you can’t spell the word you really want, or just simply don’t know the term) and it will provide you with a series of words that match the concept. If necessary you can then click on the link to find out more about any of them.
Finally, if all else fails, the online dictionary (http://www.dictionary.com/) is worth trying.
Q Are there any search engines that will allow me to search for moving images? I’m particularly interested in news reports and items from television stations.
A With the Blinkx TV video search (www.blinkx.tv/) you can search using single words (a minimum of three), or for concepts. It has options to include/exclude particular stations such as the BBC or Sky. The utility ‘listens’ to what people say and uses that transcription to search on, so a search for ‘Everton Football Club’ may well turn up an item where it’s mentioned, but which it doesn’t actually appear in.
You could also try the Google offering of Google Video Search (http://video.google.com/) or Yahoo! Video Search (http://video.search.yahoo.com/).
Q I’m trying to compile a list of the top 10 search engines. Any suggestions?
A Depends entirely on who you ask, and what criteria you use. A report from ISEDB.com (www.isedb.com/news/article/1108) suggests Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Overture, Web Search, Lycos, Netscape and My Way.
On the other hand, over at the Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1423430,00.html) they suggest Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, Teoma, AltaVista and Dogpile in its list of top 25.
As far as UK searchers are concerned, Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, Tiscali and My
Way come out on top in a report from IT Facts (http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/index.php?p=524). I think it’s a case of take your pick really!
Site of the month
My website of the month is called Nextaris (www.nextaris.com/). It’s a site that enables you to combine a lot of the different uses that you make of the internet. So it has a nice feature for using search engines, the ability to save webpages, save pictures,
publish materials and weblogs, have social and private messaging and share material with others. It’s an excellent idea and something that could prove to be extremely useful.
Phil Bradley is an internet consultant, trainer, web designer and author. Visit http://www.philb.com/ for free information on internet introductions, search engine articles, web design tips and a host of other free information. New: 3rd edn of The Advanced Internet Searcher’s Handbook is now available! If you have any questions about the internet send an email to philb@philb.com with the subject header ‘column query’.
Updated: 19 April 2005