Phil Bradley trawls the internet to find the answers to this month’s readers’ queries.
Q I noticed that in your last column regarding good medical search engines you didn’t mention the National Electronic Library for Health (www.nelh.nhs.uk/) which is a very important medical health gateway. Why was that?
A You’re absolutely right; it’s an extremely valuable resource, covering a wide variety of medical matters, and if readers haven’t discovered it already it is worth visiting. The reason that I didn’t mention it was that I thought it was already very well known, and I like to try and find alternatives to such sites that readers might not have found. I’m also limited on space in my column and once I start listing useful sites it’s very difficult to stop! However, I’m happy to put the record straight; its omission was due to space constraints and nothing else.
Q I need a good example of misquotation on the internet, preferable from a literary source for a course that I’m running – can you help?
A A really good site for misquotations and the correct original is at http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations and this lists dozens, including popular culture (‘Do you feel lucky, punk?’, ‘Beam me up Scotty’) through historical (‘A damn close run thing’) and finally to literary (‘Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well’).
Q I’m very interested in films, and want to find some film review blogs, as a way of helping me to decide which films to choose to see at the London Film Festival. Any suggestions?
A A few good places to start on movie review weblogs: Yahoo Directory gives 60 results on movie weblogs – I think most are probably American, but it’s worth going through the list to see what you can find. Try http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/search/dir?h=c&p=movie+weblogs
Google Blogsearch (http://blogsearch.google.com/) is another option and this brought up some good results about the festival. Finally, try www.technorati.com/search/London+Film+Festival+
Q I’ve looked around the advanced search functions of some engines, and have noticed the possibility of search for different file formats. Is this a good way to run a search?
A Narrowing your search by limiting results to different file formats is indeed a good way to get a smaller, more focused set of results. Most of the advanced engines provide this facility. Briefly, if you limit to .xls or Excel spreadsheets you’re going to get financial or statistical data coming up quite often. PowerPoint or .ppt files will often result in pages that explain a subject (PowerPoint being used by trainers to do some teaching) or current research, as the software is often used to create a presentation on new work in field and is hosted by the organization running a conference. And Acrobat or .pdf files will often give you ‘official’ information. For an extended discussion on file format searching take a look at the article I wrote on my website about it (www.philb.com/fileformat.htm).
Site of the month
My site of the month is Rollyo (www.rollyo.com/). It allows you to create a set of websites to run searches on. You’re limited to 25 sites, but that should be enough for most people. Basically all you have to do is register (free), give your search roll a name, list the sites you want to search and then choose a category and add some tags. You can then run searches that are just limited to those sites. Very quick and easy.
Phil Bradley is an internet consultant, trainer, web designer and author. Visit 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: 20 October 2005