Phil Bradley trawls the internet to find the answers to this month’s readers’ queries.
Q I’m putting together a 15-minute presentation for our staff on the basics of the internet. What points do you think I should make?
A Well, I think the first point is that you can’t say much in 15 minutes! What I’d be inclined to do is to spend some time creating a webpage that they can use, and basing your presentation around that. I’d start with the obvious choice of Google, and briefly show phrase searching, excluding terms and something fun like define:
I’d also point them towards advanced searching via Soople (www.soople.com). Next I’d do a quick demonstration using Thumbshots Ranking (http://ranking.thumbshots.com/) to show that one search engine cannot cover everything (not even Google). I’d then point them to engines like Exalead (www.exalead.com), Accoona (www.accoona.eu) and ez2Find (www.ez2Find.com) as useful alternatives.
Q Is the Yahoo Questions and Answers service any good?
A Several sites offer a questions and answers service. The idea is simple, you post a question, and people will answer it. Generally you let your question run for a few days, and then pick a ‘winner’. I think they’re a good idea if you want a vox pop viewpoint of something, or want general trend information. I wouldn’t use one if I had a ‘serious’ question, although someone may well give you a useful answer with a link to a good URL. In my opinion all the services are pretty much of a muchness (with the exception of the Google version, which is superior but is commercial in nature), and I’d stick to using them for fun or curiosity questions.
By the way, you can now use a British version of Yahoo Q&A (http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/), which was launched at the beginning of September.
Q I read about the way in which people’s searches can be identified when there was the fuss recently about AOL releasing search data on to the net. Can you suggest any ways in which I can browse the net without this information being stored anywhere?
A I can, but there’s a really nice short article from the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) at http://tinyurl.com/q75e7 that gives several helpful pointers on what you should or should not do.
Q I saw a recent reference to a resource that allows you to input your postcode and find out how technically advanced your area is, but now I can’t find it. Can you help?
A I can, mainly because I mentioned it in my weblog (www.philbradley.typepad.com/)!
Go to www.spatial-literacy.org/esocietyprofiler/ and put your postcode in and you’ll see if your immediate location is characterised by anything from Low Technologists through to E-professionals.
Site of the month
My site of the month is Techcrunch (www.techcrunch.com/) which is a news website, keeping its readers up to date on a wide variety of issues such as Web 2.0, searching, technological news and more. It’s a great way to try and keep on top of everything that’s happening on the web.
Updated: 13 September 2006