Before the five senses were opened, and earlier than any beginning
They waited, ready, for all those who would call themselves mortals,
So that they might praise, as I do, life, that is, happiness.

Do you have Trouble Finding Information on the Internet ?

Desperate to find that piece of missing information? You thought you had saved in on your computer but, after a fruitless search, you can’t find it. Then you remember you found it on the Internet. 

The problem is howto retrieve that vital piece of information? The answer is to use a Web Search Engine. The first one that springs to mind is Google. Everybody seems to know about this popular Search Engine. 

But that’s not the only one available. There are plenty of other ones out there. 

Search Engines

Internet Search Engines search their enormous databases of Web information by using titles, keywords or text. The type of information available is immense. You can find Text articles, images, videos maps and so on. 

Common Search Engines for Information

The most popular Search Engine is Google. Everybody “googles”. Bing is Microsoft’s answer to Google. Not to be overlooked is Yahoo. While not so popular it’s an efficient Search Engine. 

Three Popular Search Engines

Note: Bing, Google and Yahoo are American based search engines. Here in Australia, we have our own versions of Google and Yahoo – www.google.com.au  and www.yahoo.com.au

A popular Search Engine in the UK was AskJeeves. This is now incorporated in the Ask.com search Engine while in Australia we have one with a strange name. It is called WebWombat. Despite its odd name WebWombat is an efficient Search Engine.

As the information repository on the Web is forever changing all the Search Engines continually update their information databases. 

Additional Internet Information Sources

On the Web there are two other sources of information.  One is the on-line encyclopaedia called Wikipedia. Their web address is –  www.en.wikipedia.org/

The On-line Encyclopaedia

The other is Answers.com. Their web address is –  www.answers.com  Answers.com will answer direct questions. I find this a useful site when asked “curly” questions by my grandchildren. 

The Question & Answer Search Engine

Both Wikipedia and Answers.com are valuable resources when dealing with specific questions. 

Getting a Result when Searching

To get the most out of Search Engines, you need to learn how they work to acheive get the best result. The biggest challenge, when searching, is to ask the right question otherwise you’ll end up being overwhelmed by the volumes of miscellaneous information. 

So how do you ask that burning question in the right way. 

Quick Tips to Search Effectively

The following tips were found in an article on an Australian Teachers website. The article was entitled “How to Search the Internet Effectively”. 

Their Web Address is listed below. 

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/special_initiatives/wa_resources/wa_teachers/tipsheets/search_internet_effectively.cfm

Here is a summary of ways to perform a successful Search. 

• Use nouns as query keywords. Never use articles (“a,” “the”), pronouns (“he,” “it”), conjunctions (“and,” “or”) or prepositions (“to,” “from”) in your queries
• Use 6 to 8 keywords per query
• Where possible, combine keywords into phrases by using quotation marks, as in “solar system”
• Spell carefully, and consider alternate spellings – American English versus English (UK)
• Avoid redundant terms
• Check the “Help” function of the particular search engine you’re using, since they all have their own quirks and preferences

For your Internet Search to be successful, you may need to have several attempts. Keep in mind there are millions of documents on line and the organization is a little disorganized despite the best efforts of Google et al to gather all this information together. 

Source : www.windows7news.com

The result of the struggle between the thought and the ability to express it, between dream and reality, is seldom more than a compromise or an approximation.