From crispen@campus.mci.netFri Apr 12 00:55:48 1996
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 20:33:08 -0700
From: Patrick Douglas Crispen
Reply to: TOURBUS-REQUEST@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
To: Multiple recipients of list TOURBUS
Subject: TOURBUS - 11 APRIL - METACRAWLER (BORK! BORK! BORK!)
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\___/ \___/ T h e I n t e r n e t T o u r B u s \___/
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP : METACRAWLER (BORK! BORK! BORK!)
TODAY'S TOURBUS ADDRESSES : http://www.aclu.org/court/cdacom2.html
infobot@infomania.com
http://astro.queensu.ca/~dursi/borker.html
http://metacrawler.cs.washington.edu:8080/index.html
First, to those who were offended by my "mad cow" joke last week, I offer
my deepest apologies. Second, to those of you who have been having
problems getting into epic.org to download the text of "ACLU, et al., v.
Reno" (the lawsuit filed by the ACLU to stop the U.S. Government's
enforcement of the recently adopted Communications Decency Act), you might
have better luck at the following alternate site:
http://www.aclu.org/court/cdacom2.html
This is the ACLU's official Web version of their lawsuit, and this page is
pretty big (about 110K). As I said back on March 21, though, the "Nature
of the Online Medium" section of the ACLU's lawsuit is most clear, concise,
and user-friendly demystification of the Net that I have ever seen.
Finally, thanks to the kind help several alert passengers at the back of
the bus, I have once again found the address for the "English to Muppet
Show Swedish Chef Translator" (a.k.a. the "text borkifier"). You can have
the text of any e-mail letter "borkified" by e-mailing it to
infobot@infomania.com
with the word CHEF as the subject line of your letter. You can also find a
borkifier on the Web at
http://astro.queensu.ca/~dursi/borker.html
And, before I get mail bombed by a whole bunch of angry Swedes, let me just
add that anyone who has ever been to Sweden can tell you that people in
Sweden do NOT speak like the Swedish Chef ...
... now, people from Norway, on the other hand ...
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Do you know what my dream Web search engine would be? No, it wouldn't be
Alta Vista (just between you and me, I absolutely *hate* Alta Vista). My
dream Web search engine would be one that sent my search query to ALL of
the Web's biggest search engines: Open Text, Lycos, WebCrawler, InfoSeek,
Excite, Inktomi, Alta Vista, Galaxy and Yahoo. Better still, my dream Web
search engine would take my query, send it to all eight of these databases,
and then collate the results and throw away all of the redundant URLs (the
same URLs repeated in different databases).
Guess what, folks. Such a search engine exists. It was created by Erik
Selberg and Oren Etzioni at the University of Washington, it is called
"MetaCrawler," and it is completely FREE!
You can find MetaCrawler on the Web at
http://metacrawler.cs.washington.edu:8080/index.html
Because MetaCrawler is forms-based, you'll need a forms-capable web browser
like Netscape, Mosaic, or Internet Explorer to use MetaCrawler. However,
once you get to the MetaCrawler Web page, you'll discover that MetaCrawler
works like any other search engine on the Web. You type one or more
keywords in a box on your screen, and then click on the search button. The
search engine finds all of the Web pages around the world that have your
keyword(s) in them (the "hits"), and then displays the hits on your screen.
You then access the hits that interest you by clicking on their
hyperlinks.
While MetaCrawler may look like other search engines, it is actually quite
different. For example, MetaCrawler searches take a little longer than
searches through other search engine, but that is because MetaCrawler sends
your query to eight different search engines! My personal experience with
MetaCrawler is that a basic ("all these words") search takes about a
minute. But, MetaCrawler's results are well worth the extra time!
When you do a search, MetaCrawler will display a screen showing you which
search engines it has queried and how many "hits" it found on that search
engine. Be patient. This process takes some time. After all of the hits
have been collected (which usually takes a minute), MetaCrawler collates
the results. MetaCrawler looks for duplicate links, throws them out, and
then displays the results on your screen.
If this isn't cool enough, MetaCrawler also has an option that will check
all of the links that it finds to make sure that the links are both
accessible and contain valid data. Just do your search "as a phrase"
instead of looking for "all of these words." These "as a phrase" searches
will take a little longer (about 3 minutes instead of 1), but if you are
someone who is frustrated by "404" errors, you'll find that this expanded
search option will significantly lower your blood pressure ... and increase
the number of "valuable" hits that you can find.
Now for the shocker: MetaCrawler doesn't have any commercials on it, and
Erik and Oren have no plans to add any commercials in the near future.
According to Erik and Oren, "MetaCrawler is primarily a research tool, and
will continue to be such for the first few years."
That's about it for today. Oh, by the way, if you have sent in a Southern
Word and did not receive a thank you from me, I apologize. I have been
swamped over the past couple of months and my recent problems with my Mac
have turned my onramp onto the Information Superhighway into an onramp into
the Information Supercollider. Suffice it to say that I *do* thank each
and every one of you for your "word" suggestions, and I have printed out or
saved every suggestion that has been sent :)
--------------------------------
TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE DAY
--------------------------------
RAISIN - Noun. Motive or explanation.
Usage: "There ain't no raisin to be actin' thatta way."
(Special thanks goes to Jeryl Geary for today's wurd)
YOU CAN FIND ALL OF THE OLD SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY ON THE
SOUTHERN WORD HOMEPAGE AT http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~crispen/word.html
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TOURBUS - (c) Copyright 1996, Patrick Crispen and Bob Rankin
All rights reserved. Redistribution is allowed only with permission.
Send this copy to 3 friends and tell them to get on the Bus!
(\__/) .~ ~. ))
/O O ./ .' Patrick Douglas Crispen
{O__, \ { The University of Alabama
/ . . ) \ *NEW ADDRESS* crispen@campus.mci.net *NEW ADDRESS*
|-| '-' \ } http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~crispen/crispen.html
.( _( )_.'
'---.~_ _ _& Warning: squirrels.
