From crispen@CAMPUS.MCI.NET Wed Mar 26 22:03:53 1997 Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 14:11:50 -0800 From: Patrick Douglas CrispenReply-To: TOURBUS-Request@LISTSERV.AOL.COM To: TOURBUS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Subject: TOURBUS -- 27 MARCH 1997 -- DOGPILE /~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~|~\ | "Why | Surf When / You Can | Ride The | Bus?" / | \ |__________|__________/__________|__________|___________/ | \ / /______|----\ | MASS MUSIC - More Music For Your Money! Over |//////| | | 185,000 Titles Just A Click Away. FREE Weekly Music |//////| | | Zine - Buy 7 Get 1 FREE Everyday - Use Discount code: |//////| | | TOURBUS and save 10%. http://www.Mass-Music.com |//////| | ~~~/~~~\~~/~~~\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/~~~\~~~~ \___/ \___/ T h e I n t e r n e t T o u r B u s \___/ TODAY'S STOP: DOGPILE TODAY'S ADDRESS: http://www.dogpile.com/ A few alert TOURBUS readers recently wrote to me to point out that I made a glaring grammatical error in my last TOURBUS post. If you remember, I wrote: "You'd better slow those screws down, Bobby ... your cavitating!" What I *should* have said, of course, is "You'd better slow those screws down, *ROBERT* ... your cavitating!" I am happy to set this matter straight. :) *----------------------* Tastebud Alert! *-------------------------* Tired of the same old food? Give your palate a treat. Twin Peaks Gourmet Trading Post specializes in the finest all natural foods. Take a stroll through our aisles, they're full of mouthwatering goodies. Twin Peaks Sampler Packs are loaded with high quality tasty treats. Our unique and flavorful fancy foods are sure to please the most discerning food lovers... Indulge your desires! *----------------------( http://tpeaks.com )-------------------------* If you have been on the bus for a while, you will probably remember we pulled our little bus of Internet happiness into the Metacrawler search engine (http://www.metacrawler.com/) back on April 11th. At the time, Metacrawler was my favorite search engine. Metacrawler would send your search query to ALL of the Web's biggest search engines: Open Text, Lycos, WebCrawler, InfoSeek, Excite, Inktomi, Alta Vista, Galaxy and Yahoo. Metacrawler then would collate the results and throw away all of the redundant URLs (the same URLs repeated in different databases). Well, thanks to a suggestion from a dear friend of mine in Texas (thank you, Michelle!), your fearless listowner has found a new search engine that may actually be even better than Metacrawler (imagine that!). The new search engine is called "Dogpile" and it can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.dogpile.com/ As with most of the advanced search engines, you'll need a forms-capable Web browser -- like Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, NCSA Mosaic, etc. -- to be able to use Dogpile. Aaron Flin created Dogpile as ... the result of one person's search for a better search. It started when I got extremely frustrated with searching Yahoo and finding too few or no results and then trying AltaVista and getting 30000 or more documents. Naturally I tried other meta-search engines, some of which were very impressive, incorporating powerful features. However none would search starting with the search engine that gives the most focused results (in my opinion, Yahoo) moving on to search engines which, while not as focused, return more results. Further those other multiple search engine gateways would not allow the use of advanced syntax such as NEAR, which I use all the time, or leave in the option to get more pages from any search engine which returns more than 10 matches. [quoted from http://www.dogpile.com/about.html] So, Aaron created a meta-search engine that is both sequential (sending your queries to specific search engines based on the number and quality of "hits" that that search engine usually returns) and expandable (if AltaVista and Lycos each have 100 hits for your query, Dogpile will display the first 10 from each, and then give you the option of seeing the rest of those 100 hits from either -- or both -- AltaVista or Lycos). Best of all, Dogpile send lets you search the Web ... and Usenet ... *AND* FTP! Dogpile sends your Web queries to (in order) Yahoo!, Lycos' A2Z, Excite Guide, World Wide Web Worm, WWW Yellow Pages , What U Seek, Lycos, WebCrawler, InfoSeek, OpenText, AltaVista, Excite, and HotBot. Dogpile also searches through Usenet using Hotbot News, Reference.com, Dejanews, Excite News, Infoseek News, Altavista, and Dejanews' old Database. Finally, Dogpile uses Filez, FTP Search, and Snoopie to search through FTP (but only the first word in your query will be passed on to these FTP search engines). While Dogpile's interface looks a lot like every other search engine you may have used, Dogpile does have a few unique features that you probably should know about. First, Dogpile lets you choose up to two "media" that you want it to search in. For example, you can have Dogpile search for the word "Squirrel" on the Web and then search for that word in Usenet. For most of you, though, you'll probably just want to have Dogpile search through the Web for your query and then stop. Also, Dogpile lets you set a "maximum wait" time for your search. This can be anywhere between 10 and 60 seconds. Running a search through Dogpile is pretty easy. For example, I had Dogpile search for the word "Tourbus" on the Web, and Dogpile found: - 4 documents on Yahoo! - 0 documents on Lycos A2Z - 1 document on Excite Guide Search - 259 documents on Lycos (Dogpile only showed the first 10, but it provided links to where I can view the other 249 documents) - 5 documents on the WWW Yellow Pages Since I had set my maximum wait time to 60 seconds, and since the World Wide Web Worm search engine did not respond in 60 seconds, Dogpile gave up on that search. But, Dogpile did find a HUGE list of links from those first 5 search engines! (By the way, at the bottom of the page of links that Dogpile found was a button that said "Next Set of Search Engines" ... Dogpile still had *7* more search engines that it could have used if I had not found what I was searching for in that first batch of search engines!). Searching for something on the Net can be one of the most frustrating things you ever do. With so many search engines out there, and with each search engine returning different results, it is hard to know where to start. Dogpile really does solve this problem. Folks, I think I have found a new favorite search engine. :) TODAY'S STOP: DOGPILE TODAY'S ADDRESS: http://www.dogpile.com/ +--------------------------------------------------------------------* Jump start your Web pages with a copy of the best-selling book "Creating Cool HTML 3.2 Web Pages" by guru Dave Taylor. For info and FREE online HTML lessons, visit +-----------( http://www.intuitive.com/taylor/cool-web )-------------* -------------------------------- TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE DAY -------------------------------- HAL BOB (noun). A heavenly body Usage: "Have you seen Comet Hal Bob?" (EEEK! I forgot the name of the person who originally suggested today's word. Sorry about that! Anyway, the person who submitted today's word first saw it on the Search Voyeur that we visited two weeks ago. In other words, there *really* was someone out there on the Internet searching for information on "Comet Hal Bob!"). :) 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 ====================================================================== Join : Send SUBSCRIBE TOURBUS Your Name to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Leave : Send SIGNOFF TOURBUS to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Archives: On the Web at http://www.TOURBUS.com Advertising: Send e-mail to BobRankin@MHV.net for details. =--------------------------------------------------------------------= For info on my new book "Atlas for the Information Superhighway" send an e-mail letter to LISTSERV@UA1VM.UA.EDU that says GET ATLAS INFO F=MAIL in the body of your e-mail letter ====================================================================== TOURBUS - (c) Copyright 1997, 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 / . . ) \ crispen@campus.mci.net |-| '-' \ } http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~crispen/ .( _( )_.' '---.~_ _ _& Warning: squirrels.
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