From crispen@CAMPUS.MCI.NET Wed Mar 26 22:03:53 1997
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 14:11:50 -0800
From: Patrick Douglas Crispen
Reply-To: TOURBUS-Request@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
To: TOURBUS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Subject: TOURBUS -- 27 MARCH 1997 -- DOGPILE
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\___/ \___/ 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. :)
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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/
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--------------------------------
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
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======================================================================
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.
