ASSOCIATES (vol. 4, no. 1, July 1997) - associates.ucr.edu
*THE INTERNET GURU* by Dr. Brad Eden Coordinator of Technical Services beden@nhmccd.edu Well, I just returned from an exciting ALA convention in San Francisco. From the many reports on the COLT conference and other support staff meetings, it sounds as if many others also enjoyed themselves. I have put together a list of extensive Internet reference sites on various and sundry topics for those of you who are looking to explore and get your feet wet in the universe of the World Wide Web. As always, any suggestions for future Internet Guru columns are always welcome. Hope that your summer is not as hot and humid as it is here in Houston!! -- WORDS -- WWWebster Dictionary - Enter word and get meaning, pronunciation, function, origin, synonyms - can get similar words if not sure of spelling --- rated "Invaluable" http://www.m-w.com/netdict.htm OneLook - Searches more than 479,000 words in 81 dictionaries. Can use an asterisk to expand possibilities or if not sure of spelling, and you _realize_ it ... e.g. h*pocrit* works, but _not_ h*pocrit http://www.onelook.com Foreign Languages for Travelers For numerous languages, get basic vocabulary terms, pronunciation guides, translating dictionaries, slang guides, etc. http://www.travlang.com/languages Quotations Passages, phrases and proverbs traced to their sources http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/bartlett The Quotations Page http://starlingtech.com/quotes Thesaurus Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Helps find synonyms for particular terms, or you can browse classes of words. (Has a nice applications feature you can choose to cut out the exchange of cookies, which can cause problems/delays with some browsers) http://www.thesaurus.com -- FACTS -- The Old Farmer's Almanac Varied, useful, down-home and comfortable. http://www.almanac.com Ask An Expert A directory of links to experts in many fields, organized by categories. (Best to use these rather than their search. E.g., SQL, and Programming Languages are things their software-guy links can explain, but no luck on the search) http://www.askanexpert.com/askanexpert/index.html Findout - "Who - what- where - when - why - how". "Ask Us" is a free reference service. Professional Researchers will tackle the first 100 questions they get each day - The experts will only spend about 15 minutes on your question, so you should organize what exactly you want, what you want it for, and what sources you have already tried. This can be a great starting point for difficult questions, or a great check on whether you've done all you can to find a tough answer. http://www.findout.com Dates - CalendarLand gives links to a variety of celestial, cultural, religious and historical calendars; points to interactive calendars and download sites for calendar software. A really neat site with a lot of unexpected links, information and ideas. http://www.juneau.com/home/janice/calendarland/ --General Reference-- The Electric Library - An unusual and invaluable research tool. A question in plain English launches a comprehensive, simultaneous search through more than 150 full-text newspapers, hundreds of full-text magazines, two international newswires, two thousand classic books, hundreds of maps, thousands of photographs, as well as major works of literature and art. http://www3.elibrary.com/search.cgi The WWW Virtual Library - An enormous information resource, organized by categories from Aboriginal Studies to Zoos. If you just like learning about things, you could disappear forever in here. http://www.w3.org/pub/DataSources/bySubject/Overview.html A Collection of Reference Resources, including weights and measures, newspaper links, search engines, and a bunch of other sometimes needed stuff. http://www.refdesk.com/ An intriguing site. E.g., it has a nice list of links that the author implies he contemplates visiting first thing every day ... http://www.refdesk.com/first.html How-To - Simple explanations for basic life activities, such as how to fix a leaky faucet. Someone recently posted this site to Bweb, and it does have potential, but it needs a lot of growth. There is so much basic activity in life, and we have so few a priori skills... http://www.learn2.com/ -- PEOPLE -- White Pages A comprehensive e-mail, telephone and net phone directory with more than 10 million listings. http://www.four11.com Information is not always up to date, but this site has another nice feature, Planet All, a smart interactive and very useful Address Book http://www.PlanetAll.com/splash2.htm Who's Who - Searchable 15000 person database of present and past people supposedly worth knowing. http://www.biography.com/ -- BUSINESSES -- Yellow Pages - BigBook lets you use a business name or type or browse categories, and gives complete contact information for more than 16,000,000 US businesses. http://www.bigbook.com/ -- DESTINATIONS -- CityNet - provides destination information, with maps, a people finder and Yellow Pages. World Wide. Very slick, and now part of Excite. http://www.city.net/ MapQuest - answers "Where is it and how do I get there?" Driving directions in the US, plus an interactive worldwide Atlas. http://www.mapquest.com/ -- POSTAL -- National Address Server - Don't know the Zip code? Enter what you _do_ know of an address and this server will supply as much of the missing data, including parts of street names, as it can. Mostly, this just means giving you the zip code, but it now can print postscript 11-digit (ZIP+4+2) barcodes , and the map resource can sometimes be useful. http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/adserv.html -- MONEY -- Market Watch - Free at this time, but possibly this will change, Barron's provides market surveillance and critical company information, includingMarket Day analysis and looks at some online brokers. http://www.barrons.com/ The Wall Street Journal - Subscriptions at $49/yr (two week free trial), provides news, market data, company briefing books, plus access to articles from the DJ publications and more than 3600 other resources. http://www.wsj.com/ Currency - Xenon Labs: The Universal Currency Converter. Speedy, easy and world wide currency options. Offers free daily email updates on currencies you wish to track. http://xe.net/currency/ -- COMPUTING -- Find a file on the Web - everything from software to multimedia files - with this smart search engine, even when you're not sure of the file name. A great resource, e.g. try it with something like SQL, and then maybe with Virtual Library, to get an idea of its power. http://www.filez.com/ Answers for IT professionals - An example of the growing support for specialized needs, InquireCom truly delivers. Easy access to tech tips, "Ten-minute Solutions," vendor literature, discussion forums, and experts in Visual Basic and VRML. http://www.inquiry.com/ Web Developers Virtual Library - From HTML validation to quality animation, this well-organized library help give you the resources necessary to create a standout Web presence. Interesting on-going features as well, such as Introduction to JavaScript, by Steve Thompson. This is a _Must_ site if you do any Web page work, such as your own HomePage, for example http://www.stars.com/