Rim Semiconductor Company (fka RSMI)

[excel]

From another board. Hope this helps us research better.

Search tips:

It's kind of weak but there are links that aren't so weak...

http://www.sacbee.com/ib/news/ib_news03_20010426.html

Wired Life: Dozen tips to help you search Net efficiently
By David Hoye

(Published April 26, 2001)
Searching for things on the Web seems pretty easy. More often than not, even simple single-keyword searches help us find what we want. Still, everybody's search skills can stand fine-tuning. Here, then, are a dozen Web-searching tips and tidbits:

It's wise to try the same search on two or more search sites. Not all operate the same way, so the results may vary. So-called "meta" search sites will do the work for you, running your keyword through several search engines and reporting back in one spot.

There are several meta search sites available. Three include DogPile (www.dogpile.com), MetaCrawler (www.metacrawler.com) and Search.com (www.search.com).

Looking for images? You can try a "visual" search using Ditto.com (www.ditto.com). Meanwhile, AltaVista (www.altavista.com) can be told to look just for images if you click on the "Media/Topic Search" link.

If you think your searches are boring, check out what others are looking for. One way is via Search Voyeur at Excite (www.excite.com/search/voyeur/). A special window will display about 10 real-time Excite searches. The list refreshes every 30 seconds. If you see something interesting, click on it to view results.

If you use multiple keywords, some search sites automatically look for Web pages that include all the keywords listed. Some don't. To ensure results that include all your keywords, put a plus (+) sign before each keyword. Example: +President +George +Bush.

The minus (-) sign can be quite helpful. If you seek information about bass fishing, for example, a Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) search using keyword bass is going to yield Web sites devoted to both fishing and music. But a search using keywords bass -music will reduce the list to mostly fishing sites.

Putting quote marks around two or more keywords tells the search site to look for that specific phrase or name. Yahoo! found 30,600 Web page matches for Cool Hand Luke, but a search for "Cool Hand Luke" narrowed the field to 2,940.

Afraid of what you might find? Google offers SafeSearch filtering (www.google.com/advanced_search) and AltaVista offers Family filtering. Parental warning: While such filtering helps, it's less than perfect, especially if your search terms have multiple meanings.

Who links to whom? Search sites such as AltaVista and Google can tell you. In place of a keyword, simply type link: followed by the URL, or address, of any Web site or individual Web page to find out if anybody out there links to that site or page. This is a handy way to find other Web sites on the same topic.

Some search results include what amounts to paid advertising. GoTo.com (www.goto.com), for example, offers a service called Premium Listings, in which companies can pay to have their sites listed at the top of search results. GoTo.com says the service helps feed results to America Online, Lycos (www.lycos.com), AltaVista, HotBot (www.hotbot.com) and others.

Sometimes paid listings are easy to spot. In addition to being at the top of the results list, they're usually set apart from other results and placed under a heading such as "Sponsored Links" or "Featured Listings."

Want to search a single Web site? Go to AltaVista and type host: followed by the URL, or address, of the site in question. Then, type a keyword or two and click Search.

AltaVista will then search for the keyword(s) you listed at the site you specified. Example: host:www.sacbee.com kings. That tells AltaVista to find everything at Sacbee.com related to the keyword "kings."

A company called Pointera (www.pointera.com) wants to beef up Web searching. Using Napster-like file sharing technology, Web users could scan for files on up to 500 million individual PCs around the world. Will this come to pass? Check the Pointera site for more details.

A good source of search engine information is Search Engine Watch (www.search-enginewatch.com). The site offers tutorials, lists of major search sites, charts that compare features of various search sites, the latest search site news and much more.



Excel - Greg