One of the amazing features of the World Wide Web is the range of facilities available for searching. It is almost beyond comprehension that you can search throughout the Internet merely by entering a simple word or phrase, and in seconds be presented with a list of hits.
The systems that are used to undertake these trawls are known by the cognoscenti as search engines. Many services are available, including Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com), Excite (http://www.excite.com/) and – one of the best – Digital’s AltaVista (http://www.altavista.digital.com).
Recently, I was introduced to another, MetaCrawler (http://www.metacrawler. com), which appears to provide the facility to look through all the major search engines in one sweep.
MetaCrawler differs from other services in that it does not maintain its own internal database. Rather, it relies on the databases of various Web-based sources. That is, MetaCrawler sends queries to several Web search engines, including Lycos, WebCrawler, Excite, AltaVista, Yahoo, HotBot and Galaxy.
Users have the option of scoring the hits, so that the list displayed can be sorted in a number of different ways, such as locality, region and organisation. This is a powerful service, and I have already used it many times.
The MetaCrawler Development Team, located at the University of Washington, consists of Erik Selberg, Oren Etzioni, Greg Lauckhart and Darren Shack. The depressing thing is that, judging by their photographs, which are displayed on the Web site, they are all barely out of short trousers! Apart from Lauckhart, that is, who displays a picture of his dog instead.
Another interesting search facility is WhoWhere? (http://www.whowhere.com/). This allows users to search for e-mail addresses throughout the world, simply by entering the required name. For example, “John Kirkwood” produced my work and home addresses, plus six other John Kirkwoods scattered around the globe. And I thought I was unique!
Finally, if you have been frustrated in your attempts to obtain railway timetable information since privatisation, I can thoroughly recommend the new Railtrack Web site (http://www.railtrack.co.uk).
John Kirkwood’s home page address: http://www.demon.co.uk/property
