The Internet and Electronic Resources for Communities



Search Programs and Search Robots - Search While You Sleep

There are 50 or more programs on the World Wide Web that can be used to find specific information desired. You can find information by subject, language, date, topic, author, as well as country, domain, or file size. Some of these programs are specifically designed to locate individuals.


One of the most important skills needed by the professional of the 21st Century is to be able to wade through the enormous volume of documents made available to find the best quality information. If you are not an efficient user of the tools available, you will end up like the cartoon character who was trying to get a drink of water from a fully charged firehose.

You will need to become a continuous self-learner. A well done summary of Intelligent Agents, Multi-search Engines, and Individual search engines can be found on the Web. One of the basic skills that you must learn is to be efficient in using the various Search Engines that are available free on the WWW. One of the best summaries of the more common Search Engines  is a set of pages created by Phil Bradley. Phil’s pages can be found at:

http://www.philb.com/index.htm

There are Intelligent Robot Software Systems that search the Internet 24 hours a day. The software is instructed to search for topics of interest; the software tracks and delivers the information to your computer desktop on a continuous basis.

An example of this type of service can be downloaded free from the Pointcast Network Home Page:

http://www.pointcast.com