How can I find information on the World Wide Web about the particular
things that I'm interested in?
Probably the most commonly used tool is Yahoo!, which classifies the most commonly
consulted Web sites by subject. (It can also be searched by keyword.) Its
major disadvantage is that it is selective in its choice of pages -- only a
small fraction of WWW pages are indexed, although the maintainers have
tried to ensure that they have chosen the most useful and commonly accessed
pages. Excite is a similar,
but much less accurate, directory.
Several WWW indices attempt to collect information about many more pages.
In my opinion, the most ambitious and most successful of these is Digital
Equipment Corporation's Alta
Vista index, which covers more than sixteen million WWW pages. Other
indices that I have found useful include Open Text, the Infoseek Guide, and Lycos.
New WWW pages are announced in many different places, such as ``What's
new with NCSA Mosaic'' and ``What's New Too!''.
created January 16, 1996
last revised January 16, 1996
John David Stone (stone@math.grin.edu)