CRAWLIN' THE WEB

by Kelly J. Calton


THAT IS THE QUESTION!

    The net is growing at a pace that is practically immeasurable.  Search
engines are a way to search through the enormous amount of sites out there.
The problem is now you have to wade through a bunch of crap to get to what
you originally looking up.  Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly on search
engines.

YAHOO.COM

    This would definitely be the ugly.  Yahoo is so full of junk that it is
hard to find anything you like.  The links don’t work part of the time,
because the database is so out of date. Their categories have further
confused the issue, making it almost impossible to find what you are looking
for.

ALTA-VISTA.COM

    Altavista is a little bit better then Yahoo.  You will have a better shot
at finding what you want, but the same junk is sitting there, just not in the
first 10 search items or so.  Some of the older search engines really need to
just chuck it in and start over.

MSN.COM

    This is where I go to search.  Msn.com is probably one of the better ones
out there.  You won’t get a porn site with everything you search for,
(although some of you might like that) and you usually get something pretty
close to what you wanted in the first place.  Kudos to Msn.com for staying on
the ball and keeping their database clean!

TRAVEL

    With summer here, many people take vacations. There are a lot of tools on
the net to help you get where you want to go.

    I prefer travelocity.com. I recently picked up some tickets to California
, and Yahoo Travel price for the plane ticket was $60 more then
travelocity.com. Ok, I swear this isn’t a bash Yahoo column even though it
seems like it.
   
    Another really cool site is travel.com. I haven’t ever used it for travel
accommodations, but they have really cool pictures of villa’s and condo’s
from all over the world. It is a great site if you like to dream.

     Now another good one is expedia.com. I personally haven’t used it, but I
have friends and co-workers who swear by it. I searched a flight through
travelocity.com and expedia.com, and they both came out the same price, so
they must at least be better then Yahoo!

    Everyone have a safe and happy 4th!  Enjoy your summer travel plans, and
I’ll see you next month!