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Reference
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Ask
Jeeves
Like
Ask Jeeves for Kids, which is also on
our Top 100 list, Ask Jeeves lets you
do your Web research by asking questions
in plain English. Then it scours the Web
for the answers and provides you with
links to the information. In practice,
the system works reasonably well, although
it can disappoint at times. Ask Jeeves
is definitely getting better as more and
more canned replies are added to its vast
database and human editors work to provide
answers to the most popular questions.
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Britannica.com
It
seems unlikely that you'll ever find an
encyclopedia salesman knocking on your
door again, now that the contents of the
Encyclopedia Britannica are available
online (for free), along with related
articles from 76 top magazines and links
to 125,000 Web sites. Though the site
was overwhelmed with visitors when it
launched in October, response times have
now improved. It's a remarkable research
tool, and when you think about it, it's
probably worth the cost of a computer
to have such a resource available to your
school-age children.
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DeepCanyon
This spin-off from Hewlett-Packard is
a research site targeted at computer and
Internet marketers. It aggregates all
sorts of industry research, making some
available for free and some for a fee.
The result is a remarkably useful and
informative site, and you can easily imagine
the same service being replicated across
any of dozens of industries, which is,
of course, part of DeepCanyon's larger
plan.
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GuruNet
GuruNet isn't a site but rather a free
download that leverages the power of the
Web to do instant one-click research on
any word you read or type. Click on the
word Ford, and if it's before
the word Motor, GuruNet gives you
a brief company profile, a stock chart
of the past year, a chart of the current
day's stock activity, and links to recent
news stories on Ford Motor Co. Click on
Ford when it follows Henry,
and GuruNet retrieves a biographical profile
from The Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.
You can also jump off and search the Web
right from GuruNet. Amazing. How did you
get along without it?
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InfoSpace.com
You may not know it, but InfoSpace.com
is the power behind many of the directories
you find all over the Web. Everything
from people finders to the Yellow Pages
to maps are here, so you can bookmark
this one site and probably erase ten other
reference bookmarks. The site also now
offers a Personal Desktop Portal, a small
desktop toolbar that gives you easy access
to many of the site's search features.
All in all, a very handy site to have
around.
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