3rd post! Another boring academic post (kidding! .... or am I? *mysterious music*)

"Hey, i dunno how to find lyrics online."
"Use a search engine, you dummy."
"Search engine? Whazzat?"

Unless you're as clueless as the dummy, you'd pretty much already know what is a search engine and its basic function - basically, to search. According to Wikipedia, 'a web search engine is a tool designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are usually presented in a list, and are commonly known as 'hits'. The information may consist of webpages, images, information, and other types of files.'

A few of the numerous search engines available on the internet include mamma metasearch, yahoo! search, google scholar, and eric digest. As is obvious, they share similarities such as search capabilities, and all of them except for eric digest have a minimalist page (just a box to enter the search keywords, and a few tabs). Mamma Metasearch and Yahoo! search are both 'regular' search engines, which mean that they are used to search for general things, whereas Eric Digests and Google Scholar are specifically for academicia-related searches. Mamma and Yahoo! also have directory options, enabling the user to search for specific places.

Similarity-wise, Yahoo! and Mamma enable internet users to search the web, video, search for businesses and jobs, and make it easier for shoppers to compare prices. They differ on many points, for example, Yahoo! also has tabs for people to search for images, audio (songs, etc), answers (people post questions and other users may answer them. the answers are rated, based on how useful they are), and, most importantly, the directory that Yahoo! first started out as. It was the start of the Web search thing, when there were no bots to go around looking through websites and people actually went from site to site, categorizing them and posting their work on the Yahoo! directory. Mamma's unique feature is both the Yellow Pages, and the White Pages. The Yellow Pages is similar to Yahoo's 'Local' tab, which enables people to search for business, and the White Pages is used to search for people. Mamma also has a 'Travel' tab, which is useful for those who are about to travel. The tab makes it easy for people to compare prices between airlines, and search for rental car and hotel room availability, as well as book cruises.

Google Scholar and Eric Digests, are, as I mentioned earlier, more specific search sites - all academic stuff! So, compared to Mamma Metasearch and Yahoo! search, they have very limited search capabilities. However, they are very useful for researches and suchlike, as they both allow users to search for academic works. There are differences, though. Eric Digests only allow users to search for documents (reports, etc) that are produced by the former Eric Clearinghouse system. Google Scholar, however, searches journals, not reports like Eric Digest. More specifically, Eric Digests targets teachers, administrators etc, but is generally useful to the broad educational community. Google Scholar, while useful to educators and students, covers a broad spectrum of topics, and is not confined merely to education-related issues.

Oh, and there's a new search engine that is about to be launched, called Wolfram/Alpha. According to Information Week, Wolfram/Alpha is a computational knowledge engine. It is being designed by Stephen Wolfram, to answer any factual question; a breakthrough in technology with the potential to 'redefine the act of research itself.'. It uses semantic web technology, which is, according to Wikipedia (my favourite website! or maybe only til wolfram/alpha is launched), an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content. Cool stuff, huh. Imagine being able to type out 'when was the atom bomb created?' instead of typing out 'atom bomb' and having to sift through all the stuff you didn't ask for but are facts of the atom bomb. Research will be way faster!

Oh and by the way, researching this topic was mind-numbing. Can't wait for the Wolfram/Alpha launch. May, baby! Just a couple of months to go!