Old memories

[Demon Cleaner]

Does anyone remember?? Just stumbled over this, and I thought F**K, you almost forgot your favorite search engine.

Take me to 1995 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altavista)

[AlexJ]

Yep, I remember Altavista - used to be my homepage before Google became big. I still actually use the translation service on Altavista (babelfish.altavista.com) but haven't used it for search for years.

[J T]

Yep, I remember that. Think I used it a few times, along with excite, and Ask Jeeves, HotBot and yahoo.

Once a workmate pointed me towards google I barely used another engine.

[Puni/Void]

I also tended to use Altavista long ago, but also something called Webcrawler or Webspider or something like that. Have been using Google now for years, never thinking about changing search engine. After all, people are talking about Googling as in searching for information on the net.

[Submeg]

Oh yea, back in the day. Lol, how funny, I havent thought of them since just then. Been using google for a looooong time.

[Harrison]

I also still use the Babelfish translator to convert sites into English when needed, but haven't used the search engine for some time. Google has definitely taken over.

Back in the mid 90's I used to use Altavista and Yahoo! as my main two search engines all the time. They then merged so searching from either returned the same results. I think I then just used Altavista mainly until Google appeared in the late 90's.

How many still use Yahoo for searching?

[Demon Cleaner]

I use Google all the time, never use Yahoo. I find everything I need with Google, so why use multiple search engines.

[Stephen Coates]

I also tended to use Altavista long ago, but also something called Webcrawler or Webspider or something like that. Have been using Google now for years, never thinking about changing search engine. After all, people are talking about Googling as in searching for information on the net.


I hate the term Googling. It's annoying when someone tells me to Google for something.

I have used AltaVista before. Not for a long time though.

I always used to use various search engines, rather than just one.

Anyone here still use Ask Jeeves? I completely forgot about that until the other day when a teaching assistant at school went to ask.com to find a resource for me.

[J T]

I use Google all the time, never use Yahoo. I find everything I need with Google, so why use multiple search engines.

Damn straight, me too. Unless of course it's a specialised search engine/database like pubmed for journals, papers and other guff - but that's work stuff so doesn't really count.



Anyone here still use Ask Jeeves? I completely forgot about that until the other day when a teaching assistant at school went to ask.com to find a resource for me.

Not for a long time. We used to enjoy asking it questions like "why do you suck so much?" and "can I bang your mum?"

Kids, eh?

Tch

:no:









:whistle:

[AlexJ]

Where's Jeeves? (http://sp.askforkids.com/en/docs/askforkids/help/where_is_jeeves.htm)

[Submeg]

Lol.....and his answer was?

[Teho]

I actually use Altavista as my main search engine still. I did use Google for quite some time, because the embedded search in Opera defaulted to it. But you can set it up however you want and I recently went through the list and redefined which engines should be used for what, and set it up to use Altavista again. Just for a change from Google more than preference, really.

[Puni/Void]

How's Altavista working out for you, Teho? Are you still using it, or have you changed to Google or Cuil or something else? I'm still using Google, so no changes here. :)

[Harrison]

I have actually been using Yahoo! a bit recently because I have found it can sometimes find things that Google doesn't. Yahoo! is an old school search engine that indexes things in a directory fashion. Whereas Google works based on association between data on a site and links point to and away from it, and I sometimes find the search results can be a bit obscure in Google because of this.

[Teho]

Yes I'm still using Altavista and am perfectly happy with it. There are occasions when something is hard to find that I also try searching with Google, but it never does any better. ;)

Actually I often find that looking something up on Wikipedia and following the links from there is also very effective.

[Harrison]

Wikipedia is definitely very good for searching for something. I also use that a lot, plus you can really explore Wikipedia and end up in a completely different subject to the one you started with, with some great pages to read.

[Puni/Void]

Wikipedia is a great tool for sure.

Guess the times of having a huge stack of gigantic encyclopedias on the shelves are fading away. It takes a lot more effort to look something up in the books than on the Internet.

Wonder what those encyclopedia salesmen are doing these days. :D

As for search-engines. Anyone using Cuil, or perhaps just tried it?

[Stephen Coates]

I have been using books much more this last year, especially from the college library and I joined the public library as well recently. Plenty of useful information to be found in those.

I have never really used an encyclopedia though, other than my Britanica 98 CD and Microsoft Encarta 98 back when I didn't really use the internet much.

I also find Wikipedia very useful. I agree with what some people say about how you should always try and back it up with other sites and not use it on its own. It is however a good place to start looking for something and contains lots of information.

[J T]

I also find Wikipedia very useful. I agree with what some people say about how you should always try and back it up with other sites and not use it on its own. It is however a good place to start looking for something and contains lots of information.

Spot on there, Steve. It is quite often the first place I go to look something up or refresh my memory - and then I'll move on to something more reliable if I need to. It really is a very useful tool.

Some of the things I used to find really useful with encarta were the animations/videos with voice over. It's amazing how a decent picture or clip can help you to understand complex machinery - like internal combustion engines for example.

[Teho]

Wikipedia vs proper encyclopedias.. They both have their strength and weaknesses. Yes, proper encyclopedias may have the most reliable information, but you would never f. ex. find a detailed article about lighting farts on fire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fart_lighting) in one. ;)

[thirtywinter]

Tsk! Tsk! Gentlemen. Where is the love for Excite??

[Puni/Void]

Wikipedia vs proper encyclopedias.. They both have their strength and weaknesses. Yes, proper encyclopedias may have the most reliable information, but you would never f. ex. find a detailed article about lighting farts on fire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fart_lighting) in one. ;)

Hehe! Brilliant, Teho. :lol:

On the more serious side though, I agree that Wikipedia does have quite a lot of information on topics that aren't generally featured in the ordinary ones.