Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

paris slippage.
  

    
Peoples, you can use Lynx, which is a text-only browser. Unfortunately, the
way the Web is going, it's becoming less and less friendly to Lynx. But it's
still do-able.

If you're serious about research and can spend some bucks on it, you might
consider a dialup account with a service like Dialog, where you can search
and retrieve text-only to your heart's content, if not your budget's.

Sharon, for your "six jillion" question, I refer you to my 80-trillion
answer, above.

And as for porno pages, y'know, I very seldom run into that. Maybe it's
because I search more esoteric subjects or use more specific keywords than
the  average (y'know, "sports," "music," "travel"...). Maybe it's because
the search engines I use can detect and screen out that kind of spam.

I'm sure you can deal with the occasional porno page when it, um, pops up.

And Libbi: <smooch>
  

    

what was altavista's web address until recently?  can't remember.  but I
checked it out after it changed and it was such a big Porn site.
  

    

The new URL is <http://www.altavista.com/> , but the old URL
<http://www.altavista.digital.com/> still points to the same
site. Still better is to go directly to the "Advanced" part
of AltaVista : <http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=aq&what=web>

I know that by typing a similar address you get into a porn site,
but I forgot the URL.
  

    
 If you want to be spared the graphics, the text interface to 
AltaVista is really nice:  

http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?text

 There's also a text version of the advanced query form:

http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=aq&what=web&text=yes
  

    
I'm constantly surprised by how much stuff the standard search engines
*don't* find.  For example, I frequently search for computer related things,
but search engines don't typically turn up articles in the trade press --
for that, I need to go to the magazine or publisher individually, or to some
pay site that looks through magazines.
  

    
Yes indeed. Search engines often don't penetrate down to the individual
article level. And if a site requires registration, let alone payment, most
search engines just won't touch it.

That's why  aggregated sites like Dialog, Dow Jones Interactive, and Lexis-
Nexis are so powerful, and so worth paying money for. You can enter a very
targeted query -- say, look for everything that Sharon Fisher has published
on, I dunno, routers or something, since 1992 -- and pull up articles from
any publications that match all your criteria. It's a very fast, and very
powerful, way to search, and there's nothing on the web at large -- at least
not yet -- that compares to it.
  

    

I love Lexis-Nexis.  Had it while married.  You can find out about everyone
including how much they paid for their houses.
  

    

excuse me, Reva?  Do you have other books in or out of print?  This question
just weirdly sprung to mind.

also, what do you believe to be the effects of cheesesteaks with extra sauce
on your writing.
  

    
Hee hee. I've been cheesesteak-deprived -- I mean, =real= cheesesteak-
deprived -- since I left Philly, and my writing career didn't take off til I
was established in the SF Bay Area, so draw your own grim conclusions about
that.

Other books, oh yes. I did a real-page turner for Gower in the UK called
Electronic Information Delivery: Ensuring Quality and Value. As far as I
know, it's still in print; they maintain an eternal backlist, which is
actually nice.

My other two books prior to Researching Online For Dummies were Secrets of
the Super Searchers and Secrets of the Super Net Searchers. Both are still
in print and distributed by Information Today (www.infotoday.com). Both are
interview books; I talked to people who are real experts at finding
information online. The first Super Searcher book focused on those high-
power database services like Lexis-Nexis; the second one incorporates the
Web and other Net-based resources. Both are kinda cool in that they give you
the perspective of a lot of different people; you can get into their heads
and see how they tackle a research project.

Oh yeah, while I think of it; plans are underway for a series of Super
Searcher books focusing on different subjects -- business, law, science and
technology, and so on -- and different kinds of research. I'm the executive
editor for that, and I'm really excited about it.
  

    
>I've been cheesesteak-deprived -- I mean, =real= cheesesteakdeprived --
>since I left Philly, and my writing career didn't take off til I was estab-
>lished in the SF Bay Area, so draw your own grim conclusions about that.

Clearly, seared ahi and arugula are more stimulating to the creative cortex.
  

    
Reva, what are your favorite web sites for when you're not getting paid
to do research?
  

    
I could just copy over my bookmark file. Um, no, that's not a good idea.
Never mind.

Okay, a few of my favorites:

In the media department, I like Salon Magazine (www.salonmagazine.com) and
The Onion (www.theonion.com), because they're smart and, in the latter case,
excruciatingly funny. Also SFGate (www.sfgate.com), so I can read my
favorite Chronicle and Examiner writers(you know who you are) when I'm on
the road or the newspaper truck doesn't make it up Highway 1.

Entertainment-wise, I love IMDb, the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com),
not just for basic fact-checking, but to find out who that guy is who looks
so familiar, where you saw him before. For music, The International Lyrics
Server (www.lyrics.ch/) is great for settling those mondegreen arguments.
And I sometimes go to The Bluegrass MIDI Page (www.banjo.com) - gotta love
that URL -- just to annoy <jcs>.

I have the Internet Backbone Status report (www.cde.com/netstatus.shtml)
bookmarked, so I can convince myself that I'm not the only one in the world
that's stuck in telnet hell.

I've got a couple of entries in a folder labeled "Traffic and Weather
Together": Paul's SF Bay Area Weather Page
(http://www.wco.com/~paulg/weather.html), because of its excellent links to
local weather sites, and Bay Area Transit Information
(http://www.transitinfo.org/) because ditto, except substitute
"transportation" for "weather."

SOAR, The Searchable Online Archive of Recipes
(http://soar.Berkeley.edu/recipes/), for reasons that should be obvious. And
speaking of cooking, The Iron Chef (http://www.ironchef.com/), which is
dedicated to one of the most profoundly silly programs on TV. Hope I don't
start an international incident. I mean "silly" in the most admiring way
possible.

Let's see Astronomy Picture of the Day
(http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html), because it's simply mind-
blowing. I just checked; today's pic is of the far side of the moon.

A couple of reference-type sites that I use a lot: www.555-1212.com, to get
the area code for a city, or to find out what city those weird new area
codes apply to. And, amazingly, I really like the U.S. Postal Service site
(www.usps.gov/) for looking up zip codes and postal rates and that sort of
thing. I also like Statistics Every Writer Should Know
(http://nilesonline.com/stats/), because I can never be sure I remember the
difference between median and mean. There's lots of other plain-English help
for the numerically impaired, of which I am one.

Oh yeah; periodically I get into those bird cams that utility companies
sometimes put up when they discover nesting birds on their poles or
whatever. I think they're charming. Please don't tell me they're horribly
invasive or something; I don't want to hear it.

Those are just some of the ones that made it to my bookmark file since the
last time I blew it away.
  

    
hey <reva>! I've gotta question...  

is there any type or class of information that *cannot* be found on the
net... now I don't mean private or proprietary info, but stuff that one
might be able to find with a traditional, paper-based search..? or has
the net really become the universal set, informationally speaking...?
  

    
Great question!

And thanks for the site info, Reva.  I'll check out several of them
right away.
  

    
FABULOUS question, Bruce. The answer is: Yes -- depending on how you define
"the net." If you mean to include the commercial online services like Dialog
et al that began as dialup services, and that are slowly and somewhat
imperfectly migrating to the Web, I'd expand by saying that there are vast,
vast categories of information -- manuscripts, non-English language
materials, historical information, specialized academic and other scholarly,
esoteric stuff that will never (probably) be digitized.

If you're talking about the Web -- what I call the "open Web" in general,
versus Dialog, Dow Jones, Lexis-Nexis, and other password-and-fee-based
services, I'd still say "yes," but qualify it a little differently. You're
not gonna find megabucks, multi-client market studies floating around on the
Web -- not legitimate copies, anyway. But you can get to them through the
online services I've mentioned, and through specialized sites like
Investext's ResearchWeb, or Profound.

You're not going to find a continuous run of an academic or technical
journal like, say, the Czechoslovakian Journal of Electrochemistry going
back to volume 1, issue 1, 1962, in a general Web search. At least I'd be
very surprised if you did. But you'll find it -- or the equivalent; I just
made up that publication -- in professional database services like Dialog
that cover the appropriate discipline.

In general, the Web has a very short memory. Even popular magazines and
newspapers, with very few exceptions, don't go back more than a few years,
if that, on the Web. But you'll find long, long backfiles in the
professional-type databases. And you'll have to pay to get at them, of
course.
  

    
What's an example of some of the sorts of research people hire you to do?
  

    

I love those websites Ms Reva.  Here's one thing not on the web -- results
of obedience trials for dogs.

After you finish answering sharon's question, I am going to ask something
weird -- am I the only one who hates reading online?  It seems to reach a
different part of my brain when on a computer screen.  I love research and
shopping on ebay, but hardly ever go to salon, which I believe is good.
  

    
You asked Reva, not me, but my biggest objection is all the places I can 
ready hard copy that I can't carry the computer!
  

    
I'm on my way to the Online World conference in DC, via a stopover in
Berkeley. I'll get back to Sharon's question, and Cynthia's, and whoever's,
as soon as I can....
  

    
Safe journey, Reva.
  

    

reva! safe trip!
  

    
It was! I'm here. I mean, there. Whatever.

Sharon asked about things people have asked me to research. It's incredibly
varied, from getting a bibliography of everything so-and-so has ever
published, to researching current treatments for Crohn's Disease, to
determining the market for upscale fountain pens, or identifying possible
new applications for a particular technology or type of component. I've been
asked to prepare reports on how people's taste in bread varies from region
to region, on the psychological aspects of road rage or of risk-taking
behavior, on heads-up displays in avionics... I mean, the list goes on and
on.

What's particularly cool about doing research for a living -- aside from the
thrill of the hunt itself -- is when you find out that your effort
contributed in some direct way to a company's success.
  

    
Reading online, Cynthia asked about. I know what you mean; I used to print
out articles from Salon and wherever so I could read them the "normal" way
-- y'know, like gopod (WELL meme alert) intended. I still do that a lot. But
lately I find that I'm a lot more comfortable reading stuff on my laptop,
especially when I'm on a plane, or propped up on pillows on my window seat
with a cat snuggled next to me. So I'm beginning to think that it's not
about eyestrain or some deep-rooted psychological resistance to reading on
the screen, so much as it is about set and setting. I can't really =relax=
in my office chair, but the laptop almost -- almost -- makes it possible to
curl up with a good text file, if you know what I mean.

Several years ago -- way before the Web, maybe '91 or '92 -- I wrote an
article for ONLINE magazine about what people were then calling "e-texts."
The hot new thing was a Sony product called, I think, Bookman, or Data
Discman, or perhaps the two were variations on a theme. They never really
went anywhere. And now we've got, what?, at least three companies all
introducing their versions of an electronic text reader this year. I think
we're =more= receptive to the idea than we were 6 or 7 years ago, but I have
a feeling the American public is not gonna snap these things up.
  

    
I don't know what you mean by "electronic text reader," reva. Can you
elaborate? Is that software? Hardware?