Research in any form can be tedious, frustrating work. In college, the thought of researching a paper in the library's mountain of books, indexes, microfilms, and microfiche papers inspired anxiety and dread. None of it ever yielded quite what I needed without the magic "abracadabra"--the correct search terms. I always envied the librarians' brusque, efficient self-assurance, their ability to move deftly through vast collections and know just where to find a coveted factoid--or at least know where to look. Their time and attention were dear, and scarce.
The Web, of course, has not yet banished the boo in "Boolean," but every day it seems to get a little friendlier for the time-pressed and research-challenged. Take Tutorialfind. Created by a 22-year-old Australian student, Tutorialfind is the well-organized sock drawer of self-help sites. As you can expect from its title, Tutorialfind gathers more than 2,500 tutorial sites--most of them free--from around the world. Whether you need to learn how to brush your teeth, speak a language, play the piano, it's here. Search by keyword or subject, and you will get a neat list of tutorials sorted by the date they were created.
The interface is a calm oasis of organization in a sea of overcrowded search pages--no hunting for directions, search boxes, or other buttons here. Tutorialfind's most popular topics are computer-related, making it a great place to find how-to steps ranging from the basics to the latest programming tips. Adobe, Macromedia, and Microsoft, for example, have their own categories, making the chore of looking for a certain nugget of information much easier than searching their respective help pages. Of course, Tutorialfind doesn't have everything, but stick around; you can always request a tutorial the site doesn't have. Like the library of my youth, Tutorialfind provides a little space for inspiration and discovery, making learning fun.
Ingenuity must be flowing Down Under, because another nifty search site featured this month--this one for travel and shopping bargains--comes by way of New Zealand. At first glance you might bypass SimplyQuick because of its amateurish design. But click around and you'll see there's a sound method to the clip-art madness. The best thing this site does is organize and rate air-travel search sites and airlines according to where you live. For instance, choose San Francisco, and SimplyQuick gives you the three best travel sites to search for the Bay Area: Expedia, Farebeater, and Lowestfare. From Boston, the site recommends searching American Express, Farebeater, and Travelocity. SimplyQuick also rates U.S. and foreign airlines by price, flight length and availability, safety, and quality (punctuality, lost luggage, seat room, etc.). SimplyQuick's webmaster performed an elaborate air-travel study, detailed on the site, to come up with ratings and recommendations. At this writing, most major cities were available in the site's search-engine database of flights, and ones that were not were labeled either "next" or "soon" on the development priority list.
SimplyQuick also consolidates and rates the most popular online shopping sites. Although the page that comes up when you click on Most Popular Stores is dizzying at first, you'll soon see that the rating information is invaluable. Each store, organized by categories such as General, Apparel, Finance, and Health, gets an overall percentage rating by Gomez or Forrester Research or both. The sites receive further designations for low prices, ease of use, online tracking, and reliability. But best of all, each also receives a rating of zero to five for its privacy policy--enabling you to tell at a glance whether that site resells your information, whether it requires you to opt in or opt out of reselling, and whether it may spam or track you without your knowledge. Click on SimplyQuick's Safe Shopping guide and you'll get clear and comprehensive information on what constitutes a safe online connection, the lowdown on cookies, and tips on shopping-auction, small-merchant, and international sites.
Know a Web site that deserves some attention? E-mail saase@computeruser.com.
