Step 4 - Browse through your search results

You've entered your keyword & now you have 1 or more pages of search results. Browse through these results & select 2 or 3 sites that you think look most promising. Why just 2 or 3? Because search engines are designed to be start of journey not end. Your goal here is simply to find a couple of starting places that will connect you to proper on-line community. Once you've found a good starting place you are unlikely to have to return to ground zero at search engine.

Step 5 - Follow your nose

Once you have identified 2 or 3 quality sites related to your area of interest then real fun begins. Now is when you discover how truly "web-like" World Wide Web is. Check your first site for information you're after. If you find good info, but not all that you want, look for a page titled "related links" or "links of interest". This page will offer you an entire array of web sites (already prescreened by web site owner for good content) & related to your area of interest. Simply follow each lead until you:

Have all information you need Run out of sites to visit (remember each related link site will have it's own page of links to continue journey) Stop finding useful information Or collapse from information overload! If all this sounds complicated or time consuming -- you're right, it can be. It can also be immensely satisfying & lead you to new ideas you might never have considered. But if your time is at a premium, I do have one other suggestion -- "The Internet Resource Guide for Parents & Disability Professionals". This electronic guidebook is result of months spent using this process to scour web for quality disability resources. It covers 50 of most frequently searched disability topics & reviews over 400 individual web sites. It is a terrific solution for those who need answers immediately or who want help finding accurate, quality information. For more information about Resource Guide, visit: http://www.ideallives.com/generic.jhtml?pid=142

Whichever path you choose -- happy hunting & may your research adventure be a fun one!

© 2001, Lisa Simmons

They come in all shapes and modes: flow charts, quasi-geographical maps, 3-d simulator-like terrains and many others. The "web Stalker" is an experimental web browser which is equipped with mapping functions. The range of applicability is mind boggling.

A (very) partial list:

The Internet Genome Project - "open-source map of major conceptual components of Internet and how they relate to each other"

Anatomy of a Linux System - Aimed to "...give viewers a concise and comprehensive look at Linux universe' and at heart of poster is a gravity well graphic showing core software components,surrounded by explanatory text"

NewMedia 500 - The financial, strategic, and other inter-relationshipsand interactions between leading 500 new (web) media firms

Internet Industry Map - Ownership and alliances determine status, control, and access in Internet industry. A revealing organizational chart.

The Internet Weather Report measures Internet performance, latency periods and downtime based on a sample of 4000 domains.

Real Time Geographic Visualization of WWW Traffic - a stunning, 3-d representation of web usage and traffic statistics world over.

WebBrain and Map.net provide a graphic rendition of Open Directory Project. The thematic structure of ODP is instantly discernible.

The WebMap is a visual, multi-category directory which contains 2,000,000 web sites. The user can zoom in and out of sub-categories and "unlock" their contents.

Maps help write fiction, trace a user's clickpath (replete with clickable web sites), capture Usenet and chat interactions (threads), plot search results (though Alta Vista discontinued its mapping service and Yahoo!3D is no more), bookmark web destinations, and navigate through complex sites.

Different metaphors are used as interface. Web sites are represented as plots of land, stars (whose brightness corresponds to web site's popularity ranking), amino-acids in DNA-like constellations,topographical maps of ocean depths, buildings in an urban landscape, or other objects in a pastoral setting. Virtual Reality (VR) maps allow information to be simultaneously browsed by teams of collaborators, sometimes represented as avatars in a fully immersive environment. In many applications, user is expected to fly amongst data items in virtual landscapes. With advent of sophisticated GUI's (Graphic UserInterfaces) and VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) - these maps may well show us way to a more colourful and user-friendly future.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com