Online General References

Alta Vista Web (and Usenet) Search Engine

The best search engine on the planet? Searches available for both the web and the usenet. Usenet articles are updated in real time, unlike with DejaNews which takes 2 days last time I checked. With regard to web searching, Lycos is big, but Alta Vista seems bigger to me, perhaps 22 million web pages compared to 11 million. Compare searches on both services.

Switchboard -- A Free National Residential and Business Telephone Directory

Millions of phone numbers of persons and businesses across the country. They had mine! AT&T ain't going to like this.

Tiger Map Service (from the U.S. Census Bureau)

Just about every street in the country is on these maps and now on your screen. The maps are cross-referenced with Census Bureau data, so you can find out how much your neighbors make (or more accurately, the average salary of the neighborhood), and other nifty things!

The Free Online Dictionary of Computing

An online computing dictionary with extensive descriptions--not your pocket Webster.

New York Times Fax

Not really a fax but a daily downloadable 8-page digest of the New York Times (in .pdf format for use with, for example, the Adobe Acrobat reader, a Netscape helper application). The format is much like the New York Times newspaper. Learn how capitalists think with NYTFax.

Mizzou's excellent online Ovid and InfoTrac Databases

The databases include ABI/Inform, Biological Abstracts, CINAHL, Compendex, Current Contents, Dissertation Abstracts, ERIC, Medline, Newspaper Abstracts, Periodical Abstracts, PsychINFO, InfoTrac, and others. Why venture to the library again? Note: At the telnet prompt, login as "library." (Only available to Mizzou folks.)