Searching the Net? Here Are Places to Start
- Google gives terrific results by
analyzing a page's popularity. It also offers a government search.
- Alta Vista offers efficient
Web search; its new Raging Search
is even better.
- Yahoo: Subject guide and
free-text searching of the World Wide Web
- Fast Search lives up to its
name
- Excite's concept searching is
highly effective
- Northern Light categorizes
search results to help you focus
- Hotbot now comes to you from
Lycos
- search.com has the Infoseek engine as well as more obscure
topic-oriented choices
- Ask Me Help Desk
People with questions
find people with answers. (From New York Times Digital)
- Ask Jeeves searching with a
human touch
- Ixquick searches multiple
search engines and quickly returns filtered results.
- ProFusion, SavvySearch, Dogpile and Metacrawler offer simultaneous
searches of multiple Web search engines
- Magellan describes and
rates Web resources. Also visit Voyeur to spy
on other searchers
- Looksmart searches a
selection of sites chosen by humans
- About.com has humans who
assemble mini-sites on a wide variety of topics.
- Britannica adds human
judgment to searching, and presents the results in an unusually effective
way
- Searchmil.com searches for
information in military (.mil) computers
- ForumOne One-stop guide to
forum topics around the Web
- Deja.com lets you search for
Usenet postings or posters
- CNet combines computer news,
reviews, software and services. Also see their news.com
- Archieplex
Search FTP archives around the Internet
- Liszt and Tile.Net will help you find Internet
mailing lists
- Yack Guide to live events on the
Web
Collections for Journalists
- FedWorld Information Services:
Comprehensive guide to Government databases
- Federal Government
Agencies, a clean, easy-to-use listing
- Federal Web Locator
allows searching
- Fedstats collects and
organizes statistics from 70 agencies
- National Archives and Records
Administration catalogs records held by Government agencies
- DefenseLink News
and live briefings from the U.S. Department of Defense
- The White House
- House of Representatives
- The Senate
- The Supreme Court
- State and local
government websites from Piper Resources
- Statesearch,
state-level information on a variety of topics
- GPO Access searches the
Federal Register, U.S. Code, Congressional bills and other Government
publications
- Thomas, the Library of
Congress information service. Also try the experimental Web catalog
- Census Bureau home page, 1990 Census tables and Ferret, for
recent population and income data
- National Criminal Justice Reference
Service
- Criminal justice
links assembled by Cecil Greek at Florida State University
- APBNews.com crime news and
information, including police scanners from major cities.
- United States Geological
Survey, current
earthquake information and Earthquake Information Center
- National Hurricane Center
- United Nations and U.N. Web locator
- The
European Journalism page
- Newsahead upcoming news
events around the globe
- FindLaw has an extensive
collection of legal links
- KnowX Free and low-cost
information about lawsuits, bankruptcies, U.C.C. and other public filings
for businesses and individuals
- WebGator
has a variety of useful investigative links
- Federal Aviation
Administration databases of airline safety reports
- Landings Comprehensive
aviation site offers databases of plane registrations, service difficulty
reports, pilot certifications
- UniSci gives updates on
scientific research at U.S. universities
- Top 200 Government
contractors from Government Executive
- Reporters Committee for Freedom
of the Press has links and information, including a
fill-in-the-blanks Freedom of Information request.
(This list of Federal
freedom of information officers may be useful, as well as this
New
York State FOI page)
- The Freedom Forum
Journalism, journalism education and first amendment issues
- Telecommunications
information resources: social, economic, political
- The Smoking Gun
presents (undigested) documents obtained from court files and through
freedom of information requests
- Business & Finance references are available from Business
Connections
The Reference Desk
- Research It
all-in-one reference desk: dictionary, quotes, translators, more
- LibrarySpot Extensive
guide to online reference works
- YourDictionary.com and Onelook give access to hundreds of
dictionaries, specialized and general
- Encyclopaedia Britannica
The one and only.
- Roget's Internet Thesaurus
- Information Please Almanac
Almanac, dictionary and the full Columbia Encyclopedia
- Biography.com offers
brief, cross-referenced biographies of more than 25,000 notables.
- Travlang
language-to-language translation dictionaries
- Shark Talk:
Nolo's Law Dictionary
- The Elements of
Style The 1918 version
- C.I.A. World
Factbook
- Library of Congress, including
Marvel and Locis
- The New York Public Library
- The World Wide Web Virtual
Library
- National Library of Medicine and
Medline
- Carl Uncover Free citations
from 17,000 publications; charge for full articles
- The Merck Manual guide to
diseases
- RxList: The Internet Drug Index
Extensive information on prescription and over-the-counter drugs
- Nutrient
database from the U.S.D.A.
- Law Guru gives access to
hundreds of legal search engines and the Internet Law Library
- Lawoffice.com from West's
Legal Directory and Martindale-Hubbell's
Lawyer Locator
- The
U.S. Constitution
- U.S. Patents since 1971,
from I.B.M.
- The
Bible Browser
- I.R.S.
information and publications. For more tax sites, try taxsites.com.
- Citynet guide to Net
information in and about major cities
- Metroscope city, business,
entertainment guides for major cities
- National
Geographic's Map Machine
- Mapquest gives a
street-level map for any U.S. address
- Social
Security death index
- Consumer World has
consumer finance rates, company contacts, consumer information
- Currency
converter from Olsen & Associates converts from any currency to
another
- Cost-of-living
calculator and other useful tools
- How Far Is It? gives
the distance between two cities
- U.S. Naval Observatory
clock
Telephone & E-mail Directories
Publications on the Net
Breaking News & Daily Publications
Magazines & Features
Guides to Many Publications
Politics
The New York Region
- New York City Reference,
a subject guide to sites on all aspects of the city
- NYC Blue
has New York web sites in easy-to-use tabular form
- New York Today Arts,
entertainment, restaurants and New York life from The New York Times
- CitySearch NYC, a
guide to arts and entertainment
- Digital City New
York from America Online
- The Paperless Guide to New
York City, from Mediabridge (updated sporadically)
- NYC.gov, New York City's official
web site
- Guide to New York
City Government Government contacts, from the Public Advocate's
office
- The Official I Love New
York State Tourism Guide
- M.T.A. maps and schedules
for subways, Long Island Railroad, Metro North
- New York City Culture Guide
and Calendar from the Alliance for the Arts
- Playbill On-Line, Theatre.com and Broadway.com will help you find
Broadway, off-Broadway, national and international theater listings
- The New York Daily News
- The New York Post
- Newsday
- New York 1 has a nice
build-a-newscast feature.
- The New York Observer
- The Village Voice
- papermag.com, virtual sister
to the magazine of the Downtown scene
- New Jersey Online
- New Jersey Web
Commerce
- Amazon.com Books, music,
videos, games, electronics, auctions -- and growing
- Barnesandnoble.com and Borders have books and music to enjoy
off line.
- Bizrate compares prices and
lets you see how fellow consumers rate online merchants
- BizWeb: Internet commercial
sites by category
- Buyer's Index searches
19,000 Web sites and catalogs for the product you seek.
- CD Now and Tunes.com Online music stores
- Ebay The online auction
house
- Internet Fashion Mall
- NetMarket has discounts on
brand name goods.
- PriceLine lets you name
your own price for travel, cars or mortgages, and see if anyone will
bite.
- PriceScan compares prices
for computer hardware and software, as well as books.
- Product Review Net
Reviews of products from a variety of publications
- Travelocity, Biztravel, Expedia and Trip.com have airline tickets, car rentals,
hotel reservations, travel information
- Travelzoo collects special
travel offers from many sites
Entertainment/Culture/Pastimes
- The Internet Movie Database
- Movielink from 777-FILM has
theater times and advance ticket purchases in major cities
- Ticketmaster has
information and tickets for music, theater and sporting events
- Film.com News from the movie
industry, as well as links to film resources and studios
around the Web
- Reel surveys your movie tastes
and recommends ones it thinks you'll like
- Atom Films offers short
films and animations on the Web
- TV Guide Now includes an
extensive movie database
- Ultimate Television Network,
a guide to everything TV-related on the Web
- Gist provides customized TV
listings
- PBS Online
- The Discovery Channel Online
- Culturefinder has
schedules for the performing arts around the U.S.
- National Endowment for the Arts
- World Wide Arts Resources
- NWHQ:Independent
artists on the Web
- The Louvre More fun to visit
in person, but you can see many exhibits without leaving home.
- Art on the Net, an exhibit by 80
artists, and links to other art sites
- Yahoo events (formerly
Broadcast.com) Audio and video of all sorts, from all over
- mp3.com makes a wide variety of
music available in its eponymous Internet format
- Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
- Internet Underground Music
Archives
- Classical Music Archive
Thousands of classical music samples in midi format
- Epicurious, the Food Network, Recipes from
the Net and Gemini and Leo's
recipe links will help you answer the question, "What's for
dinner?"
- Wine Spectator and WineToday.com have ratings and
reviews of thousands of wines
Sports & Recreation
- ESPN SportsZone
- Sportsline from CBS
- CNN/SI from CNN and Sports
Illustrated
- The Sports Network
gives up to the minute news and results
- Allsports has news,
scores, odds, audio feeds and more
- Total Sports well
organized sports news, plus Head to Head Baseball, which lets you compete
online with others using real players' stats.
- NFL.com from the N.F.L.
- Fastball, a Cox Newspapers
baseball service with live play-by-play and tons of stats
- majorleaguebaseball.com
from Major League Baseball
- GORP, the Great Outdoor
Recreation Pages, has extensive information on parks and outdoor
activities of all sorts
- The WWW Bicycle Lane A bit
dated, but still a good collection of links
- The Tennis Server and Tennis Country have news,
schedules, rules and more
- GolfWeb, GolfDigest.com and Golf.com cover the golf world
Demonstrations and Miscellany
About This Page
Navigator is the home page used by the newsroom of The New York Times
for forays into the Web.
Its primary intent was to give reporters and editors new to the Web a
solid starting point for a wide
range of journalistic functions without forcing all of them to spend time
wandering around blindly to find
a useful set of links of their own. Its secondary purpose was to show
people that there's a lot of fun
and useful stuff going on out there.
The list is by its nature highly selective and constantly changing.
Suggestions are always welcome.