| Find an acronym | Acronym Finder | www.mtnds.com/af | With more than 61,000 acronyms in the site's database, the Acronym Finder will help you decode that mysterious abbreviation, be it serious, whimsical, or both. Entering SALT for example retrieves both "Strategic Arms Limitation Talks" and "single and loving it." The site assumes a wild card after what you've entered, so returns are usually pretty comprehensive. An advanced search option lets you find an acronym by the words it abbreviates. |
| Find anyone | Yahoo! People Search WhoWhere? |
people.yahoo.com www.whowhere.com |
Search on name, domain, city, or state to find e-mail and white-pages info. Returns from the white pages come with name, address, a linked phone number, and links to maps, whereas e-mail hits provide direct mailto links. Advanced e-mail searching lets you specify address as well as organization (such as a company or high school). |
| Find an apartment | AllApartments Rent.Net |
www.allapartments.com www.rent.net |
Search for an apartment from the comfort of your own home. Enter a U.S. city and state (or any street, intersection, or ZIP code), then specify price range, unit type, and desired amenities. Returns include listings of apartment and property features as well as direct links to management. Some returns also come with info on the nearest schools, banks, grocery stores, and other community fixtures. |
| Find an ATM | Visa and MasterCard | www.visa.com www.mastercard.com/atm |
In a strange town and in need of cash? These sites can help you find automatic tellers around the world. Visa's ATM Locator lets you specify a street address or cross street, city, state, and ZIP code; the MasterCard/Cirrus ATM Locator lets you choose only region and location from a drop-down list (though big cities are usually broken down into neighborhoods). |
| Find an attorney | lawyers.com West Legal Directory |
www.lawyers.com www.wld.com |
A great place to find an attorney and, just for kicks, get bios on the likes of Johnnie Cochran and other cable-TV talking heads. Select a city, state, and area of practice from drop-down lists to retrieve a list of firms with easy links to address, phone, and fax info. Advanced searching lets you specify lawyer or firm name and city, state, country, specialty, and language. Click on a name for a synopsis of an attorney's legal career. |
| Find company information | Hoover's Online Companies Online |
www.hoovers.com www.companiesonline.com | An excellent resource for getting a snapshot of any company out there, Hoover's harbors info on some 13,500 public and private companies worldwide. Type in a company name, ticker symbol, keyword, or person's last name and get a company capsule that contains basic info, plus a synopsis of company history, a current stock quote, sales and sales growth data, net income, number of company employees, names of corporate officers, and CEO bios. For a $12.95 monthly membership fee, take advantage of advanced searching capabilities and more. |
| Find a computer article | Computer Magazine Archive | cma.zdnet.com | Can't remember where you saw that article about the hot new scanner? ZDNet's Computer Magazine Archive lets you search more than 200,000 computer-related articles and abstracts from over 200 industry publications. You can search on keywords to pull up story titles, synopses, and dates, but access to the articles themselves--the chief charm of membership--costs $69.95 for an annual subscription. |
| Find a definition | OneLook Dictionaries | www.onelook.com | Even the heftiest Webster's will seem like a slender volume next to OneLook. Here you'll find an index of almost 2 million words from several hundred dictionaries, many of which harbor not just definitions but pronounciation guides, antonyms, synonyms, and rhymes. Enter a term into a keyword box (you can use wild cards for unknown letters) to retrieve a list of dictionary names and descriptions, each accompanied by a link to your word. Stephen Sondheims of the world, take note: Where else will you find 38 rhymes for nonplussed? |
| Find a discussion forum | Forum One | www.forumone.com | If you want to keep up with what people are saying about your company online, don't forget to check Web discussion forums. Search over 225,000 forum discussions by keyword or general-interest topic. Returns usually provide a link to the latest message posted as well as one to the forum host for easy access to registration. Advanced searching lets you employ simple Boolean operators (AND, OR, and AND NOT) to narrow your search. |
| Find a domain name | NetNames USA InterNIC |
www.netnamesusa.com www.internic.net |
You may not specialize in hot gossip, but for 50 bucks, you can do what Matt Drudge did on February 14, 1997, and register your own domain name. Search here to determine the availability of a name, which if free can be registered from the site itself. You can also search on the name of any nonmilitary or nongovernment site to determine who registered it and when the site was created. |
| Find driving directions | MapQuest MapBlast! |
www.mapquest.com | Get door-to-door directions to any spot in the U.S. without sacrificing an ounce of pride at a midjunket service station stop. Simply enter the addresses of your origin and destination to retrieve a turn-by-turn map as well as a text description of your journey, complete with the mileage of each leg. Advanced door-to-door options let you avoid routes involving major highways, local streets, ramps, and alleys. |