Happy Hunting

What’s hot on the World Wide Web

By Robert J. McGarvey • Feb 01, 1997

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

But I can’t find anything useful on the Web!”That’s the lament of ever more users as Web pages multiply likekudzu in a Carolina summer. Search engine HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com) now scans morethan 50 million pages in a search, and millions more are addedmonthly. So it’s no surprise that even a simple hunt with astandard search engine can return huge numbers of hits.

But there is a smarter way to find information on the Web–newsoftware that can simultaneously access the main search engines,sort out duplicate hits, even rank sites by likely order ofusefulness. The best of this breed is Symantec’s InternetFastFind (about $50, for Windows 95 and NT 4.0). It rushes throughAltaVista, Yahoo!, Excite, InfoSeek and more, then sorts anddisplays results as “hot links”–click on one and off yougo to the site for a look.

Quarterdeck’s Web Compass (about $50, also for Windows 95and NT 4.0) does much the same–a bit more slowly, but with a moremuscular comprehensiveness. Web Compass taps into as many as 20search engines and directories simultaneously, and also providescapsule summaries for most of the hits it locates.

Both products are available for free testing–and they’lllikely win a permanent place on the desktop of any Web researcher.Check out (http://www.symantec.com) or (http://www.qdeck.com/iff/).

Just The Fax

Send lots of faxes abroad or cross-country? Save money bychecking out Faxaway (http://www.faxaway.com), a servicethat takes an e-mail document and transmits it–usually verypromptly–to any fax machine you designate at prices that may belower than you pay your phone carrier.

Faxaway can also be used for broadcast faxing to groups so yourbusiness fax line won’t be tied up. There’s no monthlyservice charge; fax costs (calculated in six-second increments witha one-minute minimum) are debited on your prepaid card as they aresent. Better still, Faxaway allows a free test of its service–justlog onto the Web page and try it out.

Public Knowledge

Even casual followers of the stock exchanges know that initialpublic offerings (IPOs) are white-hot–and the Net makes trackingthis fast-moving market simple. Even if you don’t play thestock markets, news about IPOs is still valuable for keeping youinformed about which competitors are going public and for howmuch.

For a database of IPOs recently filed with the federalSecurities and Exchange Commission (SEC), visit Hoover’s IPOCentral (http://www.ipocentral.com), a freesite filled with plentiful information about soon-to-be publiccompanies. But for truly effortless information about IPOs,there’s Alert-IPO! (http://www.ostman.com/alert-ipo),a service that delivers a weekly e-mail report on companies thathave filed for IPOs with the SEC. For an annual subscription of$34.95, you have access the fastest and easiest way to keep tabs onwho’s going public and for how much.

Alert-IPO! is an example of a business that exists only becauseof the Net. “To give subscribers this information on paperthrough the mail we would have to charge over $100 monthly,”says president Nenita Ostman. “The Net and e-mail are whatallow us to price our newsletter affordably.”

Don’t Bug Me

Having problems running newly installed programs? Join the club.Today’s software programs have gotten huge–programs routinelyexceed 1MB, and giants bigger than 10MB aren’t uncommon. Andthe more computer code required, the higher the likelihood of bugsthat can put programs in conflict and cause systems to crash.

Whenever a program misbehaves, visit Bug Net (http://www.bugnet.com) for the latestreports about bugs–and for “work-arounds,” proventechniques for patching up glitches. Subscribers (annual fees startat $29.95) gain access to more goodies, but the site featuresplentiful freebies.