Google

If you need to find out anything, "Google" it.

Internet search engines are amazing in general. A "search engine" is a system that opens as many web pages as it can, and logs and indexes what it finds, allowing people to find web sites. And then, they do it again, and again, because web pages come and go, and get updated, or go away.

Of the search engines out there, Google (www.google.com) is, to my mind, the best. They provide an index of what is out there, and they also "rank" the importance each page they search by seeing if other sites refer to it. It is called "PageRank" and is explained at their site.

The bottom line is that while it does not cover the total vastness of the internet, Google will find you information on anything you would ever want to know.

You can also "Google" people -- try yourself! You can look for old friends, colleagues, school mates, future bosses. It is interesting what you can find -- sometimes scary.

Google has this so taped that it is now bordering on a generic term -- like Xerox or Kleenex.

Highly recommended.