Search tools

These add-ons attach to your browser or your desktop and help you search the web automatically while you surf.

[See also JNet's list of add-on Toolbars]

The best:

• Gurunet   Do more than browse.  This nifty add-on gets you more information on the words you select -- everything from the latest news, biographies, maps, statistics, translation, plus business and dictionary help. Click on any word -- not just on a web page, but even in your email or Word documents -- and Gurunet launches and retrieves information from its database. Extremely practical for news searches on the fly. You can download a trial version for free, but after 14 days it only does a dictionary and thesaurus search -- not the full news tools. The full version costs $39 US, but is well worth the price.

Toolbars:

• Google Toolbar Get the best of Google right on your browser's toolbar. Install this free tool from Google -- you must have Internet Explorer running -- and get instant access to the Google search engine,Google's Advanced Search, Google News, and Google Group

• Dogpile toolbar One of the better multiple search services, Dogpile allows you to search 13 major engines including Google and FAST. Now with the Dogpile toolbar, you get access to these tools while surfing any web page -- plus yellow or white pages ,a dictionary and thesaurus.

• The Internet Archive Toolbar    The Wayback Machine was always a little known but delightful archive tool -- making it possible to surf more than 10 billion pages stored in the Internet Archive. You can find years-old versions of web pages -- it's hit or miss, but still always useful to see what some official site was saying before or after a key event. Now you can put the Wayback Machine right in your browser by simply dragging this new toolbar link to your browser toolbar. Then when you visit a page that you want to find an old version of, just click and you will be transported to any historic versions at the Wayback Machine.

• Alexa toolbar Integrates Google but also gives you stats on web sites, information of who is behind the web page and other details

• Yahoo Toolbar Get your Yahoo mail, Yahoo news and store your bookmarks

The rest:

• GoBox News, Yahoo, Google and other sites all in one tool
• IFinger   Dictionaries and other research help
• Babylon   A free download tool that allows you use dictionaries with a click of your mouse and translate a word into or from the majority of the languages spoken on the Web. You can also receive instant information online or offline, use glossaries and make currency, measurement and time zone conversions.   
• EarthBrowser   Download this 3-D spinning globe and get current weather conditions and forecasts, real-time earthquake notifications, current cloud cover and webcam images. You can rotate the globe in any direction, get close-up views of geographic regions, or zoom out to view the entire Earth from space. You can also add cities you want to check on, Free trial before you buy.
  

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