Top Ten Picks of 2006

Here is a selection of the best sites for journalists from JNet's weekly picks of 2006. For a complete list of Jnet's picks from 2006, click here.

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Click here for previous years of Picks of the Week, going back to 1997.


Search:

  • Ask.com It is being called the best competitor to Google. Sleek and simple like Google, Ask.com gives you much the same results - and with handy access to a search tools for images, news, plus encyclopedia and dictionary references. For other search engines, see JNets' Search Page.

International research:

News:

  • BBC Desktop Alerts The world's largest news gathering organization with one of the best web news sites also allows you to get the news you want from the Beeb, when you want it, on your desktop. BBC also offers you a Daily E-mail service. You can choose the news you want, all in one personalized daily e-mail. For other news alerts, see JNet's News Alert Page.

  • InterPress News Service News from a development perspective with two advantages: lots of good, easy to use categories (environment, health) from every region of the world ... plus in several languages. For more international news, see JNet's Find News Page .

  • NewspaperArchive Finding historical archives more than a few years old can be near impossible on the web. This web site offers 28.9 million newspaper pages from 584 cities going back 238 years. It is not free but less than $30 a year. There are also several free archives, such as the September11Archive, which contains more than 15,000 full-image newspaper pages on the World Trade Center and the events surrounding September 11, 2001.Historic articles, like the unveiling of the plans for the twin towers in 1964, can also be found in the archive. Other free archives include Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln and the Titanic. For other tools, see JNet's Archives Pages.

Google:

  • Google Finance One more weapon in the Google arsenal, this search tool focuses on business news and analysis. It covers North American stocks, mutual funds and public and private companies along with charts, news and financial data.Type in the name of a major company and you get a useful snapshot. Type in a keyword like "cars" or "movies" and you get a list of relevant corporations. For other tools, see JNet's Business Pages.

  • Google Alerts: Google News Alerts have always been a JNet favourite -- the ability to track your top news stories and set up your own news clipping service is vital for journalists. The wider Alert service sends you a 'Web' alert if new web pages appear in the top twenty results for your chosen keywords. You can also combine a ''News & Web" alert, plus set up alerts to monitor chat or Usenet groups in Google Groups. For more Google Tools, see JNet's Google page.

  • Google News Archives Google News - -already one of the best news clipping services- -now offers a free archive search. News archive search provides an easy way to search and explore historical archives. You can search articles or a timeline of events and articles. Some of the results from various publications are free, others are not, but all provide helpful leads. For similar tools, see JNet's News Pages and JNet's Archive Pages