Toolbars

• Google Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com. It gives you instant access not only to Google search, but also Advanced Google, Google News and Google Groups. It even bocks pop-up ads! (Google offers only a version for Internet Explorer, but you can get a volunteer-created Googlebar for Netscape at http://googlebar.mozdev.org/
• Dave's Quick Search Taskbar : This is the king of the specialized tools at http://www.dqsd.net/. Unlike all the other tools, this toolbar installs itself on your taskbar - that bottom strip of icons on your desktop. Type in any word and it searches Google. Simply add an exclamation point to the word (for example, fbi!) and you get Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" function which automatically transports you to the first result. Type in any city, followed by an asterisk (Paris*) and you get the weather. Put a colon at the end of a word (larceny:) and you get a dictionary definition. There are tons of other shortcuts to learn.

The rest:

• The Yahoo Companion at http://companion.yahoo.com/ allows you to search using Yahoo, but also gives you access to your Yahoo Mail, plus you can save your favourite bookmarks and access them from any computer.
• HotBot: This veteran engine has a Quick-Search Deskbar at http://www.hotbot.com/tools/. Of course it gives you handy access to its own decent search engine, but you also can send email, check maps, and even install an alarm.
• Ask Jeeves: This toolbar at http://sp.ask.com/docs/toolbar of course gives you the simple-to-use, common language search tool called Ask Jeeves. But you can also hunt for stuff in news, the stock market, weather, maps, and the Ask Jeeves Kids web sites.
• Teoma: One of the newer search engines, Teoma's Search Bar at http://sp.ask.com/docs/teoma/toolbar/ gives you some of the special features of this brilliant new tool and provides the ability to email any web page you view.
• Dogpile: One of best multiple search engines, the Dogpile toolbar queries 13 major engines including Google. You can search through yellow or white pages and check a dictionary and thesaurus.
• Trellian at http://www.trellian.com/toolbar/ allows you to retrieve up to nine result pages for many different search engines.
• The Groowe Toolbar at http://www.groowe.com gives you Google, but also Yahoo, Teoma, AllTheWeb, AltaVista and many more. You can also do specialized searches - for example, find pictures from AllTheWeb, news from AltaVista.
• Alexa at http://download.alexa.com/Alexa gives you access to Google search results -- but also all the special functions of the Alexa web page. Alexa tells you about the web page you are visiting - who is behind it, how popular it is, what are similar sites. A great tool to have for the internet detective!

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