Single best fast research tip?

[bluewingz]

My tip is a little different.. I don't use a special search engine or anything. I try to pick topics that I know at least a little bit about, enough to make a rough outline. Then I search for just what I need to know. That keeps me from getting sidetracked on a lot of side bits. Then I write down the facts I need on a paper outline, which makes writing the article go a lot faster, too. Hope that helps!

[WAHbird]

Originally Posted by bluewingz

I try to pick topics that I know at least a little bit about, enough to make a rough outline.

I do this as well. And since I stick to the same 5-10 topics most of the time, I've bookmarked reliable sources that I can keep coming back to when I need references. I also keep my go-to references organized by topic which makes my research even quicker.

[delkroemer]

Those are some great ideas and ways to go about things. Looking forward to applying all this info, and hopefully I'll stop wasting as much time as I sometimes do on research!

[jessewrites]

I guess the part I'm missing about gistweb is that I don't see where to enter my search term.

[bluewingz]

You don't enter a search term for gistweb. Add the little link at the top to your favorites (drag it in, like the directions say). When you get to a page you want "gisted" click on the link in your favorites. Another tab will open up, with the gist of the contents of the original page on it. It took me a minute to figure out, too.[img]smileys/smiley2.gif[/img]

[jessewrites]

OK, ok...rocket scientist I am not. But...

I've figured it out! (With your help, of course!)

http://gistweb.comis the browser plugin/favorite option.

AND...

http://gistweb.com/web.phpis the web version where you enter your keywords.

Now back to our regularly scheduled best fast research tips!

Oh, and...thanks!

[DeeBishop]

With the http://gistweb.com- I couldn't get it to drag, so I added it to my Favorites under links. How it works then, is when I go a website I want to know more about, I click on the Gist It! link and it pulls up the first paragraph or so and maybe the footer or some other info from that site.

[DeeBishop]

Forgot to say, too, that Northern Light Search is a tremendous resource! NL was one of the early search engines pre-Google, and was MUCH better than Google ever thought of being. They went to a paid-only version and shut down the regular search engine, but they have since come out with a SE at http://nlsearch.com/ that searches news stories. VERY good resource for writers.

[starbirdy66]

Specific sites to find tech info or people/company info and FireFox tools, mostly search engine help tools for writer research have helped me the most.

People searches and/or company searches
http://Pipl.com
http://zoominfo.com


For scientific information
http://www.scirus.com/ (great for up-to-date research, can read abstracts, sometimes find preview of the complete journal article)


A few great FireFox tools I found are:

Hyperwords - allows you to highlight text and request a number of things like searches, translations and conversions... saves you time from opening Google to copy and paste a term for a search, has too many features to mention but online writers will love it.

Interclue - gives you a nice pop up when you hover over a link as to what it goes to, if it is dead, if it is dangerous - will save time and avoid bouncebacks when it wasn't what you were looking for.

Surf Canyon - great search assistant feature will find links not found in the early pages of a Google search that are relevant to the pages you do look at on the early pages of Google...hope that makes sense

Googlepedia - run an online search and a Wikipaedia search parallels it

...and to time your searches so you don't get carried away Firefox add-on TimeTracker

I also added FireShot but don't know if I should have tried Clipmarks instead for screen shots and marking content.

[WAHMBrenda]

Googlepedia: That's the 1 that I was talking about earlier LOL