The Online World resources handbook

Practical tips http://home.eunet.no/~presno/bok/12.html
See http://members.aol.com/bombagirl/freeware/email4u.txt for more hints. Then try the Email Faq.
You may also find the Website By Email "tutorial on creating and maintaining an Internet presence
using email only methods." interesting.
Searching databases by mail
You can search Google by email by sending a mail to google@capeclear.com with the text of your
query in the "Subject" line. You'll receive your search results via email. Example: Do the query
"site:www.capeclear.com ceo" to find out Cape Clear's CEO.
It is also possible to search many databases by WWWmail. The trick is to find the correct URL to
use when submitting your search terms. Some are given in our examples below.
The search URLs of some popular search engines are also given in WWWmail service's help
texts. For example, send the word HELP to Agora to receive hints on searching Lycos, Yahoo, the
WAIS server at Oxford University, WebCrawler, Hyper RFC, MetaCrawler DQG $OWD 9LVWD
If a desired service is not on the list, you can often find out yourself: First, log on to make a
manual, interactive search using almost any browser. Save the reported Web address (URL) of the
resulting report for analysis. Finally, test variations of this URL with different search words to find one
that works.
Using the Lynx browser, first make a search using a typical combination of search terms. When
the hit report is on your screen, press "=" to show file and link information. Mail this data to yourself, or
make a copy before logging off.
Then, investigate the URL under "File that you are currently viewing." Locate your original search
terms among the codes of the URL, replace them by new search terms, and send the revised URL
back to the search service to see if it works.
Note: Search URLs are usually long and cumbersome. Therefore, experienced users often save
them as templates on disk for easy retrieval and editing on the fly. Many email clients, like Pegasus
Mail and Eudora, let you pick from a list of permanently saved messages, edit, and resend the revised
search command with a click.
Other users tie frequently used search commands to specific keystrokes. Example: Enter
keyword "news" followed by Ctrl E to have the string "SEND http://www.newsindex.com/cgi bin
/process.cgi?query=" put into the text of your mail. Add search words, and you're ready to send.
Searching today's news
In Chapter 9, we mentioned the News Index news only search engine. To find today's articles about
the term "netpc" using Agora, send this command:
SEND http://www.newsindex.com/cgi bin/process.cgi?query=netpc
To search for two terms, like "sun" and "java", use this command:
SEND http://www.newsindex.com/cgi bin/process.cgi?query=java+sun
Searching Alta Vista
If you want information about a person named Bill Gates, try this command (write it on one line):
SEND http://www.altavista.com/cgi bin/query?sc=on\&hl=on\
&q=%2BBill%2BGates\&kl=XX\&pg=q
This command was made after an interactive AltaVista search. I simply copied the web address of my
browser's result page, and pasted it into an email message to the Agora server (after the word
"SEND").
In my search, I had used "+Bill+Gates" as search terms. The "+" signs forces AltaVista to only
display pages containing both terms. As the + sign also works as a separator between terms, I did not
bother to use a space.
In this way, you can construct complex search strings to satisfy your applications. Just store your
successful search term on your disk, and edit them according to needs.
The parameters of the search URL are separated by "\&". Thus, the search term (+Bill+Gates)
can be found in this part of the string (separators are boldfaced for clarity):
\&q=%2BBill%2BGates\&
The "+" signs (and also some other signs) are converted to their hexidecimal equivalents, and
displayed as %2b. Thus, "\&q=%2BBBill%2BGates" is equivalent to manually entering "+Bill +Gates" at
the AltaVista web form.
If you really want to include a space between terms, try %20, as in \&q=%2BBill
%20%2BGates\&.
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