Practical Tools for Harnessing Today's Information

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November 9, 2020
After over 20 years of pioneering practical tools for using the Internet,
we are closing our services. It's been an exciting journey of innovation.
Yes, we were first with a variety of tech, but the 800-pound Gorilla prevailed.
Lesson: Being first and $5 just gets you 1/2 cup of java at Peet's.
Thank you and stay safe.

SurfWax Search - original meta-search with FocusWords, SiteSnaps, SearchSets
LookAhead - the original (now ubiquitous) search auto-completion technology
Plagiarism Guard - comparson of documents to content across the Internet
SurfWax Scholar - linked topic-based search with secure filing (InfoCubby)
Nextaris - the original Internet toolkit with true peer-to-peer file sharing
SurfWax News Crawler - news from 5,000 sources on 50,000 topics
Nomad - news from RSS feeds offering fully-rotated search results.

SurfWax® Testimonials.

"Nextaris...blazing a trail for the next generation of web tools."
SearchEngineWatch
  "Before Google offered its popular Google Suggest tool, Silicon Valley's SurfWax was offering dynamic search navigation technology called LookAhead."
SearchEngineWatch

Danny Sullivan (a recognized world expert on search engines) has placed SurfWax in his SearchEngineWatch listing of the "major" meta-engines.

"Surfwax...a step ahead...using technologies that define word relationships, Surfwax improves upon existing meta searchers." PCQuest: October 3, 2000

"Super search engine -- SchoolNotes.com-Jim Benson

"What I like about Surfwax is everything I have seen so far. It brings up a huge number of unbiased and sensibly rated results for every search I do."

"...supergenaue Suchmaschine..." LinkdesTages

"It is the best we have ever used...I refer [SurfWax] to all my friends..."

"I just wanted to let you know I love your search engine. The search results are very "user friendly." I have compared Surfwax to several other search engines and it is far superior. I have been working in database retreival for over twenty years as an Information Specialist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I [tell about] your site every chance I get."

"If you are looking for a particular subject try using surfwax.com -- a meta search engine that beats all others."

"I love the Surfwax feature that indicates which results are homepages. A wonderful addition to my favorite search engine."

"...the feature of SiteSnaps is great--it allows websurfers to view key subject matter from the site."

"...context highlighting - great results..." Xcalibur

"...the on-the-fly page summaries of SurfWax... something droolworthy." ResearchBuzz

"It's just the best search engine... we really depend on it..."

"You get excellent results with this multi-threaded search engine. My personal favorite!" i-probe.com Webmaster

"A few weeks ago, my parents needed to know the address of a particular hospital in The Netherlands. They knew the name of it and what city it was in, but needed the entire address. I used both Yahoo and InfoSeek to try to find it. I finally did find it but only after going through approx. 25-30 tries of searches using various words. I tried the same search using Surfwax and guess what...I got the results in just one search... Thanks!"

The Best of the Best for Factual Research Meta-Search Engines
"SurfWax for the best of them to date..."

"I've tried your site and love it. I was recently diagnosed a diabetic; I checked out surfwax and it found sites I never expected to find!...I was never referred to such site(s) through a Yahoo! search. Thanks."

"Excellent choice." Pioneer Library

"Currently certainly one of the best." Bioinformatics

"Konfigurierbare und sehr komfortable Meta-Suchmaschine. Mein Tipp!" Suchmaschinen

"Very cool! This meta-search engine has a unique feature...you get a SiteSnap giving you basic info on the page, and a summary of the main points." LLRX.com

"Surfwax - Best search engine so far - it found your site." www.photo.net

"SurfWax get high marks for its clean interface, understandable help pages, its intelligent use query refinement options and on-the-fly abstract creation. It is a must-have metasearch tool."Oasis, Winter 2000

"This machine is absolut brilliant! To show the context of the found word and the abstract helps a lot."

"Everyone I've turned on to it (dozens and dozens) think it's the best search engine they've used."

"I was looking for the lyrics to the South Africa national anthem yesterday. Tried both Surfwax and AskJeeves: AskJeeves was almost useless, but Surfwax found me about 6 translations on my first shot!"

"Today I discovered SurfWax.com and just "LOVE" you. You will save me hours or searching and it is soooo easy to search on your site. I have never seen anything like it. Thanks SurfWax!"

"...your site is excellent, and I use it as my start page. It is finding more web pages than any other search engine, I have encountered. I also recommended your site by email to my friends."

"Recommended your wonderful search engine to about 250 teachers at a conference last week."

"The SiteSnap... present a faster overview than if you had to load the entire page. Really worth a visit!"
KUB Library

"You can't beat Surfwax for finding relevant links and sorting them into a neat list. If you need just one search engine, try Surfwax."

"...offers more context information (SiteSnaps) about pages than most other search engines and metasearch engines..." Universiteitsbibliotheek

"Thank you for a product that truly makes internet searching much more effective. It always takes me directly to what I need. I love the summary info..."

"I love it. Several features make it work well for me -- duplication of sites is virtually eliminated -- the original search results page stays on the desktop and a new window opens for the site -- the SiteSnaps are a great time saver -- your help screen is so convenient....no clutter, no fuss, just a fabulous tool"

"...SurfWax is more than just a meta search engine. It serves up powerful results and allows you to custom-tailor your preferences and focus your search results..."

"...this is the neatest metasearch tool I have come across in quite a while."

"...a very powerful meta-search engine, with some very good new features."

"SurfWax.com ... they're offering a new way to expand searches ... it's a heck of a step in the right direction. ...overall more relevant than the proximity terms provided by Direct Hit..."
--------ResearchBuzz

"...SurfWax uses intuitive word-relations, along with other innovative technologies...it amounts to a search experience that is both efficient and personalised. A good bookmark."

"...if you go to the wonderful Surfwax Search Engine...you will retrieve a good collection of links... For those who have never used SurfWax, I highly recommend it. It is an exceptionally powerful and fast meta-search engine, which incorporates all the best search engines..."

"A few moments ago I fed the search string "holocaust assets" into the SurfWax search engine, and it retrieved heaps of relevant sites in about 3-4 seconds."

"...after playing golf, I discovered my legs were completely covered with a red rash. Where to get information on poison oak? Surfwax, my search engine of choice, found lots of good information, including links to photos to show what it looks like."

"...I'd like to tell you that I think Surfwax is *EXCELLENT*. It has, in fact, become my one of my first choices in all my searching, and I recommend it to others whenever the opportunity arises. Do keep up the good work!"

"SurfWax -- a Meta search with great summaries."

"I am an inveterate web-searcher, and I must say that your engine has me totally captivated. Very cool."

"...Thanks to Surfwax, I just located an out of print book...I have been trying to find this book for years without success...Amazon was no good but Surfwax pointed me to abebooks.com, which did it!! Thanks so much."

"Surfwax is becoming our weapon of first resort in searching for needles in the Web haystack."

"If more sitesnaps were available (although I must say I'm impressed with how many there are even at this early date), user value would go thru the roof. Having new windows for accessing actual sites is nice, too. ...I think the engine has tremendous possibilities!"

"Surf Wax's greatest appeal was that I was able to more fully evaluate (as compared to Hot Bot, Alta Vista, et al.) the hits before linking to them. Waiting for the found sites to load, only to find them irrelevant, is the big time waster in searching, and the FocusWords feature relates to that issue. I also liked the Site Snaps feature."

"I can vouch for the good-hits-on-the-first-attempt syndrome. I needed some info about the three strikes law for my sermon, did a search, and in moments had what I needed. I *love* the clean presentation. I *love* the relevance. It looks like a winner to me."

"Worked great! I used it yesterday all day to search for links and books on specific subjects - and it seems really robust! This is a cool search site..."

"For a second sweep, the newest and maybe the best of the meta-search engines is SurfWax."
--------The Arizona Lawyer's Guide to the Internet

"Surfwax.com. A more user-friendly search engine. Searches return a framed list of results -- list of pages on the left, key on the right. You are also given the chance to get a "SiteSnap" of each web page--a summary of the page including keywords, abstract, word count, etc. You can also focus your searches with one mouse click."

"Just a week after All The Web launched and Excite promised an even bigger database, SurfWax has announced its new service that is promised to be even better! SurfWax offers a meta-search that automatically focuses the user's search criteria using its integrated hierarchical FocusWords. It's meant to make for a better set of results..."
--------Internet Today

"...interesting metasearch engine, which offers more context information about pages than most other search engines and metasearch engines do"

"I just wanted to write quickly and tell you my surfwax story: I was looking for information on bottled water in Brazil? seemingly impossible to find. Surfwax was BY FAR the best search engine I used. This is the first time I've used it for a real search where I needed information. I'm seriously impressed; I used every feature: site snaps, focus words."

"Oingo is still in beta and I'd like to see how it would work with a full-text database, instead of a searchable subject index. But it's thrilling, after what seemed like an endless stall in search engines, to see the improvements that it, Surfwax, and other new engines represent."
--------ResearchBuzz

"I used Lycos, AltaVista, and DogPile.com to try to find a site I was looking for, yet SurfWax was the only engine that found exactly what I was looking for."