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Advanced Searching on the Internet

Although most people believe they have a good idea of how to find things on the Internet many don’t know about some simple techniques to enhance the power of their searches. I am by no means an expert on the subject; even some of the tips in this article were new to me. I wish to start with the choice of search engines. There are many more search engines out there than you’re probably aware of, all you really need to know about are the top three. From what I have found Google, Yahoo, and MSN are the top three. If you already have a favorite, you should continue using what you are most comfortable. If you don’t have a favorite, I might suggest becoming familiar with Google. I don’t keep up much with technology news but what I have seen from Google in the last two years leads me to believe they will eventually be the very best at Internet searches by a wide margin.

I will take for granted that most of you know how to do a basic search, and even a phrase search (enclose a phrase in “your search phrase”). Most are not aware however that you can limit your searches to documents of a specific type (i.e. Word, PowerPoint, and HTML). In addition to this, you can limit your searches to certain sites, documents within a specific date range, documents that contain one word but exclude other words, or limit the search to the title of a document or the contents of the document. All of these features can be found in Google’s advanced search page one of the nicest things that I have seen this year from Google is the ability to create your own custom search engine. This is simpler than you might think and well worth your time if you find yourself searching the same sites over and over again. This feature does require that you create a free Google account which you can do at: www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount for those of you who also design web sites, you can add Google’s Powerful Analytics (web site statistics) to your web pages. I have not seen anything which is free of charge that can compare with the amount and level of detail that Google Analytics offers.

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Biblos Bible study site

I discovered this site recently while browsing through open DNS. There appears to be a large amount of content available from this site. I have not had the time to do an in-depth study of the site contents. I was impressed with the Atlas section of the site. The site also has a large number of language tools available. The amount of time I have spent has only tweaked my interest in what this site has to offer. I would be very curious if any of you have investigated the site in more detail.

Link: http://biblos.com

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Bible History Online

Description from Site: Bible History Online Images and Resources for Biblical History. Resources, Free Bible Software, Bible Art, Biblical History Topics and Study, and ancient Bible maps of Rome, Greece, and ancient Near East.

Home Page

Although my personal preference votes against using black for a background for any Bible study site, in general the graphics on this site are impressive. This is a very deep site. There are references on the site to undergoing improvements which may be currently affecting what content is available. The site contains a lot of links to maps which may or may not be available on this site (I mean by that I am unsure if the content resides on this Web server or if this is a link portal referring to content on other Web servers). There is much more to this site than I have had time to investigate. The content I have used I have been impressed with. If you use the site and have a good or bad experience, let me know.

Link: http://www.bible-history.com

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Bibleplaces.com

This site has some nice photography of Bible lands available in various sizes and quality levels. The site does offer some free photos for download and use with PowerPoint presentations. The main point of the site appears to be to sell their CD containing a larger collection of photographs. The product is divided up into 10 volumes, dedicated to various regions of the ancient world. The collection contains more than 6,000 pictures (at least 500 per CD), each with a resolution of at least 1600×1200 pixels. A single volume sales for $25, the complete set sells $190. There are some nice samples available on the site which has been professionally done. Additionally, the site offers a blog and a free newsletter. to visit this site:BIBLEPLACES.COM

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Archived Gospel Meetings

This single page site contains a large collection of links to various congregations’ audio collections of sermons and hymns. I was impressed with the sheer number of links offered from many different men going back over the last several years. if you enjoy audio sermons, you should definitely visit this site.

The author offers the following note as to the purpose of the site:

In offering these lessons for playing or download it is my intent to spread the Gospel of Christ and the lessons God has delivered in His holy word. It is the intent of the preachers of these sermons to teach and preach only those things taught in the Bible. I encourage you to compare what you hear in these lessons to what is written in God’s word.

To Visit this site:Archived Gospel Meetings

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Words Fitly Spoken

Words Fitly Spoken

This is one of my personal favorite sites to visit because of all the downloads. This is a sister site of In Search of Truth.org . It has one of the largest audio collections of sound gospel sermons that I am aware of on the Internet. A little more recently two periodicals have been added which have been out of print for over 30 years. The Bible Banner (Published from March 1940 — April 1949) and the Gospel Guardian (January 1936 — September 4, 1962) are now available on the site. A really nice feature of these two sites is a special program which was created to create a Scripture Index of the documents by scanning the entire text.  In addition, the site is mirroring a Public Domain version  of  Robert Turner’s Plain Talk (November. 1972 — February 1984), the originals are still hosted by cedarparkchurchofchrist.org.
Here is a high level catalog of audio files currently available :

  • I Peter – Melvin Curry
  • Acts – Jim Everett
  • Earnhart’s Lessons
  • Evidences
  • Hymns
  • Insitutionalism
  • Meetings from Irving, TX
  • Miscellaneous
  • Mormonism
  • Revelation
  • Turner’s Lessons
  • Unity
  • A Year With Jim Everett
  • Waldron’s Sermons

For those of you who are needing to stay up-to-date on everything, they also offer an RSS feed and podcast through Apple iTunes.  Almost all of the material on the site has been released to the Public Domain.  For questions regarding this site, send an e-mail to admin@wordsfitlyspoken.org