Internet Guides An Internet guide is another method of finding information quickly and easily on the Internet. The guide is often made up of communities focused on specific topics. Each community is led by a person who has some expertise on the topic. That person is your guide to Internet resources on that topic. He or she will have done the hard work for you; he or she will have surfed the Internet looking for useful Web sites dealing with that area and created a Web page with links to those sites. Your guide will write articles on the subject. These sites can also include chat rooms, message boards and e-mail lists, which are used to create a greater sense of community among those who visit them. A representative for About.com states, "The key to our site is our guides. They help users mine the Net for the best information. They do a lot of the legwork for a user, as opposed to a traditional search engine, which just gives you hundreds, sometimes thousands of search results. Our guides can be contacted directly for help and are experts in their topic." Suite101 (www.suite101.com/) is another such meta-site that provides information on a variety of topics from city guides to Web site design, freelance writing to pet care. Both About.com and Suite101 invite interested parties to apply to be guides and, in so doing, earn a little extra cash. To learn more, visit beaguide.about.com or suite101.com. These Internet guides are useful because they limit their list of links to the top of the bunch and each site is personally reviewed by the community leader to ensure that it is useful. There is the added benefit of allowing Internet beginners to be introduced to other Net users who share the same interests.

Internet Guides An Internet guide is another method of finding information quickly and easily on the Internet. The guide is often made up of communities focused on specific topics. Each community is led by a person who has some expertise on the topic. That person is your guide to Internet resources on that topic. He or she will have done the hard work for you; he or she will have surfed the Internet looking for useful Web sites dealing with that area and created a Web page with links to those sites. Your guide will write articles on the subject. These sites can also include chat rooms, message boards and e-mail lists, which are used to create a greater sense of community among those who visit them. A representative for About.com states, "The key to our site is our guides. They help users mine the Net for the best information. They do a lot of the legwork for a user, as opposed to a traditional search engine, which just gives you hundreds, sometimes thousands of search results. Our guides can be contacted directly for help and are experts in their topic." Suite101 (www.suite101.com/) is another such meta-site that provides information on a variety of topics from city guides to Web site design, freelance writing to pet care. Both About.com and Suite101 invite interested parties to apply to be guides and, in so doing, earn a little extra cash. To learn more, visit beaguide.about.com or suite101.com. These Internet guides are useful because they limit their list of links to the top of the bunch and each site is personally reviewed by the community leader to ensure that it is useful. There is the added benefit of allowing Internet beginners to be introduced to other Net users who share the same interests.