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56 SMT Magazine • December 2014 topic: With so much technological change tak- ing place on a daily, hourly and even minute- to-minute basis, how does one filter it? Spoiler alert: This author does not have the answer. Finding What One Needs Presently, the Internet is a marketer's play- ground, much like television advertising on ste- roids. Search engine providers, in spite of pro- testations to the contrary, are known to work on a "pay for placement" basis. That is, when you type in a keyword, you are as likely as not to see first on your hit list a link to an individual or entity that has paid to be there. The hit list may or may not be use- ful, so it is important to try to use as many key words and operators as possible to help filter your results. Given that there are billions of Web pag- es, one great way to control the results is to use Boolean logic and operators. Following are some common examples. The use of AND is a basic one. Obviously it is designed to assure that the search yields links that have both terms; however, improved search engines often assume AND is a number of different terms strung together. Similarly, OR will have a compounding effect by including both terms, but not necessarily in the same individual finds. AND NOT is used to exclude search results containing the specified word or phrase. For example, solder AND NOT lead-free would (should) produce results for sol- ders that are not lead-free. NEAR will produce results where two words are found within 10 words of each other. This is useful in widening the net of results. To get more information, OR can help to make sure both wordings are found. That said, search engines will often default to results that they think the user wants, so one must be careful to make sure not to be misguid- ed by a well-intended machine. Punctuation marks are also used. For exam- ple, quotation marks around a term will focus the search on the exact term. For example, "lead free solder" will provide exactly that result and should ignore "lead-free solder." The asterisk (*) is a wildcard which can be used at the beginning or end of a term to pull in results that might be of value. Cent* will bring up a wide range of answers centipede, centimeter, centigrade, centennial, et cetera. Thus one needs to be a bit careful with its use. The tilde (~) helps one find other results by seeking out and providing synonyms of the search term. Finally putting a term in between parenthesis () helps to bound a search more tightly when different terms are required for example (solder AND NOT lead-free). Once results are obtained, a good deal of sifting and sort- ing is inevitably going to be required. Fact checking is no less important in technology than it is in general news re- porting. Other Ways of Finding the "Good Stuff" With the growing amount of information out there, it is now a huge challenge to try and keep up and find the in- formation one needs. It is in one sense like searching the night sky for a specific star dur- ing a response to an air raid and a sky full of tracer rounds and in another sense like trying to see a flare in the sky on a bright cloudless sky. Given the hemispher- ical field of view and the limitations of one's individual scope of vision, unless one is look- ing in precisely the right direction at exactly the right moment, one is most likely going to miss the event. One way to increase one's field of view is to use the eyes of others. This is where the many daily or weekly newsletters can help. Editors of such information resources are always on the lookout for materials to help their readers get a leg up. An individual newsletter might miss the one bit of news or information that really matters to one personally in their job, but it may be that the item was picked up by One way to increase one's field of view is to use the eyes of others. This is where the many daily or weekly newsletters can help. Editors of such information resources are always on the lookout for materials to help their readers get a leg up. " " TrAcKING TecHNOLOGIcAL cHANGe IN THe INTerNeT AGe continues ArTiClE