Searching the net for multimedia

No short hand out, including this one, can do true justice to multimedia searching. Multimedia searching is finding music, spoken word, image, and video files or web sites. Some search engines, notably Google and Altavista, cover image searching fairly well, but directory pages and certain large, well known, sites are still the best option in many cases.

Like all creative output, multimedia files are covered by copyright, and images and sound files found through search engines are often copyrighted. Please take care to obey the licensing and use restrictions that come with copyrighted materials.

Images and clipart

Google Image Search
Set Google to image and the search engine does the rest. Finds images from multi word descriptions. Images include photographs of various sizes and often copyrighted material. Remember to observe legal precautions.

Alta Vista Image Search
The net's oldest images search engine and still one of the best. Alta Vista allows you to restrict your graphics search by size, color, format, and more.

Open Directory -- Computers -- Graphics -- Clipart and Open Directory -- Computers -- Graphics -- Web -- Free
Clip art and free web graphics are usually well suited to presentations and web pages, and also available free of charge. Dmoz lists collections of these sites on these two pages. Beware sites that demand a detailed registration or that are thick with pop up advertisements.

Graphics -- Clip Art in the Yahoo! Directory
A slightly different listing of sites offering mainly free clip art for web pages and presentations. Avoid those sites that require extensive registration or are filled with pop-up advertising and/or excessive redirects.

Sound, music, and the spoken word

Internet Broadcasts in the Yahoo! Directory
Yahoo offers a listing of various radio and video broadcasts available over the internet. Covers both broadcasts requiring RealAudio and and Windows Media Player. Includes, music, talk, news, sports, and more.

Open Directory Arts -- Radio -- Internet
Dmoz' listing of Internet radio stations that play everything from news for gamers to classical music. Sorts stations by category and includes no advertising. Radio stations requiring RealAudio and Windows Media Player are jumbled together.

SHOUTCast HOME
A comprehensive directory of Internet stations that require Winamp, the Shoutcast radio player. These include music and talk radio stations and they are typically smaller and less commercial. The search engine on the site allows you to restrict by genre and bandwidth, which is especially useful for those on slow or crowded connections.

Back to Searching for and Evaluating Internet Sources.

EHK -- January 2005