As many of you know, I am in the process of replacing my old "Help for
Physics Students" links page with what I call the "Physics E-source".
There were several motivating factors for the change including 1) the
page continues to grow in popularity in spite of the fact that it hasn't
had a proper updating for nearly 2 years, and 2) my URL submission form
received far more queries than URLs (i.e. people seemed to be searching
for a physics search engine). What I settled on is a mini search
engine, but with a few features to distinguish it from Lycos etc. (It
is pointless to try to duplicate what one could accomplish by going to a
regular search engine and using "physics" as one of your keywords.)
What the e-source does is to take URL submissions from authors with a
brief description of each page, keywords, and (here's the difference)
information about who the target audience is as well as the
qualifications of the author and the nature of the web site.
I put the first trial version online yesterday and was pleased by the
result - 50 queries in the first day. This isn't an overwhelming
response, just what I consider a good positive start. What I don't have
yet is a very large database of URLs to be searched. I know that many
of the searches must have come up with no results ("torsion balance",
"physics of tennis" and many others).
So, if anybody is looking for places to list their web pages, check out
the URL below.