Practical 4 and 5
This practical requires me to compare the different types of search facilities such as search engine, Meta search engine and subject directory.
Search engine: Google
The strength of Google is that relevant results are shown on the first pages of the results page. The weakness is that it produces a large number of results. The number of results shown is the most among the three search facilities.
Meta search engine: MetaCrawler
The strength of MetaCrawler is that it searches all the search engines to produce the results and the number of results is not very large. The weakness is that not all the relevant results are shown on the first page.
Subject directory: Yahoo! Directory
The strength of Yahoo! Directory is that the information is grouped into categories for easy searching. The weakness is that the results produced are generic links to websites. Users have to go to these websites and find the information themselves.
Before this practical, I only know the existence of search engines such as Yahoo! and Google. This practical helps me to be more familiarize with the different types of search facilities available. After comparing the different types of search facilities, I still believed that Google is the best although the number of results produced is very large. I prefer Google is mainly due to the user-friendly interface and the large number of relevant results produced.
Practical 3
This practical requires me to group the resources I have found according to their purposes such as information, advocacy, business/marketing, news, personal and entertainment.
I think that grouping the resources according to their purposes is very useful as it allows me to know how reliable the information is. If the resource falls under advocacy, personal and entertainment, the information provided may not be very accurate it does not contain any facts unlike information and news. Information provides facts while the purpose of news is to provide information about the latest happenings around the world to update the public with the most current events.
Besides learning more about the purpose of resources, I also learn how to create site feeds to other blogs by following the templates given in the practical. I feel that site feeds are very useful as the entries are placed according to the date posted. The most recent entry will be placed at the top of the page. With site feeds, users need not have to go to the blog and search for the most recent entries themselves.
Practical 2
This practical requires me to group resources into different types of website such as subject based, personal and organization. After doing this practical, I realized that the use of keywords will help to reduce the number of results produced. It will also produce more relevant results as compared to using the topic to perform the search.
This practical also allows me to get to know more about the 3 types of websites. Subject based website provides factual information about the topic. Personal website is used by individuals to provide their personal opinion regarding the topic. It does not contain factual information unlike subject based website. Organizational website provides a wide range of information about the topic and also contains links to other related websites.
Information placed on personal websites may not be as useful and reliable as compared to subject based as it contains personal thoughts, not facts.
Practical 1
This practical requires me to find resources belonging to different categories like newsgroups and discussion list, electronic journals and magazines, multi-media source and WWW site.
Different categories of resources provide users with different types of information. For example, electronic journals and magazines provides online versions of publications related to the topic while multi-media source provides video clips and sound clips about the topic. Knowing which category of information users want will help them in finding information more easily.
Links
Websites that i often visit are youtube and google.
I enjoy visiting youtube as it allows me to watch shows that are not local and also shows that I have missed. I feel that the uploaders of the shows are very efficient. I can get to watch the episode the next day after they are shown. One not so good thing about youtube is that videos that are too long have to be split into many parts. This makes it inconvenient to watch the shows. Also, youtube has alot of other interesting videos other than dramas.
The other website that i often visit is google. I need it to do my research for projects. I prefer it to yahoo as the results shown are more relavant.
About myself
Hi everyone, my name is Jing Yi and I am currently studying Financial Business Informatics year 2 in Temasek Poly. I enjoy sleeping, eating and watching TV serials.
I have a younger brother who is 7 years old this year. As the age gap is quite big, it is quite difficult to communicate with him. Having a younger brother is quite nice as he can always make me laugh with the things that he do.
I think that's all about myself.
