Reflection on my UIR journey

Through this few weeks I have learned many things on how to research and the type of search engines available in the internet. However, the most important lesson that I have learned is how to make a search terms with the Booleans and operators. By using these Booleans and operators, I can search with more precise results and better quality results. It has benefited me in academic as I need to do research very often. Last time I used to search without the operators and Booleans but now I can have better results.

Reflection on Practical 8...

For this practical we are suppose to evaluate the website www.talkingcock.com and how we will react to the website if we are foreigners. This website is very interesting and the articles are latest happenings in Singapore. They website is update constantly with different information that are funny and interesting. Some of the information might not be accurate because the articles are posted based on the author's point of view. I feel that the website is substainable due to it's high popularity.

From a foreigner's point of view, I feel that this website is a bit insulting due to it content. The content posted are somehow mocking how the Singapore Goverment works. However, the website is very interesting becuase from a foreigner's view I can understand the culture of Singapore and know more about Singapore.

Reflection on the E-learning week(WIki)

Through Wiki I can share the stuffs that I have researched on with my friends. The topic that I am doing is "Discuss the latest trends and development in the area of RSS/Podcasting". After researching, I posted a introduction, resource used and summary of resource on the wiki. Through other people's postings I also learned many things as we are doing different topics. I feel that Wiki is a good way to share our findings and research.

Evaluation of internet resource

This practical benefit me alot because I have learned how to evaluate website with different criteria. We were given a template which we need to fill in to evaluate the website. The criteria are purpose, coverage, authority, currency, accessibility, presentation, usability. After using the template, we are suppose to give a more detail evaluation on the website to judge whether is ti good or bad.

The website that I am evaluating is
http://enterpriserss.typepad.com/enterprise_rss/2008/01/2008-the-year-o.html
This website has very simple interface and it is easy to nagivate around. Even though the website have not been updated since March 2008 but the information provided is very good and accurate.

Practical 6's reflection

This is the website that I found quite interesting as it contains all the information about taiwan.
http://eng.taiwan.net.tw/lan/Cht/search/index.asp

This website is very useful for visitors who are going to Taiwan because the website provide alot of information about Taiwan. It also give recommendations to a few famous tourists attractions in the different area of Taiwan. It also provide useful tips for tourists who are about to visit Taiwan such as emergency numbers, business hours and many more. Overall, this is a must visit website if you need to visit Taiwan.

(no pictures because I was unable to upload will try again on other computers)

Taiwan was my dream holiday because of the beautiful scenery of the mountains. Other than the scenery there are other interesting location and events happening in the country. The food there also attracts me unlike Singapore we have many different kinds of food. Instead Taiwan, have more food even though the variety is not much.

Comparison between the search facilities

Compare the search results. Identify 2 characteristics that make all 3 search facilities similar or different from one another.

Each search engine has it own capabilities in term of result precision however the main difference between them are the size of hits. Using the same search keywords, I have 2,200 for google.com, 77 for metacrawler.com and 3 for yahoo directory. In terms of interface I think google.com is good as the overall design is simple and user-friendly. It is user-friendly because whenever user enters the page, they will see a textbox and two buttons for user to search for anything that they key in. The loading time for google.com is fast as the site has no ads or pictures expect for the components that I mentioned above. However, for yahoo.com the site has many ads and moving pictures so the loading time of the page might be slow if the speed of the internet is not fast. For metacrawler.com, the interface is good but it is just a site that combines search engines together such as google, yahoo, ask.com, msn search. Therefore, if the user is lazy to access individual site to search, metacrawler.com is a good portal for them to search.

Do you find any strength/weakness of each of them, in terms of search capability?

Google.com – The strength about google is that the search results are more precise than the other 2 search engines. The results showed as more relevant to my keywords. However, the weakness of this search engines is that the result might be too big that the user is lazy to access all the results. Therefore, user might miss out some good or important information that at the back of the result list.

Yahoo.com (directory) – As it is human compiled, so the database of the directory is not big. That is the weakness of directory. However, the search results are small so user do not need to access pages of results. The selected sources mostly are of the best quality.

Metacrawler.com – This search engine does not recognize the search Booleans that I used as the results are words that are contained in the keywords. Therefore, some of the results might not be what the user wants. The strength of the Metacrawler.com that this is the best site for lazy people as the result from metacrawler.com is a compilation from google, yahoo, msn and ask.com. The results that user search in the site might look similar if they have search on google or yahoo.


Overall, which search facility best meet your searching needs? Why?

Google.com is a better search engine to me because it gives me more precision results as compare to the other 2 search engine. I get more resources than what is expected and most of the resources are relevant to my keywords and topic. However, sometimes the search results might be too big that I might left out some important sources at the back of the result list.

If I have $500....

What is the currency for that $500? Is it USD, EURO, SGD, GPB or some other country’s currency? With that $500 I also cannot buy what I want because the item is more than $500. So I will just save that $500 and perhaps wait for another $1000 then I will use that amount to buy the item that I want. If the currency is in GPB, then I can get that item. The item I want to get is a Sony Bravia Tv. If only I have $2000....

Reflection on this activity: I learned about the process of e-shopping and understand that e-shopping is actually much more convenient than doing the shopping physical. I can browse the items by clicking on the mouse which can save lots of trouble. However, there are risks when doing e-shopping such people hacking your credit card account and many more. In all, there are pros and cons doing e-shopping and e-shopping can be a enjoyable exprience.

Update on the elearning

I forgot to update the blog about the elearning lesson until today. What did I do on my elearning? The elearning was simple as I need to answer 2 questions and the questions was how internet enrich my academic life and why is there a need for advocacy website. Answer them within 10mins because the questions was too simple. Even though the questions were simple but i learned more about advocacy websites and other people views on advocacy websites.

First UIR Blog

Hi, My name is Leonard Ong. This is my UIR blog, do not ask me why I create this blog. Answer is I have no choice as creating blog is part of the subject requirement.

The topic that I am suppose to research on is
Discuss the developments and trends in the area of RSS/podcasting

So far what have I done in practical 1 and 2?
Using the search facility to look for websites relevant to my research topic. Found a couple of websites all related to Podcasting. Realised that I can categorise the websites in to organisational and personal. I have learn something new after practical 2 where I can categorise the websites.

Two interesting link to the topic that I am suppose to research on
www.podcast.sg This is a website where user can upload and download podcast. We can also download and listen to podcast by the radio station in Singapore.

http://www.podcastusermagazine.com/ This is a website where the author will post the latest updates and information about podcast. The updates are in forms of pdf files so we can download and read it on our own free time.