Internet Search Facilities

On the labs of week 5 and 6, we were to search our topic on different types of search facilities. I hadn't known that different search engines queries their databases differently and gives different results. In this exercise, we search for results from different search facilities and compare them. Then, we see which is more relevant to our topic. Here are my searches on the different search facilities:

1. Google.com(http://www.google.com) - Search Engine
   Keywords: "development of RSS" technology news
   Size of Hits: 357
   Relevant Rank: N.A.
   Relevant Result: Yes
   URL Found:
   http://www.attensa.com/news/2005/12/
   attensa_lands_series_b_financi.php
   Purpose: News
   
2. MetaCrawler(http://www.metacrawler.com) - Meta Search Engine
   Keywords: "development of RSS" technology
   Size of Hits: 67
   Relevant Rank: N.A.
   Relevant Result: Yes
   URL Found:
   http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/07/25
   /29NNrss_1.html
   Purpose: News
   
3. Yahoo!(http://www.yahoo.com) - Subject Directory
   Keywords: development of RSS
   Size of Hits: 126,000,000
   Relevant Rank: N.A.
   Relevant Result: Yes
   URL Found:
   http://topics.developmentgateway.org/rc/
   showRSSFeeds.do
   Purpose: Information

When comparing the results returned by the different search facilities, I am surprised to see they are quite different. This could probably be the way the search engine searches its database. By looking at the size of hits alone, the different search engines gives different number of results. Google gave 357, then MetaCrawler gave 67 and Yahoo!, gave a huge number of results of 126,000,000! Same keywords used on different search facilities did not return me the same sites nor related contents, at least. I had to alter the keywords a little, trying around the wildcards in the search query in order to get the right content.

After this exercise, I no longer think that all search engines perform similarly and are of the same. The different search facilities query the database differently. As they query the keywords I keyed in differently from their database, I get different results from the different search facilities. In some cases, this different way of querying the database returns more relevant results. Through this, I can effectively make use of the different types of search facilities for the different kind of contents I am looking for!

Purposes of Internet Resources(Week 4)

On the lab of week 4, we had to identify the purposes of websites and compare them. It isn't easy because not every topic that we searched on has websites of different purposes and type of resources. Nevertheless, I managed to find 4 websites of similar resources but different purposes and here they are...

• Introduction to RSS
  http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/xml/rss/intro/
  Resource Type: Electronic Magazines/Journals
  Purpose: Information
  Reason:
  This article provides information on how RSS looks like and what is it all about.
  
• Why use RSS
  http://computer.1howto.com/other/Why-Use-RSS.html
  Resource Type: Electronic Magazines/Journals
  Purpose: Advocacy
  Reason:
  It tells the reasons on why we should use RSS and how it is used in the market. It stresses on the advantages of using RSS and why every web services should use it.
  
• RSS Specifications
  http://www.rss-specifications.com/
  Resource Type: Electronic Magazines/Journals
  Purpose: Information
  Reason:
  This site provides RSS feeds for the articles which are all about RSS.
  
• Best uses of RSS
  http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art46361.asp
  Resource Type: Electronic Magazines/Journals
  Purpose: Information
  Reason:
  In this article, the author tells about how are some of the web services which RSS could be implemented. It also provides information on how Active Server Pages(ASP) can be used together with RSS onto the web services he mentioned.

Deciding the purpose of the website of the resource helps me to know what kind of information I am getting. Through this, I can also know how to manipulate the contents from my research better.

Categories of Internet Resources

During the lab of week 3, we had a practical assignment to search for sites and categorise them. Although we were advised to pick on a topic which is related to our diploma, we were still allowed to decide what to research on from a list of subjects. Still, I did a brief search on all the topics. Apparently, the trends of RSS and Podcasting is the one that relates most to what I am studying in my Diploma. Hence, I decided to work on this. I found a few sites on this topic and here they are...

1. Wikipedia(Organisation Website)
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)
   Everyone knows this site, Wikipedia. I did a search with keywords like RSS and Podcasting and Google returned me Wikipedia links as the first few rankings on its result page.
   
2. RSS & Atom Tips(Personal Website)
   http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/rss/
   category/developmentnexus/rss/category/development/
   The webmaster of the site, Lockergnome, provides latest updates and trends on RSS and Atom tips. He wrote many articles on the development of RSS and their usage on different web services.
   
3. KnowThis.com(Organisation Webiste)
   http://www.knowthis.com/tutorials/principles-of-marketing/public-relations/13.htm
   This is a website that is maintained by a group of people, which I presume is an organisation site. It tells how RSS and Podcasting is used in Marketing and Public Relations.
   
4. XML.com(Subject-based)
   http://www.xml.com
   When we go indepth into RSS, we realise it's actually XML. XML is what that makes up RSS for other websites to use it as a feed. This is also why Google rank the official site of XML third when I searched for it.
   
5. Digital Podcast Forum(Forum/Discussion Board)
   http://www.digitalpodcast.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=966
   I searched for discussions on Podcasting on Google. This forum did not show on the first page of the search. Fortunately, I bothered to browse through the few pages(which I usually don't after I don't see what I need on the first page) and found this really useful forum - www.digitalpodcast.com/forum. It was hidden on the fifth page of the search result. The thread in the link above is something interesting. One of their members asked how he could post a RSS to a local IIS server. The other member replied him on how he thinks about this and even with steps on how he could go about it.
   The Digital Podcast forum has a pretty active community with more than sixteen hundred members on the forum. It's a very good place to discuss on RSS and Podcasting issues.

After reading through the links that I had found, I somewhat found myself understand better about what RSS and Podcasting are. The relation between XML and RSS is also getting clearer in my mind and XML also become an alternative keyword when I want to search for RSS. The assignment may look simple as we just do some searches on the internet but it can really enrich ourselves very much if we find the right contents and sites.

Searching the WWW

To many people, including myself, thought that searching the web is just firing up our browser and key in a subject. But most of the times, the returned results may not be relevant. There are tatics and ways to search for the contents that we really want. During the lab(week2), we were delegated to search on any topic that we are interested. We would then categorise the results returned by the search engine into categories like personal site, coporate sites, forums, etc.

We put the sites that we found into these categories so that we can know their author of the contents and how reliable the contents are. For instance, contents from a personal site or blog may be just the author's opinion, and not a fact. To judge whether if a content is merely an opinion, we could try to compare them with the other sites, especially encyclopedias, that we had found to see their similarities and differences. From here, then we infer what are the contents that we want.

This doesn't gurantee to work always, but it helps to filter out the right contents for us, at least.

Pen My Blog

This is my very first post, as well as blog. I am starting to find myself excited over my first and new blog. I didn't know having a blog can have this much fun. This is especially when I know I will have lots of content to put up as I attend the lessons for my UIR! Here, shall be my den where I pen my research and thoughts.