My UIR Blog

Monday, January 22, 2007

The American History

This is going to be the final entry for this semester and on this blog. In this last lab activity(Week 13), we were to do...well, yet another website evaluation. But a tougher one this time. We can't get to choose sites as the lab sheet insists that we had to evaluate on a selected website. And the website is not other than the American Musuem site(http://www.si.edu).

When I first got into the website, I was like "WOW, Cool". The site is heavy and has a lot contents to show. Even on the main page, they want and need to show a lot of things. Maybe just a little bit of each things they want to show but they are just too many of them. However, they managed to arrange and sort the many items which they want to show in a very neat manner. The interface of the website is also nicely designed in such a way that it allows the many items to be presented in a very neat and easy-to-read layout. The colour combination on the site is also very considerate to our eyes. The website also does not have heavy advertisements that may cause the visitor's surfing experience on the site unpleasant.

One of the toughest thing to evaluate this site is when it comes to the criteria of coverage. The site simply covers too much; their coverage is too wide. It is almost possible to identify everyone of them and the only general word I could think for what they cover, American History, is too vague to be mentioned. The site also do not have a sitemap probably because of this. A sitemap may prove too useless since the site is so huge and only a good search facility can help the visitors to search for what they want on the site. This makes things slightly more complicated.

Fortunately, the site has a very easy navigation. The navigation has somewhat branched the contents into their sections. From these sections, we can manage to understand their coverage in a more systematic manner.

As I compile my portfolio for the final submission and reminisce the past lessons since the start of the semester, there is this particular lab which I had the most impression for. This particular lab is no other than the one on week 5 and 6. During these labs, it was the time when I got to know that these search engines work differently after using them for years! I haven't known that they have different purposes and could have helped me to do a more precise search for what I needed. I know after many years down the road, even when I have forgotten about this subject that I had taken, I will never forget how I could make use of different search engines to help me to enhance my search experience on the internet. Throughout the whole UIR course, I have had done so many searches in the lab activities that such good practises of using the right search engines have become a habit. It has already become part of my way of living on the internet world. That's why these 2 labs etched a mark on my memory for this subject.

As this is the last lab activity for the subject, I still enjoyed it very much. Maybe a little nostalgic as well. Nevertheless, the whole subject was still an enriching and fun one. Cheers! :)

3 More Website Evaluations!

My first entry for the new year! Well, first lab(Week 12) after the break and holidays, we continue our lessons with 3 more website evaluations. Once again, we were to select 3 more websites from our list of resources. I fired up my word processor and opened the list of websites that I had. I am quite surprise that I felt that so new to the sites that I had once visited them often for my previous reflections. Maybe the holidays and break were too long.

Well, I gone through the list of sites and visit the links one by one. As delegated by our lecturer, these are the next 3 sites that I had hand picked out from the list...

  1. Lockergnome RSS & Atom Tips
    http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/
    rss/category/development

  2. XML From the Inside Out
    http://www.xml.com
  3. RSS Specifications
    http://www.rss-specifications.com/

Similar to the previous lab, I followed the template format that was given to us to evaluate on the websites. The format has a few categories we are suppose to evaluate on. These categories had somewhat given me the chances to explore the websites even more than I had done when I first found them. I got to explore their site and understand their goals, scope of their contents and the usability of their web design. Every single bit has to be taken into considerate to give a good appraisal to the site.

Such evaluations had somewhat taught me to appreciate a better way to surf the web. If I were to surf the websites along with the guidelines from the evaluation template, I will be able to surface out more information and understand the website better. With better comprehension of the site, I could also appreciate the website more!