Y . UIR practical 9 . Thursday, January 31, 2008 .
Throughout my UIR journey, I've learnt quite a number of stuff which is useful to me like blogging, searching using a efficient manner, using wiki and different type of websites, how to evaluate a website by certain criteria, etc. The most important lesson I've learnt is searching for information using a efficient manner, meaning the usage of boolean operators and key variations. Searching by this way will ensure only relevant results are returned therefore saving time in researching for information. It is especially useful when I need to do any research for projects and self-study.
ADRIAN __``
7:39 PM
Y . UIR practical 7 . Sunday, January 20, 2008 .
In UIR practical 7, I'm supposed to log in into the UIR-Rawkz Wiki and post my comment for the group summary about the findings.
I've post in the two internet resources that I've found and the coverage of both the resources in the wiki. I've learnt how to use the UIR Wiki better and learnt that it is a good choice to use a wiki to do projects in times when group members prefer to do their work at home. As the whole work can be edited by any group member, group members are free to work on it during their own free time and they can add on or edit each other work if they think is necessary. It can then be read through by all members to acknowledge the work easily.
ADRIAN __``
6:06 AM
Y . UIR practical 6b . .
In UIR practical 6b, I'm supposed to post a discussion post on a internet discussion forum, evaluate one more internet resource that I've found and answer a question on the OLE discussion board.
I've start a post on the world affairs board discussion forum. The title i created was impact of terrorism on world economy and the question i post to discuss was 'What are the impact of terrorism on the world's economy?'
The URL of the another internet resource that I've found is: http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/speakers/baynenov2001.html
This website address more details of the impact of terrorism on the world's economy. They have state that the financial institutions housed in the twin towers has been affected greatly. There is loss of business confidence in the country as firms are more reluctant to take risks or undertake new ventures. Aviation and tourism has also been hit extremely hard with the industries associated with them. There has also been a drop in customer confidence.
Terrorism has also provided a distraction effect. Countries start to focus too much on how to solve and prevent terrorism problem and neglect other problems which should not be in the case.
Next will be the answer to the question for the OLE discussion forum.
Question: Briefly explain how Internet has enriched your academic life. Illustrate your answer using at least ONE Internet resource you had learnt in UIR.
Answer: Internet has enriched my academic life by providing me with all the information about everything. I'm able to search for more information about stuff that I'm not sure and getting all the information I need for my projects. The internet also includes manuals for differenet programs available and makes life easier when I need to do some self-study.
I have learnt that Internet resource can be categorized into 3 categories: organizational, personal and subject-based. I have learnt that http://www.snort.org/ is subject-based Internet resource. It contain manuals and downlads of the program snort and the manuals help me figure out how to use the program while doing my project using the program snort.
From this practical, I've learnt that another way I can get answers to question I have is through a online discussion forum. If the question is posted correctly, I may get a chance of getting an answer from a professional, any user who wish to make his comments. However, it has one disadvantage and that is I may have to wait for a long period of time before I get a reply. It is not as efficient as searching from a search engine.
ADRIAN __``
4:53 AM
Y . UIR practical 6a . .
For UIR practical 6a, I'm suppose to choose a topic for my assignment 2 and find the keywords that I wish to use. I'm suppose to think of variations for each keyword too. Finally, I will need to search for two resources with search phrases we have created and evaluate one of the Internet resource.
My group has chosen the topic 'Discuss the impact of terrorism on the world economy'. The keywords my group have found out were 'impact', 'terrorism', 'world', 'economy'. For impact, we have variations words like effect, affect, influence, outcome. For terrorism, we have variations words like foreign attack. For world, we have variations words like global. For economy, we have variations words like financial progress.
We then come out with 1 search phrease: (impact OR effect) AND (terrorism OR “foreign attack”) AND (world OR global) AND (economy OR financial progress)
I found my first resource and the URL is: http://bluered-bluered.blogspot.com/2007/05/terrorism-and-world-economy.html
This website is actually found in a blog and it bascially give me some important information about the impact of terrorism on the world's economy like foreign investments drop after terrorism occurs which is overall result in a great impact of the world's economy.
The article in this website actually gets its source from another website. In that website, they have examples of how they calculate the impact of the economy, other risks which may affect the economy, graphs and statistics on the economy.
From this practical, I've learnt how to use boolean operators much better and with the help of key variations, I'm able to get more relavant results that I want. It is a very useful skill as I would apply it when I need to do a research on any my project or read up on any subject.
ADRIAN __``
3:54 AM
Y . UIR practical 3 . Thursday, November 29, 2007 .
In this pratical, I will be identifying the purpose of 4 resources.
Resource 1: http://www.cybercrimeconference.org/program.html
Purpose of resource: Information
Reasons: It provides factual information about a conference that was held in may 2002. (eg. Session title, time, speakers). The session title also gives a brief description of what the conference will be about.
Resource 2: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/05/02/computer_crime_sentences_are_not/
Purpose of resource: Information
Reasons: The content on this website is written by John Leyden and it provides factual information about what Detective Superintendent Mick Deats said and felt about computer crimes.
Resource 3: http://osdir.com/ml/security.attrition.infosec-news/2005-05/msg00051.html
Purpose of resource: News
Reasons: The content of the website is done by InfoSec News. It provides information about current events, in this case, impacts of computer crime. Statistic of how much losses from certain organizations and different types of attacks are also stated.
Resource 4: http://www.totse.com/en/law/justice_for_all/ccl_fl2.html
Purpose of resource: Information
Reasons: The content of this website provides factual information and provides statistics for what they have claimed. The facts included the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) conducting a comprehensive survey of the local law enforcement community, State Attorneys' Offices and area businesses. It also stated 1300 surveys being sent to law enforcement agencies, state prosecutors and businesses.
I have learnt the different purposes of a resource and identify different resources with their purposes.
ADRIAN __``
8:19 PM
Y . UIR practical 4 & 5 . .
In this pratical, I'm suppose to use the three different types of search facilities (search engine, meta-search engine, subject directory search engine) to research on a topic. The topic that I've chosen is 'Discuss the impact of drug abuse on youths'.
Search engine used: google
Keywords used: Drug abuse on youths
URL of resource: http://www.nationalyouth.com/substanceabuse.html
Google return me with 1,920,000 results but only the first 20% of the results provides information about the effects of drug abuse. The URL that I wanted appears in the top 5 of the search results.
Meta-search engine used: mamma
Keywords used: effects +(drugs abuse) + teenagers
URL of resource: http://helpguide.org/mental/drug_substance_abuse_addiction_signs_effects_treatment.htm
Mamma return me with 53 results and more than 60% of the results give information about effects of drug abuse. The URL that I wanted appears in top 20 of the search results.
Subject-directory search engine used: galaxy
Links: Community/Health/Teen health/Teen substance abuse
URL of resource: http://www.focusas.com/SubstanceAbuse.html
Galaxy return me with 27 results and only 3 results provide information about the effects of drug abuse on youths. The URL that I wanted appears in top 10 of the search results.
Compare the search results. Identify 2 characteristics that make all 3 search facilities similar or different from one another.
I have found out two characteristic that makes the different type of search engines dfferent.
Firstly, the way of searching using different type of search engines is different.
A search engine will search for its database for the keywords typed. It will display the results in order in which they think is the most relevant as the first result. Owners of website can also pay search engines to place their website as one the top results search.
Meta-search engines, also known as metacrawlers or multi-search engines, do not have their own database and will send the keywords typed to the different search engines available and display the results from the different websites in the order where the most relevant website will be placed as the first few results. The advantage of this type of search engine is that it will be able to display more variety of results compare to normal search engine and they group similar subjects in a group.
Subject-based search engines, also known as subject catalogs, allows user to search stuffs by different categories. The list is arranged in a hierarchy way and by doing do, its more organized when comes to searching. The results are often very specific too. However, the results are computed by human therefore limited, giving the user a limited choice of results to choose from.
Secondly, the way the results display of the different type of search engines is also different. The largest amount of results given will be search engines, meta-search engines being the second most and lastly few results are displayed for the subject directory search engine. Subject directory is the least as the results are manually computed and therefore, limited resources available.
Do you find any strength/weakness of each of them, in terms of search capability?
Strength of search engine:
It visits a web page and read it, takes note of the content (first 100 keywords, entire full text or top level of a site) and goes back on regular basis to look for changes. It contains an index that has a copy of every web page it finds and is always updated with the changes it finds in the webpage. It always provides user with a wide range of results but careful usage of keywords with relevant Boolean operators is needed to get relevant results shown in the top few results instead of showing a chunk results where most of them are not useful.
Weakness of search engine:
Provides whole chunk of results that searcher have to spend lots of time reading through them to get the most useful result for him.
Strength of meta-search engine:
Lesser results are displayed as the results are grouped according to the subject and this saves times in going through lots of results given by normal search engine. It also displays which search engines it got the website from which is also useful for the searcher if he only wishes to visit sites that are found from certain search engines.
Weakness of meta-search engine:
I personally feel that there is no weakness for meta-search engines.
Strength of subject directory engine:
This search engine narrows the results through specific directories, therefore always displaying only a few results which means lesser time spend on reading unwanted results. Directories are also clearly defined so that users only need to click on the links to get the results they want.
Weakness of subject directory engine:
The results are often too little and there may not be even one link which is useful to the searcher. The searcher also can’t do any comparison between different results to see which results are more useful for the searcher.
Overall, which search facility best meet your searching needs? Why?
Meta-search engine would meet best for my searching needs as it searches for the keywords keyed in and transmit the keywords simultaneously to several search engines and display the results. Therefore, instead of getting results from only one search engines, I’m able to get results from more than one search engine and therefore, giving me more variety of results to get from. Even though for my topic in this case, I got the result I want in the top 20 results, I still find that the grouping of similar subject links together is very useful and is able to get links from different search engines.
From this practical, I've learnt how the different type of search engine works and is able to use the different type of search engines in a more effiecient way in the future to get whatever resources I need from the internet.
ADRIAN __``
10:12 AM
Y . UIR practical 2 . Friday, November 9, 2007 .
Today, I've done UIR pratical 2 and have learnt about different types of websites. (personal, organization, subject-based) and to differentiate the websites I found into the different types of websites. I search on the topic on 'Discuss the impact of computer crimes on businesses' and have found 3 websites related to the topic.
1) http://www.cybercrimeconference.org/program.html This website being an organization type of website relates to the national cyber crime conference and details about them (eg. Session title, time, speakers).
2) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/05/02/computer_crime_sentences_are_not/ This website being a subject-based website claims that sentences are not good enough to describe the impact of computer crimes. They included statistics for further elaboration.
3) http://www.totse.com/en/law/justice_for_all/ccl_fl2.htmlThis website being a subject-based website show the statisctics from surveys they have done with companies and name a few of the different threats companies faced.
I've used google as my search engine and the keywords i used are 'impact', 'business', 'computer crimes' & 'cyber crimes'. 'impact', 'business' & 'computer crimes' being the keywords that yield more relavant results. The differences between the different type of websites are actually their point of view but they come to the same thing that impact of cyber crimes is dangerous.
ADRIAN __``
6:50 AM