module 4: searching the web.

This is a timely task for me with the concepts assignment due date fast approaching. My skills in searching for quality information on the internet are very basic and i have tended to waste a lot of time so far without much thought before hand as to how i search . I just think Google. But doesn't everybody? Google is so popular that it has become a verb. when you need to do a search, you go and "Google it."

This task requires a meta search engine, the suggested ones being Copernic or Sherlock. Well i am a Linux user so both of these programs are useless to me. What to do? I did a Google search of course! I searched for meta search engines and came up with some good hits. Websearchguide and the Berkeley Library website i both found very useful.
This is what i did.I searched on Google for the term "instant messaging" and got 37,300,000 hits. The first hit being at Wikipedia on the subject of instant messaging.
Next, i searched using a meta-search engine called Allplus to compare results. Allplus works by delegating the search query to other search engines. In this case, Google, msn, Ask and Yahoo. Allplus also searches news sites,images, video and Twitter would you believe. Using the term "instant messaging", Allplus came up with a combined number of hits of 197,599,000 hits. Wow!
So how should i interpret this? Theres lots of overlap and duplication in the search results, but there would be lots of hits unique to a particular engine too.
I also tried using the meta-search engine, Surfwax. which the Berkeley library site recommends for serious deep web searching. I tried to register as a user so i could take advantage of setting up some custom searches, but the registration process was closed. From searching Surfwax. i did get lots of results but only from a 5 or 6 sources.
My experience of using both Google and using a meta search engine is that they just give too much information, much of it irrelevant and unhelpful. How are you supposed to process so much. Much better to get only a handful of hits that are useful.

Regards the issue of searching the "invisible web" or "deep web",it is not as straight forward as it appears. From my understanding, there is no one particular search engine that will perform this task adequately although Copernic comes close from some of the reviews i read. But the issue here is that a huge amount of the content on this part of the web is contained in databases, the content of which, may not be generally accessible to to the casual user of a search engine, even a meta-search engine. I found some of the articles at Websearchgguide on the topic of the invisible web or deep- web very helpful. They suggested i use the term, "database" together with the topic of interest in my search query. When i found a suitable database, i could drill down through that to find suitable information. I tried this just using Google. I used the terms: "Computer mediated communication" AND "text based chat"AND database"
and found some relevant databases to search.
They also suggested i try CompletePlanet, a site that allows you to access roughly 70000 searchable databases. If I could find a suitable database then i could search within that. I used the term "instant messaging" and came up with a list of 80 databases. I was then able to narrow my search to databases within the subject of social sciences which gave me five hits, one of which was titled "journal of computer mediated communication " and looked very promising. Of course i have now added CompletePlanet to my list of search engines for future use. Actually CompletePlanet is a very impressive website.

Boolean Searching on the internet.

To get the biggest number of hits relating for a search term, you need to use synonyms. This casts a wider net over the possibilities. You do this by using the Boolean operator: OR . For, example, for the term"invisible web" you could construct a search thus: "invisible web" OR "deep web" OR "hidden web".
When i did this using Google, i came up with a massive 42,200,000 hits, substantially more than just using one term. Thats just part of the story though. What do i do with so many hits? Its not quantity i want, its quality and to do this, i have to try another search strategy.

To get the most relevant information according to what you searched for, it is crucial that you use many keywords to qualify your search term. You do this by using the AND operator.This means that keywords on either side of AND must be in the document.This will narrow your search considerably to a manageable number of sites to investigate which hopefully are relevant. For example, i used the following search query in Google: "text based chat"AND databases AND"instant messaging" AND "social impact"AND "psychology".
This narrowed my search down to 11 hits and most of them looked pretty promising.
It is easy to limit your search results to those simply from university sources by narrowing your search results to the .edu domain. This is easily done through the Advanced search preferences. Also, when you use the term database in your search, you notice that a lot of the results are indeed from academic institutions.

Organising search information task

Choose the three best sources found (so far)

1. http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/texttalk.ht
2. http://www.livescience.com/technology/050301_internet_language.html
3. http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2007/04/11/text-chatting-versus-face-to-face-talking/

I have used Zotero , a Firefox browser extension to collect manage and cite my reference sources. Below is a screen shot displaying bibliographic information for the first of my sources. I think if you click on the image, you will get a better view.


Zotero opens in three panes. The left pane contains folders called collections. Each collection is connected to a topic. My sources so far are all gathered together in the middle pane and are contained in a collection (left pane) which i have called "text based chat".This helps keep all my sources relevant to my topic in one place. The pane on the right contains the bibliographic information related to a particular source. Most of it is captured automatically,but it can be edited. I have created an abstract made up of key words that help me remember what the article is about. it also contains the URL, author and a link to the original website. So for each source, i have created an abstract and stored the bibliographic information.
Zotero also creates a snapshot of the webpage which is stored locally. It then lets you annotate to your hearts content. In other words highlighting and adding comments much like i might do in the margins of a book or article. (see below).



Finally, this application lets me print out my accumulated bibliographic information in a number of formats including APA.

module4: Tools for using the web

Bookmark management programs have become popular due to the large number of bookmarks that most of us accumulate these days. Especially students such as us, doing most of our reading and research online. These  programs are a supposed solution to the problem of messy unorganized bookmarking: just storing with no thought of organization.
One of the tools suggested is Bookmark Buddy. I am not intending to download it but i have read some reviews of it, which have been good.I have pasted a screen shot of it here.

Seems straightforward enough. Be warned though, you will have to pay for it after 30 days.
My first thought about this is: what is wrong with the trusty old bookmark manager within one's web browser? I can't comment reliably about internet explorer, but Firefox's web browser allows you to organize bookmarks into folders and tags and it also has live bookmarks which allows saving of RSS feeds as a bookmark. Very handy when you have to keep up with a lot of blogs.

Because i use Ubuntu as my operating system, i am unable to download any of the programs mentioned, but this is hardly an obstacle to managing my bookmarks as there are plenty of online bookmarking sites available. They are so common these days the question immediately comes to mind as to why would anybody want to download one onto their desktop? Personally i use Delicious and Diigo to manage my bookmarks. These are social bookmarking sites that allow you to set up an account and then store your bookmarks online. you can organise your items with tags and lists. Diigo lets you add annotations in the form of sticky notes which is extremely helpful. The other program that i use to organise my information is Zotero which is a firefox add on. This site takes snapshots of web pages and then allows you to make notes on them. You can classify your information similar to Diigo and Delicious, but what really makes it stand out is the capturing of bibliographic information automatically. You are able to display it in many different formats. I discovered this site a few months ago as an alternative to Endnote and can't sing it's praises high enough.

Module 3: standards, legal issues

Module 3 standards

• log entry: have you used images or words on your web page or website that contravene copyright laws?
  

Regards the use of copyrighted material on my website, well i have an image that i sourced using Google image search. Ooops. So, am i in violation of copyright law? And if so, Australian law or US law - assuming the image was sitting on a server in the US? On the Google image site it did say that the logo i used "may be protected by copyright".It didn't say explicitly that it was. Some things to ponder.
I investigated further. The Australian Copyright Council was a good source of information here. They had good information sheets to download in pdf format, in particular : Websites: an introduction to copyright.( info sheet: G057v08). It explicitly states that individual components including photos, logos and other images are protected by copyright. Looks like I'm gone.
However, it goes on to say that there are certain circumstances where you can use material without permission. These exemptions are termed, "Fair dealing", for example, if you use material for the purposes of satire, jokes or parodies, then you can use the material without fear of copyright infringement. Also included in the definition of "fair dealing" is using materials for research and study.(see information sheets: Research and Study (G053v07) ) On reading these exemptions it seems clear that what these laws are trying to protect is people exploiting other peoples work for commercial gain. The fact that i am using a logo as an example of my technical ability to insert an image into an html document doesn't infringe copyright. I am sure of it now.

• Would you be in breach of copyright if you put the curtin logo at the top of your web page for an assignment? This information may be difficult to find so be prepared for a search and some independent thought.
  

There is a link to the copyright and disclaimer page at the bottom of the curtin university homepage. Within that page there is a link to copyright information for staff and students. On this page it contains information for students relating to what is copyrighted material and also information regards allowances of copying material without infringing copyright. Again the allowances come under the provisions of "fair dealings". Basically you can copy part of copyrighted material provided it is for research or study. As for the curtin logo, it definitely would be protected by copyright. So you would need to consider your intention in using it. If you thought that adding the logo to your work might infer to the reader some extra credibility on your part, then i think you are probably infringing copyright. But if your intention was just to demonstrate your mastery of inserting an image into a html document, then i wouldn't think you had anything to worry about. But i may be wrong here. It would be interesting to know what others thought.

html task:

Log entry: Once you have completed the lessons, you should have a page with all the basic elements needed in a web page - save it as 'index.html', open it in your browser and take a screenshot and post it in your blog.

Record any difficulties you encountered with these exercises. Record your thoughts about html - do you feel a sense of achievement? What are the differences between html and blogging? what do you like best?

What do i feel about html? Well i feel a great sense of achievement of course. Having created a web page with my own handy work, one can't help feel a bit chuffed. I did find the original tutorial a bit cumbersome and ended up using the W3Schools Online Web Tutorials which i found much more helpful. But it still took me quite a long time to get comfortable using a text editor to write my html. it got to the point where i felt i was spending too much time on this task and just had to stop. Hence my site is rather rudimentary. The W3 site is great and when i do have time i will go back and try and master it more fully.

The differences between html and blogging? Funny question that. The way i understand things, html is simply the language that underpins websites and blogs. Its just that blogs are created with WYSIWYG editors, so that writers don't have to worry about having to learn html themselves. This is no doubt part of the reason why blogs are so popular. But learning how to write html gives you and edge. It gives you control of how you want things to look, because you can edit and tweak the html to create a design that you want.

The url of my uploaded web page is http://users.ncable.net.au/~garryreid/

Blogs:

Blogs are one of the new tools with which to communicate on the internet. They are an asynchronous in form, where one person can communicate with potentially many others. And they are booming on the net.

The thing that i find most appealing about blogs is their capacity to facilitate discussion through comments. Often it's not a particular post that is the most interesting part , but the flurry of comments that sometimes follow, as readers choose to add their two cents worth. Comments can be silly and even outrageous, but they can also be amusing and informative and add to the topic being discussed to the point sometimes of being more interesting than the original post.

I follow a few blogs regularly. I guess Lifehacker.com would be one of my favorites. It's a technology blog that I've learn't heaps from, mainly about more productive ways of doing things with technology. I would say my internet literacy where it stands now has a lot to do with that site, not only due to the topics they post, but also the responses to the posts that follow.

When i think about personal blogging, i think about a blog's ability to communicate and therefore connect with potentially lots of others especially in situations where the participants may be isolated. I remember being struck by a news report I saw on the TV some weeks ago about a young man who had written a blog of his experiences undergoing treatment for this rare life threatening medical condition that he had somehow taken on. And then how supported he had felt by the responses he received especially by others who were suffering the same disease. It was an uplifting news story and showed the power of the internet through blogging to connect with others. The same story could be applied to those who feel alone and isolated through mental illness such as depression and schizophrenia.

And citizen journalism? it's a new concept for me, something i haven't thought much about before.

I think the basic idea is that ordinary citizens can participate in the reporting and publishing of news. Whereas previously, what was deemed newsworthy would be decided by editors and the proprietors of large media companies, the internet via blogs has now broken down the barriers to make it possible for potentially anybody to contribute news. The most succinct definition I got was from you tube: definition of citizen journalism. People are calling it the democratization of the media. Really? I just wonder if the reality is as good as the rhetoric. Just because you can write a informative and opinioned post and publish it on a blog, or upload a newsworthy video on you tube, is that journalism? Or is it just news reporting? Not sure about that.

I did a bit of searching on Google regarding this topic and it's obvious it is a subject of intense debate, something to write a thesis about rather than just contribute in a blog post here. Maybe for another time.

Web2.0 task

Web2.0 task
although both sites contain the same information, the differences in presentation and usability are striking. Furl is a social bookmarking site which embodies a lot of what Web 2.0 is about.
For starters, it allows searching of the site's content. I can search for the term Web 2.0 and then if I choose, i could filter my search by time, say, for articles that are as recent as the last 6 months. Very important for those who bookmark a lot.
Also notice that the titles of the sites listed are not the only way to describe what they are about. They also use tags, which allow users to reorganize the information in a way that they may interpret it. The site on opera web standards, for example has a number of tags associated with it: web design; web standards; opera; html; css. Tags allow users to reorganize their data in different ways, how they see it.
Another feature of Web 2.0 on this site is syndication or RSS, indicated by the little orange icon located in the address bar on the right. It means that i don't have to keep checking this site to see if it has been updated. I can choose to subscribe to it and then receive updated content automatically delivered to my feed reader. What a time saver! These three characteristics: searching, tagging and Rss are enabled on the furl list, but not on the static html version.
Furl has recently been taken over by Diigo which is a similar service and which i use extensively in this course because i can annotate while i read things on the web. With this increased level of usability available on web services like Diggo and others like meebo and google docs etc, what is becoming apparent to me is that one's desktop operating system is fading in importance. You don't really need a powerful desktop computer for the majority of stuff that one does. All you really need now is a web browser and a fast internet connection. That is what Web 2.0 is all about.