Reflection on invisible webs

Reflection on invisible webs.

Today, I shall reflect what I think on Invisible webpages. I know that some information must be kept confidential such as our personal data, our credit card numbers etcetra, but then again, its in a computer and therefore though encrypted, it is still hackable.

Invisible webs got its name from being invisible from general search engines such as Google and Yahoo. I think that this is a very good way to secure information in bulks by leaving it in a database somewhere safe and secure. Furthermore, invisible web databases hold very vital and valuble information. So databases such as EBSCO, holds very important information and can only be accessed if one pays money for it.

I can see that this is the same way on how we claim that the world revolves around money.
To have good stuff, you would need money.

However, there is an exception though. Leakers. There are people that leak these information into general website databases that are trackable by the normal search engines.

This way, the good side is, the people who genuinely want to use this information but doesn't have the money to pay for it can now use it.
The bad side however, people with malicious intentions could use it for their cause as well.

And therefore it brings us back to the same old same old, Internet can be a good place while it can be the worst place as well.

Evaluation for internet resources

The evaluation Criteria :
-Website's information.
-Examples.
-Objectives.

Coverage
-what does it cover/help
-Give screenshots

Authority
-Popularity
-The founders/news reporters

Chosen website

I've chosen http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/02/teens_web.html
as I found that their site usually professionally critisize things that they think its wrong which is usually correct in a sense that they are being honest. Furthermore, they are not run by a government organization but still backed up by Laywers, professional reporters as they do not want to have controlled news.

Info found from:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/consumerism/faq.html#who

Their interface is fairly simple, just an overload of ads but that is what keeps the site going on free. Since there is a heavy load of traffic going into that site, much money is needed. Hence the ads will help gain some revenue for them to keep on posting information to the site.

The catagories are very simple to find and can be found on the bottom of the page and the top of the page. Not to mention that we do not need to register to view the information, we only need to register if we want to post comments on the site.

Information on the site is still being updated up till today.

Applying

Today, we had our class test, it was reasonable.

After that, we were taught about reputation and authority & the difference between
citizen reporters and professional reporters who risk their lives to provide valuble information to us.

In our next practical, I have to find out about the purpose, accuracy coverage and authority on my website that I chose.

It is advisable for me to choose a website that is recently updated.

___________________

Secondly, In second life, we have to come up with a report on our gameplay and what we found out in second life.

Second life is quite entertaining, met some people that gave me freebies as well.
Other than that, I found out certain features like teleporting to friends, spawning items, and attaching them to my avatar.

___________________

Talking about yesterday, our group, Imam, Jereld, Yan Da, Heng Le and myself came up with a presentation that describes about citizen reporters. Though unprofessional and not motivated in delivering proper news, citizens are generally more scattered around the globe and could possibly have first hand view on accidents, incidents and usually faster than reporters. However, it is because of their lack of training that they do not give exactly accurate information even though they witnessed it first hand.

For example, about the uproar on Ris Low & her molester. These kind if gossip news does not benefit our country in anyway other than stirring up the interests of people that likes these kind of news.

Meta - search

I've found out that Meta search is one of the oldest search engines in the internet.
And I found it to be slow in loading the page.

But perhaps thats just me, and just probably too customed in using Google as my primary search engine.

But everything has its reasons and the reason why I've stuck with Google is because of the fast loading pages, a catchy name and most importantly, the accuracy of my search results.

Well, having said that, metasearch does provide some useful information when searching "social networking sites AND impacts".
However, I do wish that they didn't limit the number of characters that can be inserted into the search bar.

The Ayes are :
A very big selection of search choices
Eliminates most of the irrelevant search.


The Nays are :
Limit to the number of words in searching.
Long loading time compared to Google

and thats basically it.

Google is your best friend

Google has rarely failed me in its search missions.
It shows me the materials that are relevant to whatever I'm searching as long
the search is valid.

I've been using Google since primary school. But I didn't find out the search functions until in recent years. This course has also taught me on what Google can do using Booleans.

But however, I find citations annoying.

Difficult - Nay
Easy - Aye.

Yes it is easy, but it is annoying to be following the format
I mean that, as long we give credit to the author in a legitimate format and
read-a-ble.

But yeah, its a burden, but can be dealt with.

____________________

References?!

Though quite late in this post, most of my search are found on Google™. However, I do know that there are specific search engines that are better for specific functions. For example, I've searched the blogs with help of Google search which enabled me to find the blog searcher website.

I've found the following:
(http://www.blogsearchengine.com/)
(http://technorati.com)

Quite useful to me!

_______________________

Now! About the Booleans that has brought me this far:
(effect OR impact*) AND (social OR communication*) AND (teenager OR teen*) AND (network OR networking*) AND (sites OR websites*)

I've found this to be a good search base, which from then on, I shall add on functions such as "-" "+" to make my searches even more accurate.

However, the weakness of Google is that it sometimes come up with alot of junk when you're searching pages 7 and above.


_______________________

Citations: are a pain. But a necessary pain.

Examples of my citations are:
Weishaar, J. (2009, December 28). "Social Media Marketing: A Necessary Evil?" Retrieved March 19, 2010
from - http://technorati.com/business/article/social-media-marketing-a-necessary-evil/page-2/



Perez, S. (2010, February 18) "Social Networking Now More Popular On Mobile than Desktop" retrieved March 20, 2010 from - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
social_networking_now_more_popular_on_mobile_than_desktop.php

Some stuff that I found here was exceptionally amusing and intriguing. Like how mobiles are more popular on mobiles. Well, its probably a one sided story and doesn't apply to everyone but still, it does show that mobile technology is the trend now.

______________________