Practical 4 & 5

The purpose of this practicals is to assist us in doing our very first assignment. Basically, what I have to do is to compare 3 different types of search facilities using the Topic: Drug abuses on Youths selected previously.
The 3 types of facilities are: Search Engines, Meta Search engines, and Subject Directories.

For search engines, I chose the most famous - www.google.com

Google ranks results by the number of links from the largest number of pages also ranked high by the service. The more highly ranked pages that link to a certain page, the higher the linked-to page will be ranked by Google. This unique ranking system can be quite effective. It is also possible to search Images, Groups and News from the tabs available.

For Meta Search Engines, I chose www.metacrawler.com
Meta search engines simultaneously search multiple search engines and returns results from each sources minus the duplicate files. Therefore only a limited number of results available will be returned from each source when you do a search.

I chose dir.yahoo.com for my subject directories because it was the only one I knew of.
The way of searching for yahoo directory is to click on the topic that you are looking for and it will break down into a smaller scope for you to find your information.

To conclude,

Google, as a search engine, is good for looking for a specific topic and if your topic is made up of multiple ideas. This can be attributed to the usage of the advanced search interface that allows you to do a search that is targeted at your needs. The link ranking of results may also bring extremely relevant results to the top. However, due to the large number of hits, browsing every links may be not very efficient.

Metacrawler, the meta search engine, is good for searching multiple sources at the same time. This may come in handy if the topic you are searching on is obscure and made up of multiple concepts. The number of hits is slightly more than Directory but this may mean some relevant websites are omitted. It should be noted that even though metacrawler may obtain some same results as google, it is not necessary a better way to do an internet search as it does not represent the totality of result. Its use is also limited to simple queries.
Yahoo Directory, the subject directory, is an excellent place to start research on a topic that is broad. Being able to browse through subject categories is extremely useful and even searching the directory results in a small amount of hits that is efficient for browsing link by links on the relevant resources. Because the results are human compiled, the results have already been selected carefully by various people and therefore may return the most relevant results of all the search facilities.

Week 4 Practical 3

Resource 1: http://www.cnb.gov.sg/index.asp
Purpose of resource: Advocacy
Resource 1 is an advocacy website as it is created and maintained by an organization to influence its readers. The website also hopes to promote greater awareness about drugs usage and why they are so harmful.

Resource 2: http://www.teen-drug-abuse.com/
Purpose of resource: Informational
Resource 2 is an informational website because they are dedicated to the treatment of addictions and eating disorders. They also provide information and treatment resources for all types of addictions. They seek to provide prompt information to individuals needing assistance in finding the right treatment center.

Resource 3: http://drugabuse-awareness.blogspot.com/
Purpose of resource: Personal
Resource 3 was was created in order to bring to the forefront, awareness of the sad reality of drug abuse throughout the world in the 21st century. Currently, the owner is collecting every piece of information he could find regarding this subject, and put it here with reference to the origin. The owner clearly feels strongly against drugs and many of the posts relate to his opinion and feelings.

Week 3 Practical 2

For this week's task, I decided on choosing the topic: The impact of drug abuse on youths from the list of topics given.
We are supposed to search the Internet for websites with a combination of different types, them being: personal, organization and subject-based. This is what I've found.
Organization: http://www.cnb.gov.sg/index.asp
Personal: http://drugabuse-awareness.blogspot.com/
Subject based: http://www.teen-drug-abuse.com/

Some reflections I've had for this week is that entering the correct keywords into the search engines are very important. Carefully crafted searches often return more relevant results as to general searches. For example, drug abuses and drug abuses on youths return different results.

Some differences I noticed between the 3 websites that I discovered is that in organization websites, such as the CNB, they are usually created and maintained by a particular organization. They contain extensive materials on the subjects.

Personal websites, however, are usually designed by a individual for various reasons, maybe due to their personal interest. They commonly include personal experiences or opinions and sometimes recommendations.

Subject based websites have a particular focus which may contain some overlapping information from the above two mentioned types of websites.

Week 2 Practical 1

Topic: IT Technology
Aspect: Motherboard

My partner has decided to do on the topic IT Technology because we didn't know what else to choose so we randomly picked one. We also narrowed it down to motherboards.
We were required to search on the topic on the different types of websites and list down one example of our chosen aspect.. They consisted of Newsgroups and discussion lists, Electronic journals and magazine, Multi-media source and WWW sites.

Newsgroups discussion list: http://www.techtalkz.com/ www.hardwarezone.com/

The newsgroups and discussion lists on techtalkz and hardwarezone has various consumers coming together to discuss and provide their own reviews on the products as well as giving their own rating.

Hardwarezone also has a price list of the motherboards available in Singapore.

Electronic journals and magazine: www.pacmag.com

PC Magazine provides reviews and previews of the latest hardware and software for the information technology professional.

Multi-media source: reviews.cnet.com

Cnet contain videos that may test the motherboard on its advertised features, quality and value. The best receive their Editors’ choice award to help consumers choose the best tech.

WWW site: sg.asus.com

One of the many makers of motherboards, sg.asus.com gives many in depth specifications of its motherboard and often provide benchmarks against others.

Two links

Two links I like to share with all of you is
http://www.wikipedia.org/
and
http://www.crunchyroll.com/
For the first link, wikipedia has a massive amount of information that would always be useful whether if you are bored and surfing it to pass time or if you are simply researching a project.

The second link, crunchyroll contains lots of videos of dramas or music videos. Sometimes in my spare time I enjoy watching an episode or two.
Have fun!

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Hi. I'm Aaron from Temasek Polytechnic currently enrolled in the Cyber and Digital Security course for the second year.
In my family I have an older sister.
My interests are watching soccer, listening to music and going to cinema watching movies. I dislike studying :o
I also consider sleeping as my favourite past time. :D
I have two friends taking this UIR CDS with me, them being Mun Whye and Ming Hui.
That's allllll.