Practical 4&5

Another fruitful lesson. I've learn metacrawler and google directory. I've not even heard of them before lesson on wednesday , really ashamed of myself .

Starting with Metacrawler linking to the process of crawling or spidering (obviously not related to this  )



Function

When a search is submitted to a meta-search engine, the meta-search engine will then relay the query to multiple regular search engines, such as Yahoo search or Google. The meta-search engine then aggregates and filters the results using it's own filtering algorithms. This method can theoretically provide a wider range of results

Read more: What Does a Meta Crawler Do in Simple Language? | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/facts_6887037_meta-crawler-do-simple-language_.html#ixzz16mk3jzo5

It' really an awesome search engine as it gives results from all the famous search engiine like google , bing and yahoo! etc.

Notice that every link that metacrawler gave , they will write the search engine name that provides it and that is the best part as it gathers the best returns from google,yahool,bing etc and give it to you. It's like giving you all the good stuff. However as we can see metacrawler only provides returns for only up to two pages for my search. If i google my search, i would probably receive thousands of returns but for metacrawler i've only receive a few pages of returns. The bad thing about this is the lack of returns or informations, while the good part is that is takes away those (what the search engine thinks as )useless sites and give you the important ones.

Google Directory.

The way it function is like looking at the world map. If you want to look for hollywood on the map, you have to look for North America - United States - Florida - hollywood. It's like zooming in from human to cells.

It's really useful if for example I want to read something about computers

Step 1 - i will chose computers from the categories

 step 2 - look through the list , i have chosen history.

step 3- look through the list, at the bottom of the picture, google directory will display history of computers

step 4 - Under history i can either look in further on linux , mac os , unix and windows , or read about operating system of computers.

step 5 - i've chosen microsoft windows history which will display all the relevant sites under microsoft windows history.

To choose which search engine, the MetaCrawler or Google Directory depends on individuals. I would prefer MetaCrawler over Google Directory when i'm researching about something as it gives me informations in the shortest time and more relavant sites from different search engines as compared to google directory.

As for google directory, i would use it when i feel like reading a topic, so that i can narrow it down .

Second life!

Really sorry for posting this late.


Chun Kiat and I went to second life to shop

We met up before leaving to Farrah Island

When we reach, we were at different location. In order to locate each other at the shortest time , we make use of one of secondlife's advantage FLY!!! which obviously couldn't be done in the real world.

We went in a shop which looks like an art museum. To our surprise...

This is the art that they were selling ... hahah

Pretty awkward to post it on my blog. Well if we just view it from an art perspective it should be alright. hahha ( one think that i dont like about blogging is that everytime i put haha on my blog, it makes me feel silly, like i'm laughing to myself haha)

next i went to another mall and saw some big LCD tv which i thought they were selling. In end it they were using the tv to promote their tour packages. It's expensive cause i cant buy it. They have a tour package for anniversary for couple which i wanted to get haha.

Doing shopping on 2nd life isn't as great as E-shopping spree as i know that the things that i buy is virtual. On the other hand shopping on 2nd life is allow much more freedom for me as i can just buy anything that i want without having to think so much that people might not like the things that i bought. I felt that it's really difficult to find things that i want to get from 2nd life probably because i'm still new to this game.

3rd lesson...

To begin with, I must say that i'm pretty ashamed of myself. Reason is that i've not heard of google scholar untill 3rd lesson. Usually, if i were told to do research on something, i would just "google it" as google will return with billions of links. To google my research is the most effective and efficient source of research for me. On the 3rd lesson of eir i got to know about google scholar... To be honest i've not heard of it and when i first heard of it, it came to me naturally that its a place where u search for things posted by scholar... i was wrong! hahah. In fact google scholar "Provides a search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles." whereas google search engine will search the words that you type in on the internet and come back with billions of sites.

As you can see above, the first screen shot is google the search engine. The second one is google scholar.

Both of them look the same just that google scholar has a small word "scholar" under it. Reminds me of those Singtel advertisement whereby they says "get a new Iphone 4 for just $0 " and below it, its small unreadable writings of after $200 tradein, with iflexi plan blaa blaa hahah. 

Back to the topic... Do not judge a book by its cover.

When i type in "James Bond"( one of my favourite movies) into both the "google THE SEARCH ENGINE " and "google SCHOLAR" , it came up with two different types of information that i want.

For google THE SEARCH ENGINE...

I get to see webs like wikipedia ( a great site to briefly read up about your research) It's good for those who wants to know james bond in 5 minutes. Google search engine will even show u links on youtube about James Bond.

For Google Scholar

its a little disappointing for google Scholar unlike the elder brother google the search engine, it came up with nothing that i wanted to know. Google scholar is used to find the author and the books title as well as articles. Its not recommended for people who wants know know James Bond in 5 minutes, but its a great website to further read about books and articles written by others.

Shihan

E-Shopping Spree

If i have $500 to do online shopping i would go to ebay and a get a guitar.
I've look up for a Fender Squier Vintage Telecaster Electric Guitar which look like this...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Fender-Squier-Vintage-Telecaster-Electric-Guitar-NEW-/190456008737?pt=Guitar&hash=item2c58101021

The above guitar cost US$299.99 which is S$385.14 leaving me a change of S$114.86 for my S$500 budget. 

Ebay.com is a website in which people and businesses buy and sells goods worldwide. Most of the prices of the goods are lower than any shops outsides thurs people likes to shop on ebay.

As for me, this is my first time shopping on ebay simply because i'm afraid that i might get cheated or the goods is not in good condition. Ebay doesn't work in 1 to 1 exhange of money and goods, most of the time customers have to pay before they can received their goods days later. Therefore it's hard to ensure that the goods are in good quality as you can't check the items before payment.

Second lesson

Hi there,
On my second lesson of EIR, everyone in class have to choose a topic to research on. I've chosen the topic on the impact of peer pressure on youths behaviour. The objectives of this lesson is that expose us to different ways of looking up for information on the web. 

Usually when most of us are told to do research on the web, we would just "google it" not knowing which type of internet resources are most useful to our project. Thus this lesson teachers me how to effectively look for information on the web.

I've learnt that different internet resources like organisational website, blogs, magazine/journal and discussion forum provides us with different types of informations that we needed. For example, looking for information through forums expose us to different people's views and past experiences from different places all at the same time. On the other hand, looking for information through online magazine or journal provides us with clear facts rather than views and past experiences from forums .

The reason that i've chosen peer pressure on youths behaviour is to understand the advantages and disadvantages of peer pressure on youths. As a young adult i understand that peer pressure is inevitable in everyone's life thus understanding the advantages and disadvantages of peer pressure will help me in future.

Shi Han