I used Url Organizer to organise my URL sources. I found this program extremely basic and simple to use. I don't need a fancy complicated program to save my URL's. I just need something that is quick and easy to use. Thats exactly why URL Organizer is good.








1. ALL THE WEB
URL: www.alltheweb.com
Author: Run by Yahoo
This site is a great search engine! It is most effectively used when performing an advanced search. There are several useful filteres such as words, formats, domains, and date. Being run by Yahoo, AllTheWeb constantly updates its resources to stay up to date.
"AlltheWeb's index (provided by Yahoo!) includes billions of web pages, as well as tens of millions of PDF and MS Word® files. Yahoo! frequently scans the entire web to ensure that our content is fresh and to eliminate broken links. "[http://www.alltheweb.com/info/about/index]


















2. Advark Sport
URL: www.ardvarksport.net
Author: "Aaron the adrdvark"[ardvarksport.net]
Ardvark sport is an online sports search engine and forum. It is a great way to restrict your search to sport related websites and discuss sport related topics. If someone is unable to locate sport infromation via a website then they can attempt to find information through the forum.














3. DMOZ - open directory project
URL: www.dmoz.com
Author: "The ODP is hosted and administered by Netscape Communication Corporation. It is operated by a very small staff responsible for editorial policies and direction, community management and development, and systems engineering. However, the ODP is first and foremost a self-regulating community of net-citizens that basically runs itself. Through a system of self-governance, the ODP volunteer editors manage the directory's growth and development, and through a system of checks-and-balances, ensure the directory is of superior quality."[http://www.dmoz.org/help/geninfo.html]

"The Open Directory Project (ODP) is the most comprehensive human edited directory of the Web, compiled by a vast global community of volunteer editors.

The ODP powers core directory services for some the most popular portals and search engines on the Web, including AOL Search, Netscape Search, Google, Lycos, and HotBot, and hundreds of others.

The ODP is 100% free. There is no cost to submit a site or to use our data. Anyone can download and use ODP data at no cost provided they comply with the ODP's free license agreement and attribution. Also, there is no cost associated with listing and submitting sites." [http://www.dmoz.org/help/geninfo.html]

The dmoz interface is very useful as it seperates directories into practical categories. You can either type in what you are looking for or follow a directory and see what other options you have.

Module 4 Tasks - Boolean

I found that when i tried searching "cats NOT dogs" in google it returned result for the word "not" and "dogs". This supprised me because the Boolean website said you just have to type NOT. I went into advanced search in Google and typed dogs in the 'words to exclude' section and my new search was "cat -dogs". So instead of writing NOT i just need to put a minus symbol. And it worked well!

When searching for "cats" i had 181,000,000 hits! When i searched for "cats -dogs" i had 81,400,000. Less than half!

When i tried searching for Surfing Portugal i recieved 363,00 hits. So then i put "surfing portugal" in inverted commas and returned 29,900 hits.

Then i tried Surfing AND portugal and returned 2,630,000. This suprised me because i thought that there would be less results when both the words were required in the result. Then I searched NOT france and only recieved 636,000


Strategies to get the most numer of hits:
A general unrestricted google search seems to return the most number of hits. Using general words will get a broad mix of search results.

To get the most relevant results:
A good strategy for this is to use inverted commas to search for consecutive words. For example when i was searching for Surfing Portugal I used commas and had much more relevant results.
Using NOT helps by manually excluding the irrelevant words.

Information only from University databases:
Use a search from the deep web. Such as turbo10.com these search engines can be set to only search databases.

Module 4 Tasks - Searching the web

I use Google as my most common search engine. When searching for "surfing portugal" Google returned me 29,900 search results. With globalsurfers.com being the first website displayed.

Copernic returned 67 results. They were more specific but didn't have the number or variety that i would prefer.

I could not undergo a 'deep web' search through Copernic as i do not have the full version. I did however, use the online search at turbo10.com which is a deep web search engine. I received 25 results from this search. My results came from 3 different sources.

-alltheweb.com
-mirago.co.uk
-dmoz.org

Mirago.co.uk was pretty useless for what i was looking for. It had some general unrelated links. Then i came accross ardvarksports.net which is a search engine dedicated to sports. This site proved to return relevant results.

I still prefer the Google search but realise there would be circumstances where a database search could be useful. For searches to do with science based research or statistics a meta search would be great.

Module 4 tasks - Downloading tools

I downloaded Copernic desktop Search 2. It is useful to have a more thorough search tool other than the windows ones. This tool is great because it searches for much more than just files. It covers from email to history and every other kind of file in between.

I tried to download glooton but got directed to a French version of the site. I will try to find an English version. I do however, like the idea of have a search engine that gets results from many different sources. I had not previously known that such a program exists. I was also surprised to know that there is so much information on the internet stored in data bases.

Module 3 Tasks - Web 2.0

The term web 2.0 has been very foreign to me thus far. Previously i would have thought that it was some kind of program. I came to this conclusion from the "2.0", suggesting the second version of "web", whatever that may be.

After reading the curriculum and the articles provided i was pleasantly surprised. Web 2.0 is not a program, it is somewhat a second version, but with a twist. I like to think of web 2.0 as a concept, the second era of internet.

Now days i am sure that normal internet users would spend the majority of their internet use time in this new era. I know that I myself do, when i am on the internet I am usually using facebook, wikipedia, limewire, utorrent, google earth and youtube.

The most known websites, many mentioned above are all examples of Web 2.0. The video The Internet is Us/ing us is a great clip that shows the real difference between the physical world and the digital world. As the video clip states "Web 2.0 is linking people" and i believe the world is a
much smaller place now than when web 1.0 was around.

Module 3 Task - Blogging

I belive that blogging can be very useful. However it takes some commitment to create a decent blog. Before this course i never read or contributed to blogs. I do think that if i had a descent cause, such as this learning log, that i could regularly contribute to an online blog.

I have considered starting some blogs of my own but am waiting until i find something that i know i will stick with. Im thinking most likely one of the outdoor sports i enjoy. I will post a link to it here if i decide to go ahead.

I strongly believe that blogging has its place on the web and is here to stay. As more people are spending more time in from of a computer it is most likely that blogging will continue to grow in popularity. Im excited to be on board!

Module 3 Task - FTP

http://student.curtin.edu.au/~14160176/

This task was fairly easy but took a little bit of trial and error. I enjoyed it as it is very practical and good to learn how to go from having a webpage, to getting it online!

Module 3 tasks - WWW standards

5 most important rules for web writing:

1. Keep the content clear and to the point.
2. Ensure the most important information is in the first 2 paragraphs as these get the most attention.
3. Avoid moving or animating text as still text is much easier to read.
4. Simplify the page design and include the main options in the top or side bar,
5. Make search forgiving of mispellings

I think a bit part of the research conducted in 1997 is still relevant. However the new research in 2005 relkating to literacy level is also valuble to keep in mind when writing for the web.

Module 3 Tasks - HTML tags

I have had some experience using html coding so this task was a good refresher for me. I was personally suprised at the amount of tags i remembered. So i didn't have any difficulties with this task.

Blogging is still new to me so i find it more interesting than writing html code. However i do enjoy using programs like dreamweaver to create webpages. It makes it much easier than coding and you dont need to remember a whole bunch of tags. To me blogging is more of a Journal tool whereas html is used to create webpages about anything.

Having some trouble

Im finding things a little harder now that assignments are all happening. I keep getting confused between my units and find it hard to share discussion board posts between units. Its like going to two classrooms where everything is exactly the same besides the content. Gets confusing for me. But im still going! So far....

Module 2 Tasks - Chat

So i finally gained entry to the skype room and had a quick chat with the people in there. I think there were 4 or 5 of us. It works well if you are all discussing the same topic but when there are several conversations going on its better to do a private chat. I am now connected to the internet sudies yahoo group aswell. I have never previously used skype as a text chat program. I have however used it alot for making phone calls from overseas to home and visa versa. For this it is great! Cheap calls are very useful when keeping in touch with distant friends.

Now that i have used it for 'text chatting' i do like it. It serves its perpose well.

Now i just need to get a cool bluetooth headset and i'll be laughing!