Fun Fun UIR

Practical 8 Evaluation

2007-01-25T17:43:00.000-08:00

Today's lab I'll be evaluating on the website of Smithsonian. The aims for this website are not clearly stated. From looking through the section of "About us". I can only tell that Smithsonian have a magazine of their own called the Smithsonian Magazine. They provide information for jobs, internship & fellowship and volunteers. The website is commited to provide authoritative experiences that connect people to their heritage and history as Americans.

From evaluating this website, I feel that the website is pleasant to surf because they have pictures and contrasting colours to match the background for the website. The navigations are also direct and simple to use. There isn't any need to have user support facility. The most inportant lesson I've learnt while evaluating is setting the criterias to evaluate on the website. Looking through a set of rules and then evaluate the quality of the website. E.g the what is the purpose of the website, is it an authoritative source, what are the features of the website and are the navigations easy. All these factors determine the quality of the website.

Practical 7 Evaluation

2007-01-23T06:24:00.000-08:00

Today I'll be evaluating on another 3 websites which I have researched on.

Daniel W. Drenzer Blog

This website is quite messy with the arrangement of information. Although the format for postings is standard for blogging but there are simply too many postings in a page that lots of scrolling is required. The links are in simple english thus you can tell what each of them does. This website is useful for people who wants to do research on the global politics or world economy. Overall it is an informative website with direct links just that the arrangement is a little uncomfortable to the eyes.

The Trillion dollar war - World Affairs Board

This website is a forum discussion on mainly topics like foreign policy issues, national politics, military and defense and international strategic affairs. They do not discuss other issues other than that. It provides opinion-based information. Thus there is no right or wrong. I'd recommend people to take them as references and then come out with a conclusion themselves.

War on Terrorism, World Oil Market and US Economy

This website is informative and free for users to comment on each post they made- Sort of like a blog but one with a big database of information. They touch on topics mainly business, politics, governence, economics and other world issues that's happening around us. This website is very useful and i strongly recommend it to be used as a reference because the author really put in lots of effort and time to research on the topic and then give their opinions and some data results they generated. Overall the website is easy to navigate, clean and comfortable for the eyes to see and has lots of juicy information in it.

Practical 6a Evaluation

2007-01-22T06:32:00.000-08:00

Today's lab we did on evaluating one of the 12 websites we did. I chose a magazine company website called the Slate Magazine. I'm actually surprised to see that so many considerations are made just to evaluate on a website. Normally when i browse through websites I wouldn't even thought of such questions while using as it is too obvious to me that I did not even notice at all. After evaluating this website I have learnt to judge a website more seriously and if I have a chance to create my own I'd defintely take these questions as consideration.

Search Engine

2006-12-02T23:42:00.000-08:00

There are many good search engines to use for searching information you want. And these search engines need to be fast, accurate and also user-friendly. Some of the common ones used are Yahoo or Google. For today's lesson, we are supposed to research on 3 types of search engines and compare & contrast between them.

Search Engines

Google Search Engine: http://www.observerindia.com/analysis/A410.htm

Keyword used: Impact of terrorism, economy

Purpose of resource: Information

I used google for this and it is easily available and relevant to my topic. It is a full report on economic impact of terrorism by B. Raman. He talked about the oil and tourism industries that is being affected by terrorism. You can check the website for more information. Google is popular because of its large hit size and the convenient function "Google Suggest"- It allows you to type a phrase of part of a word and the function will auto generate a few possible searches you might want.

IxQuick Search Engine: http://www.watchblog.com/democrats/

Keyword used: Impact of terrorism, economy

Purpose of resource: News

This is used by a meta search engine known as "ixquick". It is much different from other engines because it provides ranking of search results. It has also the same features as Yahoo search engine which categorized groups of topics so as to enable easier search.

Yahoo Search Engine: http://www.ict.org.il/institute/Conferencedet.cfm?ConferenceID=8

Keyword used: impact of terrorism, economy

Purpose of resource: Personal

This is a personal website by Herzliya where she puts down the daily events of the economic affected by terrorism. The search engine i used for it is Yahoo search engine, Yahoo is good to sue for searching as it classified lots of topics to make search easier. It even have latest current event news which is put on at the front page so that if the topic you are searching for is there, you can just click it.

Overall Reflection

I feel that among these 3 search engines, I'd probably use Google more often because of its popularity defintely. Not to mention the fabulous "Google suggest" function it has to offer. It is unique and really enhances the search for all users. Thus i find it most usefull among the 3 search engines.

The Search Continues ...

2006-11-16T23:45:00.000-08:00

Today's UIR lesson we were supposed to search for websites that have different types of purpose of resources. These purpose of resources are information, advocacy, business/marketing, news, personal or entertainment. As my topic is on Terrorism affect World Economy, therefore I am only able to search under these themes:

Personal
http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/archive/2005-07/

The terrorist attack in London today remind us that terrorism is an important geo-strategic risk that affects the global economy and financial markets. The impact effect of this terrorist attack on financial markets was the predictable one as ...
Quoted from the blog.

This is a blog by Nouriel Roubini and he has a lot of information on how the economy is being affected by Terrorism supported by his views over the situation. It is a very good blog and you can see many people commented and replied to his posts. You can click on the link to find out more.

News
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2004/me_terror_06_03.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HI30Aa02.html

Both of them are news websites where they have the latest & the juiciest news. Well if you want to be aware of what is happening around us and keeping up with the current issues, these are some websites you can look at.

Information
http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/perry/20011024.htm

The terrorist attack of September 11th raised important questions about what may lie ahead for the world oil market and what it could mean for the U.S. economy ...
Quoted from the website.

This website provides detailed information on the impact on the World Economy due to Terrorism. The author explained deeply into the gradual decline of oil consumption, production and imports every year and even have graphs for the past 30 years. It is very detailed in every aspect. I'd strongly recommend this website to be used for reference if anyone is doing a project on the same topic.

My Reflection
Today's activity was quite easy and thankfully the internet connection was not that slow as compared to last week. Therefore the search was smooth and I managed to obtain all the different types of websites quickly. The easiest to find was the theme News as you could just search for a particular News website like CNN and use their search engine to find what you are looking for. While searching under the theme Personal, I came across something which was amusing. As most personal websites are blogs, one of the search results that came out was my blogsite! Haha. There's a test on Lecture 1-3 on next week's lesson so to anyone of my classmates reading, this is just a reminder. All the best.

School's Computers work like a Tortoise!

2006-11-13T00:34:00.000-08:00

Today was our third lesson for UIR. We were doing some research on one of the topics we chose. Well I chose the topic on Terrorism affect World Economy. It is quite a popular topic as most people are discussing over this issue ever since the 9/11 bombing incident. Thus I chose it because there might be many information on it to search on.

We were required to search on 4 types of websites on our topic- Personal, organization, Subject-based and Forums. These are the following websites I found :

Personal: http://www.danieldrezner.com/blog/

This is a personal website, by a person call Daniel D. Rezner, where he has a section on his opinions and terrorism and its impact on the world's economy. He has some interesting comments and suggestions so you can visit his site if you are interested.

Organization: http://www.slate.com/id/2079298
http://econlog.econlib.org/GQE/gqe041.html

These 2 websites are organization websites which provide information on terrorism and its effects on the world's economy.

The Bank of Israel estimates that intifada terrorism has cost Israel 4 percent of its GDP, as foreign investment and tourism have fallen sharply and security costs and budget deficits have soared.
Quoted from slate.com website.

You can check it out for more details.

Subject-based http://economics.about.com/od/terrorism/index.htm?terms=economic+activities

This is a website which focused on Economics and they have sections where they discuss about current affairs have affected the economy. Terrorism is one of them.

Forum http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/showthread.php?t=7762&highlight=terrorist

This is a forum whereby people come here to discuss over the economy being affected by terrorism. The information given is detailed to the extend that the they even have the figures for the losses. Post your comments up there to join the discussion if you are interested.

Overall Reflection

Today's lesson was one long day. The school's internet connection was so slow! I managed to search most of the websites. They were quite easy to search except for the forums. They do not have any topic specifically on Impact on Economy caused by Terrorism. In fact Terrorism, What President Bush is doing, 9/11 incident topics are more common. Well I did not complete the activity in class so I had to bring home and finish it. I spent a lot of time and effort searching on the forum, managed to find one or two but no one replied to the thread. After many hours of browsing i managed to get a website with that topic. So Cheers!

First UIR Blog

2006-11-02T18:27:00.000-08:00

HI! This is my first UIR blogging. Today was our first lesson. We formed into groups and did some fun activities. We have to use a search engine to search on a particular theme like "Which hip-hop popstar hot shot 9 times and is still alive?" The searching was fun as you get to read up on interesting articles while browsing through the websites. Finally the lesson ended with the teacher explaining some details on our subject and what is expected of us.