Thursday, November 29, 2007 - the 3 Search Engines :

Neeew this wik, thees weak's post wil b posted wiwth spealling mistooks.

Now that sentence took 5 minutes to type out. Partly because i was bored with work..

This week, we swapped the order of the practical worksheets, so as to aid us in doing our Assignment 1. We went ahead to practical 4&5 which was to fill up a lenghtly worksheet, which will then serve as a reference for our assignment 1.

So apart from the change in the order of the practical worksheets, this week's lecture notes talks about the different purpose of internet resources, and there are a whole list of it. Most of this are pretty common sense, such as News, Entertainment, Business/Marketing. Whereas there a few which are interesting like Advocacy, Information and Personal. Advocacy is more like an education site, that is trying to convice you to believe in that particular subject.

In the lab, i learned the differences between the 3 search facility available. Previously, i only know of the standard search engine, used to search for information blindly on that search engine. However, now i learned that there are such things called Meta Search Engines which saves alot of times as it search many different search engine at 1 go, retrieving information from many places. Also when researching on topics related to the industry or a company, using Directories is a great help as the sites there are all chosen by professionals. So anyway, the 3 search facilities are Directories, Search Engine, Meta Search Engine, and each of them has their own benefits.

If only i learnt about the 3 different search facilities earlier, then i wouldn't have a hell of a time searching for information for a previous assignment.......

Fats RANTS 6:08 PM

- Different Types of websites :

This post is "abit" late... but as the saying goes "better late then never"

In this week's lesson, we covered on the 3 different types of internet resources available. Those 3 are :- Organisation, Personal and Subject-based websites.

So you might wonder what has this gotta do with researching for information online. Well, it plays a big part when reasearching online. If you can categorize the websites found into the 3 different categorize, you will know the characteristics of each website. From the characteristics, we can sub-consciencely categorize them into reliable, non-reliable and quite reliable webs.

Apart from the sub-conscience thinking of whether the websites are reliable, there are several major differences between the 3 types of websites. In simple terms;

- Organisation websites usually promote their organization and products and is usually professionally done. They also provide links to other websites.

- Personal websites are like blogs, information posted there are mostly about topics the poster is interested in. It also contains information about the poster. However information posted there might not be reliable as it might be bias or inaccurate.

-Subject-Based websites are websites like wikipedia, where it contains definitions of a certain topic, or topics. It has a focus on a subject.

What is interesting about subject-based websites is, it can be a mix of organisation websites as well as personal websites. Lets say Wikipedia for example. Information posted up there are by the community, making it also classifiable as personal website. However wikipedia is a community organisation. Now this really complicate things up. 0_0

In this week, i also picked a research topic for my assignment. and the topic is......

Discuss the usage of 2-Factor Authentication in the banking industry.

and yes it might seem no link to what i am studying, but its an interesting topic cause i use 2-Factor Authentication too..

Fats RANTS 5:35 PM

Thursday, November 1, 2007 - Different types of internet resources :

Topic: Games
Aspect: Development

As this industry is booming, there are many websites that are related to this topic. Especially newsgroup and discussion list. I also found that there are many sites on the web that are unreliable and of no relevance to the topic.

In this week's lesson, i learnt how to create my own blog and post things on it. I've also learnt that apart from the famous .blogspot.com, there are also many other blogging websites, such as wordpress. Although this is not the first blog that i created, this would definitely be the blog that i will constantly update and visit. Maybe when i'm free, i'll try to beautify this blog.

I've also learnt how to search for information on the website that are of different types; magazines, journals, newsgroup, discussion lists and more. This will definitely help me in my work outside of UIR, as researching and looking for infomation on the internet is unavoidable.

Stay tune for more next week...
I

Fats RANTS 7:27 PM

- The 2 Towers.. I mean Links :

Here are the 2 links:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/
This is the WOW webpage, the game i play. It provides infomation, details and latest news about the game. It also allows me to check my subscription and my account information.

http://www.wikipedia.org/
This is wikipedia, everyone knows that. If you don't, this is an online encylopedia about everything, and is posted by users like us. Type your questions and get your sometimes-not-so-reliable answers there. Its interesting how the website is actually able to run smoothly, as each infomation posted there can be edited by anyone in the world. And that how some lecturers say that "information there is not realiable, don't use it" and they themselves use it for some of their lessons.

Fats RANTS 6:51 PM

- Hello World :

I am Guo Wei, 18 this year, currently studying in the course Game and Entertainment Technology (GET) of TP School of IIT.

I come from a small family of 4; me, my parents and my elder brother. My brother is currently in army. He was from TP too, but from the engineering school. I don't get to spend much time with my family as they have different working shifts. While most of the time I'm at home, their not, and vice versa.

As most MALE teenagers, i like to play games during my free time. I usually play World or Warcraft, but I also play games of every genre. However, when you see me play games, it does not necessary mean I am 'playing'. I might be just doing some research, as my course requires me to do so. My friends call me Fats or Fattie(Fatty), and i usually tell people to call me that cause its much easier to remember then my name. That explains why you see the world 'Fats' so much around the blog.

This blog will be constantly updated for the next few months, for the CDS Using Internet as a Research Tool(UIR). Check back again for more!

Fats RANTS 6:38 PM