Evaluation on Smithsonian Museum website

The first impression when I first opened the Smithsonian Museum website is that it gives me a totally different impression that I would expect from a museum website. Most of the time when the "museum" word flashed pass my mind, I would related it to "boring". But to my surprise, the website actually captures my attention with all the interesting images being displayed.

Coverage
The interesting thing about this museum website is that the scope of it targetted audience is pretty broad to the extent that it even covers on kids as well as interns who wants to gain some experience after their stay in their school. It totally differs from the traditional museum where it only targets at adults AND only adults.

Content
The other thing which I like the most is the content that they covers as all the information are being categorized accordingly. Other than providing exhibits, this website is also a place for people who wish to learn more by entering the "Explore & Learn" section. In this section, they have information that is almost similiar to what is on the Discovery Channel and the content that they cover are practically anything under the sun.

Usablility
The website are arranged in a neat manner as such that me being a first timer to enter it website, I am able to navigate around without any hestitation. All the main links are neatly presented on the top on the website. The use of appropriate colors to differentiate from one column to the other. It also provides a sitemap and searching facility for users who wish to get information on their fingertip as soon as possible.

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After evaluating this website, I would give it a rating of 7.5/10 as all the content are being presented nicely for user to navigate with ease. The lost of 2.5 marks are mainly due to lack of animation which could lift up the atmosphere of this website to make it more interactive and attractive to user.

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Describe in a paragraph, the most important lesson that you had learnt in the process of developing your UIR Portfolio.

During the journey of UIR as my CDS, I learnt several precious skills in finding resources pertaining to the topic I wish to look for. As for the most important lesson that I have learnt, I would say that all the things that I have always been learning during lessons are as important. However, I would like to point out a specific lesson which is the use of operators along with the keywords which will return me results that are much useful and relevant to the topic that I wish to look for. These operator are "AND", "OR", "NOT" and use of ' " " ' to narrow down the results that is being returned to me. And what I notice that all the operators use are similar to what I have been always been doing in my diploma subject which we do our java programming. Therefore, with the knowledge that I have acquire during my programming lessons, I am able to relate it and use it for my searching ability.

I would like to point out the other lesson that I wish to point out other than the use of operators in search keywords as I felt it also affect the way I look at sources from the website. In the previous lesson where we are required to evaluate on website. I felt that by using this evaluation method, I am able to identify the reliability of the sources. This is important as during my stay in polytechnic, I am required to do research on the internet for report purposes. With this knowledge, I am able to do a much more reliable report which are extracted from an authorized sources.

With this 2 lesson I had mentioned, I will end my post on my "Most Important Lesson". =)

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Lastly, Thank everyone for helping me in learning during UIR especially my tutor who have been very helpful even though I always been late for lesson =). I will always miss UIR as it is the best CDS that I have taken over even though it is my 4th CDS that I have taken.

Please don't be mistaken that I failed one of my CDS that's why I taking the 4th CDS. It is due to the reason that I taken my Global Citizenship CDS during the holidays to pull up my grades. =)

Week 12 & 13

Update your Blog with a paragraph on your reflections of experience evaluating the websites related to your research topic
*yawn... so troublesome

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Evaluation 1

Resource : Microsoft Singapore
URL : http://www.microsoft.com.sg

Reflection
When I was evaluating this website, the first time that came to my mind was that this website belongs to a organization. Everyone will like be thinking, "Aiya, just a organizational website, what so great about it?". BUT this website that I evaluated a the LARGEST and BIGGEST IT company in the whole world. Everyone who uses computer definately know what is Microsoft and they will think of Windows and BILL GATES.

So everyone would expect a lot of this reowned company, not forgetting about the website too~! When I entered Microsoft Singapore website, I was please with the website they produce as I myself entered the website with an high expectation, therefore I was not shocked to see the nice website they have produced.

The whole website gives me a very lively experience as it uses a very cool warm blue color as the theme of the website. With the addition of a flash animation, it makes it more interactive and causing me to navigate further into the website. Besides that, the website is so easy to navigate around, even the first time I entered this site, I immediately know where I should click to look for the information that I want. The site is further enhance by having quicklinks on the bottom portion of the site which I can reach to the information that I want with just 1 click! Hurray~!

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Evaluation 2

Resource : CNET Asia - Where tech becomes life
URL : http://asia.cnet.com/

Reflection
Before I do my reflection on this website, I would like to declare that I personally love this site. It is because I used this site to look for information on a laptop before I got my new laptop. So please do not be surprise if my comments are one-sided. Haha =)

I shall elaborate further on the reason why I love this website so badly. During the process of buying a laptop, I searched for several website and I wanted to look for a site where I am able to see other user comment on the product so I can know if that is an ideal product to buy or not. As a frequent gadget buyer like me, getting to know the user opinion on the product is far more important than seeing the specification of the product. It is because by looking at user opinion, you can actually know the advantages and disadvantages of the product. All this information cannot be seen on the product specification itself.

In this website, it provides a portion of every product's webpage for user opinion. It is very useful as all potential buyers can make a better decision to buy or not (as what I have stated in the previous paragraph). Hence, buyer will not regret after buying the product. The other feature that I like about this website is that it provides that top product monthly or even yearly. Besides that, the user are able to see the latest headline just in their fingertip at the homepage of the website. Everything is neatly arranged and categorized. I felt that this is one of the best IT guide I have been to over the past few years.

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Evaluation 3

Resource : www.hardwarezone.com Forums - powered by vBulletin
URL : http://forum.hardwarezone.com/

Reflection
During the process of evaluating this website that contain a discussion forum, I could not help myself but to navigate around before doing my evaluation on it. It is mainly because of the forum room that it has. I can easily fit into different forum room easily as the forum allows people of similar interest to come together and share their views.

In this forum, all the posting are well categorized and well maintained by the moderators as non-related posting to the topic of the room will be remove in no time. This is to prevent spamming of post by certain users.

The other thing I like about this website is that it also provides IT guides such as DIY on building self-made computer. I no longer need to buy IT megazine to learn how to do it as I can actually learn it on my own at this website. This website also provides a "How to " section for user to look for answer to their IT related questions.

Lastly, this website has something which distinguish from the rest of IT portal is that it also provides LOCAL IT related headlines which are pretty hard to find for. This actually explains why it has been rated as the number 1 online IT portal in Singapore.

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Evaluation 4

Resource : Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: It's the future of Windows ... Today!
URL : http://www.winsupersite.com/

Reflection
The first impression to me of this website is that the whole website is so messy. So many images are used inapporiately at wrong location. During the process of navigating, I was stuck for quite a few times a I could not find the links to look for the information I desire. It nearly made me close my browser in the mist of search for some information due to the messy layout it has.

However, I decided to stay on navigating this website as the contents of this website are very interesting. There are even information that I have not seen before. After quite some time of reading through the website, I concluded that this website fits one quote very well : "Do not judge a book by it's cover". Why do I say so? It is because although this website has a very bad arrangement of content, it contains a lot of information which is very useful and interesting. If the arrangement of the website is being improve, it will definitely be one of my ideal website to go to look for information on Microsoft latest technologies.

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Finally after reflecting on all the website that I have been during the process of evaluation. I wanted to give an overall reflection on it.

Overall Reflection

After evaluating on all the website, I realise that there are so many evaluation factor I did not take notice of before doing this evaluation. By doing this evaluation, it makes me take extra notice on the layout, accuracy, usuability of the website. This is helpful because all this factors I have evaluated on could be my improvements when I were to build my own website in the future.

Lastly, I also get to learn a lot of new information when I read on the information from all the website I have evaluated. I makes me realise that technology is something which we have to constantly keep ourself updated on it, just even a day or two is enough to make you feel so outdated on what is happening in the outside world. We should not enclose ourself in school only and not bothering about what is happening in the outside world. =)