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. =)

Microsoft Security Week 2006 : Security Showdown
Apart from normal UIR posting, I wanted to post something that is quite relevant to what I am doing which is on computer technology. But how come I keep posting about computer technology which even talking about SECURITY!

Nowadays with the advanced in technology, the problem faced by people using internet in the past is very different from what people are facing currently and the problem has been a major problem even in major firms or organizations. In a company point of view, having a secure server/database in them is one of the top priority. Companies can lose millions and millions of dollars if one day their server got crash by a virus or even a HACKER! Therefore, security is so so important!

Therefore, I decided to go down to Microsoft Office on Thursday after school to attend one of the talk given by Stanley Tan, Academic Program Manager, and Chewy Chong, Technical Community Manager, Microsoft Singapore. Very interesting showdown, I will cover a few later on.

This is the venue of the place, very crowded as you can see.

Firstly we learnt that even if we set our password on our windows xp, it is not SECURE AT ALL!
Why do I say so? This is because if you have a bootable Linux for example, you can actually bypass all security of Windows xp and able to access all data inside it! Amazing issn't it?

• Solutions
  -Use Harddisk password or disk encryption ( Windows Vista's BitLocker)
  -LOCK YOUR HARDDISK IN SAFE OR DRAWER!

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Having giving a brief description on how to secure your information well. I learnt of some of the ways to hack website or application but for knowledge and not for bad use. I shall only talk about one of the mode of hacking as not too much information should be disclosed.

• SQL Injection
  -Input SQL statement into textfield and letting the computer to run the SQL statement
  Example: String sql = "Select * from user where user = "+user+"and password = "pass;
  By input: user = o OR 1=1;-- ( -- means comment the following )
  1 is always equals to 1 , therefore the SQL statement returns true even no password input in it
  - String sql = "Select * from user where user = 0 OR 1 = 1;" // returns true
  *Solutions
  -Validate all input
  -Use a procedure
  -pass all input through a parameter (command.Parameter.Add("@user",user);

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This shall end my small post on security.

Security is only as strong as the weakest link - Quote

Practical 4 & 5

Topic: Discuss the latest trends and developments of computer technology

1) Search Engine
Search Engine Used: Google (www.google.com)

Keywords Used: "computer", "technology", "trend", "entertainment"

Purpose: Information

URL: 2005 Consumer Electronics Show Recap > Technology Trends< (http://www.quepublishing.com/articles/article.asp?p=169628&rl=1)

Description of website:
This website contains an article on the different types of trend when it comes to technology. It separates the trends into categories such as Media Servers, Portable Entertainment and Telematics. It also does a comparision with companies under the same industry for example Creative and Ipod.

Search Results: 7,550,000 hits
Relevant Ranking Available: None
Relevant Results:
Results gotten did not meet the requirement of mine. Results returned are mainly like industry trends which does not fit the things that I am looking for.

Searching experience
By using this search engine by Google, i did not really get what I hope for. A lot of redundent sites being returned by the search engine even after a few attempt of changing the search keywords. I met a lot of diffculties and it resulted me wasting a lot of precious time that caused me to be stuck doing this portion of the accessment when everyone in the class is doing their reflection. A lot of changes in the keywords being used, need to search for better ways to enhance the performance of my searching ability.

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2) Meta Search Engine
Search Engine Used: Ixquick Metasearch

Keywords Used: "Computer", "technology", "trend"

Purpose: Business/Marketing

URL: TREND MICRO
(http://www.trendmicro.com/en/home/us/home.htm)

Description of website:
This website of a organization is a security company which sells things like firewall or anti-virus. The website works just like a typical computer hardware/software website where users is able to buy things online. Apart from that, it does provide news on blogs which make it a little like information website but the main purpose of this website is still a business/marketing.

Search Results: 11,499,685 hits
Relevant Ranking Available: Yes
Relevant Results:
For this search, the result gotten is very pleasing to see. It provides stars to rate how relevant the website they found has got to do with keywords that I have input. From the stars, I can immediately know which website will contain the information that I want.

Searching experience
Just on my first search using the keyword, I immediately got the result that I want and I would say it is very effective in term of their searching capability. What makes the website real good to me is that even when I use the same keywords I used in google, I got a much better result being returned rather than from google. Perhaps it lies with the fact that metasearch will search across multiple search engine which enables it to get the top few most relevant website being returned.

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3) Subject Directory
Search Engine Used: Yahoo! Singapore
Keywords Used: "technology", "news"

Purpose: News

URL: BBC NEWS Technology (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/default.stm)

Description of website:
This website is from a news organization from UK. It contains all the latest updates on the technology such as gaming and the upcoming operating system, Windows Vista. It also provides webcast of news and podcasting of news as well.

Search Results: 581,000,000 hits

Relevant Ranking Available: None

Relevant Results:
For this search, the result gotten is very impressive as all the results returned are relevant to what I am searching for. I could easily find any other websites which also contains the information I needed as everything is just a click away. One of the best search engine so far as it is able to reach out to as much as half a billion amount of websites.

Searching experience:
I had a very wonderful searching experience with yahoo as it provides the most relevant websites back to me given only 2 keywords is being entered. Although it lacks of the relevant ranking, it still does not lose out in term of their relevant of website. Although I may have found the website that I wanted, I could actually still narrow down by having more relevant keywords being search which might even return something which will surprise me.

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Reflections on Comparison and Evaluation on search effectiveness

Compare the search results. Identify 2 characteristics that make all 3 search facilities similar or different from one another.

Similarities:
1) All webpages allows the user to narrow down search by having another search method. For example: Yahoo (All The Web or Singapore), Google (Google Search or I'm Feeling Lucky), Ixquick(Search or Power Search).
2)All search engine provides multiple language

Differences:
Search Engine(Google)
1) Returns websites even though it is not very relevant
2) Results that are under another website will be indented

MetaSearch (Ixquick)
1)Provides result from all search engine and returns website of certain relevant
2)Provides ranking to state how relevant the website is to the keyword

Subject Directory (Yahoo)
1)Provides website of most relevant to the keyword even though returns huge amount of hits.
2)Provide features like Save webpage to My Web

Do you find any strength/weakness of each of them, in terms of search capability?

In yahoo and google search, both search engines have very good search capability in term of the relevant of the result being shown. Both engine produced almost the similar result. However, using the similar keywords searched, yahoo is able to find an estimated of 1/6 of what google is able to find. Therefore, yahoo is much more specific in the topic they looking for.
*test were carried out using the same keyword*

As in Ixquick meta search engine, it provides me all the most relevant website from several search engine. This will enhance it searching capability as sources came from all different search engine which means it covers a huge network of websites around the world.

Overall, which search facility best meet your searching needs? Why?

Yahoo! Singapore. After this exercise, I realise that the search engine that I have spend least is Yahoo. What do I mean by that? It is because this subject directory search actually able to return me the results that I want very quickly, at such, I do not need to spend much time changing the keyword that I have input or navigate from page to page just to find the website that I want. Therefore, I would rate Yahoo! Singapore as my ideal search facility that meets my searching needs.

Comment whether your research topic has any co-relation to the purposes of the resources retrieved.

Yes, the purpose of the search that I have gotten have relation to the topic that I am covering as all the information has inter-relation to computer technology, being security or operating system. I collect information of all purpose because in technology would, it is not reliable if a source is just taken from a website, for example a vendor as it may be one-sided. Therefore it is good if information can come from all purpose so that I can cross-reference from all sources to know if this information is reliable to what extent.

Practice 3


Resource 1 : Digital Life CNET News.com - Click here
Category : Newsgroup
Purpose of resource : News

In this webpage of CNET News, it provides the latest headlines on computer technology in the technology industry. It also contains news on specific category such as consumer technology, desktops, games and etc. Therefore, the targeted audience of this newsgroup can be of any age group, being teenagers or adults. Information from this webpage can be reliable as CNET has been a well-known webpage for people who wish to know more about technology and stuff.



Rating:




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Resource 2 : Hardware – Computerworld Blog - Click here
Category : Blogs
Purpose of resource : Personal

In this blog, there are entries posted by a blogger named Richi Jennings and the entries are based on its own opinion. Not very reliable as its about this comment on things, but it is good to read if you need to burn some time. What good about this blog is that it provides user to limit down what type of entry he/she interested in by choosing the category on the left of the webpage.


Rating:






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Resource 3 : Funny Computer Jokes- Click here
Category : Multimedia Sources
Purpose of resource : Entertainment

It contains jokes in all form of media such as video, text, pictures and etc. It even provides mailing of jokes to e-mail by joining their group. It is recommended for people who meets people of IT background very often and wish to crack a few jokes on IT to socialise around. A pretty good webpage to read on to kill some time.

Rating:

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Resource 4 : PC Magazine – Computer, Software, Hardware and Electronic Reviews, Downloads, News and Opinion- Click here
Category : Electronic journals and magazines
Purpose of resource : Information

It contains information on different specific category of technology and providing the latest top stories and insides stories. It is customize at such it works like a how a person looks at magazines. It contain different tabs for people to look into a topic he/she interested in. Nothing is made easier than this webpage which contains everything onto your fingertips.

I personally loves this webpage as it contains a lot of interesting headline and reviews. It even managed to attract me to read up on certain articles which I am not interested in.

Rating:

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*Disclaimer: Ratings are only for reference purposes only.
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Reflections

In this week practical, I faced quite a few diffculty during the searching of the webpage. It is mainly due to the words I used for search engine like yahoo, google or live.com . In this practical, I intended to search for something related to more of IT hardware rather than platform based product that I search the previous week. So I used "computer hardware" as my keyword and no useful webpage been found. It has been disturbing me for quite some time but overcome it by putting keywords of the category I wish to search for. For example : "computer hardware blog".

From this week for practical, I learnt to use more keywords to narrow down the result I'm looking for. This will greatly improve the efficiency of my search time. It is a precious lesson for me to learn from.

1. Microsoft Singapore - http://www.microsoft.com.sg/ (WWW Organizational Website)

Microsoft, being the leader in term of platform, has been one of the famous name when people talks about Information Technology. In this Microsoft Singapore website, it contains informations such as their microsoft software, solutions for troubleshooting, answers, support and latest news of their organization. It also cater to specific group of consumers such as business, IT professionals and developers who does codings. Apart from that, it also cater to people just like you and me where it targets people who have passion in their gaming console which are the XBox and the latest XBox360. It is a great website as information regarding Microsoft can be found within here.

2. Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows: It’s the future of Windows … Today! -http://www.winsupersite.com/ (WWW Personal Website)

This personal website i featured is mainly on Microsoft latest operating system : Windows Vista . Besides that, some of the products by Microsoft are also being featured inside as well such as Xbox and Zune. This website basically gives very good review on products because the information the author written has reliability and accurate to a certain extend. It also provides detailed information on the things featured.

3. CNET Asia - Where tech becomes life - http://asia.cnet.com/ (WWW subject-based website)

In this subject-based website, you will be able to get full review on the product and most importantly is reader's opinion on it as well. It provides information such as price, specification, review, latest news of technology out in the market and provides inside tips on technology. What makes this website special is that readers are able to give opinion on product as I have mentioned earlier. It is essential because people who post opinion is a user of the product itself, so the comment they post will be accurate and reliable to potential buyers.

4. ZDNet: Tech News and White Papers for IT Professionals - http://www.zdnet.com/ (WWW subject-based website)

This website contains information about technology but in a business point of view. The main target audience of this website is mainly for businessman because all the latest updates about companies in the technology industry can be found easily in it. Although this website is mainly for business, it also provides reviews which is very convenient for readers to navigate rather than visiting several websites.

5. www.hardwarezone.com Forum - http://forum.hardwarezone.com (Discussion Forum)

Hardwarezone is one of the biggest IT portal in Asia and basically almost anything regarding technology can be found. In this portal, it provides discussion forum for members to discuss on the interest they are in such as Mobile Communication Technology, Hardware, Notebook and ect. This forum is very active over the past few years, therefore request will be answered in a short span of time.

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Reflections

Internet has been a well known technology and it has brought convenient to user in search for information. It is just like a library containing mass amount of information. But what makes internet has an advantage over searching for books in the library is that the time taken is reduce massively. Therefore it is essential to have a search engine for users to search for the information they wanted.

Search engine has been very useful to internet users nowadays as it enables users to search for related topic they want in split seconds. However, people do face diffculties trying to look for the information he/she really wants due to the massive amount of information out there. In this case, I'm looking for information on computer technology. It is a topic where a lot of report is out there on the internet and finding something useful needs to have a good knowledge on how to use a search engine well.

At the beginning of my search through the Live search engine, i faced problems where the information is out of date. I overcome this diffculty by adding a "latest" in my search box and I did get the information i wanted. As i search along, I realised something that is how a search engine actually works. It actually works by looking at the keyword inside the textbox of the engine regardless of how the words are being phrased. For example if I wan to look for information of what is windows operating system. I typed in "windows operating system" and i may not get the information I really want. Using what I have stated previously, I can type in "windows operaing system what is" to get the information I wanted. I noticed that the english is not properly phrased but I do get the information I wanted.

After this exercise of searching, searching of information will be of ease to me and will be very useful in the future where I need to look for information for my projects. I will hope to continue exploring the wonders of search engine and making it part of my IT life ahead of me.

Cool . new blog created