Reflections on UIR Practical 8

It was the week of second quiz for UIR. It was also the last practical before the submission deadline next week. For this week I mainly complete the evaluation by editing and finalizing them before submitting. I checked through for any possible grammatical errors and edited some parts.

The rest of the time was actually used to come together as a group to compile all the resources together and did the citation and bibliography. This bibliography was more detailed compared to the previous bibliography in assignment. With author, date of published, title and url, it gave readers a more detailed information and also acknowledgment to the resource. I felt the importance to cite because inadequate citations constitutes plagiarism. This practical would be very useful because we often use the Internet for research findings and it was compulsory to include bibliography at the end of each project. With this practical I learnt how to write a good and professional one.

Overall I felt my group mates had done well in contributing their findings. They were efficient in producing high quality of work and I were glad that I had this opportunity to work with them in UIR.

Reflections on UIR Practical 7

This was the first time I had used UIR-Rawkz Wiki to share the experience and reflection on searching, blogging and participation in discussion forums. It was kind of difficult to start off with. However, with the little help from Mrs Faridah, I soon realized it was actually a very user friendly and helpful platform to see group contribution. With just a click on the "complete history', users could view how much changes had been done to the post in word count. Also it allowed users to see what had been done before the changes took place. When the page was put under watch-list, users would get notified through an email sent. Basically, we compiled our individual findings and edited this week. Another function I like it's like it allowed changes due to made simultaneously. In other words, my group members could all edit the page at the same time. I felt that I had just learnt another useful tool which I could continue to use in my future.


The following is my findings in UIR-Rawkz Wiki.

IMT-2000 offers the capability of providing value-added services and applications on the basis of a single standard. The system envisages a platform for distributing converged fixed, mobile, voice, data, Internet and multimedia services. One of its key visions is to provide seamless global roaming, enabling users to move across borders while using the same number and handset. IMT-2000 also aims to provide seamless delivery of services, over a number of media (satellite, fixed, etc…). It is expected that IMT-2000 will provide higher transmission rates: a minimum speed of 2Mbit/s for stationary or walking users, and 348 kbit/s in a moving vehicle. Second-generation systems only provide speeds ranging from 9.6 kbit/s to 28.8 kbit/s.

In addition, IMT-2000 has the following key characteristics:
1. Flexibility
With the large number of mergers and consolidations occurring in the mobile industry, and the move into foreign markets, operators wanted to avoid having to support a wide range of different interfaces and technologies. This would surely have hindered the growth of 3G worldwide. The IMT-2000 standard addresses this problem, by providing a highly flexible system, capable of supporting a wide range of services and applications. The IMT-2000 standard accommodates five possible radio interfaces based on three different access technologies (FDMA, TDMA and CDMA)





2. Affordability
There was agreement among industry that 3G systems had to be affordable, in order to encourage their adoption by consumers and operators.
3. Compatibility with existing systems
IMT-2000 services have to be compatible with existing systems. 2G systems, such as the GSM standard (prevalent in Europe and parts of Asia and Africa) will continue to exist for some time and compatibility with these systems must be assured through effective and seamless migration paths.
4. Modular Design
The vision for IMT-2000 systems is that they must be easily expandable in order to allow for growth in users, coverage areas, and new services, with minimum initial investment.

Reflections on UIR Practical 6b

Due to the fact that search engines like Yahoo! Search gave large number of results, which sometimes may not be relevant to my research topic, I turned to apply what I learnt about meta search engine - MetaCrawler. And the results turned out to be pretty accurate, good and relevant, too. I managed to found the site CDMA Development Group on the topic 3G - CDMA2000.

After the first evaluation, I was now experienced with evaluating the second source. This evaluation was done much faster than the previous one.

I felt that overall it was an success, because not only have I learnt on my topics about development of 3G in market, but also inquired the skills to evaluate a source, so that in my future research or projects, I can better make use of the internet to find more valued resources.


Discussion Forum 2 : Introduction to Internet Resources

Internet has enriched my personal knowledge as well as my academic life. The first thought when doing a research topic would be using the Internet. This is because it’s fast and convenient as it can be access at home, school, or even anywhere that has wireless surfing. Internet is very vast and though the information obtained sometimes may be misleading or not as what you intend to find, it’s still a lot of people’s first choice in obtaining information. It’s so convenient that we may tend to neglect other sources of information likes books.

In UIR, I have learnt to use and apply the search engine’s advanced search and preferences to enhance my search results to obtain even more accurate and better ones. Using this information I found, it helped me greatly in many of the projects I have faced in my years in polytechnic. Internet not only helped in my projects, but also shares the thoughts and ideas online through blogs and discussion forums. Information can thus be spread at ease.

I believe Internet had both it's pros and cons and it all depend on how users use it. In conclusion, I still believe that Internet had enriched my academic life with tons of useful information.

Reflections on UIR Practical 6a

In this assignment 2, there were quite a few topics that were quite interesting and we found them closed to our daily lives. Topics like impact of drugs abuse on youths, usage of blogging in businesses After a short and brief discussion, the group decided to choose the developments in the market for 3G mobile devices as this topic is something that we, teenagers are most aware of these days. The ever changing technologies strike our heads and we believed that we could do a good job on this topic.

The keywords used in the Yahoo! Search included development, 3G market, 3G devices and 3G hand phones. With the help of the thesaurus, I managed to find out about the key variations of 3G Advancement, 3G improvement, Growth in 3G business, Growth in 3G market, Development of 3G equipments, appliances, accessories and 3G cell phones, 3G mobile phone, Third generation market growth and more. With these search phrases, I began my research at Yahoo! Search. However, there were too many search results, i applied what i had learnt in assignment 1, that was using the advanced search option to enhance and get better search results.

Basically it was still difficult to start and search for a good and reliable source to evaluate. I ended up with an source at searchmobilecomputing.com on Mobile and Wireless Protocols. Base on the template provided, I started evaluating and at the same time, browsed through and clicked on all links to find out more about the site so that i could evaluate more in depth. Following the template, I evaluate each criteria which included purpose, coverage, authority, accuracy, currency, accessibility, presentation and arrangement, usability and overall. As this was the first time i ever evaluate a resource with so many criteria, i started off carefully. The guide point in the template provided an idea on what should be written on each. With the additional help of lecture notes downloaded, I added on other points not written in the template to improve my overall evaluation.

Reflections on UIR Practical 4&5

Search Engine: Yahoo!

Keywords used: Impact of terrorism on world economy, terrorism on economy, world economy, terrorism, terrorism on economy

Web Results showed the relevant web pages found by Yahoo! Search found in response to users’ search terms. Web Results were generated from the billions of web pages discovered, crawled, and indexed by Yahoo! Search. Within web results you might also choose to see Portable Document Format (PDF), View as HTML, RSS/View as XML, View as XML, Add to My Yahoo! Beta, URL, Cached or More pages from this site. The list of results will include the name of the page, the URL and short description from the page containing your keywords.

Relevance ranking looked at the number of times search term appears in the document, in a ratio with some overall measurement of the document, like length of number of words. The significance of term in the retrieved text was estimated and the hits were given rank or scores that determine the order they were displayed.

Size of hits is 8,910,000 for impact of terrorism on world economic took 0.11 sec. There were often multiple pages of web results. The total number of results found was listed to the right of the section heading. When other users had done searches similar to the user’s searches, Yahoo! Search would list these queries under the search box in “Also Try” which might help narrow down results.

Meta Search Engine: Metacrawler

Web Results showed the relevant web pages found by MetaCrawler in response to users’ search terms were ranked by relevance and eliminate duplicate hits. Refer to figure 8 below. Size of hits was only 56, much lesser compared to using search engine. The results returned from these engines include commercial (sponsored) and non-commercial results. MetaCrawler was designed to identify the intent of a user's search. Web Results were generated from combined results found in different search engines which users could see the URL with short descriptions showing the keywords and url of the source found. Beside Preferences and Advanced Search, there was a click option for exact phrase to display results keyed in the search box. Are you looking for? would provide additional topics related to the research keywords. This was helpful in providing additional help especially when users were uncertain about what to find on. Recent Searches was used t o rack and display 15 most recent searches for easy references on past search keywords.

Subject Directory: Galaxy

From the keywords of ‘terrorism on economy’, Galaxy found 407 directory matches, mainly the sub-categories are business and economy for each country. For example Community > World Communities > Asia > Countries > India > Business and Economy. Refer to Galaxy would also show sites that match with titles and short written description. These sites actually paid to submit their site to the Galaxy Directory. Galaxy offered multiple service plans in which editors will manually review the submission to ensure listings in Galaxy were well organized and presented in a logical and intuitive fashion. Theses sites could be accessed by clicking on the telescope. The relevance was actually ranked with how many stars given to this site.

Search Engine

Search engines used software "bots" to scout the Web and assemble databases or indexes of Web pages. When a query at a search engine Web site, input would be checked against the search engine's keyword indexes. The best matches were then returned as hits. Basically a search engine had two parts: A "robot", "crawler", or "spider" that traveled to pages on the Web and assembled an expansive index, and a program that received search request, compared it to the index entries, and returned with results.

Limiatations of Search Engine
The percentage of pages effectively indexed by search engines. Moreover, the overlap between different search engines was quite limited. This was due to the continuous expansion of the World Wide Web (WWW). erroneous answers. Some of the results returned by Yahoo! Search were links that were not available any more, or unrelated to keywords entered. The redundancy of results was another problem of available search engines.

Limitations of Meta Search
Usage was limited primarily to simple queries. It was difficult to conduct a complex search because each search engine had its own search features. Other limitation of this meta search engine would be returning of a limited number of results that do not represent the totality of results from any source engine, little or no field searching is available.

Limitations of Subject Directory
One of the major disadvantage of using directory would be the hierarchical arrangements may be arbitrary. The editors who organized the directory may defer from another directory. The ability to search Yahoo! and most other directories by keywords solve this problem of arbitrary hierarchical arrangements. Another drawback was that selecting, rating and categorizing Web Pages took a lot of time, so directories tend to me less up to date than search engines databases, which are constantly updated by computer programs that automatically gather new Web Pages. The third disadvantage would be subjectivity of rating and annotating resources because it differs between individuals.

There was no hard and fast answer to whether a search engine, meta search engine or subject directories would be a better choice. A lot depends on the personal preferences of the user. Some people like directories because the user can control the search pattern, varying the path through the descriptors if another descriptor looks promising.

Directories allow users to browse and to be more vague or general in their search term. Directories are generally better at finding general information and should be where user should start. Use meta search or search engine instead to find something more specific.

Search engines are not always as easy to use as directories, but sometimes they can find sites that have not been indexed in a directory. Even search engines cannot keep up with the explosive growth of the Internet, however, so more than one might have to be used to find specific information. User must take note that carefully constructed searches of the major search engines often return more relevant results than those delivered by many meta-search engines

Search engines leave the searching pattern to the computer program and can be used to find more specific resources. Many of these search engines maintain separate pages for simple and advanced searches. Don't be afraid of the advanced searches because usually it just means there were more options to use. Thus results would be frequently better.

Reflections on UIR Practical 3

I will be touching for the 4 purposes of resources which include new, information, business/marketing and entertainment for this post.

The purpose of news as a resource is to provide information on current events. News are often developed by traditional companies such as newspaper. They are usually parallel to the traditional medium. Example includes CNN, BBC, Straits Times, CNA, etc.

With the printed newspapers and broadcast companies going online, we can see many examples of websites of this nature on the internet now. Many latest news are updated on the internet and users can view them at anywhere that has internet connection. Many existing radio and television broadcasters provide Internet 'feeds' of their live audio and video streams (for example, the BBC). They may also allow time-shift viewing or listening such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. These providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet 'broadcasters' who never had on-air licenses. This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to access on-line media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a television or radio receiver.

Next is about information. Information provides factual information. From and about Government, e.g. census data For example visiting HDB.gov.sg would give factual information for both buyers and sellers. From and about Organizations, e.g. transportation schedules and about subjects e.g. Sciences, Arts, etc. This information keep us updated and through these information found, it eventually can increase our knowledge on a particular topic, example latest technology. Through research, we get information to help us in projects as well. Internet file sharing is another form where by information is spdead. A computer file can be e-mailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can be uploaded to a Web site or FTP server for easy download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networks.

The third reason would be for entertainment purposes.

Going onto entertainment, it is established to provide entertainment. The different types of entertainment includes, games, jokes, fan information, music, movies, pod casting.
One main area of leisure on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of leisure creates communities, bringing people of all ages and origins to enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from role-playing games to online gambling. This has revolutionized the way many people interact and spend their free time on the Internet. Many use the Internet to access and download music, movies and other works for their enjoyment and relaxation. People use chat, messaging and email to make and stay in touch with friends worldwide, sometimes in the same way as some previously had pen pals. Social networking Web sites like Myspace and Facebook many others like them also put and keep people in contact for their enjoyment.

Finally for business/marketing purposes.

For business and marketing purposes, it is used to promote a product or a service. In this purpose, the sites may offer online catalogues, contain press releases and information about the company, offer online services, etc.

The Internet has also become a large market for companies; some of the biggest companies today have grown by taking advantage of the efficient nature of low-cost advertising and commerce through the Internet, also known as e-commerce. It is the fastest way to spread information to a vast number of people simultaneously. The Internet has also subsequently revolutionized shopping—for example; a person can order a CD online and receive it in the mail within a couple of days, or download it directly in some cases. The Internet has also greatly facilitated personalized marketing which allows a company to market a product to a specific person or a specific group of people more so than any other advertising medium.

Reflections on UIR Practical 1

Newsgroups and discussion list
http://www.talk-movies.com/

This movie lovers community to discuss the latest movies, get movie reviews from movie-goers and talk about your favorite movies. The forum also features a marketplace to buy and sell movies. The website itself has various forums for discussion like “At The Theater” will show movies that are now showing and coming soon. If you are looking for a particular genre movie, for example my favourite is action and, you can view the Action and Adventure to discover more about recent and past movies. A great website for movie lovers like me.

Electronic journals and magazine
http://www.moviespotmag.com/

The Moviespot magazine is all about movies , Its movie magazine And can be downloading in PDF Format , So if you have free time and like to know when the movies will come you can use it as your movie guide , the most feature of the moviespot film Ezine is that show you the films release dates of the full year of the year and films of the year , film news, previews and reviews.

Multi-media source
http://www.watch-movies.net

This website allows me to watch very various genre of movies because it is a legal site that contain only links to other sites on the Internet : ( rapidshare.com, megaupload.com, megashare(s), mega, dailymotion.com, myspace.com, ouou.com, stage6.com, tudou.com, veoh.com, youku.com, youtube.com and others.. )

This site is not hosting, not uploading movie files, but search & collect movie files from the internet. Any broken file can be fixed by find another copy elsewhere and updated constantly.
Ever since I discovered this site through my friends, I am getting more updated with movies that are both shown in Singapore as well as those that are exclusively in United States only. It’s encyclopedia of movies range from the latest movie to movies I have enjoyed in my early childhood. Most of all, it’s a free website.

WWW site
http://www.imdb.com

Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel.The IMDb website consists of the largest accumulation of data about filmsand others. In many cases, the information goes beyond simple title or press credits to include complete cast and crew credits, uncredited personnel, production and distribution companies, plot summaries, memorable quotes, awards, reviews, box office performance, filming locations, technical specs, promotional content, and links to official and other websites.

Furthermore, the IMDb tracks titles in production, including major announced projects still in development. The database also houses filmographies for all persons, cast and crew, identified in listed titles. Site visitors wishing only to view information without accessing interactive features can do so without registration. Database content is largely provided and updated by a cadre of volunteer contributors; although 20 members of the IMDb staff are dedicated to monitoring received data.

Upon completition of this Practical, I understand how to identify and compare different categories of Internet resources. The information we got are basically somehow similar. This actually depends on how well each of the site is updated. Basically it’s information on the movies, reviews, thrillers, if possible some sites even provide link to official sites.

The difference is the findings is that each of us may have different preference to choose from the large variety of choices in the internet. Hence, the resource or the URL of the site is very different. Still the findings we found were able to suit the different categories of Internet resources and therefore the resource description may differ a little too.