Friday, July 13, 2012

Mapping Information Activity

     Before this activity I thought I was an expert at researching, especially after 12 college credits in english. I knew about searching with quotes, I frequently used +/- but never knew about  using country codes, that will come in handy when writing about other cultures such as writing a paper about England, it makes more sense to get information from them rather then from an American website. These tools greatly reduce the amount of time needed to research for a paper or project. Without these shortcuts a student could still write a good paper but could have missed out on information, along with taking twice the amount of time needed to make a good paper. While I was working on this assignment I found something useful, Google's advanced search does allot of these shortcuts If you know what the terms mean, so even if a student can't remember what they have learned about internet shortcuts they can be reminded by using advanced search.
     After taking this Mapping Information Activity I think my habits will change, I found that Ask.com is a faster place to look for common questions. While there are many other search engines Google and ask.com are the only ones I would be willing to use on a project, though the others seem useful I can't compare it to these too. Yahoo is a very common search engine, over the years yahoo has degraded their system, and is now just an out of date Google. Search engines like Excite and Go spend too much time throwing adds in the users face making it annoying to do searches with them. Hotbot, I'm not exactly sure what this browser is used for but I am liking it. Whatever I search it seems to find the sites I like most at the top? I think I will be using this browser in the future.
     This activity has taught me allot, The main thing I can take out of this activity is that I should be more open to using different browsers, not just Google. Browsers are made differently, though Google is the most known and the most advanced, other browsers have an objective. As an example Ask.com is used for frequently asked questions, Ask uses 100s of people whose job is to link up websites with questions. Go.com and yahoo are mainly used by travelers, they seem to have the best searches for hotel, rent a car, and flight rates. I want to spend more time with Hotbot.com, I still can't figure out what its primarily used for. This lesson has taught me more about browsing and how to make it more convenient.

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