Tag Archives: Blog

Research Blog

Everything that we learned the previous week about advanced internet search, searching library catalogs and searching article databases was very helpful to me, not only for this class but for my other classes as well. I did not know about a lot of those search engines. I find the google scholar the most accurate and most informative of all, I got a lot of interesting articles on there about designing and architecture which were of great help to me for my other class. I also like the google books, a lot of books that I had to use for some of my classes, I found those books on google books. I learned a lot about internet search which will always be helpful whenever I have to do another research paper.

Organizing Your Resources

In this chapter of Badke’s Book, Badke introduced “register method” of resource organization. He suggested labeling our resources because it will be easier to retrieve and organize your sources later on. An example is when you have 50 pages of sources from different media; you would want to number the pages to prevent chaos. He also proposed that “you have to keep track of them, including enough bibliographical information” so you won’t need to go back and search again later. He introduced many helpful tips in how to organize your resources. The most helpful tip, in my opinion, is his answers to writing anxiety. I tend to have a lot of information, but I never knew how to start.

Search Engines Behind the Scene

Everyone knows how to and what search engines are but not everyone do it effectively. At least that’s what Badke said. Badke also taught me tons of techniques and tricks to efficiently narrow down my search results (e.g. using NOT in search engines exclude unwanted results). The way a search engine work can be compare to a complex factory assembly line. There are many steps and procedures that needs to take place every time we press a search button as mention in “How a Search Engine Works“. I also learned that companies like Google invest heavily their search engine; Google has more people working on their search engine than any other of their projects. From personal experience, I learned that Google makes a lot of money by configuring the pagerank system and putting payer’s WebPages in beginning of search results.

Assignment 8

Folksonomy: A Game of High-tech, this reading is focused on tags. It’s telling us the importance of tags and how tags can be really useful when you are doing a research or something. There are so many new stuffs being uploaded every second online, it’s hard for people to read everything. So tags can be very helpful when you are looking for an article or an information on something, however there are so many tags as well and when you type that article’s name or the information on major search engines like Google, there’ll be so many stuffs and it’s going to take some time before you find the right article or information. Therefore to ease things up and make your life a lot easier, del.icio.us comes into play. Where on Google you’ll find thousands of websites for the information you are looking for, del.icio.us will just give you much less results but they’ll be more accurate. The del.icio.us website can be very handy when you are looking for articles.

Copyrights Plagiarism and Fair Use

The assigned readings on fair use and plagiarism were long and boring or maybe it was because I read it after watching the videos. I find the videos very informative and yet entertaining.  The first video had me really thinking about how technology changed laws over the time in order to complement with technological advancements. In the video, Larry Lessig brought really good points on copyrights. He explained that copyright laws are restricting creativity and it can be prevented to benefit both sides. The second video was not only amusing but it was informative as well. While I was enjoying the video I learned many facts. I had no idea that copyrights last 70 years or 100 years if it is under a company.

Online Privacy

The two readings were long informative articles that exposed really important matters regarding online privacy. The first reading  Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck points out many flaws in Facebook’s privacy system. After reading the article I became more aware how exposed I really am to my friends and to the world. Anything shared on Facebook can affect not only someone’s life but their future career as well. In the second article Online Privacy: Do Americans need better Privacy?, Marshall implanted fear into my naïve little mind on how naked I really am when I surf the net. I feel that the government should strictly regulate online privacy though they fear that by doing so may hinder the economic growth. Regardless online privacy is a topic that is raising a lot of attentions.

The politics of research (Brian Martin)

In The Politics of Research, Chapter 7 of Information Liberation, Brian Martin stated “The work of professional researchers is strongly influenced by funding, disciplines, hierarchy, and competition.” I think the message Martin is trying to convey is that in order to carry out a formal research you will need funding from government or corporate agendas (in most cases).  The fact that researches are supported by funding, the researchers are restricted to follow the guideline  set  by the providers of funding, unlike university researches which are less targeted to specific outcomes and more freedom to be creative.  I fully support martin when he said “The corruptions of power associated with the expert establishments should be recognized.” And his proposition on to solve this problem with popularization was brilliant!

Assignment 5 – Politics of research

The reading, “The Politics of Research” by “Brian Martin” is very compact, covers vast variety of knowledge and its use in research. But the word, “research” is never alone; it comes with money, power, competition, status and politics too. Large organizations contribute large amount of money towards research but on biased basis because they want the research to be beneficiary to themselves only. They want to make more money than they invested in the research or sometimes they want to be in competition. One good and simple example could be a software developing company like Apple or Microsoft, which have their own software developers working for them. Since, I already mentioned the word, “politics” before; I can also say that when it comes to selecting a team of researchers, politics also exist. Sometimes they want to hire people from different competitive companies by paying more money. Organizations who are funding a research want king of one specific field or in other words, they want people who are professionals with vast knowledge in the field of research because most of the researches are narrow and highly distinguished.

If your blog post is late…

A question came up today about credit for late blog posts. Blog posts are due by the beginning of the class for which they are assigned. If you submit a blog post within 48 hours of its due date and time, you can earn up to 1/2 a point of credit. Remember, blog posts are 20% of your grade, and there are 20 of them, so each post is worth 1 point. I hope that clears it up. Any other questions? Feel free to leave a comment below. ~Prof. L