Module 4 - Evaluating The Web

As a part of the Concepts assignment I was introduced, in no uncertain terms, to the concept of evaluating and annotating my reference sites. At the time I really thought nothing of it and felt it was more a waste of time rather than to my benefit; really why couldn't those 200 words be better used writing ABOUT the concept.

Now with the assignment behind me and finally completing Module 4, I have come to truly appreciate and understand the need for this type of evaluation and annotation. As a direct result, I have become more and more reliant on tagging my bookmarks and writing a brief annotation about the page, if needed. In this manner I have began to really manage the information presented to me and cross reference it for future use.

What really intrigues me though, more and more online resources are allowing Internet users to do this quickly and easily. From social bookmarking with Delicious, Diigo's text highlighting or Google's SearchWiki feature. Browsers are even getting more in on the deal with Firefox now auto suggesting popular tags for sites and allowing notes (annotations) in bookmarks. It seems that information management is really starting to come to the fore.

So as we move forward on the Internet, these type of features are definitly becoming essential to manage the vast amount of information presented to us, and how we use these tools becomes even more important.

Module 4 - Organising Search Information Task

After you using the Internet for awhile, you soon realise that you need a good strategy for managing all that information you come across just by browsing, searching or other nefarious means.

My primary method of managing this information is bookmarking. As I always have a browser open, I generally bookmark and save into one of several folders that I have arranged. As I sometimes use 2 or 3 different browsers on 2 or 3 devices (laptop, desktop, iPhone, work machine, etc), keeping bookmarks in sync has been a bit of a problem. To manage this issue I use the Foxmarks plugin to sync all bookmarks across all machines and browsers.

Another bookmarking method I have recently started to embrace is Delicious. An online social bookmarking site, I love how Delicious allows me to find other peoples treasure and for me to share mine. Because of Delicious (and Net11) I have also really started to tag my bookmarks (both in Delicious and my browser) and add short annotations (notes) to help me manage that information in the future.

In relation to the task I bookmarked my top three results via Delicious. These were bookmarks relating to my study hence this method. I tagged each result "ouanet11, module4, search, result" and made a short annotation as to the information on the site (and reason for bookmarking the page).

I really like the idea of social bookmarking, sharing tags and notes on pages, finding other peoples nuggets of useful (or not so useful information). Now through Net11 I have been able to have more of a play with Delicious and now I'm now starting to think about moving all my bookmarks there, really it's just another step towards the cloud.