While completing the last task in Module 4 Searching the Web, I came across this an amazing web app Diigo.
Essentially it's a cross between social bookmarking and a research/reference tool where as you can not only bookmark a site, but highlight words or leave a sticky note with annotations ON THE PAGE for future reference. Diigo bills itself as a research tool and knowledge sharing community. While I haven't had a full play with it yet it's free to set up an account so hopefully tomorrow I shall be able to poke around and see how it works.
The ingenuity of people on the web never ceases to amaze me!
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Net11 Reflections Week Eleven
Another week down and some interesting things have come and gone through the course of it. I am now finally catching up on course work while reading blogs and forum posts has been a bit slower.
The last couple of tasks in module four have given me a couple of interesting things to think about, particularly the types of tools I use to manage my time and productivity online. The more I have thought about it the more I am looking at stripping back the applications I use, and where possible move more into the cloud.
I have achieved this in a couple of places such as email and RSS feeds. I am starting to use Delicious more and more for bookmarks and have just set up a Pro Flickr account to get our photos online (and backed up). I have also come to appreciate my browser more, including how it can interface with so much more than just a simple web page: I now have plugins for Twitter and Delicious amongst other things.
So now we are drawing quickly to a close for Net11 (just two weeks to go). There still seems so much more to learn and discuss and I still have a couple of tasks and the like to complete. To date this has been a fantastic journey and reading through some fellow students blogs I can see they too have been impacted by what they are learning. I think both Cynthia and Peter can be proud of what this group is taking away.
Don't you think so?
The last couple of tasks in module four have given me a couple of interesting things to think about, particularly the types of tools I use to manage my time and productivity online. The more I have thought about it the more I am looking at stripping back the applications I use, and where possible move more into the cloud.
I have achieved this in a couple of places such as email and RSS feeds. I am starting to use Delicious more and more for bookmarks and have just set up a Pro Flickr account to get our photos online (and backed up). I have also come to appreciate my browser more, including how it can interface with so much more than just a simple web page: I now have plugins for Twitter and Delicious amongst other things.
So now we are drawing quickly to a close for Net11 (just two weeks to go). There still seems so much more to learn and discuss and I still have a couple of tasks and the like to complete. To date this has been a fantastic journey and reading through some fellow students blogs I can see they too have been impacted by what they are learning. I think both Cynthia and Peter can be proud of what this group is taking away.
Don't you think so?
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Module 4 - Boolean Searching Task
As Google automatically assumes the Boolean operator AND my initial search results were actually pretty limited so you could say there was some room to wriggle.
To achieve absolute maximum results I used the Boolean operator OR between each keyword "desktop OR meta OR search OR osx" and closed up "os x" to "osx". This resulted in an increase from 206,000 results to a more respectable figure of 7,090,000,000. Heh!
Obviously this is not a manageable search as Google is looking for pages which contain anyone of the keywords. To narrow down my results I began by removing the OR operator and changed my keywords "meta search" to "metasearch"; I now had 111,000 results to go through. The really funny part about doing this; results 3 and 4 are my own blog entry regarding the Search Task! Have a look if you don't believe me.
At this stage I felt that my initial keywords were affecting the quality of my results. To try and improve results I switched keywords and included the operators + and - with various keywords. As a result my search of "metasearch software +mac -windows" now yielded only 13,400 results. Much more manageable and of better quality overall (it didn't include my blog entry).
Now, other than using a specialist search engine, I'm not fully aware of a foolproof way to only get results back from university sites. It was mentioned on WebCT to use "+.edu" to achieve this, personally I found that this did not filter results enough. In the end I added "-.com" to my search string and again changed my keywords including adding another Boolean operator. As such my search string was now "(metasearch AND software) +.edu -.com" which gave me 519 mostly results from government or educational sites.
Of course I could have just used the keywords "metasearch software mac" on Google Scholar to get something similar results wise.
To achieve absolute maximum results I used the Boolean operator OR between each keyword "desktop OR meta OR search OR osx" and closed up "os x" to "osx". This resulted in an increase from 206,000 results to a more respectable figure of 7,090,000,000. Heh!
Obviously this is not a manageable search as Google is looking for pages which contain anyone of the keywords. To narrow down my results I began by removing the OR operator and changed my keywords "meta search" to "metasearch"; I now had 111,000 results to go through. The really funny part about doing this; results 3 and 4 are my own blog entry regarding the Search Task! Have a look if you don't believe me.
At this stage I felt that my initial keywords were affecting the quality of my results. To try and improve results I switched keywords and included the operators + and - with various keywords. As a result my search of "metasearch software +mac -windows" now yielded only 13,400 results. Much more manageable and of better quality overall (it didn't include my blog entry).
Now, other than using a specialist search engine, I'm not fully aware of a foolproof way to only get results back from university sites. It was mentioned on WebCT to use "+.edu" to achieve this, personally I found that this did not filter results enough. In the end I added "-.com" to my search string and again changed my keywords including adding another Boolean operator. As such my search string was now "(metasearch AND software) +.edu -.com" which gave me 519 mostly results from government or educational sites.
Of course I could have just used the keywords "metasearch software mac" on Google Scholar to get something similar results wise.
Module 4 - Search Engine Task
For the non-mac users in the unit, OS X's Sherlock has been replaced by the much niftier Spotlight. Unfortunately I have not been able to work out how to make Spotlight search multiple online search engines, nor have I been able to find a desktop metasearch engine tool for a Mac. As such I have used the online metasearch engine Search.com to complete step two of this task. Now on with the show.
Search 1
Site: Google.com
Keywords: desktop meta search os x
Results: 206, 000
Check out the search results from Google
Search 2
Site: Search.com
Keywords: desktop meta search os x
Results: 166, 020
Check out the results from Search.com
Google not only yields more results, but the relevancy of the results is also far better with Google than Search. Google's first result is indeed for a desktop metasearch app (albeit something similar to spotlight rather than for the web) unlike Search.com's self referencing list of web search sites.
I am a big fan of Google. 9 times out of 10 it finds what I am looking for and when it doesn't, I use Google to find me a specialist database or directory to try and find more particular information on what I am searching for. Then I go back to Google and refine my search.
Search 1
Site: Google.com
Keywords: desktop meta search os x
Results: 206, 000
Check out the search results from Google
Search 2
Site: Search.com
Keywords: desktop meta search os x
Results: 166, 020
Check out the results from Search.com
Google not only yields more results, but the relevancy of the results is also far better with Google than Search. Google's first result is indeed for a desktop metasearch app (albeit something similar to spotlight rather than for the web) unlike Search.com's self referencing list of web search sites.
I am a big fan of Google. 9 times out of 10 it finds what I am looking for and when it doesn't, I use Google to find me a specialist database or directory to try and find more particular information on what I am searching for. Then I go back to Google and refine my search.
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