Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Google Advanced Search

Advanced Google Search is a new way to search topics easier with very good accuracy. It is a great way to fine exactly what you are looking for when you type in a certain topic.

I have never used this type of search engine before so this was fairly new to me. I usually use the regular Google search when looking up things, but that just leads to problems. When you type in a topic in regular Google search you get hundreds and thousands of results and many of them lead to the wrong website.

Lets say you want to see who won the 2004 World Series. What you do is go to www.google.com and look for the “Advanced Search” button next to the regular search button. This will lead to another page where you can type in specific phrases or words that you are looking for. So what I would type in is “2004 World Series” in any of the areas where you can type except the “unwanted phrases.” From here you can click search and multiple pages show up. You will first find out that the Baltimore Orioles did not even come close to the World Series.

From this search I was able to come up with specific results and I was able to get the search narrowed down to less pages to look through. It was much easier when trying to find the exact words or phrases I was looking for when searching up how bad the Baltimore Orioles are and how great the Red Sox are.

The searches can be even more specific when you look up things you can look them up in certain languages such as French, Russian, and Chinese. There are other options that you can choose such as the reading level of the pages and the amount of results per page you can have.

In the end I believe that Google Advanced Search is a lot easier than the regular search. It was way easier when looking up specific details and stories and also held the search to less pages making it easier to not have to scroll through.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

What's this "RSS feed" I keep hearing about?

An RSS feed is a simple and easy way to keep websites people visit easier to access. If you have a Mac computer you may notice at the top that there is this bar filled with all of these website in it. A "Feed Reader" is needed with all of this because it is the one that can keep you updated with your website. This is what an RSS feed is. It is used for people to get easier access to a website. Many news websites have RSS feeds that allow you to go to their website with just one click of the mouse. And along with those news websites there is a drop down bar that has all of the top stories in it so that someone can go straight to a big story without having to go through a lot of pages. With the help of “RsSS in Plain English” I was able to understand that an RSS news feed is “like the video store but Netflis.” This is theying to show how RSS feeds work. Instead of having to go out to find news and stories you can just have the feed send them to you, just like Netflix. According to whatisrss.com RSS feeds “allow you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in.”

Thursday, December 9, 2010

To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

Twitter is a social networking website where one can update people from all over about what they are doing. A very useful if someone wants to keep up with a friend or family member. With already 190 million plus members Twitter still remains one of the top sites to follow. The process of a "tweet" (a persons comment) is someone writes a little update of what they are doing, for example "I am typing a blog post", and all of that persons followers can now see what that person is doing. Recently people have been able to "tweet" from their phones making it easier to stay updated.

Another function of Twitter is it allows people to follow other people or groups. So if someone wanted to follow what their favorite sports star or politician was doing then they could do it by following their page. A Wyoming Seminary student, Jack Cartwright, says that "I can find things faster on twitter than on the news and I can see what people are talking about on hot topics which is very helpful when you want to be up to the minute."

Another Seminary student Kristian Stefanides does not find Twitter very useful saying "I do not think twitter is useful because you can simply only "tweet" I like Facebook much better because you can IM, post pictures, write on a friend's wall, etc. Twitter is too many small updates."

In the end Twitter is a very useful tool for keeping in touch with friends and family all around the globe.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Whys blogging so important?

Blogging is a new subject to me, therefore, I can not pretend to say I know a lot about these things. They seem to be a good way to obtain some information and get other opinions of people all around the world. But I think I don't know enough to side with if they are good or not yet. Everyone has the right to say what they want and blogs are a helpful way for those people to get their opinions out. But I really don't see the point in them because opinions from one person to another would be more interesting in person rather just commenting on someone’s blog post. It is true that people seem to spend more time on the computer more than ever and staying away form the traditional news paper way of obtaining information, and blogging seems to be a new and good way to obtain this information. Mostly everyone, nowadays, has acces to a computer so they could look up several things if they wanted to. All they would have to do is look at top bogging sites and look up their topics. Its that easy.