Week of October 4th

1) This week, I learned about virtual index on the world wide web and how it is used to narrow down searches. For instance, if I wanted to do a search on Tyler Clementi, I would search: site:nytimes.com "tyler clementi" + gay. I believe virtual index is very useful for research projects because to get more accurate and specific facts about a particular topic, it is best to a search with less results. I will be using site:command for my other classes if I need to do research on the world wide web.

2) From the material this week, I already knew that www.easywhois.com can help me find out who owns the website. It is useful to know who owns a website, especially when doing research for school, because the author might be part of a group or organization that has a specific agenda. Sometimes these agenda's are not appropriate because you can find racism and discrimination on web pages that you would never expect to find. For instance, www.martinlutherking.org is a website that is not permitted through the school because it portrays racism that contains invalid information. 

3) From looking at Michelle's blog, I saw that she reviewed what R.E.A.L. meant. Read the URL, Examine the content, Ask about the author or owner, and Look at the link. Using R.E.A.L. can help identify whether a web page is personal or is owned by a company, organization, etc. There are three basic questions that you should ask about the URL is what is the domain name, what is the extension, and are you on a personal page? Usually you can evaluate whether the URL is personal by seeing whether there are tilda's or percent signs.