Activity 4

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using search engines?

The advantage of using search engine, is that it has most of the information you can search for in the internet, and with absence of book it is a great help to get information.
The disadvantage is that you are not sure if the information is accurate and you have to gamble for it.

Compare and contrast individual search engines and search meta search engines.

In individual the information is stored within the site then the meta use multiple search engine in the net.

When is it appropriate to use a search engine?

when looking for information on the internet, and if the information is reliable and accurate by following the reference or if has a author. If you can't find it the book or in the library you have to used the internet.

When is it appropriate to use a search/subject directory?

when you search for a specific information in the internet.

Question 3
•What is an Invisible Web or ‗Deep Web‘?

There are parts of the Internet that search engines simply can't see. The search engine's  robotic "crawlers" either miss or are locked out of these areas on the Internet.  Behind the barriers lie treasure troves of quality information. Collectively this information is called the Invisible Web.  There are many categories of invisible information missed by the popular search engines.


•How do you find an Invisible Web?

Simply think "databases" and keep your eyes open. You can find searchable databases containing invisible web pages in the course of routine searching in most general web directories. Of particular value in academic research are:

    ipl2
    Infomine

Use Google and other search engines to locate searchable databases by searching a subject term and the word "database". If the database uses the word database in its own pages, you are likely to find it in Google. The word "database" is also useful in searching a topic in the Google Directory or the Yahoo! directory, because they sometimes use the term to describe searchable databases in their listings.

Examples:
    plane crash database
    languages database
    toxic chemicals database

Remember that the Invisible Web exists. In addition to what you find in search engine results (including Google Scholar) and most web directories, there are other gold mines you have to search directly. This includes all of the licensed article, magazine, reference, news archives, and other research resources that libraries and some industries buy for those authorized to use them.

As part of your web search strategy, spend a little time looking for databases in your field or topic of study or research. The contents of these may not be freely available: libraries and corporations buy the rights for their authorized users to view the contents. If they appear free, it's because you are somehow authorized to search and read the contents (library card holder, company employee, etc.).

•Why are these web pages not available in search engines or subject directories?

Webpages that have been intentionally skipped by search engine crawlers. Webpages that are dynamically assembled from online database content. Password protected webpages. Non-HTML resources like image, audio, animation, and PDF files

Activity 2

• Write a short essay (250 words) on the "Impact of the Internet in our world today"

The impact of the internet today is more likely a new generation of addiction to the people. Because you can almost do anything you can in the internet like gaming online which most of the youth today are addicts to it, social networking which makes people find a lost friend or communicate with friends anywhere in the world, gain money from the net like selling online and working online. Somehow some people used the internet to do crimes like hacking accounts sort of using their credit card accounts for their own self, using other accounts like facebooks, friendster or twitter which they posed as you. But one of the most important the internet in our life today’s is about information and details like in education you can searched in the internet if you have assignments, projects or thesis.

• Give a brief desription of the following Internet organizations

• ISOC – The Internet Society (ISOC) is a nonprofit organisation founded in 1992 to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education and policy. We are dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world.
• IAB- The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) is the committee charged with oversight of the technical and engineering development of the Internet by the Internet Society (ISOC).
• IESG - is an acronym for the Internet Engineering Steering Group. This group is assigned with the responsibility of technical management of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which concentrates producing high quality and relevant technical documents for the betterment of the internet. The IESG provides technical management for all the activities conducted by IETF and the Internet Standard Process.
• IRTF - The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) focuses on longer term research issues related to the Internet while the parallel organization, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), focuses on the shorter term issues of engineering and standards making. The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) promotes research of importance to the evolution of the Internet by creating focused, long-term research groups working on topics related to Internet protocols, applications, architecture and technology.
• IETF - The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) develops and promotes Internet standards, cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite. It is an open standards organization, with no formal membership or membership requirements. All participants and managers are volunteers, though their work is usually funded by their employers or sponsors; for instance, the current chairperson is funded by VeriSign and the U.S. government's National Security Agency.
• IANA - The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is the entity that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Internet Protocol-related symbols and numbers. IANA is operated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, also known as ICANN.
• InterNIC - The Internet Network Information Center, known as InterNIC, was the Internet governing body primarily responsible for domain name and IP address allocations from 1972 until September 18, 1998 when this role was assumed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). It was accessed through the domain name internic.net, with email, FTP and World Wide Web services run at various times by SRI, Network Solutions, Inc and AT&T.
• ICANN - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN, play /ˈaɪkæn/ eye-kan) is a non-profit corporation headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, United States, that was created on September 18, 1998, and incorporated on September 30, 1998[1] to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. government by other organizations, notably the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

ICANN is responsible for managing the Internet Protocol address spaces (IPv4 and IPv6) and assignment of address blocks to regional Internet registries, for maintaining registries of Internet protocol identifiers, and for the management of the top-level domain name space (DNS root zone), which includes the operation of root nameservers.

• Arrange the organizations in chronological order

1.      InterNIC

2.      ISOC

3.      IETF

4.      IRTF

5.      IANA

6.      IAB

7.      IESG

8.      ICANN

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Architecture_Board

http://www.isoc.org/isoc/ 

http://icannwiki.com/index.php/IESG

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Task_Force

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Engineering_Task_Force

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Authority

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterNIC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN

Web Browser

Activity 3

·  What is a web browser? How does it work?

A software application used to locate and display Web pages. The two most popular browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox. Both of these are graphical browsers, which means that they can display graphics as well as text. In addition, most modern browsers can present multimedia information, including sound and video, though they require plug-ins for some formats.

·  What is a bookmark?

Internet browser feature that allows a user to go back to a previously visited website by clicking on the saved link - without retyping the site's address.

·  What is the purpose of a web [browser] cache?

Cache is a high speed memory which is basically used for the following reason:

As the speed of the main memory is not as much as the speed of the CPU. So just to compensate the speed mismatch between the CPU and main memory the cache is used in between the two. So whenever the CPU asks for any data its being checked with the cache memory and if present then "cache hit" occurs or else "cache miss" occurs where the CPU takes the data from the main memory and that data's copy is being send to the cache for any further operation where the CPU can request for the same data.

·  What is a web [browser] plugin?

Plug-in applications are programs that can easily be installed and used as part of your Web browser. Initially, the Netscape browser allowed you to download, install, and define supplementary programs that played sound or motion video or performed other functions. These were called helper applications. However, these applications run as a separate application and require that a second window be opened. A plug-in application is recognized automatically by the browser and its function is integrated into the main HTML file that is being presented.

·  Choose three types of web browsers and answer the following questions for each browser.

Internet Explorer

1.       How do you enable tabbed browsing? private browsing? Ctrl+T

2.       How do you set homepages? Press Alt + F then Click Tools then Click Internet Options and edit the Hompage box.

3.       How do you customize search providers? First install the desired search provider so that it will be available in the selection box.

4.       How do you bookmark a page? How do you organize your book marks? To bookmark a site click ctrl+D and to organized click Favorites then Click Organized Favorites.

5.       How do you clear the cache?

Click the "Tools" menu bar. Then Choose "Internet Options". Then On the "General" tab, click "Clear History". Then When it asks "Delete all items in your History folder?", click "OK". Then click "OK".

6.       How do you install a plugin? Press Ctrl+Shift+A

How do you save pages offline? File, Save As, just choose .html as your Save As Type.

Google Chrome

1.       How do you enable tabbed browsing? private browsing? Ctrl+T

2.       How do you set homepages?

Follow these steps to adjust your home page settings:

·         Click the wrench icon on the browser toolbar.

·         Select Options (Preferences on Mac and Linux; Settings on a Chromebook).

·         Click the Basics tab.

Ø  Set your home page
Pick the page you'd like to be your home page in the "Home page" section. You can select to use the New Tab Page as your home page. To use another page, select "Open this page" and enter the web address of the page you'd like to use.

Ø  Add the home button to the browser toolbar
Want a button on the browser toolbar that you can click to open your home page? Select the "Show Home button" checkbox in the "Toolbar" section. 

Ø  Set your home page as your startup page
To see your homepage whenever you open Google Chrome, go to the "On startup" section and select "Open the home page."

3.       How do you customize search providers?

Go to Settings (Symbol next to address bar) then go to Options then pick basics , You will Find "Default Search" and MANAGE Next to it.

4.       How do you bookmark a page? How do you organize your book marks?

·         Click the star next to the address of the page you are on or use Ctrl+D to bookmark it.

·         Open the bookmarks bar (ctrl+b) right click it and click add page

·         Drag a link up to the bookmarks bar (ctrl+b if it is not already open)

·         Go to Tools (the wrench icon) and click on Import Bookmarks if you want to import from firefox or explorer

5.       How do you clear the cache?

1. Click the Tools menu. (the wrench in the upper-right corner)

2. Select Options.

3. Click the Under the Hood option on the left pane.

4. Click Clear browsing data…

5. Check the boxes for the types of information you wish to delete.

·         Clear browsing history

·         Clear download history

·         Empty the cache

·         Delete cookies

·         Clear saved passwords

You can also choose the period of time you wish to delete cached information using the Clear data from this period drop down menu.

Click Clear Browsing Data when ready.

6.       How do you install a plugin?

First you should download and Dev Channel installer from the Chromium Developer page.

Next, right click on the chrome icon, click on properties and type the following” To Enable Plugins: –enable-plugins, To Enable Extensions: –enable-extensions, To Enable Greasemonkey Scripts: –enable-greasemonkey and click “Apply”                                                                                          

You have all three at a time for better compatibility like this – enable-plugins –enable-extension –enable-greasemonkey.

You are all set to install Plugins, Greasemonkey and Extensions in the Chrome Browser. Just start the browser and get sample extension page.

7.       How do you save pages offline?

Chrome also has a Save as option. You can access it from the Page icon that’s next to the address bar. You can also load the webpage and right click anywhere on the page to get to the context menu. Or do the quick keyboard thing with a press on Ctrl+S.

The same kind of Save As dialog window appears and lets you save the page as Web Page, complete in a location of your choice.

Mozilla Firefox

1.       How do you enable tabbed browsing? private browsing?  Ctrl+Z

2.       How do you set homepages?

·         Open up the website you want to be your home page. If you want a blank home page, open a new tab.

·         Click on the icon to the left of the web address, drag it to the Home button and then let go.

·         Click Yes to set this as your home page.

3.       How do you customize search providers?

4.       How do you bookmark a page? How do you organize your book marks? Ctrl+D and Ctrl+Shift+D

5.       How do you clear the cache?

·         At the top of the Firefox window, click on the Firefox button (Tools menu in Windows XP) and then click Options.

·         Select the Advanced panel.

·         Click on the Network tab.

·         In the Offline Storage section, click Clear Now.

·         Click OK to close the Options window.

6.       How do you install a plugin?

Open a new browser window using Firefox.

Go to the Firefox plugins Web page (see Resources below).

Browse through the list of plugins that are available. Choose from items such as Shockwave, Windows Media Player and Quicktime.

Look beneath the plugin you'd like to download. Find your operating system and click the version number link listed beneath it. You'll be re-routed to the downloads page for the specific plugin you wish to add.

Look for the 'Download' or 'Download Now' button and click it. You may be prompted to save a file. Click 'Save File.' A dialog box will show the download progress. When the download is complete, click 'Clean Up.'

Open the plugin after it finishes downloading. If you left the default setting in place, the plugin will be on your desktop. Simply clicking the icon will install it in Firefox.

How do you save pages offline?

From the menu, click on File ““ Save Page As”¦ (Or alternatively, press Ctrl+S). The Save As dialog window appears. Select Web Page, complete in the Save as type dropdown. The webpage is saved as a set of HTML file and a folder that holds the other elements of the page.