Lecture Notes on Internet Search & Online Documents
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1. Internet Search

When you search information on Internet, keep the following in mind.

Example 1.1:
What is the origin of the word "news"?

Many people circulate a groundless rumor such that "news" is an acronym of the phrase "north, east, west, south" because news is information from all over the land.
Even some people who are native English speakers post this false information on Internet.
If that were true, then the order of the 4 directions should be either north, east, south, west or north, south, east, west that derive "nesw" or "nsew" instead of "news".
The ordering of north, east, west, south does not logically sound right.

Remark 1.1:
When you look up an autheticated dictionary, you find that the origin of the word "news" is a plural form of the word "new" which came from Greek.
You may wonder why the adjective "new" has a plural form.
In English, nouns have plurals, but adjectives do not.
However, in some Romance languages such as Greek, adjectives do have plurals.

Example 1.2:
When you try to find information about the following, it is not easy to find what you really expected in a reasonable amount of time.
Assume that you has chosen a research topic for your Bachelor thesis to be a method of freezing & thawing organs for transplants.
It will be a breakthrough in medicine once iPS (induced Pluripotent Stem) cell technology will enable regeneration of vital organs (such as a heart, liver and lung).

Review 1.1:
Determine whether information of the following URL is trustworthy.

http://www.improbable.com/airchives/classical/cat/cat.html

Review 1.2:
Look for information about programming X-ray beams of a CyberKnife.

Search Engines Used in English-Speaking Countries
Comparisons among the above search engines are summarized in Best Search Tools Chart.

Google is so dominant that people tend to consider the following though,
you must keep in mind that such a tendency is sometimes a misconception.
To locate information that you are seeking for, you need to learn how to express a query with keywords and phrases.
Google provides us with search operators,
e.g., a dash "-" followed by a keyword excludes web pages including the keyword from search results
and "site:" followed by a domain name or a website narrows search to the specified domain or website.

The following provide informative tips on composition of queries on Internet.

Review 1.3:
Related to Example 1.2 above, compose a query for searching information on iPS.

2. Screening for Trustworthy Information
As was mentioned in the above section, there are a number of websites and Web pages that are fallcies and/or misleading.
Some of them are unintentional such as false positive results in medicine.
The others are malicious such as frauds and misleading attempts.
To select true and accurate information from websites and/or Web pages found by Internet search, we need to acquire a skill for evaluating them.

The following are informative tips on evaluation of online information and deciding which are trustworthy.

Example 2.1:
Content farms such as examiner.com and websites containing user-generated content such as Demand Media are not necessarily trustworthy.

Example 2.2:
Many websites try to gain revenues from advertisements.
They often obscure a distinction between ads and the main content so that viewers undoubtedly click links of ads.

Review 2.1:
Assume that you need to write a research paper on the affects of alcohol on verbal skills.
Search with keywords "alcohol," "verbal skills," and "drinking" on Internet.
Then, identify trustworthy and useful sources of information.

If these keywords are not good enough for the search, then apply tips on query composition.

3. Publishing Online Documents

CS major students should be familiar with publishing information via Internet in the following forms.

There are two critical factors that decide the quality of online documents.
They will be discussed in the next topic "Written Communication."

Remark 3.1:
Do not overuse programming techniques in creation of online content.
Avoid latest technology (often buzz) to show off technical skills and make what techies think is cool.
For example, carousel slides were once popular in creation of Web pages whereas they are now perceived poorly from a viewpoint of UX (User Experience) design.

4. Exercises
  1. Identify at least 3 websites that provide trustworthy information on cybersecutiry and give their URLs.

  2. Write a summary of tips that you think are useful for composing queries in a way for obtaining trustworthy & useful information on Internet quickly.

  3. Write a summary of tips that you think are useful for screening trustworthy information from results of Internet search.

  4. Review the English home page of your department at Hiroshima City University and summarize your suggestions for improving it.

  5. Create a Web page for your academic portfolio (often simply portfolio)
    that compiles self-assessed records and evidence of learning experiences, academic achievements and professional development.

    Remark 4.1:
    Academic portfolios have become common for students (especially, graduate students) in U.S.A. to create, maintain and use a portfolio as a means of job search and/or applications to graduate programs.