Questions about the internet.

Q: How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?
A: Google ranks websites by how often other sites link to you. Google also uses the relevance of your website to make sure that it is to be included in the list of websites it gives you. The rankings of websites on search engines used to be based on the relevance of your website along with the amount of content on it. So after not to long web designers would put large areas of white text with white background. This would create an illusion to the search engine that there was far more content on the web site than there actually was. Google's way of ranking websites got rid of this and has made Google very popular and effective.

Q: Who, or what, makes one page (that you might get in your search results) more useful than another one, so that it is put at the top of your search results?
A: In my opinion I feel that a page's usefulness is based on the source and the amount of material listed. If the source is not good (Wikipedia) then I feel that the page or site is useless. Wikipedia uses information that can be entered by or edited by anyone that feels like they know about the subject. There is a lot of useful factual information Wikipedia but the fact that it can be edited by anyone makes the site, to me, lose it's credibility.
To get to the top of the search engines the page has to be popular among other websites. The more websites that link to it, the higher the ranking will be on the search engine.


Q: What are some of your favorite search engines? Why do you like one more than others?
A: I like Google the most out of any search engine. It has evolved to be tailored to what you need and what you are looking for. It has added separate sections for images, web, maps, and so on. I like it more than others mostly because of habit. It's what I've used for as long as I can remember so as of now it's kind of a natural instinct to go to Google when I need to search for something.

Internet Scavenger Hunt
10 questions to be found on the internet while not using Google or Wikipedia

1. Who was the creator of the infamous "lovebug" computer virus?
Onel de Guzman
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/06/29/philippines.lovebug.02/index.html

2. Who invented the paper clip?
William D. Middlebrook
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/paperclip.htm

3. How did the Ebola virus get its name?
It is named after the Ebola River in Zaire, Africa, near where the first outbreak was noted.
http://www.crystalinks.com/ebola.html

4. What country had the largest recorded earthquake?
Alaska, United States of America
http://earthquakes.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_great_alaskan_earthquake_1964

5. In computer memory/storage terms, how many kilobytes in a terabyte?
1 Billion kilobytes in a terabyte
http://www.cctsolutions.com/HowManyBytes.htm

6. Who is the creator of email?
Ray Tomlinson
http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/email.html

7. What is the storm worm, and how many computers are infected by it?
A worm/Trojan horse/bot that was hidden in attachments of e-mails; 1 to 50 million Computers are affected by the storm worm.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201804528

8. If you wanted to contact the prime minister of Australia directly, what is the most efficient way?
With a message form.
http://www.pm.gov.au/contact/index.cfm

9. Which Brisbane-based punk band is Stephen Stockwell (Head of the School of Arts) a member of?
Black Assassins
https://secure6.ozhosting.com/brisbanewritersfestival/2005/content/standard.asp?name=StockwellS

10. What does the term "Web 2.0" mean in your own words?
After the dot-com crash, the internet was reborn into something better, hence "Web 2.0".
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

New technologies make it easier than ever to communicate with friends and family. Before the telephone there were very limited ways to communicate between people. Then the invention of the telephone which revolutionized communication. At the time of it's invention, the telephone was an amazing piece of technology. But now there is e-mail, mobile phones, Facebook, MySpace, forums, message boards, online games, and even YouTube. I wonder what Alexander Graham Bell would do if he saw someone walking around talking on a mobile phone or checking there Facebook?

Today my main uses of communication tech are e-mail, my mobile phone, and Facebook. The easiest way to communicate in today's age is the mobile phone. It seems as though everybody and their brother has a mobile phone. Before I left the States I remember seeing kids that couldn't have been older than 10 or 12 and they had their own mobile phone. I don't see what need those kids possessed to own their own mobile phone. None the less, mobile phones seem to have become a necessary part of today's society.

I've had a phone since I was able to drive at 16, and I've been on Facebook for about 2 years now. The phone seemed like a sort of right of passage. I need a phone once I became able to drive so it kind of went hand and hand for me. As far as Facebook goes my friends talked me into getting one. I didn't even want to set it up so I made them do it. Privacy became an issue very quickly when Facebook became popular. A lot of people complained when it was opened up to everyone and not just students at Uni. There has been a lot of changes made since it's start to make every user control the amount of information that he or she wants to divulge to the general public. I really didn't use e-mail until I started Uni about 3 years ago. There really wasn't much need for me to e-mail people, everyone I wanted to talk to I could just call. E-mail isn't the most efficient way to communicate with people and it has it's place but I feel as though it is slowly being phased out by newer, faster, better technologies.

I'm Mike McCarthy and I am on a study abroad semester here at Griffith University at Gold Coast. I'm originally from Michigan and I have lived there all of my life, and it's very different here than it is in Michigan. When I left Michigan it was about 0 degrees Fahrenheit, that's about -16 degrees Celsius, and when I arrived in Brisbane it was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit, 25 degrees Celsius. I enjoy a lot of snow activities that I am missing out by being here. I left in the middle of the winter so I missed a lot of snowboarding and snowmobiling this snow season, but there will always be next year. I knew that all the stereotypes about Australia were just that, stereotypes, but I can't say I wasn't a little disappointed when I didn't get off the plane to see red deserts and kangaroos.

Uni here is different than back in Michigan. Classes here are two or three hour lectures and tutorials where as in Michigan classes are an hour long every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

It's been a little difficult to adjust to the climate and the classes and minor things like that, but it's been amazing thus far and I'm sure it won't get bad while I'm here.