Ethnic and Racial Images in the Media

Stacey, Tori and Rob...

Rob

Comparison of Visual Search Engines/ Open Directory vs. Google

After checking out all the innovative types of web pages I am fairly intrigued in the possibilities internet database searching has. When you think about it our structure of search engine is very primitive. I though out of all the search engines that http://news.stamen.com was a very good web site to gain general knowledge because you can scroll across the color chart and find an infant number of names and topics on which to read. However, there were no strict distinctions or guidelines to the chart. The visual thesaurus was also very useful and visually stimulating. Kartoo was probably the easiest to understand at first because the visual layout is pretty straightforward yet at the same time represented very well visually. The Touchgraph Google Search was by far the most visually intense but it was also the most complicated to use. I like the news stamen site the best because it offered unlimited resources on unlimited topics all displayed in a visually engaging way. I think I liked Mooter the least because it was most like the standard search engine.

The open Directory is a very useful idea, however it has troubles all its own. Google is far easier to find effective web pages for what you are searching for because you can search for information directly related to your topic where in the Open Directory it is not as guaranteed. However, the open Directory offered many alternative web sites that perhaps you would not be prone to search had you used Google.

Comparison of Visual Search

visulization searching, google, and open directory comparissons

What I Liked Best...

The best one was probably the straight forward and easy to use Mooter.com. I typed in a search (coldplay) and got a list of categories like BAND, or LYRICS, or POSTERS, etc. And all I had to do was search through those, and get a whole list of sites directly related to my precise search. No sorting through piles of Google pages. They were categorized and that makes me happy.

What I Liked Least...

Anything BUT Mooter.com because they just seemed like they were flashy designs that were good for nothing but giving my synonyms and alternate searching terms, which, while that is a plus, doesn't give websites to click on quick and easy like. They just seem like tools where graphic designers and librarians show off. And new.stamen seemed to me to be a popularity contest, which is interesting but doesn't give solid information. just data.

Google vs. Open directory...

Google is, as always, fast and easy to use. I typed in the band Coldplay for google and got the typical results (ie. the bands official home page, amazon.com's listings of the band, a few major fansites, and the other music publications of the band's work like interviews, reviews, pictures, etc). Open Directory, on the other hand, separated my results into categories like: Arts, Music, Shopping, etc

The results were organized, easier to sort through, but for some reason, in different languages. For a more organized search on a topic that a user might not know lots about, Open directory would be the way to go. Butfor something like Coldplay, which I'm pretty well versed on, I like google because it's fast, easy, and i can explore and pick through a lot of sites in a pretty efficient manner.

Amy Orfanakos

Hi, my name is Amy and I am 19 years old and in my first year at Western. I am originally from Richmondhill, On where i live with my parents, my older brother who goes to school in Guelph and my dog Kelsey. I live in Saugeen and eventhough it was my last choice, I LOVE IT...

Visualization Tools and Open Directory vs. Google

1) The visualization tool I liked the best was the site http://kartoo.com. The search results were broken down into clusters that linked to each other in different ways. This allows the searcher to pick and choose from the visual concept map which sites are relevant. There is also a synopsis that appears to the left of the screen when choosing different combinations, therefore the searching process is made faster and more efficient. There are also suggested words that can be used to make the search more specific. This site is visually stimulating, which makes conducting an effective search easier. I liked this site because the pages retrieved were useful and because the links between the ideas helped me to clarify the topic of my search.

The visualization tool I liked the least was the site http://news.stamen.com. Although I think this is an interesting idea for a news search engine, the visuals on the opening page were much too jumbled and convoluted. There is a lack of organization as the coloured blocks that the searcher can click on for information on different people and topics made the site difficult to orientate. I found that this opening page hindered my ability to use the site to its full potential as I didn't really understand how it worked. This site was unorganized and the visual aspect was frustrating as too many possible examples are provided on the first page, which only discourages the searcher.

2) The advantages of using the Open Directory search engine are numerous. First of all, the Open Directory is more organized and provides specific categories, sub-categories, and languages in which to conduct searches. This allows for more relevant matches. Also, once you have entered your search there are numerous suggested categories that can be linked to in order to guide your search. However, an advantage of using Google instead of the Open Directory is that the advanced search option is offered, which seems to narrow the search more efficiently than the categories provided on the Open Directory. It is also important to take into account the topic of research. For instance, if searching for broad information on a favourite television show, Google would be the better choice. However, if you have a focused topic for an essay you are researching, the Open Directory may be more beneficial as you will know which category to search within. Therefore, when conducting certain searches the Open Directory will suggest that you use Google. In conclusion, both search engines are useful for different types of searches. The Open Directory is beneficial for searches involving certain categories and broader topics whereas Google searches are helpful in retrieving specific word searches.

Open Directory vs. Google

The Open Directory searching tool is very useful when examining specifics and potential web pages to be used in researching. The overall interface for both search engines are extremely simple and user friendly. I prefer Google because you can search direct information and not just web pages as in the Open directory. In the directory searching requires a little more patience than in Google but in many cases patience yields results. The Google searching tool can be used in all instaces for research and has many more advanced features then that of the Open Directory. When searching through categories much of the web pages were somewhat underground and tended to steer clear of the mainstream. For example searching for golf putters none of the big name golf makers web pages popped up and the ones that were exhibited were no name un advertised companies. Personally I find it much easier to use Google simply for the time factor and relevance but the idea of having a fully edited Directory of potentially helpful web pages recommended by others is a great idea and concept which I beleive can be pushed futher by the capability of the world wide web.

Comparison of Visual Search Engines

After checking out all the innovative types of web pages I am fairly intrigued in the possibilities internet database searching has. When you think about it our structure of search engine is very primitive. I though out of all the search engines that http://news.stamen.com was a very good web site to gain general knowledge because you can scroll across the color chart and find an infant number of names and topics on which to read. However, there were no strict distinctions or guidelines to the chart. The visual thesaurus was also very useful and visually stimulating. Kartoo was probably the easiest to understand at first because the visual layout is pretty straightforward yet at the same time represented very well visually. The Touchgraph Google Search was by far the most visually intense but it was also the most complicated to use. I like the news stamen site the best because it offered unlimited resources on unlimited topics all displayed in a visually engaging way. I think I liked Mooter the least because it was most like the standard search engine.

The Open Directory vs. Google

The Open Directory vs. Google

As far as results were concerned, both Google and The Open Directory seem to return similar amounts. The Google results have more returned results that are directly related to the topic, but through using the directory to specific topics and subtopics, The Open Directory provides many specifically related results. Although not all these results that are found in the directory of The Open Directory are specifically related to the originally searched topic, many of the websites themselves are full of other useful content. I also found Google to be much more comprehensive with keyword searches. The Open directory returned no results for “ethnicity media” and suggested searching on Google. Therefore, for conducting simple keyword searches I find Google to be much easier, but with using directories to search, the Open Directory provides a more effective list of topics and subtopics.

Web Visual navigation tools

Visualization Tool sites

The visualization tool that I liked the most was the site http://news.stamen.com. It was very easy and fun to use. It is an easy way to become up to date with current events as people in the news are directly linked with online news stories related to them. It is very useful because it provides a large list of results specifically relating to a person. People often recognize news stories by the names of people, businesses, etc. that are involved and not necessarily the exact content of the stories, making it an easy tool to use for searching current events. The fun aspect is the colour coding that determines who is a winner and a loser in the news recently. It makes it seem like a tabloid, but the difference is that all the stories are true. The colour coding is also very easy to read and recognize, as opposed to some of the visual representations of the other visualization tools sites.

The site which I liked the least was http://visualthesaurus.com. I found this site to be of very limited use. When searching Media Theory, I was provided with other search terms that had for the most part nothing to do with media theory. The site was also very bland and unappealing visually. Perhaps this site would be useful for somebody who would like to start searching for an extremely general topic. However, in university studies, this is very rarely the case.

Beyond search engines lab for tuesday march 8th, 3:00pm

2. New visual tools
a. Of the new visual tools used today the one i liked the best was Kartoo. i liked it because it uses a concept map for words searched, some results seemed pointless but others seemed useful. connected links in the concept map together if the shared common themes. there was also a list of related topics at the side to assist in further searching . could be confusing to make the connections between ideas on the concept map. Still did offer up lots of good initail information as well as links to site that could provide usefull info. This one is more visually apealing using cartoons and other animations to try to grab your attention.

b. the visual tool that i liked the least was TouchGraph Google Browser. I did not like this because it work right now. I will try again later to see if it works, how easy it is to use and the caliber of results offered. The loading never finished after correct entry feilds were submitted. this leads me to believe that this tool is unreliable.

3. Using the Open Directory Project
Advantages:
Provides you with specified categories(google does not)
Gives good results (Better then that of Google)
The results are ordered in terms of what you searched for (google only counts the number of times characters are used, content is irrelavent)
More search results are displayed per page so load time is decreased

Disadvantages
S
Still contains links to irrelavent information(not as many as google)
Gives irrelavent categories(at leaste it gives categories

this blog was posted by Spencer Vermue

lab:tuesday March 8, #3 The open Directory

Disadvantage it has compared to Google - it frequently says that it's on a heavy load.
Its advanced option is not as diverse as Google

Advantage it has over Google - I could narrow the sites into Kids sites or Teens sites

by Ho-Yul Lee

Open Directory vs. Google

When exploring Open Directory I found it to be both advantageous and disadvantageous in comparison to a Google search. For starters, the first attempt of searching on Open Directory was denied because it was “temporarily unavailable”. I retyped the search and thankfully, it worked this time. After looking at the different sites that it provided me I found that a lot of them did not have to do with what I was looking for (there were a lot of sites on actual races [ex. Running] rather than the race I had in mind. So, I decided to search ethnicity and media instead, but again, the site was temporarily unavailable. This made me a little frustrated and felt that this consumed too much time. The writing seemed smaller to me than Google. The one thing I liked about Open Directory was that it did not provide thousands of sites, but only the ones that seemed to be of my best interest. Also, Open Directory allows searches in several languages; the option of changing the language is very easy and noticeable. All in all, I still prefer Google (despite the thousands of useless sites it provides) but this may just be my bias kicking in.

New Visualization Tools

My favourite search engine was Touchgraph Google browser. The website was organized and easy to use. Once you searched something, Touchgraph would open up a spider web of topics which have to do with your requested search. This allows for unlimited searching opportunities and learning about all areas of a search that you had no initially requested the website to find. All of the various topics Touchgraph found were useful and applicable to the requested search and it made it easy to find what exactly you were looking for and created new ideas of what you wanted to find. As well, once you select one of the many topics, you may click info which will provide with a summary, a snippet, a website and a Google directory on the requested search for further searching.

My least favourite search engine was kartoo.com. This is because when I requested “race in the media”, it completely disregarded the four words I had requested and only found topics pertaining to the word race, in the sense of racing (cars, bikes, etc) and not race as I had intended. I value a search engine that searches for all the words I request so I can be assured cohesive and inclusive search results, rather than limited and unfulfilling results that I obtained from kartoo.com. Although the website was well designed, it was also hard to look at visually and hard to follow because of the many spider webs which emerged from the various topics.

Advantages of open directory:
-Stimulates results in an organized manner. You are given a list of articles, as well as various other categories that the search engine believes pertain to your search. You may click on any of these categories which include how many matches there are. Google just gives you a list of articles.
-Every article that is stimulated explains what the article is about so you know what you are clicking on. In Google, every article title is followed by the first few lines of the article, and not an explanation of the overall article so you know what it is you are selecting.
It allows you to search on various other websites (Altavista, HotBot, Netscape, etc) whereas Google only allows you to search on its own site.
-It searches in many languages (Catalan, German, Spanish, etc.)
-Allows opportunities to become an editor, or to submit a site.
Introduces the website and allows for further information about the site with various URLs that pertain to the site.
-It is a volunteer based search engine which gives the opportunity for everyone to contribute.

Disadvantages of The Open directory:
-The Open directory does not stimulate as many searches as Google does. It filters out many articles which may have perhaps been useful.
-Is it very word specific. When I typed in “Race in the media” it said nothing could be found, whereas when I typed in “Race and the media”, it found results. Google would have found the same results, despite “in” or “and”.

beyond seach tools

The search tool I liked the best was kartoo.com because when I searched for kiss of the panopticon all of the relevant sites appeared on the page and everything was grouped on the side panel. when u search for something initially an icon appeared which indicated that it was searching the database although its something that wont really change the outcome of a search I found it welcomed because most sites are bland and boring .Another feature which I liked was the ability to save your search, mapes

The site I found least helpful was http://news.stamen.com/ first of all I was very confused as to what or wear to go they have all these color bars which meant nothing to me. For a first time user it might be a little too confusing. Also compared to cnn where most articles are on the front page and ready to be viewed. On this page I had to sort though And figure out what to do and where to look in for example I was looking for Lebanon and needed to sear thought many of those blocks of color before I found anything while on cnn it was displayed on the front page confusing for someone who has never used it for sure.

The open directory

Well what I really like about this search tool is that if nothings available it asks if u want to try another search engine mainly Google. It also allows anyone to edit url links and stuff to help add to its database IT also separates subjects into categories which is useful for anyone that has an idea for a specific heading like videogames. It looks the same as Google appearance wise, everything is in front of you easy to see, with little confusion.

Just as gouge can expand so can this search engine thought editors summiting articles. So it’s just as powerful as Google allowing for future expansions.

The biggest problem found with this site is it took me many tires to finally search for “race and the media” due to large server loads it seems its not as versatile as goggle which works regardless of how many people are using it . Since everything is sorted into categories it sometimes could take a while to find what you’re looking for sometimes directly typing in a search term might not yield any results. This search tool grows by allowing anyone to edit its contents or add to it this maybe hinder it as peoples own laziness could allow it to stop growing as fast as Google and its search bots

SIMAR HAMID

Diane's post for March 8 - beyond search engines

The search engine I liked best was Kartoo. I simply typed in Futurama, then about 8 websites came up with the properties of each. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to know, but when I saw the word ‘wallpaper’ I thought – hey! – I should get some Futurama wallpaper for my desktop. Then I could see which Futurama websites had wallpaper. If I clicked on ‘wallpaper’, then it showed popular wallpaper sites. The site is very cool for browsing.

The one I liked the least was Mooter. When I searched for Futurama, I could choose from ‘movie’, ‘movies’, ‘cartoon’, ‘series’, ‘fox’, ‘television’ and ‘groening’. After choosing a few of these clusters, I found that the websites found were repeated under the categories. The categories were too much alike to really have much purpose.

The Open Directory is better than Google in a lot of ways. At Google, a number of sites come up that when you look at them, you have to sort them and decide if it is relevant. At the Open Directory, the categories are given first, then you can click on a relevant category and relevant sites are displayed. The site is sorted by experts in the field who do the deciding for you. This leads to more precise searching.

The Open Directory is not perfect, however. The site is organized by volunteers; it even asked me if I would like to help edit this category. The site has no way of knowing whether the person editing is actually an expert or not. I, a person who knows nothing about cooking, could help edit and sort recipes. This takes away from the trustworthiness of the site. Also, when I searched for “media AND ethnicity” some fabulous cultural studies categories appeared. Unfortunately, many of them had nothing to do with media.

Diane Jansen

Beyond Search Engines

1. I liked the Mooter search engine the best. It provided me with the easy access to everything I needed with complete ease. The lay out of the search results was very interesting and it also provided other results, which were closely related to my search and were also very helpful. One downside to it though, was the fact that you could only search in Australia or the rest of the world. All in all I think that Mooter is a very good search engine and I plan to use it in the future.

2. My least favorite search engine would have to News Stamen. Although it did give some good information, I didn’t like the fact that you could only search as far back as 6 days ago. The fact that you couldn’t search for anything was very restricting and I didn’t like that. When you type in something that you are searching for all you get is something that may closely relate to it but not exactly what you are looking for. If you need something which is from only a few days ago and you know that it was important and made headlines than it is a good search engine but other wise I will stay clear of it.

Open Directory: Advantages and Disadvantages

The open directory being a directory which is maintained and edited by volunteers is restricted to what they can find searching the web or watching the news. It has a few different advanced search options which are very helpful for both kids and adults who know exactly what they are looking for or are trying to narrow down their search. As a result of being volunteer operated, the results which are provided are very limited ins some situations. Search engines such as Google always provide many more results for each search. On the search for race and the media I only retrieved 44 results in the open directory as opposed to Google where I found over 14,000,000. After all this I say that the open directory is nothing special and I would rather stick to Google and other search engines which I am more familiar with.

By: Josh Steinberg

New Dimensions to Web Info Retrieval

Visualization Tools
I liked the Stamen tool the best. It is a great way of catching up on current events in a very visual and intricate way.

The visualization tool I liked least was the Visual Thesaurus. Although it was visually appealing, I found it to be quite impractical and would personally prefer looking up synonyms on a regular online dictionary/thesaurus website.

The Open Directory Compared to Google
The advantages of searching on the Open Directory includes the fact that the results generated are more narrowed and has higher relevancy, since it is maintained by a vast community of editors. In addition, the service is offered in nine different languages (from Catalan to Portuguese) whereas Google.ca is only offered in one other language (French). Disadvantages include the fact that it is not always accessible, particularly in situations when it is under “heavy load”. Furthermore, since it produces significantly less results than Google, it may be weeding out information that could be potentially useful.

Daisy Tsang

Lab March 8

The TouchGraph Google Browser
This graph was full of information and various sites, but it was way too large and detailed and confusing.

Mooter
I liked Mooter because the layout is very simple. When I searched “the kiss of the panopticon”, instead of getting a mess of zigzags and spindly bursts of colour every time I passed over a site on the map, each aspect of the searched query was simply labeled as what it entailed: the actual term “kiss”, when clicked on came up with various sites of relating to “kiss”, whatever that may be. Same with author, resource, etc. Very simple and quick.

Kartoo
Kartoo wasn’t as simply laid out as Mooter was, but I liked the style of it too. Kartoo’s neat function was that each site that you pass your mouse over on the graph connects with little curved lines what other sites it is related to, and what major sub-topics it’s connected to as well.

Stamen
I hated Stamen. Its way too difficult to understand what is going on, and there are no instructions that will explain anything to you. When I typed in “the kiss of the panopticon”, all I got was a whole bunch of names of people that have been in the news recently, and when I clicked on one of those topics or names, I got dates that I could click on to see what was going on there. Interesting layout, but too difficult to use.

The Visual Thesaurus
Very cool. I like the spidery layout, which is a lot like the Mooter, but obviously has a completely different purpose. I typed in Media as my word to look up, and got hundreds of other words.

The Open DirectoryI found that when searching on the Open Directory, it was much more accurate with precision when recalling. I liked the categories listed at the top, which Google doesn’t have on its search site. The Open Directory doesn’t give close to as many search results as Google does, however, but the value of the information is much greater than half the stuff that comes up on Google.

Open Directory

Advantages and Disadvantages of searching the Open Directory Vs Google Search Engine:

Advantages:
-because the Open Directory is constructed and maintained by human editors, you have the advantage of more comprehensive and recent information available
-more organized, improves ease of searching on web
-provides list of categories in which your query fits
-provides advanced search option, as does Google

Disadvantages:
-less search results compared to those retrieved when searching for same topic in Google
-may not be able to find exactly what you are interested in
-advanced search option isn’t as comprehensive less as Google’s

Overall I see more advantages than disadvantages of the open directory. I can definitely see myself using it as a search resource in the future.

visualization tools- fav and least fav

When looking up different visualization tools on the Web, I found that they all had their pros and cons. However, the first one I looked at (TouchGraph Google Browser) was my favorite. At first, it seemed a little intimidating and confusing but it was very easy to understand once I started to explore it. It provided a lot of links that are divided into several different subjects, allowing for precise and easy research. Once you click the info box it provides a summary of the site that it provides for you, so you can determine whether or not it is worth looking at. It also allows you to change the colors, the number of lines that are displayed and a scroll bar allows a zoom in/out of the graph.
My least favorite was news.stamen.com. It was visually interesting but unfortunately, I think this did not work in their favor. Each square represents a person that news stories have been made on in a certain time frame. However, you can only see who occupies which square by placing your mouse over the square and a pop up appears. This makes it hard to remember who belongs to which square and is also more time consuming to have to look at each square individually in order to see who are being represented. I think it would have been more beneficial if the names were displayed or put in a list that is easy to read and easier to access. Once you choose a person it provides several links like a google search would have done. All in all, I did not find this visualization tool to be that great.

Visualization Tools

I was a fan of the Kartoo visualization tool because it has a very user friendly interface that is easy to use and visually appealing as well. The results were easy to navigate and tended to be fairly relevant when examining a broad range of topics.
The visualization tool I liked least was the mooter search engine...it was fairly easy to navigate but it exhibited many irrelevant search results and yielded poor precision rates on a variety of topics. Once the creators have a chance to fully execute its capabilities and work the bugs out of the engine it should increase relevance and increase it's user friendliness improving it's popularity vastly.

Lab: Tuesday, March 8, 2005 Beyond Search Engine - #2

I like the Stamen the best because as I typed in Sony about which I was interested in finding news it gave me all the possibilities. For example when I typed 'S' it gave me all the things that start with S.

On the other hand, I like the Touch Graph Google browser the list, simply because I just didn't know how to use it.

posted by Ho-Yul Lee

Open Directory vs Google

The Open Directory webpage was created as an attempt to organize and simplify the frenzied nature of the internet. It was designed to ensure that searchers find only relevant search results based on the fact that there is so much useless and mediocre information on the internet today making searching for specified topics more and more difficult. This site would be advantageous to anyone doing a very specified search with a very specific research mode in mind. Because the objective of the Open Directory site is to filter out ineffective information, the number of hits on a specified topic will be very limited yet precise. Depending on the type of study being preformed and the area of research, this site or Google could be of benefit. Google would be useful when the specified method or area of search is not yet known and a degree of flexibility and freedom is involved. Google does not subscribe to any filtering methods and as such, would result in a great number of hits on a specified topic, regardless of relevance. This tool would allow you to expand areas of research and explore possible topics and ideas. Overall, both tools could be useful depending on the search being preformed and the characteristics of it.

The Open Directory

I found that this tool works almost the same as Google. The advantage I found is that the Open Directory offers you a list of categories that were found in addition to the websites. Google does not offer this feature. Seeing as Google is powered by the Open Directory, the search on Google would not provide any more accurate results. Though the google search provides thousands more websites than the Open Directory, the Open Directory has more accuracy.

Lab March 8th Part Two

After looking at the two different search engines, we found advantages and disadvantages about both of them. First off, they did have a lot of similarities. In both, the key words were highlighted, there was a brief description of the article and they had the same advanced search. With Google, the visual aspect of the site was easier to read and the font was larger and little more specific. The Open directory seemed a little more complicated, and it was a bit overwhelming with all the different options. Now I do not know if this is because we are more familiar with Google, but on a first glance basis, the open directory seemed more complicated. The good parts about the open directory were that they gave you a more limited search. Instead of giving you 1,000 options for a search (as Google did) it only gave you 40 options which were easier to handle. Also, the idea of the different open directory's was nice for further search options, which Google did not have. Overall, we found that both sites had good and bad parts about them and they are both reliable search engines to use.
By Katie McKinnon and Lesley Walton

Lab March 8th

Visualization tools:

The tool that I found to be the best was mooter. This tool presented a kind of new way to search
for information. The tool is capable of finding related terms to the searched term and then display a sort of web with the terms so someone can look for information relating to the term searched based on a related term. I found Visual Thesaurus to be simliar to mooter except you have to pay for Visual Thesaurus which is uncalled for. I attempted to use Visual Thesaurus and when I searched it gave me a related term and when I clicked the term to search for it I couldn't because I had used up all my free tries, which was a total of one.
Although I found Visual Thesaurus to be pretty bad, the tool that I found to be the worst was Stamen. I can't really see a good purpose for this tool at all. It provides some kind of losing/gaining scale for several different names or topics and I can't see any use in this.

Open Directory:

Open Directory seems to have many disadvantages when compared to google, but not many advantages. One disadvantage is the "heavy load" problem, which is no problem at all with google. If too many people are using ODP at any one time, you have to wait to conduct your search, which doesn't happen with google. Another disadvantage is that ODP can't seem to
retrieve as many results as with a google search. This is a problem because it limits the number of possible sources for finding information. One advantage of ODP is the category system which seems better than google's because it opens the possiblility of finding more sources related to the same topic, and the categories are based on terms related to the search term, so it is likely that
these categories can find other related information on the search topic.

What I Liked Best/Least About Visualization

What I Liked Best...

The best one was probably the straight forward and easy to use Mooter.com. I typed in a search (coldplay) and got a list of categories like BAND, or LYRICS, or POSTERS, etc. And all I had to do was search through those, and get a whole list of sites directly related to my precise search. No sorting through piles of Google pages. They were categorized and that makes me happy.

What I Liked Least...

Anything BUT Mooter.com because they just seemed like they were flashy designs that were good for nothing but giving my synonyms and alternate searching terms, which, while that is a plus, doesn't give websites to click on quick and easy like. They just seem like tools where graphic designers and librarians show off. And new.stamen seemed to me to be a popularity contest, which is interesting but doesn't give solid information. just data.

Posted by Alex paterson

Advantages and Disadvantages of Searching the Open Directory

"The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web." However, Google still has way more sites available to search through. The Open Directory Project searches over four million sites, whereas on the Google page it says it searches 8,058,044,651 web pages. It's similar to Google in that upon searching we are presented with categories such as: arts, games, shopping, sports, and so on - all sub categories which make it easier for us to use in our searching.

One advantage of using the Open Directory Project is of particular interest to those who do not speak English as their first language. It is available in nine different languages which can be accessed through the main website. On the other hand, Google is automatically loaded onto an English page but there is a link which will take you to the French version of the program.

Google also seems to be better at retrieving information when boolean expressions are used whereas the Open Directory doesn't always find both subjects you are looking for.

Overall, Google is still my preferred search engine over the Open Directory because it retrieves more data and is much quicker at doing so as well!

advantages and disadvantages of searching the open directory

When comparing searching the Open Directory to searching the Google search engine, there are several things that differ. The Open Directory is much bigger than Google. It works as a collective brain as a way for the Internet to organize itself. The vastness of this web directory can also be a disadvantage in that the amount of options can be slightly overwhelming. An advantage is that because it is simply a data provider, compared to Google it has no influence or knowledge on how the queries are searched.
posted by Katie and Robyn

The Open Directory

The advantage of using The Open Directory is that when topics are searched, the precision is high. Of the results returned, most related to the representation of race in the media. Also, because of The Open Directory's unique organization, the sites that looked relevant actually were useful, and from reputable sources. When searching on Google, many of the sites that look relevant on the results page are actually not helpful at all, and not from recognized sources.

The disadvantage of using The Open Directory is that the recall is much smaller than it would be when searching using Google. Even though most of the results returned are useful, there are many more pages on the Internet that would be useful, but are not included in the directory so are not returned. On Google, there are thousands of sites returned, and if the time is taken to sort through them, more useful sites will be found than on The Open Directory.

Nooreen

The Open Directory VS. Google [march 8th,2005]

The open directory is a reliable search engine in terms of its content, the fact that the content and sites are handpicked give it credibility. When searching with the open directory, sites are listed with a short description and the category they belong to. Any related groups are also displayed at the top of the page. The advantage of the open directory is that it produces more relevant information, and gives further possibilities of research by providing related directories. However, this also makes the search much more limited in scope. There is much less results produced, and may not be sufficient for research. Also Open Directory lacks some inportant features that is used by google. It does not have options for users to search within a particular region or language for a web site. This makes it difficult for non-english speaking people to use the site. The open directory, due to its voluntary basis, also seems to lack the server capacity of Google. It occured to me serveral times during my search and was extremely inconvenient.

Google vs. The Open Directory

There were definitely advantages to searching the Open Directory as opposed to Google. One of these advantages was that, since the sites are organized by volunteers, the search provided categories that you can use to make your search more focussed. For example, i seached modernist art, because the topic of modernism was discussed in my MIT025 class. The search results included categories of "Society; Subcultures; modernist", "Art; Literature; Time Periods and Movements; Modernism", "Art; Poetry; Poets; Modernist" and a few others. This allows a searcher to find the exact aspect of, say, modernism that they are seeking. The Google search did not do this.

A Disadvantage to the Open Directory, and a fairly obvious one, is that not all existing web material on the seached topic is retrieved in the search. The google search retrieved 450,000 results for the exact keywords that found 104 in the open directory (this argument sorta sounds like one from my Google vs. Library Database essay!) Generally, there is less information to be found on the Open Directory site.

--Andrew Ioi--

Lab March 8

Visualization Tools

Best: http://news.stamen.com
Why?
I think this is a very interesting way to look up on a particular news story that interest you. You will be able to see the different ways people have chosen to written about that topic. It will allow you to see that story from all different perspectives and not have somebody else’s bias attached to your opinion.

Least: ToughGraph Google Browser
Why?
The main reason is because the explanation that it gives you for each site is very vague. In the other tools you are usually given a more in depth abstract. I think a good description is important. They allow you to only go to sites that seem relevant to you. With this tool I am getting too many sites that are irrelevant and I do not realize it until I am there.

The Open Directory

One the main disadvantages is that if the open directory is under a “heavy load” it can not conduct your search. This is happening to me right now and I am becoming very annoyed. I would rather search in google for this reason specifically. When it finally does begin working though, the way it categorizes the searches in categories and then sites makes it a lot easy to narrow your search if a category is relevant to you. One was for me, and it provided me with a shorter list of sites that were all mostly relevant. It seems more organized then google, but the first problem really pissed me off.

Lab March 8th, 2005

After searching the four web sites we found that the easiest to use and most educational was the web site http://news.stamen.com. It was very specific and the setup was unique. It had current and relevant issues in regards to sports, entertainment and many other news fields. Not only could you look at current information, you could also look at stories from the past. This is not to say that the other web sites were not beneficial, but in terms of personal preference we found that this one was the best. With mooter.com the information provided was not as detailed and it was almost overwhelming at first. Although kartoo.com was similar, we would have to say that our least favourite one was mooter.com. In regards to the visual thesaurus, it was quite different from the other sites but very easy to use. It was much more efficient than the thesaurus on Word or other programs. We found it a very accurate website that would be very beneficial to all people.
By Katie McKinnon and Lesley Walton

Lab: March 8, 2005

March 8, 2005

Part 2
a. My favorite website on the list is The Visual Thesaurus. The site allows users to search for synonyms and then displays results in a unique web structure. The Visual Thesaurus gives an interesting twist to more conventional sites like thesaurus.com that simply list a long list of similar words. The site may be more cool than practical, but it is interesting nonetheless.

b. My least favorite website was Kartoo.com. The site is somewhat similar to The Visual Thesaurus in that results are displayed in a web-like map. The results are linked by similarity to a central search. Although very cool, different, and graphically pleasing, I didn’t find this site particularly useful. Looking through the map display was slow and inefficient, and switching to another page of results took several seconds of loading time.

Part 3
I was very impressed by the Open Directory. In their mission statement, site designers argue that “The small paid editorial staffs at commercial directory sites can't keep up with submissions, and the quality and comprehensiveness of their directories has suffered…. Instead of fighting the explosive growth of the Internet, the Open Directory provides the means for the Internet to organize itself.” In many ways, this makes the Open Directory more useful than the Google search, as all the results that I got were somewhat useful. When I searched for “race and the media” in the Open Directory, it returned categories such as Society: Ethnicity: Multiracial: News and Media and Society: Ethnicity: News and Media. Both of these resulted in useful hits.

Visualization Tools/The Open Directory

After trying all of the listed visualization tools, I found that the one I liked the most was the Mooter tool. I did a search on the movie "Finding Neverland" and was given seven different "clusters": movie, neverland, movies, depp, author, reviews, and film. I was also given the option of viewing all of the results in one "cluster". I liked this option because it can help you focus on one aspect of the movie or very general ones.

I also liked the Stamen News search - it's a very interesting way of keeping up with the week's news stories. I searched "Martha Stewart" and all of the news stories on her in the past week (and there have been many) came up. There were even ones as recent as three hours ago. I liked this tool a lot but I seemed to be limited to the people/events that it "suggested".

The tool I liked the least was Kartoo. When I searched "Finding Neverland" again, I had difficulty finding any relevant results and many seemed to be in French. Perhaps I wasn't using the tool correctly but in any result, it didn't seem to be too straightforward.

Using the Open Directory was a new and informational experience. The disadvantages to using this tool seem to be that you don't get the wide variety or sheer number of results that you do with the Google search engine. But in contrast to that, the Open Directory seems to be much more focused. When I searched "race and the media", I was given several results, in addition to suggestions for other related topics in the Category results. The links to the individual search engines on the bottom of the page were also very useful.

Lab March 8, 2005

I liked the Visual Thesaurus the best as I found it very useful in searching for words and meanings. I could definitely see myself using this tool when writing papers. I found the tool very clear and easy to understand. I also liked how the definitions where availiable on the screen when you scrolled over the words and lines but disappear when the cursor was moved so that the screen was not cluttered with information. Overall, it was both informative, helpful and easy to use.

I liked Kartoo the least because I could not really understand how to use it. The results were mostly unrelated to my search subject and the display was very confusing. I did not understand how each resource linked to the others or simply how they linked to my search. It was both confusing and ineffective in delivering the search results I wanted. I cannot see myself choosing to use this tool for research purposes because of its confusing nature.

Open Directory:
The advantage of the open directory is that the search results are mainly very relevant and the amount is small so it is easy to go through each of them to select the best ones. There are also subject headings available at the top which help to narrow down the search should one of them prove to be applicable. This makes searching much more efficient overall.
The disadvantage of the open directory is that it has very limited returned results so it may not cover all resources available. Google has a much larger base of resources and therefore more returned results. Also, since the open directory is free, the volunteers may be less motivated to search for high-quality results that Google’s workers may strive for.

March 8th - Visual Navigation / Open Directory

Visual Nagivation Tools:
The tool I found most effective was mooter.com's clusters. This gave me the opportunity to separate what I was looking for into a specific category such as an author, artist, date or theory. I also had the option of receiving all my search results in a traditional google-type format.

The least effective tool I found was the TouchGraph Google Browser. This site took awhile to load, and the results were scattered and complicated. Initially I was impressed by the graphics and navigation, but I found it relatively useless when searching for a particular topic or site. I would prefer using an actual search engine over using this tool.

Open Directory Project:

The benefits of using this tool instead of a regular search engine is that everything has been neatly categorized by hand, making it easier to find exactly what you’re looking for. You don’t need to change your search too many times before your desired information is found. When you search Google, you are simply searching the contents of other people’s web pages, using their descriptors and keywords. This directory on the other hand uses common keywords with more organization.

The major drawback appears to be that there is not as much volume to search with. Since all the information must be sorted out by hand, it becomes difficult to get as many results.

LAB tuesday march 8

Visualization Tools

Best: http://news.stamen.com/
Why?
I think this is a very interesting way to look up on a particular news story that interest you. You will be able to see the different ways people have chosen to written about that topic. It will allow you to see that story from all different perspectives and not have somebody else’s bias attached to your opinion.

Least: ToughGraph Google Browser
Why?
The main reason is because the explanation that it gives you for each site is very vague. In the other tools you are usually given a more in depth abstract. I think a good description is important. They allow you to only go to sites that seem relevant to you. With this tool I am getting too many sites that are irrelevant and I do not realize it until I am there.

The Open Directory

One the main disadvantages is that if the open directory is under a “heavy load” it can not conduct your search. This is happening to me right now and I am becoming very annoyed. I would rather search in google for this reason specifically. When it finally does begin working though, the way it categorizes the searches in categories and then sites makes it a lot easy to narrow your search if a category is relevant to you. One was for me, and it provided me with a shorter list of sites that were all mostly relevant. It seems more organized then google, but the first problem really pissed me off.

Lab March 8th

I found that the best tool was actually the one for kartoo.com. It showd a variety of websites that can be linked to the original search, and organizes it in an interactive, easy to use web of links.
I did not, however, find mooter.com helpful at all. It was difficult to find information, and I could not find the website I was looking for at all. Perhaps I wasn't doing it properly, but I still didnt like it compared to the other tools.

Kiss of the Panopticon search

Out of the suggested tools to use my favourite to use was Mooter. From the few quick searches that I made on the site they came back with good comprehensive responses.
It is basic and straightforward to search on. I also like how it pops up the best search result initially and then allows you to view the other searches it got. That cuts the searching time in half and allows people to get want they want quick and easy.

And how can I leave out that I love how it says MOOT! instead of search and how it can be in Red or Blue.. (I know i'm weird)

The one that is liked the least was stamen.com I didn't find the fact that it was "events in the news" that limits the search.

visualization tools

I found all the visualization tools pretty cool, nothing like anything I have experienced on the web thus far. I'm having difficulty choosing which tool i like best, so I will give you my top two. For search purposes, I like Mooter the best. It was fairly straight forward and easy to use, especially for beginner web users like myself. And my second favourite would be the Visual Thesaurus. I found this really cool, and could be quite useful during those essay writing moments when you just cant think of the right word to fit in your sentences. Although I thought that all the tools were quite interesting, I must admit that Kartoo was my least favourite. I found it the most difficult to figure out, and more disorganized than some of the other sites we visited.

Lab: March 8, 2005

Visualization Tools

I personally found that the Visual Thesaurus was the best one to use. It worked the best for the visualization in my opinion. It was not only easy to use but it made sense and it mapped the information in a way that made it simple. Kartoo and TouchGraph employed similar methods but they did it with websites which made it more complicated and more difficult to use. Of these two TouchGraph provided the information much more comprehensively when compared to Kartoo which gave much less information. I found Mooter to be completely useless. It did not find much information and even after reading the instructions the results still made very little sense and it was difficult to see where they were coming from given that they were not all provided in one visualization.

Open Directory

The open directory immediately gives you a list of categories at the top which it thinks will be useful. I found the first result useful but the others were about sports and their coverage when searching for "Race" and "Media" However, having said this the directory links make it very easy to find what I was looking for it immediately had the information I was looking for. It is much more organized than google is which makes it nice, but for organization we give up size. It is a trade off. Searching becomes easier but results are less. Finding the information was much faster on the open directory, but given time Google produces more results. As the Open Directory grows it will become a great tool but for now size is its limit.

Posted By: Cole Thorsen

I liked Kartoo.com the best because when i typed in what i was searching for it gave me an option of what I wanted to look at, it also found the official page (I searched Louis Vuitton).

I liked news.stamen.com the least because I found it slight confusing to navigate my way around. I found this was the same with geneseo.edu I could seem to find my way around.

The Open Directory:
- Advantages
o Less work for moderators
o It allows for people to help edit topics they are knowledgeable about or interested in
- Disadvantages
o Anyone can sign up
o Not everyone is reliable

Google:
Google has many search features that help you find exactly what you want which I find to be very helpful. Example, Search within results, language, images and so on…

I liked Kartoo.com the best because when i typed in what i was searching for it gave me an option of what I wanted to look at, it also found the official page (I searched Louis Vuitton).

I liked news.stamen.com the least because I found it slight confusing to navigate my way around. I found this was the same with geneseo.edu I could seem to find my way around.

The Open Directory:
- Advantages
o Less work for moderators
o It allows for people to help edit topics they are knowledgeable about or interested in
- Disadvantages
o Anyone can sign up
o Not everyone is reliable

Visualization tools [March 8th, 2005]

Out of the 5 tools presented, I found http://mooter.com to be my favorite. This is due to the easy to understand interface, and the clear and concise way it presented its information. The search results were presented in groups where I could choose which results were best related to what I preferred. The results were then displayed under the chosen category in a similar way Google would display it.

I liked http://kartoo.com the least. Its concept was very similar to that of the TouchGraph Google Browser. The one thing that differed them was in terms of their visual organiztion. Touchgraph tried to simplify its interface by displaying only how key terms related by their proximity to the centre word or Url. Kartoo did almost the same thing. The problem with Kartoo is that it does not show the links until you mouseover a URL. This makes the site very hard to browse and understand, as URL give us little information at what the site may mean.

Visualization Tools

a. I liked the Visual Thesaurus the best. It was very easy to use: there was only one field to fill in and one button to press. The results page was very straightforward and clear to understand. The actual words returned were organized based on what meaning of the word they applied to, if there were multiple meanings, and this made the search very efficient.

b. I liked Kartoo the least. Although the search page was very simple, the results page was extremely complicated - so complicated, that I wasn't even able to find a result that related to what I was searching for.

Nooreen

Visual Navigation Tools- Pros and Cons

Visual Thesaurus takes the cake....

Out of the suggested visualization tools used to navigate the Web in a new light, I found the visual thesaurus to be most useful because it displays the words relevant to the search in a way that makes finding the right substitute for a word easy. The branch structure of the word diagram makes locating words very easy and the site is easy to use. Alot of times when preforming a word query, the searcher has to sift through definitions and alternative words, some of which may be irrelevant to the search, especially with many different meanings for the same word. This site presents the words in a very clear and precise manner. The only downside to this site--you have to pay for it.
The site that I found the least useful personally, was the touch graph google browser. This tool was far too crowded, jumbled and chaotic to be of any use at all, and is extremely difficult to interpret. I would think that when creating new visually stimulating ways, or any new ways at all, to navigate through the web, one would focus on the ease in which searchers could access and preform inquiries with their web tools. I'm not sure exactly what this graph tool would be used for or how it could be of benefit for someone interested in preforming a search.

Lab for March 8th

For Part 2
The visualization tool i liked the best was the visual thesaurus because the product has a nice user interface and it is a useful tool for students. the only down side is that it is not for free.

the least tool i liked was the TouchGraph browser because applet on the site is very slow and it is not a useful thing to check who is linked to the W3C main page.

For Part 3
Advantages of using Open Directory is that it is put together manually by actual human beings which means that only useful and meaningful entries will be added to the directory unlike the google site where a spider browses the web for indexing pages.

Disadvantage of using the open directory is that it is not as powerful as google. Google has more features on its search pages and more boolean operations can be used to limit search results.
Cheers,

Stamen vs. Visual Thesaurus

Out of the new visualization tools that we browsed through today my favourite would have to have been Stamen (http://news.stamen.com). The site was visually appealing with its black background and brightly coloured text, and it was easy to navigate through as well. It didn't lead me astray as a viewer at all, enabling me to simply click on a name of particular interest which would conveniantly pop open a new window and provide a list of recent articles published on that given subject. I liked using this one because it gives you so many options to choose from once you select your subject, and it also allows you to read articles coming from all different points of view.

In contrast I liked the visual thesaurus the least because I found it to be too 'showy' almost. It seems as though this site was striving to be visually appealing while forgetting that simple is better a lot of times. After clicking on just a few words it becomes so crowded that it's hard to follow the concept map clearly any longer. This service is not free either and so it can be discouraging to even look up this site when you have no intentions of paying to use it.

I'm a big fan of the MOOTER visualization tool

I tried out all of the suggested visualization tools and found that MOOTER was my favourite. (Based on the few quick searches I made) It allows you to search a phrase and returns a visual web of related subjects and topics where you will find information on the terms you searched. For instance i searched a band's name and the web had links to information on the "band", "music", "lyrics", and "artist". A movie title will return links on the topics of movie, director, the main actors, author, etc.

This is definitely something that would be handy when you are searching for something on the internet with ambiguous keywords: for example you can differentiate between a website on a movie or a book (sharing the same title) if that makes sense.

The visualization tool that I found the LEAST useful was the Stamen tool. It focuses only on recent news and is not convenient for general web searching. Perhaps this is based on a think bias of my own, given that I rarely use the internet to fulfil my current-event needs.

Also, I found the Google TouchGraph to be somewhat confusing. I found that too much was displayed on the page at a time and it was difficult to mentally organize the information and filter it for what I was specifically looking for (once again, IF that makes sense)

--Andrew Ioi--

Ethnic Images, Videos and Sounds

AUDIO, PHOTOS, MOVIES

http://www.archive.org/audio/audio-details-db.php?collection=opensource_audio&collectionid=MLKDream
This is an audio recording of Martin Luther King Jr.’s infamous “I have a dream” speech from August 28, 1963. It was found in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Reading Room

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?ils:2:./temp/~pp_5D7k::@@@mdb=fsaall,app,brum,detr,swann,look,gotts
This is a picture of thousands of civil rights protesters in Alabam in the 1960s. It was also found in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Reading Room

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?ils:2:./temp/~pp_2elb::@@@mdb=fsaall,app,brum,detr,swann,look,gottsc
This is another image from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Reading Room. It is also a photo of Selma to Montgomery Marchers in front of the Alabama State Capitol building. The protestors are waving American Flags.

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Speech/VideoTest/africanamvid2.html
This is a video that discusses the Rodney King beating as well as a modern-day youth’s perspective on racism. This was found on the Berkley SunSITE

ARTICLES

http://www.wm.edu/news/index.php?id=3938
This is an article about the famous Brown v. Board of Ed. Case from 1954. It talks about how racism in society and the media has affected education. It also discusses how education is different today, due to changes in levels of racism. This article was found on Google.

http://www.pbs.org/race/007_Resources/007_01-search.php?getonly=Video%20/%20film&searchheader=Video/films
This is not really an article as much as it is a list of films. Actually it IS just a list of films, and not an article at all, but I feel obliged to post it anyway. It lists film resources on the subjects of ethnicity, racism, and immigration. I think that it provides good resources for someone looking to investigate the topic thoroughly.

Posted (late)
by Andrew ("the honest") Ioi and Erin ("reliable") LaRocque

March 2, 2005. Construction of Race

1. Resource: The Open Video Project
Good Neighbor Family, 1943. <http://www.open-video.org/details.php?videoid=3841>
I chose this video because it compared American family culture with that of Latin family culture. It was easy to access, and provided substantial information escorted by the stereotypes of the time.
2. Resource: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Reading Room
Selma to Montgomery marchers wave American flags in front of the Alabama State Capitol at the end of their 5 day march, 1965.
They say a picture’s worth 1000 words, in this case that is true. The picture gives you an abstract, dramatic idea as to what is going on at the time.
3. Resource: Google
News file: Rodney King Riots, 1996
http://www.time.com/time/newsfiles/rodneyking/
This picture attached Rodney King to the events as an individual. It was provided with a brief explanation of the situation.
Part 2

1. Ian F. Haney Lopez, The Social Construction of Race: Some Observations on Illusion, Fabrication, and Choice, 29 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 1-62, 6-7, 11-17 (Winter, 1994).
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/race.htm

I picked this website because it seemed credible, and I found the direction focused on by the author to be interesting. The article focuses on the construction of race through law as appose to biology. It had great citation, and bibliographic information for those using the site as a reference.

2. Bowman, Moria, David Rogers. A History: the Construction of Race and Racism. (Western states centre, Portland).
http://www.westernstatescenter.org/resource/ScreenDRHistory.pdf

I liked this site because it had a lot of information and a lot of images to demonstrate its points. I liked that it used a PDF/Adobe Acrobat file format, and the presentation of the information. It also had a good use of bibliographic citations.

Ethnic and Racial Images in the Media

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Monday, March 28, 2005

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Comparison of Visual Search Engines/ Open Directory vs. Google

Comparison of Visual Search

visulization searching, google, and open directory comparissons

Monday, March 14, 2005

Amy Orfanakos

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Visualization Tools and Open Directory vs. Google

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Open Directory vs. Google

Comparison of Visual Search Engines

The Open Directory vs. Google

Web Visual navigation tools

Beyond search engines lab for tuesday march 8th, 3:00pm

lab:tuesday March 8, #3 The open Directory

Open Directory vs. Google

New Visualization Tools

beyond seach tools

Diane's post for March 8 - beyond search engines

Beyond Search Engines

New Dimensions to Web Info Retrieval

Lab March 8

Open Directory

visualization tools- fav and least fav

Visualization Tools

Lab: Tuesday, March 8, 2005 Beyond Search Engine - #2

Open Directory vs Google

The Open Directory

Lab March 8th Part Two

Lab March 8th

What I Liked Best/Least About Visualization

Advantages and Disadvantages of Searching the Open Directory

advantages and disadvantages of searching the open directory

The Open Directory

The Open Directory VS. Google [march 8th,2005]

Google vs. The Open Directory

Lab March 8

Lab March 8th, 2005

Lab: March 8, 2005

Visualization Tools/The Open Directory

Lab March 8, 2005

March 8th - Visual Navigation / Open Directory

LAB tuesday march 8

Lab March 8th

Kiss of the Panopticon search

visualization tools

Lab: March 8, 2005

Visualization tools [March 8th, 2005]

Visualization Tools

Visual Navigation Tools- Pros and Cons

Lab for March 8th

Stamen vs. Visual Thesaurus

I'm a big fan of the MOOTER visualization tool

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Ethnic Images, Videos and Sounds

March 2, 2005. Construction of Race

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