Besides that, I also learnt the various purposes behind websites, and learnt how to evaluate websites and look out for biasness. It was really interesting to have the opportunity to compare so many different types of websites about the same topic. Besides learning to evaluate them, I picked up many soft skills as well, such as different writing styles and site presentation as well, which helped me with my main course of study where a few of my assignments required the creation of an online newspaper website.

It’s been a great class and I love attending the informative lectures and tutorials

These are my pieces:

Resource 9: http://www.cadre.org.za/
This is an organisational website detailing the group’s research of responses to AIDS/HIV in Africa. They don’t just research on physical treatments for the disease, they focus on strategies and policies to help stop the spread of HIV as well. They do lots of indepth qualitative and quantitative research on the deadly disease. (JDL)

Resource 10: http://www.bentham.org/chivr/index.htm
This is an information news website on the dangers of AIDS/HIV, a published science journal that documents current research techniques and the latest discoveries in the line of HIV/AIDS research. The publication is called “Current HIV research”, in which experts from all fields contribute studies and research that will aid in discovering more about HIV/AIDS. (JDL)

I joined the forum with the name Scotty_D, and hoped to get a reply regarding the current situation with AIDS/HIV research. Sadly the forum hardly gets much activity, and some of its threads are spam with titles such as “LINDSAY LOHAN SHOWS OFF HER CUTE BODY”. Still, there was some discussion going on so I went ahead and posted.

Hope I will get a reply soon!

 Resource 1
Title of Internet Resource:

CADRE: Centre For AIDS Development, Research and Evaluation

URL : http://www.cadre.org.za/

a. Purpose

The purpose of this website is to detail the CADRE organisation’s HIV/AIDS research and programme development work that it does in South Africa, where AIDS is a fledging epidemic.
The site also states that the CADRE organisation is non-profit, and aims to create the most strategic and coherent models for intervention, through strong qualitative and quantitative research, as well as policy-making.
b. Coverage

The site covers information on AIDS/HIV in South Africa, and has current and up-to-date research on the progress of AIDS in the African continent, the challenges of HIV prevention, as well as progress reports on its prorgammes. The site also features the organisation’s publications and presentations, together with its AIDS/HIV educational material named “TSHA TSHA” which can be freely downloaded.
c. Authority 
The source is a valuable authority considering that it’s a non-profit organisation, meaning that are seldom any political bias or social slants that might impair the authority of the website. The organisation is also run by a group of medical professionals, with doctorates. Their professional status gives the website credibility.
The organisation is also a strong part of the South African medical and education communities. Besides working hand in hand with other scientific organizations to research HIV/AIDS, the organisation publishes material to educate the population on the dangers and preventive measures on AIDS as well. The reports published by CADRE are also used in medical and university journals worldwide. This lends even more to the website’s credibility.

d. Accuracy

The website is updated constantly with published medical journals and credible research backed by other resources in the field of HIV/AIDS research. Also, the material on the website is published/broadcast/presented in print, television and live forms for educational and intellectual purposes. Thus it is to be expected that the material found there is factually accurate on all levels.
 
e. Currency
The website constantly publishes and showcases all its publications and presentations online. As can been seen in the screenshot below, the last published report was dated just last year, a time period understandable due to the long amount of time required to conduct, observe and document AIDS/HIV research.

f. Accessibility
The website is easily accessible despite its focus in South Africa. It is written entirely in English and does not have any multi-language functions. It is however easy to navigate and not a difficult find using search engines such as Google when researching AIDS/HIV research online.

g. Presentation & Arrangement 
The website is logically presented as an organizational website. The only things that irk me are the sidebar, where headers such as “TSHA TSHA” and “AJAR” confuse me. Although they are the names of the programmes and broadcast material the organisation uses, it would perhaps be better to clarify the meaning of these subsections rather than leave the average internet surfer confused.

h. Usability
The website has easy navigation and can be used to find many of the facilities it has hosted and available for viewing. It can be used as a valuable resource to discuss HIV/AIDS research as well as compare the situation in Africa regarding AIDS to a worldwide context.

i. Overall 
The website is extremely comprehensive as a representation of CADRE’s work in the field of HIV/AIDS research and development. It comes with constantly updated reports on the research and development done by the organisation as well.
Resource 2
Title of Internet Resource: Current HIV Research

URL : http://www.bentham.org/chivr/index.htm

a. Purpose
The purpose of the website is to showcase published science journals such as those on HIV/AIDS research. It showcases a scientific journal on current HIV research.

b. Coverage
The website includes a comprehensive section about the scientific journal, “Current HIV research”. Included there are the current issues of the journal available, abstracts from the print journal, as well as quotations from eminent scientists.

c. Authority
The authority of the source is entirely credible, due to the medical professionals who are responsible for the creation of the scientific journal. The publishers of the journal, Bentham Science Publishers, is renowned worldwide for being an authority in the publication of science journals, and thus its publications and its website are to be trusted sources of information.

d. Accuracy
The accuracy of the website is high as well, due to the scientific profession being a very accurate job. Thus standards have to be high for it to be credible, and since it is credible, it is therefore accurate.

e. Currency
The last publication of the journal was in 2007, thus meaning the website is current and up-to-date.

f. Accessibility
The site comprehensively details all the latest developments in the field of HIV and AIDS. While it is accessibly, the medical and scientific jargon and terms used may be a bit hard to digest for the layman reader.

g. Presentation and Arrangement
The site is presented and arranged simply, it is clear and concise as well.

h. Usability

The navigation of the website is easy and straightforward, with only a few very obvious links to guide the user through

i. Overall 
It may appear plain and simple, but the website is a very valuable resource for AIDS/HIV studies.

The first search facility I started with was the search engine. I used AltaVista for this task, with the keywords “terrorism”, “impact” and “world economy”. It turned out 15, 400, 000 results, and led me to this particular resource I found useful for my search: http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2001/1024terrorism_perry.aspx

The second search facility I used was the meta search engine called MetaCrawler, with the same keywords. This time it yielded only 84 select results from all the different search engines, with my previous resource I found being the first on the list this time. Thus, I decided to select the second resource on the list, http://www.lloyds.com/News_Centre/360_risk_project/Terrorism_and_political_risk/?source=goldladder

The third search facility was the subject directory, and for that I used the Google Directory. The results came up to be 1230, and I picked the first resource: http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/usterror.html

From there, it was easy to tell the differences between the three different search facilities. The Meta Search Engine and the Search Engine were more similar in the sense they were both searching the entirety of the web for results pertaining to the search. Meanwhile, the Meta Search Engine is more similar to the Subject Directory in the sense that it only returns select results from a particular database; the Meta Search Engine chooses the best results from the various Search Engines that it searches, while the Subject Directory takes its results from its particular database on the issue.

I think the benefit of using a Meta Search Engine is that you get streamlined results from Search Engines overall, however it limits your findings to only what a computerised data picker will display to you. A regular Search Engine will yield a large variety of results, leaving one to discover their own resources out of an endless sea of information. However, this might cause an information overload for a researcher and might not be beneficial either way. For Subject Directories, they are useful in finding very specific sorts of data from a very specific sort of database.

Throughout my search for the “impact of terrorism on the world economy”, the results I’ve found from using Google Directory were the most convincing, namely because it has the most credible sources of information. While search engines and meta search engines gave a wide and interesting variety of information, the subject directory had the specific resources needed for such a research topic.

My first search was for “Islamic view on terrorism” on google.com. The first result led me to http://www.alislam.org/terrorism.html, a website that shared with me the views and opinions of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community. A quick search on wikipedia revealed that the Ahmadiyya Muslim community was a branch of Islam, one of two that initially begin as the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. These branches were considered controversial to mainstream Muslims, with disagreements ranging from the Ahmadiyya views on the death and return of Jesus, to the concept of Jihad. The link on the alislam site which I was directed to explained Jihad as a misunderstood concept, citing its sources that terrorism is not tolerated by the teachings of Islam. After reading all that, I figured that the purpose of this particular internet resource was one of religious advocacy. Trying to get a less biased view, I began to search other terms on the internet. 

The next search was performed on google.com using its “news” feature. Using the search term “Islamic views terrorism”, I found this link http://nation.ittefaq.com/issues/2007/11/20/news0635.htm. It was a news page called The New Nation, Bangladesh’s independent news source. The article I was linked to describes the Gallup World Study on the Muslim community, a study which the article claims reveals the opinions of the 1 billion-strong Muslim population. The article expounded on the report’s findings, revealing its findings on Muslims views towards the acts of terrorism targeted at western countries. This was all really cool to read, but all the facts and figures started to get a little too dense. It was useful information, definitely, but I was really looking for a personal account of a member of the Muslim community, and my intrigue lay within discovering the ‘other side’ to which sheltered Singaporeans like me are hidden from. I admit it was more to satisfy a curiosity then to read the news and seriously immerse my mind in a debate encompassing radical beliefs, justifying acts of violence, and the death, suffering and horrible tragedies faced by both hapless victims and perpetrators blinded by faith. 

To find out what I wanted, this time I entered “muslim personal blog terrorism”. I changed the search terms because this time I wanted a more in-depth and individual view that only a personal blog could provide. I found this gem, http://sillybachi.wordpress.com/tag/terrorism/, a wordpress blog of a Muslim woman, an even more interesting perspective, I felt. That link lists out all the blogger’s posts with a “terrorism” tag to them, meaning I could easily find all her posts in which she discussed terrorism. There were only two posts with the tag, but reading through both of them gave me an interesting and refreshing view on the entire topic. I mean come on, the woman was Muslim and living in America, writing (and with such a personality, I might add) about Muslim views on extremism, terrorist attacks, and Harry Potter. What was there not to enjoy about her blog?

In all, my ‘research experiment’ left me with a variety of varying views on the topic. The first provided me with a very anti-terrorism slant, yet further nosing about showed that the website was a resource of religious advocacy providing those views was not much part of the mainstream Muslim community. The second source was a news source, yet being based in Bangladesh, it did have a kind of anti-western biasness to it. The third was a personal blog of a Muslim woman living in America, who denounces terrorism openly. Yet there is her social background, her life history and other considerations to take before one can quantify the strength of her argument against terrorism. One of her blog posts noted that “Every single Muslim I know has always spoken out against killing innocent civilians.” While she did go on to cite other sources and muslim organisations sharing the same view, I would have to research further on it to create a credible understanding.

Might seem a little on the dull side, but this IS a blog for school assignments anyhow.

Not that I think the subject is uninteresting or anything. Its fun and everything we learn is absolutely 100% fantastic. “Using The Internet As A Research Tool” is the best Cross-Disciplinary Subject ever made.

I was just having a great conversation with the lady friend to my right about movies (actually its part of the class assignment), and we started thinking about all the movies we watched together in 2006. We soon realised that its an absolute chore trying to remember what movies came out when, so we started searching forums, newgroups, online publications and other websites for their list of top tens.

http://www.reelhorror.com/forum/

One of the first links that came up in google was http://www.reelhorror.com/forum/, a list of 2006′s top horror flicks from reelhorror’s forums. While I’m not a huge fan of horror movies (and mostly avoid them completely), I realised that I had somehow ended up watching half of the movies the first poster listed. Shocking, definitely. I don’t think I’d put any horror movie from last year on my top ten list, but shows like Saw 3, Hard Candy and The Cave were pretty entertaining. My parents have an obsession with the Saw series, which is really weird and creepy. Sometimes I wonder what they did to me as a kid. Also, how is Snakes On A Plane a horror movie. Really. Reelhorror’s forums seems the right place to be for anyone who’s a horror flick fanatic, where all the people who love blood, screams and gore can discuss their favourite film scares and bleaghs.

http://www.slate.com/

Moving on from horror, I found that online publication Slate magazine had a list of top 2006 movies as well. The writing’s pretty entertaining and most of my faves (Children Of Men, Babel) made the list. These are the kind of reviews that make me want to get off my bum and head to the nearest VideoEzy for some cheap and fun rent DVD rentals.

 Well movies are fun and all but I’ve got another class to go to soon. Ciao, peeps!