Did you know that? Neither did I! But 15th result on Copernic ....reveals that interesting piece of information: WARNING NS for those with a weak stomach ;)
The words of my choosing were 'Eddie Vedder', he of Pearl Jam fame. I used Google which is my preferred internet search engine and there were 2,150,000 results. Popular guy! Copernic, on the same search, returned 18 results, most of which appeared to be gathered from yahoo. Hmmm.
The first result in Google was for wikipedia , the first in Copernic was imdb (which was 6th on Google). I'd take a wiki entry in this instance over imdb if purely for the fact that fans have obviously compiled it and everyone knows fans do their homework! - loads of links, cross-references, discographies and sources noted .... if you wanted to do an in depth study of the man, starting here, this wiki has it all.
The most promising results? 2,150,000 vs 18.... I'll keep googling.:)
I didn't realise that what I do when I search is 'Boolean'. I remember when everyone said you had to use a '+' to link two or more search terms together in a search which was fine until one day I forgot the '+' and got the same results and concluded for myself that the '+' was redundant.
I didn't think 'Eddie Vedder' was narrow enough for this task so I pretended I was searching for a particular song he had done and, in the first instance named it, and the second searched as if I could not recall the name. I used Google.
Eddie Vedder Hide Your Love Away - 22,400 results
Eddie Vedder song beatles - 174,000 results
Eddie Vedder beatles cover - 303,000 results
The top search result for all was a youtube link to an audio of the track with a clip from the Beatles' film 'Help'. It had 22,544 views. It was disconcerting watching the Beatles but hearing Vedder so I instead clicked on another alternative at youtube, courtesy of ann19oct of Vedder singing with an accompanying montage of stills of him singing. This one had 277,007 views - clearly people like to look at him while listening to him as the recording was identical in both clips ;)
I also selected a result from Rolling Stone magazine 'Weekend Rock List: Best Beatles Covers' from March 2008. It's a trusted source and I've been collecting Rolling Stone for a hundred years or more so I was happy with this pick.
Then I found consequenceofsound.net and a review by Michael Roffman of an August 2008 performance by Vedder at the Roosevelt Uni Auditorium in Chicago at which he performed Hide Your Love Away. The review, pictures, set list and detail were a great read and their 'About Us' says they cover the music scene in Chicago and New York. It's a music e-zine specific to those two cities and well written.
So I bookmarked the youtube video and consequenceofsound and recorded all my results and the Rolling Stone info in a simple word doc for future reference for this Unit.
Copernic is, sadly, going to have to be uninstalled. Although I can see the benefit of having another search engine at my fingertips, every time I now access Mozilla I'm being prompted to select Copernic as my default and that's irritating :)
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Passing time with Eminem
I downloaded Quicktime without any difficulties. The task was useful actually because I have encountered a few instances where I've needed Quicktime to watch something and haven't been bothered at the time to go through the download process ... now I have it! And I watched Eminem's clip of "We made You" (hilarious - the more times you see it the more things you pick up.... the less colourful John Mayer/Jennifer Aniston moment can pass you by if you're not paying attention!) while I waited for Bookmark Buddy to download. It seemed an interminable wait. Again it brings me back to concepts of time. I remember when a download used to take hours not minutes - you had to go away and leave it and keep coming back to check how many more minutes the thing was expected to take! Here I was in 2009 being irritated that Bookmark Buddy took about 6 minutes to download.
I had a play around with the Buddy and decided - nah it's not for me. Too cumbersome. I'm happy with the way I have my Bookmarks working already courtesy of Firefox - simple, easy to navigate and retrieve.
I had a play around with the Buddy and decided - nah it's not for me. Too cumbersome. I'm happy with the way I have my Bookmarks working already courtesy of Firefox - simple, easy to navigate and retrieve.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Web 2.0 Rules! Bring on Web 3.0!
I'm a visual person so purely from that perspective my preferred format is the Internet Communications Furl List. The web is a visual medium so that appeals immediately rather than the bland presentation of highlighted blue links.
With Web 2.0 applications in place I also get the added advantage of seeing each link rated, how many discussion entries pertain to each link, members and number of views.
This information is provided by my peers, others who have accessed the information and whose evaluation of that information I can reference immediately. I may disagree with their assessments or their comments. I may agree with some or all. Instantly I am part of an activity that is 'shared' and the solo search I may be engaged in is no longer just a solo search. Instead of just being in task-driven mode I am now taken into an asynchronous interaction with strangers who share a common interest with me.
It's like following a well-trodden track in the sand - someone has gone before me and left their mark. Someone will, no doubt, come after me and walk in my footprints. The process is one of unending engagement.
Web 2.0 has taken the old perception that being online is an insular or anti-social pastime and turned it into a vastly social activity. In cyberspace you are not alone!
With Web 2.0 applications in place I also get the added advantage of seeing each link rated, how many discussion entries pertain to each link, members and number of views.
This information is provided by my peers, others who have accessed the information and whose evaluation of that information I can reference immediately. I may disagree with their assessments or their comments. I may agree with some or all. Instantly I am part of an activity that is 'shared' and the solo search I may be engaged in is no longer just a solo search. Instead of just being in task-driven mode I am now taken into an asynchronous interaction with strangers who share a common interest with me.
It's like following a well-trodden track in the sand - someone has gone before me and left their mark. Someone will, no doubt, come after me and walk in my footprints. The process is one of unending engagement.
Web 2.0 has taken the old perception that being online is an insular or anti-social pastime and turned it into a vastly social activity. In cyberspace you are not alone!
Everyone Has An Opinion
Blogs first came on my radar with all the hoo-haa in the media when Arianna Huffington launched The Huffington Post in 2005. I was fascinated by this apparent group blog and the notion that several people could contribute their thoughts to a constantly updating log that wasn't a website. It was a public airing of individual opinion and I thought that sounded fab!
Around the same time I received an email from my ISP telling me I'd been allocated FREE blog space and since I was already engaged in wonderful, lively, opinionated political and social conversations via email with a friend, I suggested he and I use the offer of the blog space and make our own blog.
We never did because really we had no idea how to create a blog or the time to figure it out - we just totally and excitedly loved the concept of having a dedicated space online in which to sprout our thoughts,opinions and theories about our world and our times.
The motivation would seem to have been then that we would have a forum for our views beyond our one-to-one email exchanges but did we consider if anyone else would be at all interested in what we had to say? Probably not. But I think we thought if Arianna Huffington and her celebrity pals could have their say why couldn't we.... pseudo journalism for the ordinary folk?
The Huffington Post stands out for me as a great example of the rise of the blog. In his article in The Washington Post, July 9 2007, "The Blog That Made It Big", Howard Kurtz makes the following observation:
Read the whole article here.
Around the same time I received an email from my ISP telling me I'd been allocated FREE blog space and since I was already engaged in wonderful, lively, opinionated political and social conversations via email with a friend, I suggested he and I use the offer of the blog space and make our own blog.
We never did because really we had no idea how to create a blog or the time to figure it out - we just totally and excitedly loved the concept of having a dedicated space online in which to sprout our thoughts,opinions and theories about our world and our times.
The motivation would seem to have been then that we would have a forum for our views beyond our one-to-one email exchanges but did we consider if anyone else would be at all interested in what we had to say? Probably not. But I think we thought if Arianna Huffington and her celebrity pals could have their say why couldn't we.... pseudo journalism for the ordinary folk?
The Huffington Post stands out for me as a great example of the rise of the blog. In his article in The Washington Post, July 9 2007, "The Blog That Made It Big", Howard Kurtz makes the following observation:
" ...skeptics dismissed it as a vanity outlet for her [Huffington] and her Hollywood friends. But The Huffington Post has become an undeniable success, its evolution offering a roadmap of what works on the Web."
Read the whole article here.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
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