Constructing Queries

Assignment: find out about possible lives in other planets

Query 1: other life

We found information about a book called “The Other Life”, but it doesn`t respond to our doubts.http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9554790-the-other-life .  Also we found theories which talked about other possible life, which refers to a virtual life, created by Linden Lab, again this didn`t work for us. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

Query 2: other lives in the universe

When searched other lives in the universe, we found a Wikipedia page that talked about extraterrestrial life.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_life .   We also found another page which talked about other lives in the universe, and there is a theory by Bill Watterson which says that he is really sure that there are other lives as no one tried to contact us.http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/Extraterrestrial%20life.htm

Query 3:  is there any life on other planet?

  In this page Hans Bodlaender concludes that there probably is life in Mars, and that there will be bacteria taken from the Earth to Mars.

http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~bodla101/religion/lifeonotherplanets.html

In this page we read that The Telegraph announces that there certainly exists other lives in other planets, it confirms that there were signs about extraterrestrials found.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8337518/Life-on-other-planets-latest-discovery-comes-after-string-of-recent-signs-of-extraterrestrials.html

When constructing a query in Google, the more precise you are on your search, the more accurate results you will get. In order to construct a precise query, try to be specific on what you are looking for. Don’t search for queries that may give you a large diversity of results such as ‘world’, when you are actually looking for the percentage of water in the earth. Google can’t guess what you are looking for, so you must be clear enough on what you are looking. In this case, your search query could be: ‘percentage of water on earth’.

By: Delfina Martìnez Puente, Paula Elias and Juan Blaquier 

The Filter Bubble

1.We have noted slight difference in our webpage ranks appearance when we googled the same query. The difference was just in the order the first five links were ranked. This lack of clear differenciation may be due to the little we use google while we are logged in to our mails or accounts, not providing google the information they need to rank and choose what type of information we like or preferr the most.

2.Google collects information about its users based on their activity in different sites, from its search page to Gmail to Youtube to phone running its Android operation system.  No data is collected while the user is not logged in.  You can't opt-out of shared search data on Google.

The main change is for users with Google Accounts, the new Privacy Policy says that, if you’re signed in, Google may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services.

For example, if its January, and maybe you’re not a gym person, so  you are not interested on fitness ads, Google provides reminders that you’re going to be late for a meeting based on where you are, your calendar and an understanding of what the traffic is like that day, in order to help you in daily tasks.


Google's new privacy policy has as a main objective, narrow the user's search results and try to guess what you are really looking for since many articles or links can appear from the same query.  This system inhibits some links from appearing because the software has registered that the user is not interested in certain stuff. 

http://googleblog.blogspot.com.ar/2012/01/updating-our-privacy-policies-and-terms.html#!/2012/01/updating-our-privacy-policies-and-terms.html

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-27/tech/tech_web_google-privacy-clarified_1_google-chrome-browser-privacy-tools-search-data?_s=PM:TECH

By: Paula Elias, Delfina Martínez Puente and Raul Lottero

Search Engines

1b. The first page to appear in Google for searching 'electric cars' was Wikipedia, in which the words 'electric car' appeared 136 times throughout the whole article. This page, used 182 references to collect all the information. Google is the reason why most people visit Wikipedia.  The co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin, believes that Wikipedia is “one of the greatest triumphs of the Internet” and “an invaluable resource to anyone who is online”. Google loves Wikipedia, there are 99% chances that, if Wikipedia has an article based on query, it will be shown on the first page. http://www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/wikipedia-appears-page-google-searches/13269/

The second page that appeared was Telsa Motors (http://www.teslamotors.com/) which was founded in 2003 and they wanted to prove that electric cars could be excellent also.  In this page you can see the different models Telsa Motors offers.

The third page to appear was Electric Cars, (http://electriccars.com/previews/main.cfm?FUNC=MAIN) which has as a mission not to produce gas or pollution. They also have a ranking of the top 10 electric cars. Also, they show the worldwide dealer network.

The fourth page that appeared was Hybrid Cars (http://www.hybridcars.com/electric-car) that explains what an electric car is, and then compares electric vs. Gasoline, also they have a list of the new upcoming electric cars.  It also provides a lot of information about electric cars and its benefits.

The second search engine we used to look for ‘electric cars’ was yebol.  I consider that the first link (http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/01/09/switched-on-highways.html) was ranked in that position because of the amount of times that the word ‘electric ’ and ‘cars’ appear throughout the article.  In addition, yebol may recognize how popular this webpage is. 

The link ranked second on Yebol’s search engine was http://www.milesev.com/ This may be because of the fact that this webpage that sells electric cars and tries to promote them.  The webpage called milesev refers to miles electric vehicles.  This search engine takes into account the use of the word vehicle, a synonym for cars.

Thirdly ranked appears http://www.teslamotors.com/ Tesla is a webpage about cars specifies on ‘electric cars’, when you click on an interactive button. This suggests that the search engine used, has a deep investigation on the websites so it also bases it results on the links you may open within the webpage.

In the fourth ranked link, the word ‘car’ appears in the title, in the name of the webpage, and throughout the article.  This webpage is a guide on cars and prices, and a listed category is ‘electric cars’ http://www.thecarconnection.com/

Besides, in every webpage ranked in the first four places, our search query appeared as one or more of the webpage’s tags.

c. The search engines algorithms are based on the coincidence of your query with the webpage tags and also with the amount of times your query or part of it is mentioned throughout the text.  It also analyzes the importance of your query in the webpage such as if your query is described and deeply analyzed or just being mentioned.  In the case of google, Wikipedia appears as the first ranked link in several cases not only because of your query and its popularity but also because Wikipedia is highly supported by Google.

2. Search Engine Optimization is a process where the search engines are optimized for the people who enter, it makes it more "friendly". The most important objective is the choosing sites from the words that the user imputs in the search engine. When a page is more visited that the others, it tends to be in the top of the page when you look for something. Thats part of the process of SEO. Also, the SEO targets to optimized other type of categories, such as images, videos or news.
http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/search_engine_optimization/
 
PageRank is the way that Google ranks the pages from the keywords you've input. Depending on what you had written, PageRank analyzes the links and quality of them. If the hits are higher and better for what you are seraching, the most recomended pages will be at the top.
http://www.motive.co.nz/glossary/pagerank.php
http://www.topwebsitetips.com/articles/GooglePageRankDefinitionHistoryDevelopment.aspx
 
There are a lot of startegies to make your webpage appear at the top of Google. One of the most important techniques is the title he tag. The page title is the first thing the search engine will look for. It is essential to put one or two keyword and not spamming it. The second most important technique is the meta tag. Is important beacuse it appears listed in te search results. It is what the user reads when i comes up and makes them decide to click your web page or not. As title tag, it is important to us keywords but not to many. The third most important is the proper use heading tags. This helps the search engines, users and web browsers to know where the major key points of your copy are.  http://freelancefolder.com/10-top-seo-techniques/

3. When we searched Miserable failure on Google, we found that many links were related to the ex-president of United States, George Bush, before when people searched “miserable failure” the first link that appeared was his biography, although the 2 words never appeared in the article.  But that happened because Google doesn’t search only about the content of the page but also about other links the page has.   This is called Google Bombing, when you relate one phrase to certain articles which maybe have nothing to do, but they appear when searched.

When we searched Talentless hack, we found that most pages talked about Google bombing, then we found an article that explained that Adam Mathes who has a weblog and an online journal of his thoughts and investigations,  used a bomb to make his friend page appear when talentless hack was searched on Google.  This may be used by businesses or corporations to improve their position in search results.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/1868395.stm

http://google.about.com/od/socialtoolsfromgoogle/a/googlebombatcl.htm


Prezzavento, Elias & Martinez Puente

Terra 2050 Analysis

1st Statement: "2/3 of the languages of the world will go in the 21st century"

By doing deep research in reliable sources, we proved that the statements mentioned in Terra 2050 were correct.

Source 1: http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/29-11-2007/101929-language-0/

The first source analyzed seems reliable because of the author, David Harrison, that is a linguist and a deputy director of Living Tongues Institute in the USA.  He also makes reference to other professionals by quoting their own opinion.  It seems he is an educated man that really knows what he is talking about so he convinces the reader about the reliability of the article.

In the article, David Harrison makes the reader understand the reasons of his declarations.  He wrote that a language dies every two week and that most of the world population spoke 83 languages out of 7000.  This means that there are many endangered languages since very few people speak the remaining 6917 languages. 

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Source 2: http://worldfocus.org/blog/2010/03/03/cultures-around-the-world-at-risk-of-losing-their-languages/9925/

The second source analyzed is also reliable since it includes videos and reports from BBC, that is well-known. In addition the webpage is very organized, with diverse ways of delivering information to the reader such as text, images and reports.  

UNESCO, a very important organization, includes in the article an interactive map of the whole world representing the endangered languages where the southern hemisphere and the usa are at higher risk of language disappearance.

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Source 3: http://lsadc.org/info/ling-faqs-endanger.cfm

I consider  this source reliable since it has been written by the Linguistic Society of America and different sources are cited, such as National Geographic, showing that deep investigation has taken place.  Besides, the article is informative, every point is explained through a question - answer format.

The article at first gives you an introduction of an endangered language and its corresponding explanation of cases of extinction, such as when the last person alive speaking a certain language, dies.

2nd Statement: "Robots will be used around the home doing vacuum and cooking"

Source 1: http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/24/garden/in-a-cashless-future-robots-will-cook.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

The selected source is an article from the New York Times that in the title clarifies that robots will cook in the future.  I consider it a reliable source of information since it is one of the most important newspapers around the world, granting yourself from true data or facts that have been previously analyzed and corrected before being posted.

In the article mentioned, the author writes about a developed society were robots will cook for you taking into account your health conditions such as blood pressure and cholesterol level.

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Source 2: http://www.about-robots.com/cleaning-robots.html

I decided to keep on reading this second source because of the fact that the webpage is completely about robots so a very deep investigation must have taken place in order to post several articles.  Besides, the text is very organized together with images related to the topic, showing dedication to the webpage design.

The article is based on the description of four different robots that can clean your house in a very efficient way, saving you time and effort.  Everything will be much more easier and these robots may be scheduled to clean your house while your away or sleeping.

By: Valentín Mac Ardle & Paula Elías