Information Discovery

Within the Internet, there are hundreds of millions of computers, and millions of them are servers. Each of these servers provides huge amount of information.

Nowadays, most of these servers are based on web technology, and they are called web servers. The information provided by these web servers are formatted by using HTML and access to these servers can be done through a web browser.

In order to obtain information, we can go to the URL of a particular website. For example,

 To get information about Open University Malaysia (OUM), we need to browse the website of OUM (www.oum.edu.my).

 News from al-Jazeera tv station can be obtained by browsing al-JazeeraÊs website (www.aljazeera.com/english).

 To read online newspapers, we can visit www.bharian.com.my (for Berita Harian) or www.thestar.com.my (for The Star).

The major problem of discovery on the Internet is the huge amount of information available. Research has shown that the amount of information available on the Internet doubles every year. In order to help in discovering information, a number of search engines have been developed. Some of the search engines are:

 Google;

 Yahoo;

 Altavista; and

 Live Search.

A search engine maintains an index of hundreds of millions of web pages. This index is created and updated by a software agent called softbot or spider. A user searches for information by typing some keywords. The search engine will use the index to find web pages that match the userÊs request. Figure 5.2 shows how Google search engine is being used to search for „Distributed Computing‰.

Figure 5.2: Searching by using Google Search Engine

Another method for information discovery is by using Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Agent. One of the popular FAQ assistant is Ask (ask.com) which allows the user to discover information by asking questions in plain English.

Another source of information on the Internet is online encyclopedia for example wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com). This type of encyclopedia compiles information based on usersÊ contributions. It provides a lot of useful and interesting infomation about almost everything. However, since it is based on usersÊ contribution, the information may not be reliable.

 Personal portal: A portal that offers information content that can be personalised to a particular person. An example of this type of portal is My Yahoo.

 Government portal: A portal that offers information about government services to the citizens.

 Corporate portal: Organised and coordinated information content for the corporate and partnersÊ communities.

1. Go to wikipedia website and search for definition of portals.

2. Do you trust the information given in wikipedia? Explain your answer.

3. There are a number of search engines. Which one do you prefer?

Why?

4. Give examples for each type of portals.

ACTIVITY 5.1

5.1.2 Communication

The second major category of Internet computing aplication is communication.

Since computers on the Internet are connected to one another, they can be used as an effective medium of communication.

Advantages of using Internet as the medium of communication are:

 Fast: The information sent can be received almost immediately.

 Cheap: The cost of sending a message through the Internet is very cheap compared to sending them through the normal post.

 Multimedia: Messages can contain text, audio, picture and video.

 Interactive: Many means of communication provided by the Internet are interactive.

 Not limited by geographical or political borders.

The most commonly used communication tool is e-mail. However, there are many other different types of communication tools available, for example:

 Instant messaging: A technology that enables real-time text-based communication between two or more participants over the Internet.

Multimedia-based instant messaging allows participants to use webcam to send voice or video messages. One of the most popular instant messaging tools is the Yahoo Messenger.

 Online chat: Refers to direct one-on-one chat or text-based group chat. The expression „online chat‰ comes from the word chat that means "informal conversation‰. Some of the tools that can be used for online chatting is Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and talkers. Multimedia-based online chat enables users to communicate through voice and video.

 Voice over IP: A general term for a family of transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications over the Internet. Other terms frequently encountered and synonymous with VoIP are IP telephony and Internet telephony.

 Video conferencing: A set of interactive technologies which allow people from two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously. It differs from videophone in that it is designed to serve a conference rather than individuals. Examples of tools for video conferencing are netmeeting and CU-SeeMe.

 Weblogging: A blog is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other materials such as graphics or video. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, videos and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic.

The communication tools available on the Internet can be looked at from a number of different perspectives. From the perspective of the audience, we can divide these tools into one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many, as shown in Table 5.1.

Table 5.1: Communication tools from perspective of the audience Audience Tools One to one

e-mail,

Instant messaging VoIP

One to many Weblogging

Many to many Video conferencing, Online Chat

Table 5.2: Communication tools from the perspective of time

The third perspective is from the content point of view. In this perspective, communication tools can be divided into text only, voice only or multimedia content, as shown in Table 5.3.

Table 5.3: Communication tools from the perspective of content

Content Tools Text only Text-based instant messaging

Text-based online chat

Collaboration refers to an activity being carried out by two or more people in order to accomplish certain tasks. Internet computing enables virtual collaboration (or e-collaboration) to be carried out. This virtual collaboration involves a group of people located at different locations.

Some of the benefits of virtual collaboration are:

 Reduce the cost of travelling; and

 Reduce time taken to complete a task.

There are a number of technologies that are available to support virtual collaboration. Some of them are:

 Workflow Management System;

 Groupware Technologies; and

 Real-time Collaboration tools.

Workflow Management System is a system that manages the flow of document from one person to another.

Groupware technologies allow virtual collaboration through virtual meeting, teleconferencing .

Realtime Collaboration Tool is a special type of groupware technology that provide synchronous interaction between people in a group. Examples of this type of tools are:

 Computer-based whiteboard, which enables all participants to view and draw on a single whiteboard displayed on their computer screens.

 Screen sharing, which enables participants to edit the same document at the same time.

ACTIVITY 5.1

Explain how Internet Computer can help you to do the following things:

1. Get information about some terms that you do not understand ă for example „client-server computing‰, „voice over IP‰, etc.

2. Find out the cheapest airline ticket from Kuala Lumpur to Venice.

3. Find out about major tourist attractions and recreational facilities in Hawaii.

4. Communicate with your friend in the UK.

5. Prepare a working paper together with your colleagues in Germany.

6. Buy books online.

 Mobility; and

 Broad reach.

Mobility implies that users can carry mobile devices with them and can communicate with other people from new locations. Broad reach means that users or mobile computing can be reached at any time.

The development of mobile computing is driven by two important factors:

 Widespread availability of mobile devices; and

 Improvement of bandwidth of the wireless network.

We will discuss both of these factors in the next subsections.

In document Fundamentals of ICT (Pldal 122-128)