EduNotes (March, 2002 edition)

EduNotes EduCyber is pleased to present the March Edition of EduNotes. In this issue you'll read about frustrations with technology, a great place for help on searches or research of any kind, an explanation of what search engines are, and what's in store for the floppy. Enjoy and as always, send feedback to edunotes@educyber.com.

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Throw Them Out the Window!

I've heard this sentiment regarding computers from more than a few business owners lately. Frustrated by the cost and by their lack of understanding of the technology, they only half-jokingly mention their desire to throw them all out the window. While they cannot be dismissed as Luddites, they have recognized the need and benefits of technology after all; most of us can understand their frustrations. Today's computer systems, whether you've got one computer or several dozen, are the result of enormously complex technologies. These technologies need to all work together flawlessly for the system to function normally. Amazingly, they actually do work together without fail most of the time but unfortunately they do cease interacting sometimes. Let's use an analogy to cars to get a better idea of what's happening. When Henry Ford was cranking out his colorful (black is a color after all) cars, anybody could (and did) work on them to keep them running. Even when I was in high school in the early 80's, there were auto shop classes where the more mechanically inclined could disassemble and then reassemble an entire engine and have it function normally. These cars were much more complex than Mr. Ford's but they could still be managed by weekend mechanics. Some of the earliest (and enormous) computers are similar, in our analogy, to the Model Ts. By the time computers reached the 66 MHz 386 computers of several years ago, they had bypassed the 80's car technology and were more on the level of today's vehicles. With all the electronic and computer gadgetry in today's cars, most of us opt to take them to the garage rather than repair them ourselves. If we carry this analogy out to today's 2 GigaHertz Pentium 4 Computers, we'd have to shift the car analogy to include jet airplanes. And of course I don't know of any weekend mechanics who pull their F-16 fighter jets into their garage for a tune up or an oil change. The technology has surpassed the level where most of us can tinker with computers and so we need to hire experts to help. EduCyber also works with a team of other consultants to help in specialized areas. But calling in outside help can be frustrating. When the mechanic tells you you need costly repairs, unless you're quite familiar with the problem yourself, you have little choice but to have the repairs made. So what can we do? First and most importantly, plan your technology systems and purchases. If you opt to go for a Hyundai over a Mercedes, realize that there will be additional maintenance and performance costs. Secondly, be patient. When you buy a new car, there is an adjustment period both for the driver as he adjusts to the new car and for the car itself as the parts get broken in and used to working together. And finally choose your "mechanic" carefully. The lowest cost mechanic is often not the best one. And often the lowest price has several hidden costs. So it is with your computer systems. Choose who will provide your computer support based not only on competitive pricing but also on what experience and knowledge they bring to the table.

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Research

If you do any kind of research on the web, whether for fun or for work, you should visit www.ResearchBuzz.com. This site, maintained by Tara Calashain, has all the latest news about research and search sites. Think of a topic to research and there's a very good chance that she's got it covered. You can also sign up for her free weekly newsletter entitled, you guessed it, ResearchBuzz. ResearchBuzz covers hundreds of sites of directories, specialized search engines and general listings. Want to know where you can find an online manual to virtually every road sign in the U.S.? ResearchBuzz can help. Want to know which search engines accept paid advertising or how they work? ResearchBuzz has your answers. Want to know how you can use Google as your phonebook? Check out the news page at ResearchBuzz.

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Internet Basics:

What are search engines and how do they work? Since Yahoo emerged as THE search engine in 1994, the technology powering the Internet's most well known genre, the Search Engine, has changed much but the basic idea remains the same. There are millions of web sites out there, how do you find the one(s) with the information you need? Yahoo started as a list of web sites, just like you can define favorites or bookmarks in your own browser. As their list grew, they began dividing and subdividing the various sites into categories or directories. Actually Yahoo was the first Web Directory. As the volume grew, the search engine feature became necessary to find the right the site from amongst the hundreds. As with any success story, others quickly began competing with Yahoo and search engine sites like HotBot, Lycos, Excite, NorthernLight and others sprang into existence. But as this is not a historical perspective, let's take a look at what search engines can and cannot do. In 2002 the major search engines are vast databases of millions of web sites around the world. Each search engine has its own method or algorithm for ranking the results of any search you provide. They all rely, to one degree or another, on the content or key words of the page or pages. This content may be from visible text on the page or it may be from keywords or descriptions about the site that are "hidden" in a special place called meta-tags on the page. These meta tags provide information specifically for the search engines about what kind of information can be found on a site. If you know some information about a web site, say for example you knew that EduNotes was on the Internet, then typing the word EduNotes in the search field of your favorite search engine would be a good way to find this fascinating newsletter and all the back copies as well. If on the other hand, you knew that www.educyber.com was the place to go to find EduNotes, you would not want to type www.educyber.com in the search field. Instead you would type it in the address bar of your browser and go directly there. If your friend in Toledo told you they had just created a new site called www.imfromtoledo.com, you would not want to type that in a search engine box either. Newly created web sites or even new pages in an existing web site won't appear in a search engine until the search engine knows about the existence of the site. Most search engines have submission pages that allow you to notify them of new sites or changes to existing ones. Some sites will update their database within hours and others may take weeks. So what's the best place to go to find the information you need? Alas, that depends on what information you need. The best general search engine right now is www.google.com. They've got a great formula for ranking web sites that depends not only on the content of a site but also on the quality and quantity of links to that site from other places on the Internet. This makes it harder for one site to put all kinds of key words in the meta-tags simply to get people to visit their site. Google handles over 150 million searches a day and has cataloged over 2 billion web pages. If you don't find what you're looking for on Google, you may want to try www.northernlight.com. They have a unique way of grouping results by category that may help you find what you're looking for.

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Feeling Floppy?

For some time now we have been recommending clients (and anyone else who will listen) to not use floppy disks. As a method of backup for data or even in a sneakernet (moving data between computers with the use of sneakers or floppy disks), this medium is notoriously unreliable. Usually when we hear about floppy disks from people, it's because they've lost important data to a floppy that the computer now claims is not formatted or is otherwise unreadable. One point four megabytes. At one time that seemed like a huge amount of storage space. At one time. Now a basic install of Windows 2000 is likely to take up one Gigabyte of hard disk space and by the time you get other programs installed you'll likely be pushing two gigabytes. 1.4 MB disks can still hold a lot of word processing files if the file is just text. But if you start adding any of the useful things like charts, graphs, drawings, or other graphics, one file may not fit on a floppy. Once you couldn't install or reinstall an operating system without a floppy. Now computers can boot from CDs (yes Mac lovers, the PC can finally do that) so new operating systems like Windows 2000 and XP can be installed directly from the CD. So it sounds like Microsoft may finally have decided that the floppy is as useful to a PC as your appendix is to you. ZdNet's AnchorDesk recently had a story about the floppy going to hardware heaven which deals with Microsoft's decision. Visit www.zdnet.com/anchordesk and click on previous issue if you'd like to read it. What should you use instead of floppies? That depends on your purpose and your budget. With the possible exception of CDs, don't expect any of the removeable media drives to be around as long as the floppy has been. Zip Drives are a nice option but the media can get pricey. Our recommendation remains writable or rewritable CDs. A CD burner is in the same price range as a zip drive but the media (blank CDs) can be had for as little as $0.36 each. One point in the favor of CDs is that the new DVD drives are all backwardly compatible with CDs so you can continue to use your CDs for several years into the future.

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© 2002 EduCyber, Inc. This newsletter is brought to you by EduCyber, Inc. Permission is hereby granted to redistribute all or part of this newsletter as long as this copyright message is included. http://www.educyber.com

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For questions, or to be removed from this monthly newsletter distribution, email us at edunotes@educyber.com.