~Querying Quest for Questions~

In this week's episode:

The class embarks on an honorable quest to delve into the unventured recesses of the online universe and retrieve random jewels of information in order to develop searching skills WITHOUT the assistance of the invaluable aid, Sir Google...

Today Alex learnt:

1. The world's largest pumpkin weighed in at 666.32kg, also holding the Guiness World Record as the largest Jack O'Lantern ever.

2. Aussie swim champ, Grant Hackett can be contacted at his swim meet: Miami Olympic Heated Pool, 80 Pacific Avenue, Miami QLD.

3. Giraffe tongues: "This muscular, prehensile organ can extend up to 18 inches"...lol

4. Ontology: I thought it was the study of being and existence. Dictionary Definition.

5. David Cronenberg's first film was Transfer (1966) "Transfer, my first film, was a surreal sketch for two people - a psychiatrist and his patient - at a table set for dinner in the middle of a field covered in snow. The psychiatrist has been followed by his obsessive former patient. The only relationship the patient has had which has meant anything to him has been with the psychiatrist. The patient complains that he has invented things to amuse and occasionally worry the psychiatrist but that he has remained unappreciative of his efforts."....NICE!

6. 'Hacker's Manifesto' was written on the 8th of January 1986

7. In movies, phone numbers off start with '555', a prefix reserved for the entertainment industry, to avoid having curious movie-goers calling actually calling the numbers on the screen.

8. The cheapest form of travel from Crete to Rhodes is by ferry

9. This week in 1965, kids everywhere were cranking up the volume on I'll Never Find Another You by the Seekers

10. New Comm Tech Lecturer Stephen Stockwell [the jolly guy in Hawaiian shirts] is on keyboard and vocals for The Black Assassins

Part Two:

THE SEARCH ENGINE

A search engine is a program which operates by sorting articles on the internet as a database to find matches to key words provided. It then reports a listing of related articles, or 'hits' to the searcher, along with links to these sites.

The list is often sorted in terms of relevance to the key words provided.

Indexes, which sort the relevance of the article are regularly updated and reviewed.
I've found Google to be my favourite search engine. Reasons for this could be that, in school we were taught and encouraged to explore the internet through Google; it uses a clear format of layout to display results; it's URL is easy to type quickly, and, it has many affiliations and links to other useful online resources (e.g. YouTube!).

Some interesting reads on the WORLD DOMINATION plans of search engines!

1. They CLAIM search engines are out for Optimisation not Domination......

2. A list of search engines [there's some newbies!]......

3. Search engines that rely on people power, hmm old-fashioned?.....

4. A search engine for open-source code!......

5. Google, Yahoo & Microsoft at WAR!.....