The good, the bad and the ugly

The research topic that I choose was one I had to write on child obesity.

The Good: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/obesityinchildren.html

• What does the URL tell you? The URL tells me that is it a government site because it has "gov" in it. It also tells me that it is associates with the National Institute of Health because it has "nih" in it.
• Who is the author? And, how current is the information? The group responsible for this page is the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. The information was last updated 2/18/2010.
• What indicators are there that it is quality information? There are several links to other websites associates with the National Institute of Health.
• What do others say or think about this resource? When I typed the URL into google a long list of websites came up that had that link on their site.
• What's the purpose and intent of the resource? Are there better sources available? The purpose of the site is to give more information about childhood obesity and to provide information to people about this issue. I think that this is a good source.

The Bad: http://www.myoverweightchild.com/

• What does the URL tell you? From the URL I believe this is a commercial website.
• Who is the author? And, how current is the information? There is not an author listed on this web page and there is not a date provided.
• What indicators are there that it is quality information? There are no indications that this is quality information.
• What do others say or think about this resource?
• What's the purpose and intent of the resource? Are there better sources available? The purpose of the site is to give information about childhood obesity but there are much better sources available. I'm not sure how reliable this information is.

Wikipedia Part 2

After reading the information provided, I do think that wikipedia is some what reliable but I am still leery. I guess its been forced into my brain so much that even with what I just read I still don't think I can trust it 100%.

All the news thats fit to print

How many internet users are in the world?

According to this website there are 1,733,993,741 internet users in the world.

Who is allowed to publish information via the internet?

According to this website as long as you have access to register with a websites that publishes information you can publish whatever you want.

I think this information means that internet users need to be careful about what we read. If anyone can post what they want we need to be cautious about what we believe. Thats a lot of internet users and a lot of people who can post whatever the heck they want to. Some people are naive and believe everything they read without getting a second opinion. Its easy to be fooled by stuff we read on the internet. Its a scary world out there kids!!

Wikipedia Part 1

Over the last five years the schools have had this big thing that wikipedia is not a reliable source. Every research paper that I had to write in high school the teachers would constantly stress the fact that wikipedia was not reliable because anyone can go to the website and edit the information. With that said I do not think that Wikipedia is very reliable. Honestly I have never actually tried to go to Wikipedia and edit their information I have just always relied on other people telling me that you can do this.

Searching the Internet

I decided to search for hair dyes.

First Search

hair dye

2,860,000 in .12 seconds

Second Search

hair dyes home easy

691,000 in .20 seconds

Third Search

easy ways to dye hair at home

309,000 in .22 seconds

Fourth Search

easy ways to dye hair at home AND Boolean

2,040 in .27 seconds

Personal Computer Use Profile

I am constantly on the computer at work. We use Microsoft Outlook for our email system. I probably get fifty emails a day. I also work a lot in Microsoft Excel and Word. We use Excel spread sheets for reports and we use Word to create mail merges to generate letters to send out to customers. We use a computer system that we call Newstar Enterprise in which we basically input all kinds of information into it and it generates certain corporate reports. We used to use SAP but within the last year or two we converted to the Newstar System.

At home I use my computer for school and for social networking. Usually when I get on the computer I will go check my Yahoo account and then log on to Facebook. I also use my computer to download music through Itunes. I use my computer to transfer the music to my Iphone. I also use my Iphone to check my work/personal emails. I can also download music from my phone.

I don't know very much about my computer hardware or software. I do not think I know how to clean up my computer if I were to get a virus. I could probably figure it out but it would take some time. I do not know how to add more RAM to my computer. Again if I really wanted to I could figure it out but as of now I do not have any knowledge of that.

:)

How safe are you?

Survey Says:

• Virus Protection. Are you absolutely certain your personal computer has virus protection software running? If yes, what virus protection software do you use? NOT SURE
• Password Strength. Go to Microsoft Password Check tool, enter your password to see how strong it is. How strong is your password? MY PASSWORD IS MEDIUM
  
• Firewall. Does your computer have a firewall active? If your machine is running a firewall, what kind is it? What's the name of it? NOT SURE
• Ad/Mal-ware. Are you absolutely certain your personal comptuer at home has ad/malware protection software running? If yes, what software are you using? NOT SURE
• Spam. Do you forward to friends and families strange photos, stories, please for help or security warnings? If yes, how often do you check to see if the messages you forward are true or valid? NOT OFTEN
• Phishing. Do you know what phishing or social engineering is? YES
• Image. Do you monitor your online image? Are you absolutely certain your social network profiles are private? Do you ever do vanity searches on the internet? YES
• Data Backup. Do you have a backup of your data? If so, where do you keep that backup? NO