DKIT experience

As the first time when I arrived at the small town where the Dundalk Institute of Technology is located, I was interested in its rich history with modern industrial development. Not only we can get beautiful view from DkIT, it is an Institute which creates a dynamic learning environment for all our students.

From the beginning of my study here, especially being an international student, everything is different and unfamiliar. I was lost in direction and confidence and very keen to improve my English by making friends with native students. When I felt struggling of how to give the first step with other people, they welcomed me and accepted me as an old friend. After three years study here, I learned a lot both from academic aspect and practice. Our Institute gives the commitment to course provision, which responds to the aptitudes and ambitions of our students with an unrelenting focus on excellence. Also DkIT provide us a wonderful new Library and Information Resource Centre as well as additional classroom and performance space where are very significant to our study.

The life in the Dundalk Institute of Technology is continuing and I am very proud of being one of the students here. It was a wonderful memory that everything happened in DkIT and that will be my treasure for the entire life.

Mobile Commerce

Mobile commerce is triggered by the well-developed wireless technology, which provides the users to conduct commerce using a mobile device, such as a mobile phone, a PDA or other newly emerging mobile equipment such as an iPad. Through mobile commerce, shoppers can easily get connected to the sellers online around the globe to get their desired commodities. No doubt, the wireless technology speeds up the transaction process in the way to help the shoppers to buy online whenever there is a hot spot for wifi services or 3G networks. The mobile devices are portable and user-friendly. Also, it is fast and convenient, and shoppers will be able to get immediate feedback or confirmation from the seller online even in the case that they are waiting in line for a coffee.

From some personal experience, I am using an iPhone now, and the App Store provides thousands of apps that I can download to my phone for various purposes and uses. I can go online to browse news, connected to Facebook, shopping on eBay or Amazon. The specifically designed software applications are built in the iPhones, and through the Apps’ interfaces, we can conduct a lot of activities using the mobile devices. Not to mention that the mobile devices are also connect to the mobile banking, for iPhone or Blackberry they have specifically designed apps for banks, such as HSBC. This approach makes the mobile transactions more timely and efficient because the users can get instant resources right away. 

Censorship

Censorship is an action of limited using of speech or other form of public communication that may contain harmful, sensitive, or offensive information to the main public (Wikipedia). Therefore, the government or other organizations may propose related regulations to prevent the potential harms that might be resulted from the media sources.

The types of censorship highly depend on the kind of information that is potentially harmful to the public and therefore needs to be censored. Moral censorship is the most common one and it requires removing the materials that are considered morally questionable. Pornography often falls under this category and it is illegal to expose these materials to the general public especially to children. Another type of censorship is recognized as military censorship, and the major task is to keep the military tactics confidential and prevent them being exposed to the enemies.

However, the issue of censorship has brought a hot debate into the public, people are more concerned with the freedom of speech and expression of their opinions especially for the news media. The public is worried about losing the democratic status in the society. For example, the news of War of Iraq, the information has been somehow limited and hided from the public because of political pressure and chaos it might bring consequently. When Internet users are browsing online for the news, they might only see and comment on the information, which has already been censored by the government in order to make sure that no intense news has been released. Due to the reason that higher mortality rate during the wartime will cause negative domestic influence. The positive side for censorship for certain news is trying to protect the public, but in the long run, the public will inevitable question the news and they will potentially lose confidence and trust in government.

This is what I have been experienced about the debate over censorship towards news media through TV shows and Internet-based providers.

Usability

Web usability is gaining its importance in nowadays fast-paced society. The reason is that the Internet can store tremendous amount of information for the global users and we can get the information needed within seconds. Sometimes, when the end-users are exposed to millions of different sources of information, it is really important for us to narrow down what we need in a more efficient way.

Let us take a look at the example of Yahoo’s main page. Right next to the YAHOO! Title is a search box where end-users can look up for the information to fulfill their needs. On the very left side, there is the navigation panel which will lead the users to the various yahoo sites related to finance, jobs, entertainment, weather, shopping and so on. Under this major navigation panel is a section called “my favorites”, so end-users can add or delete what important activities they require for personal need. Another good illustration of the highly convenient Yahoo website is the middle section which is the news section. This section includes the local and worldwide news. The images of the hot topics are also showing under the news in order to direct the readers’ attention to highlight the importance of certain information. Overall, Yahoo did a really good job of reducing the potential ambiguity for readers while viewing the website. The information is clearly laid out, and the interface is very organized. It helps the users to find what they need more efficiently and improve the user-friendly features of the website.

Search Ranking Algorithms in Baidu & Google

If you want your website appear in the first page when people searching your keywords in the search engine. One of the most important things is SEO. In order to be successful in SEO, it is necessary to have good acknowledge of search engine ranking algorithms.

Baidu and Google are two most common used search engine in China. There is a big difference in website. When searching the same keyword respectively in these two website, the results appeared is quite different. For example, I type in “Beijing luxury hotel” in both website, the result is showed in the picture below. The left one is from Baidu and the right one is from Google. (to click on the picture to see the clear one)

According to some research on this area. The difference between ranking algorithms of Baidu and Google can be concluded as: Baidu is more focused on matching keywords, the freshness of the page, the page URL, and Google is more concerned about the influence of the site.

The main factors to be considered in search engine ranking algorithm are the following: URL, site impact, keyword matching, web update and web page similarity.

Baidu more focuses on whether the keyword matches the overall page, title, Meta and content, and also the URL rather than the influence of the site. Baidu intention to do so is to reduce the role of site influence, therefore to give prominence to the quality of the results page and the matching degree between the results and users’ expectation.

Since Google doesn't use human interference in searching results, Google focuses on the site influence as their priority of their website ranking algorithms. Otherwise there will be a large number of spam sites appear in the first page of results.

Not like Google, which is completely dependent on the machine to appear search results, Baidu use human interference in searching results. Therefore Baidu has the monitoring capability for those websites, which don’t have much influence. Once found spam pages appear in search results in the forefront, Baidu can manually block those sites. Therefore, Baidu can reduce the importance of sites influence in their website ranking algorithms.

One of my friends who is a SEOer talked his experience on these two search engines. He thought that Baidu and Google have some common, also have some difference need to be considered. First, the performance difference on the new site included. General when your new website has been submitted to the both Baidu and Google, Google will include your website in their results page and release the search data. On the other hand, you need to wait a long time before Baidu record your website. Secondly, the rank stability is quite different. Baidu is less stable than Google. Google ranking is generally very stable, if you have already in a high rank, it is difficult to fall off. However Baidu will suddenly give you a high rank, but after 1-2 days, it may fall quickly. If you have a lot of external links and good content, your rank will recover later.

Different search engine ranking algorithms are constantly adjusting. Google recently added update as an important factor in their ranking algorithms since blog is becoming more and more popular.

Web Standards

To accurately define web standards, it is a general term for the formal or the technical specifications describing the aspects of the World Wide Web (Wikipedia). The term is referring as adapting to the standardized practices for websites constructing and websites designing. The international standards organization is the W3C, which stands for World Wide Web Consortium (blog.genggao.net). The W3C’s main function is to propose new standards for the World Wide Web as well as ensure all the industry members and general users are adopting the standards.

What does it mean exactly by complying with the web standards? It means that the site or page has valid HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The HTML, CSS and JavaScript combining together.

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, and it is the primary markup language for web pages. Also, HTML is the basic building blocks of web pages. HTML form is consisting of tags, and angle brackets. For instance, <h1> and </h1>, it always comes in pair. The first tag will be called the start tag, and the second one will be the end tag. The website designers can keep adding text, tables and images in between those tags to build up the websites so people can view it using the web browser. The web browser is used to read the HTML documents and convert them into visual or audible formats.

CSS, which is Cascading Style Sheets, is another name for web browsers. It helps to outline the appearance and layout of text, images and other materials. On the other hand, JavaScript, not to confuse with Java programming language, is also known as ECMAScript. It is an implementation of the ECMAScript language standard and it is also part of the web browser so that the JavaScript will enhance the user interfaces.

In short, web standards lay out a unified structure of composing text, images and markup languages into clear forms through the web browsers. Anyone who gains access to the web pages through the Internet-enabled devices is complied with the web standards. A good web standards should allow users access the website through any Internet-enabled device, and there should be no difference of the functions or services provided by the website when accessing through different web browsers and Internet-enabled devices.