Lori Kim's attempt to learn the web search engine: Lycos

Report 2
My Learning to Use Web Search Engine:
LYCOS.

Table of Contents
Picking my Topic Yahoo, I picked Lycos Romance and Power, HUH?? Steps Taken in my First Lycos Search Quantitative Evaluation of the Overall Experience

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Picking my Topic

Before my attempt to even use any type of search engine, I had to pick a topic that I was interested in, so I went into Generation 3's class and looked at some of their works. There was one subject there that I thought would be interesting to find more information on, for my own personal knowledge, and that was relationships. I thought to myself that this would be easy and my mind will be all there, I will be focused, since the subject is of interest to me.

Yahoo, I picked Lycos

At firtst I decided to search on Yahoo, a directory based search engine, only because I heard of this name before. I had no idea what it was but I knew that it was somehow connected to the whole cyberworld. I tried a couple of times to do some searches on Yahoo, mostly entertainment. Either the topic that I chose was boring or some of homepages wasn't that neat. The next day in class, I found out that our professor, Dr. Leon James, uses Lycos- a keyword string type of search engine. I have never heard of nor used Lycos before but I decided to give it a try the next day - to my liking.

Much like Yahoo, Lycos had on the top of their screen, an advertisement by a company trying to promote itself or sell something - the same ad even appeared on the bottom as you scrolled down. I found out something interesting in class about these ads and it was that the company only paid Lycos if people actually clicked onto their advertisement, so if you just feel like killing time and making a little money for them, why not click on it. I heard that there was directions on how to use Lycos when you clicked on it but I guess I never really paid that much attention to the screen and all its functions or maybe I might of unconsciously blocked it out of my head because of all the neat graphics. I wanted to just play around and learn for myself.

Romance and Power, HUH??

My topic was relationships. This was too broad a subject to study, so to narrow it down, I focused on only romantic relationships and the problem that some couples are actually fighting for - POWER. I think most conflicts in a relationship is because both partners are struggling for power. I think relationships are like business investments, where the parners are not happy unless they have more than the other but this may not be possible so the next best is a 50-50 deal. Both sides give and receive the same amount of love, care, respect, etc...

I did not take notes to help me with this topic - in fact, I got my topic one day when I was riding on the bus thinking about my own relationship with my boyfriend. My relationship with him has its ups and downs and I believe most of our downs has been because of this power trip that both he and I try to gain from each other. I was going to use my own experience to try and find those exact words to type in the search window. I was pretty confident that I knew my subject well enough for me to not have to consult anyone or take any notes before hand. I was also still pretty confident not to have to read directions on using Lycos.

BOTTOM anyone??
TOP anyone??

Steps Taken in my First Lycos Search

I typed the words LOVE & RELATIONSHIP & CONFLICT & POWER in the search window of Lycos. There was over 47 million unique URLs that the search came up with that could of related to my topic, or so the computer thinks. It then told me how many documents have the words that I typed along with a different way of writing the word. For example love - the computer gave loved and lovely...for power - the computer gave it powered, powerful, and powers. I would never have thought of these words myself. Going down the screen, it gave me the first ten documents that had the words I was searching for along with the amount of these words appearing in the documents as compared to other documents by percentages...the first of course having the highest percentage. There is a link to the document by clicking the name of document, but the address is given also, along with the last date that the document was updated. I think this part is the most tedious, because you have to read all the little summarys and see if it really has any relevance to your topic.

This document The Courage to Love Deeply, got only a 42% rating but it's the best that i have run into so far concerning my topic. There is another document, that tries to explain love, and how it is the greatest thing on Earth..but it doesn't say how one can manage a relatinship..it doesn't talk about the conflicts that arises when one is usually in a relationship, ..An explanation for love is what this document tried to show, it was called the Power of Love, just like the song. In fact I found the document that had the words to the song. Two of my words appeared in the lyrics and so that is why it showed up...Anyone interested. I didn't know that there would be so many religious documents on the internet nor services for purchases. I found a great link to my topic on relationship conflict but this way trying to sell its book...Relationship Conflict. It summarized a little about the book and said "how conflict is a natural and inevitable aspect of most close personal relationships - the crucial issue is not whether it exists, but the way it is managed. Skilfully portraying both developmental or healthy conflict, and destructive or unhealthy conflict, this interdisciplinary volume leads to a better understanding of this vital aspect of relationships." Do you have $31, this is how much the book costs, maybe later I might want to pick up this book at the bookstore.