Week 6, Internet Tools

So recently, I learnt about Internet Tools, with specification to

GOOGLE TOOLS!!!!!

Not all google tools, but the Google Ngram Viewer in particular. This particular Google tool aroused my interest as I have never seen it on Google's homepage before, as well as never before on the set of Google tools that are laid out below the Google search bar that we so often see. As you can see in the picture below, the list of Google tools seem horribly limited, but in actual fact, there is MORE to Google tools if one actually bothers opening up the search engine bar.

However, with respect to the other tools that I am so sure that we are all familiar with by now, I will briefly touch on their functions.

Firstly the Web tool, it is a general search engine that searches for anything in relation to the keyword that you key in the search engine bar, and would enable users to find websites that contain the keyword or information that would be related to the item that you are searching for. Google Search is a web search engine, which is Google's core product. It receives over 3 billion search queries per day. Google also offers regional search by its 189 regional level domains. 

Google Alerts – email notification service, which sends alerts based on chosen search terms, whenever there are new results. Alerts include web results, Groups results news, and video.

• Google Books (formerly Print) – search engine for the full text of printed books. Google scans and stores in its digital database. The content that is displayed depends on the arrangement with the publishers, ranging from short extracts to entire books.
• Google Custom Search – allows a user to create a customized search experience for his/her own website. Renamed from Google Co-op, which in turn replaced Google Free Search.
• Experimental Search – options for testing new interfaces while searching with Google, including Timeline views and keyboard shortcuts.
• Google Finance – searchable US business news, opinion, and financial data. Features include company-specific pages, blog search, interactive charts, executives information, discussion groups and a portfolio.
• Google Groups – web and email discussion service and Usenet archive. Users can join a group, make a group, publish posts, track their favorite topics, write a set of group web pages up datable by members and share group files. In January, 2007, version 3 of Google Groups was released. New features include the ability to create customised pages and share files.
• Google Hotel Finder - Provides searches similar to other Online Travel Agencies (Travel website) that searchers can search for check-in and check-out dates.
• Google Flight Search - a service that allows users to search for flights from many airlines to many destination, offering tools such as price comparisons and travel recommendations.
• Google Image Search – image search engine, with results based on the filename of the image, the link text pointing to the image and text adjacent to the image. You can also make a search by uploading a picture from your computer.When searching, a thumbnail of each matching image is displayed.
• Language Tools – Collection of linguistic applications, including one that allows users to translate text or web pages from one language to another, and another that allows searching in web pages located in a specific country or written in a specific language.
• Life Search (Google China) – Search engine tailored towards everyday needs, such as train times, recipes and housing.
• Movies – specialised search engine that obtains show times of films near a user-entered location and provides reviews of films compiled from several different websites.
• Google News – automated news compilation service and search engine for news. There are versions of the aggregator for more than 20 languages. While the selection of news stories is fully automated, the sites included are selected by human editors.
• Google News archive – feature within Google News, that allows users to browse articles from over 200 years ago.
• Google Patent Search – search engine to search through millions of patents, each result with its own page, including drawings, claims and citations.
• Google Scholar – search engine for the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and scholarly fields. Today, the index includes virtually all peer-reviewed journals available online.
• Google Shopping (was Google Product Search and Froogle): price engine that searches online stores, including auctions, for products. Beginning in Fall of 2012, it will become a fully commercial product, only indexing paid listings.
• Suggest – auto-completion in search results while typing to give popular searches.
• Google Video – video search engine and online store for clips internally submitted by companies and the general public. Google's main video partnerships include agreements with CBS, NHL and the NBA. Also searches videos posted on YouTube, Metacafe, Daily Motion, and other popular video hosting sites. Google Video will no longer host video content after August 20, 2012
• Voice Local Search – non-premium phone service for searching and contacting local businesses
• Web History (was Google Search History, Personalized Search) – web page tracking, which records Google searches, Web pages, images, videos, music and more. It also includes Bookmarks, search trends and item recommendations. Google released Search History in April 2005, when it began to record browsing history, later expanding and renaming the service to Web History in April 2007.
• Knowledge Graph – a knowledge base used to enhance search results with semantic information gathered from several sources.
• Google Trader – a free online classifieds service that allows people to post or find jobs and buy or sell goods and services. Currently available in Ghana,Kenya, Uganda, Thailand and Nigeria.

However, the most important tool of the day would be the Google Ngram Viewer that I recently found out about.Google's Ngram Viewer lets you search keywords in millions of books over the span of half a millennium, a useful tool for finding trends over time. For power users, the Ngram Viewer also has advanced options, such as searching for particular keywords as specific parts of speech or combining keywords. Just in case you ever wanted to see how big cocaine was in Victorian times, now you can.

The word-search database was created by Google Books and was based originally on 5.2 million books published between 1500 and 2008. Collectively, the corpus contained over 500 billion words in American English, British English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, and Chinese.Italian words are counted by their use in other languages. A user of the Ngram tool has the option to select among the source languages for the word-search operations.

Researchers have analyzed the Google Ngram database of books written in American or British English discovering interesting results. Amongst them, they found correlations between the emotional output and significant events in the 20th century such as World War II.

Operation and restrictions

Commas delimit user-entered search-terms, indicating each separate word or phrase to find. The Ngram Viewer returns a plotted line chart within seconds of the user pressing the Enter key or the "Search" button on the screen.

As an adjustment for more books having been published during some years, the data is normalized, as a relative level, by the number of books published in each year.

Google populated the database from over 5 million books published up to 2008. Accordingly, as of May 2012, no data will match beyond the year 2008. Due to limitations on the size of the Ngram database, only matches found in over 40 books are indexed in the database; otherwise the database could not have stored all possible combinations.Typically, search-terms cannot end with punctuation, although a separate full stop, or period, can be searched.Also, an ending question mark (as in "Why?") will cause a 2nd search for the question mark separately.

Omitting the periods in abbreviations will allow a form of matching, such as using "R M S" 

to search for "R.M.S." versus "RMS".

The Ngram also serves to be particularly useful when searching for statistics for research papers online, when accomplishing assignments that are heavily statistically based or when simply searching for numbers to back up evidence that you have found online for your research papers. 

I never knew about Ngram until today, and when I found out that it actually existed, one can only imagine how elated I felt as it was the key to solving all my inaccessible problems! 

However, less about the Ngram, here is something from my personal stash of videos as required by my module for this blogpost, edited by IMovies from my trusty old Macbook! 

Link To Video : 

week 5: Internet and Education

So this week, we learnt about Internet and Education, which in short, means e-Learning!

One may ask, How can learning be made effective through the use of digital media?

Firstly, the internet makes learning a more fun and effective process because of the convenience and availability of resources online. With information simply only a click away, people are able to access the information from anywhere and everywhere, as a wise man once said, "Learning never ends." such is applicable to the internet, as information on the internet is never ending.

Videos, multimedia tools also enhance the visuals in the learning process, due to the fact that visual aids are always present online for people to learn better, as some people learn better through visual aids. The flow of information comes in an organized manner as well, as the internet helps filter and process the information as needed by the searcher.

Schools these days are also making use of the internet as part of their teaching curriculum as seen in the e-Learning portals that schools are jointly working with such as to provide a better platform for their students to learn in, as well as to keep up with modern advancements in our society. Students spend most of their time online, so why not make good use of the fact that the internet can be a heady tool in educating their students as well?

Take Google Scholar for example, it provides scholarly articles for students or researchers alike in processing scholarly research articles on the topics that they wish to search on, and this helps a lot as it cuts down on the time that people would have to go to libraries to search for information and filter out the articles that would be of help to them. 

Another example would be BlackBoard learns, where students from college make use of this particular online portal to access their education related materials and their assignments as well as to check on their gradebooks as well. Universities such as University of London, RMIT and University of Buffalo makes use of these portals to post up their student's assignments, exam dates as well as miscellaneous information regarding the student's progress in school. Students refer to their respective online portals to check on regular updates that their lecturers might have posted as well as accomplishing the online assignments that have been given to them as well.

A video on e-Learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxUQsKxcOYM

Future of e-Learning: 

"The Benefits of Big Data And Its Impact In The Future of eLearning Industry

One of the most amazing aspects of eLearning in today's world is that it is constantly evolving. Thanks to emerging technologies and improved instructional design models, the possibilities are endless for the future of eLearning. A concept that has been a hot topic amongst the eLearning community recently is “big data”. But what, exactly, is big data, and how does it benefit the eLearning industry?

What is Big Data?

Big data, in terms of the eLearning industry, is the data that is created by learners while they are taking an eLearning course or training module. For example, if an employee is interacting with a training module centered around company policies, his/her progress, assessment results, social sharing, and any other data being produced during the eLearning course is “big data”. The Learning Management System, the eLearning Authoring Tool, social media, multimedia, etc, that have been set by the organization or the eLearning professionals, collect the data.

The term “big data” doesn't only apply to the volume of data itself, but the individual pieces of data that are being collected. These pieces of data can be analyzed to offer organizations or eLearning professionals the opportunity to determine how the learner is acquiring information, at what pace, and to pinpoint any problems that may exist within the eLearning strategy itself.

5 Benefits That Big Data Offer To eLearning Professionals

There are a variety of benefits that big data offer to eLearning professionals, all of which have the power to impact the future of eLearning and revolutionize the way we analyze and assess the eLearning experience. Here are just a few of the most significant advantages associated with big data:

1. Allows eLearning professionals to understand how the learners are digesting the information and which learning needs appeal the most to them. For instance, big data allows eLearning professionals to determine if a reality-based scenario is more effective than a text-based problem solving activity.
2. Enables eLearning professionals to pinpoint areas that may need to be fine tuned within the eLearning course or module. For example, if multiple learners are taking an excessive amount of time to finish a particular module, this probably means that the module need to be improved in order to make it more manageable for the learners.
3. Provides an analysis of which eLearning modules are visited the most and in the case of social learning which eLearning modules or links are shared with other learners. For example, you can determine which link was shared via Facebook the most.
4. Data is received almost immediately, rather than having to wait for long periods of time to receive assessments. This means that eLearning professionals can begin implementing changes or utilizing the data to fine tune their eLearning strategy right away.
5. Based upon patterns, eLearning professionals have the power to predict where learners may struggle or excel. This way, they can develop their eLearning courses so that learners get the chance to achieve the best possible results.

How Big Data Will Impact The Future of eLearning

There are a number of reasons why big data may, very well, revolutionize the eLearning industry. First and foremost, it will allow eLearning Professionals to customize the eLearning experience  to provide learners with more effective, engaging, and informative eLearning courses and modules. Big data also has the potential to impact the future of eLearning by:

1. Offering invaluable feedback.
   While online surveys and discussions may offer feedback regarding the effectiveness of eLearning courses and modules, big data gives to eLearning professionals the chance to receive invaluable feedback that can be used to pinpoint where the learner, and the eLearning course itself, may need to be improved. For instance, if a learner is able to look at an analysis of where he/she fell short while taking the eLearning course, he/she can then figure out how to correct the issue moving forward. At the same time, if the online facilitator observes that the majority of the learners struggle with a particular module or assignment, he/she can make proper adjustments to improve learners’ performance.
2. Allowing eLearning professionals to design more personalized eLearning courses.
   If eLearning professionals are given the opportunity to know how their learners are acquiring information and what works best for them, in terms of content and delivery, then this will result in more personalized and engaging eLearning courses. As such, modules can be custom tailored to meet the individual needs of the learner, which will offer a high quality and meaningful learning experience.
3. Targeting effective eLearning strategies and eLearning goals.
   Big data in eLearning gives us an inside look at which eLearning strategies are working and which ones aren't necessarily helpful in terms of eLearning goal achievement. For example, you can determine which eLearning courses are contributing to skill development and which eLearning modules or elements may be irrelevant. As such, you can then devote resources to the aspects that are working, so that the learners can receive the preparation they need to fulfill their career goals.
4. Tracking learner patterns.
   With big data, eLearning professionals gain the rare ability to track a learner throughout the entire process, from start to finish. In other words, you can see how well they performed on a test, or how quickly they finished a challenging eLearning module. This helps you to pinpoint patterns that will not only enable you to learn more about the learning behaviors of the individual learner, but your learners’ group as a whole.
5. Expanding our understanding of the eLearning process.
   As eLearning professionals, it's essential that we learn as much as possible about how learners acquire and digest knowledge. Big data gives us the chance to gain an in depth understanding of the eLearning process and how the learners are responding to the eLearning courses we are delivering to them. We can even figure out which time of day they learn most effectively or which delivery methods allow them to retain information most efficiently. This information can then be used to take our eLearning strategies to the next level.

To make a long story short, embracing Big Data reshapes eLearning and it’s a win-win situation for both the eLearning professionals and the learners."

This article essentially embodies the information one requires to know of the future of e-Learning, and Big Data is just a sneak peek into the future of e-Learning. e-Learning is constantly evolving for the better, who knows? Just one day we might even see teachers or educators swiping information out of thin air and coaching their students.

This brings me back to Microsoft Surface Technology: 

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BHA09wCArY

 Many science fiction films have depicted powerful computers that are no more than large touch-screen displays. In "Star Wars," it was a series of transparent room partitions with schematics used to plan and monitor a battle out in space. In "Star Trek," it was entire wall panels and tabletops for controlling everything on the spaceship. Today, here on Earth, Microsoft Surface is beginning to turn these sci-fi wonders into a reality.

Surface is a platform, or combination of hardware and software technologies, designed to work as a collaborative touch-screen interface for multiple simultaneous users. Here are just a few possible examples of how Surface could be useful:

• Colleagues gathered around a table could push digital text blocks instead of paper across the desk, and they could sign paperwork without requiring printouts.
• Doctors could glide through patient records and X-ray images on a wall-mounted display during a consultation instead of fumbling through a file.
• Friends eating at a restaurant could place their orders then play games while they wait for their food, and they could pay just by laying RFID-embedded credit cards on the table.

Microsoft launched Surface 1.0 in 2008, working with a number of retail partners to find ways to apply the technology in their storefronts. With the January 2011 announcement of the Samsung SUR40 and Surface 2.0, Microsoft seemed ready to make the Surface platform available for a much wider audience. If you haven't seen Surface in your local electronics store, though, don't be surprised. As of mid-2011, Microsoft is marketing Surface to businesses rather than home consumers.

Educators could make use of this technology in the future to ensure the utmost accessibility and convenience in education, as well as to continue to awe students in the process of learning.

In my opinion, I feel that this technology might be a success in the future, however, not everyone might enjoy such usage of technology in educating their students, for all we might know, people might learn better with books in the end! 

Week 4- E-Commerce

10 Key factors to successful E-commerce: 

-Great Customer Service

-Be innovative and Creative

-Understand the sector of business economy that you would be dealing with, hence setting reasonable prices.

-Have sufficient manpower to deal with influx of customers

-Understand how third party payment services works and search for a reliable one.

-Ensure that sufficient information about product is duly given on the site.

-Loyal Customer fanbase

-Catered to a certain consumer base

-Monitor sales and the more popular products that people are generally more interested in.

-Although it is an E-commerce business, ensure that organisation plans are properly laid out and the strategic execution of plans.

Top 10 examples of successful E-Commerce companies

- Reebok

-Le Coq Sportif

-Kipling

-Spyder

-Oak Street

-Noon Style

-Stella McCartney

-Mum's Made

-Vernier

-My Own Bike

Top 10 Reasons why some E-commerce failed

-Lack of strategic decisions

-Poor user interface

-Lack of trust

-No loyal customer base

-Payment gateway issues

-Insufficient manpower

-Lack of transparency

-Poor Product

-Poor service

-Overpricing

-Insufficient planning

Top 10 Failures 

-Barnes and Noble

-HP

-Boo.com

-Webvan

-Beautyjungle

-Flooz

-SpiralFrog

-Digital Entertainment Network

-Boxee

-Shelby.tv

-Yoyo

How to make it a success?

- Deal with your customers in such a way that they are not intimidated by you.

- Be as transparent as possible when disclosing details about products on the site.

- Develop a good working relationship with your suppliers and ensure that they are trustworthy.

-Ensure that the web interface is easy to navigate.

-Should you be using a third party payment gateway, ensure that its a trustworthy agent.

E-Commerce is fast becoming a rising trend in the business world, as it is considered to be one of the fastest revenue raising businesses besides the stock market. Purchases can be made with simply a click, and details about the products are simply a click away. The convenience provided to people with the products being delivered to their doorstep after having paid for it online.

With E-Commerce becoming such a lucrative trade, many are jumping on the bandwagon without having proposals and business plans done up properly, hence leading to not such successful business e-ideas. 

"

Quick Price Shopping

Most people love to compare prices before they buy something, and the Internet has made it easy and quick to do just that. By typing in a few search terms, people can now compare prices from several vendors to see which one is offering the lowest price, the best shipping policy, and the highest quality products. Another reason that many people are interested in online shopping is because stores are offering great discounts to their online customers either with free shipping on orders over a specific price or with promotional codes to special discount offers.

eCommerce stores are becoming more popular each and every year, and business owners that are invested in their business are now looking to open online stores to bolster their sales and appeal to a wider market. The Internet offers exponential opportunities for growth, and marketing online is very cost-effective compared to outbound marketing strategies. eCommerce shopping is more than just a trend. It’s becoming the new way to shop. There has never been a better time to open an eCommerce business. With social media networking and amazing opportunities to create a branded, professional online store, business owners are able to increase productivity and sales by opening an online store.

"

More information can be found here : http://www.omnistarcart.com/blog/why-is-ecommerce-so-popular/

Social Network Marketing in Businesses

Companies successful in social media marketing experience:

-Nylon

-Barkbox

-Pizzahut

Nylon

In 2005, Nylon was bought by Pennsylvania businessman Don Hellinger. The following spring, Nylon and MySpace collaborated on their first International Music issue, making it freely available online for a time. Nylon TV was launched in 2006 with the creation of its own YouTube channel, and by 2014 gained 62 thousand subscribers and 62 million cumulative views. Nylon partnered with MySpace in 2006 for its annual June/July music issue. None months later the magazine became generally available online in digital form in March 2007. Nylon released their June/July International Music and MySpace issue online for free viewing. Marvin Scott Jarrett's Editor's Letter described it as a collaboration with MySpace, focusing on eight music and style mecca cities around the world, featuring the White Stripes on the cover, as selected by Nylon's MySpace fans. 

Nylon joined with Facebook in 2012 for its June/July music issue. 2012 also brought a Summer Music Tour, featuring Neon Trees, and sponsored by Starbucks. America's Next Top Model announced that Nylon would be its media partner for the show's 19th cycle. 

Nylon has established a material social media presence. By early 2014, Nylon was active on Instagram, had over 700,000 Twitter followers, and a million Facebook fans. 

A copy of Nylon Magazine

Nylon has proven themselves to be one of the few successful companies who have successfully teamed up with social networking sites to be able to influence the masses with their pop-culture identity and such.

Barkbox

Prehype partnered with Matt Meeker and Carly Strife in September 2011 to develop a new business called BarkBox. The Prehype incubated business is a subscription service that delivers monthly boxes of dog products to pet owners. With a model similar to Birchbox, BarkBox collaborates with local vendors to provide products like treats, accessories, and gadgets.

An example of a Barkbox Social Networking site promotion: 

Be sure to check out The BarkPost, The Puppy Feed, our Facebook page, our Instagram, and Twitteraccount for goofy dog pictures, heartwarming videos, and anything else we dream up!

Sending BarkBox your pup pic may get you featured on the BarkBox website, Facebook/Twitter/Instagram page or another social media site. Your pup may just be an internet sensation!

P.S. Pics tagged with #barkbox may be featured on our website, the Puppy Feed, FB/Twitter/Instagram page or BarkPost newsletter.

Barkbox promotes their company through advertorials through popular dogs on Social Networking sites, and makes it a point to send their products through to the celebrity dogs such that their products are made known their products to pet owners.

Pizzahut

-The potential of Cyber Monday spans beyond traditional retailers, and Pizza Hut saw this opportunity. Using social media to share a special 20% off promotion, the digital team at Pizza Hut is taking advantage of the increase in online traffic to show customers that ordering online at PizzaHut.com has a lot of great benefits.

-Pizza Hut is utilising augmented reality technology and a large social media campaign to help reintroduce its Cheesy Bites pizza in the US, as part of partnership with the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film.
-The social media campaign will involve both a hashtag promotion where Twitter and Instagram users are offered an opportunity to win gift cards and other prizes, and an online video teaching fans how to cut pizza the ‘turtle way’. Fans will be able to request their pizza cut ‘Katana style’, into four large slices, when ordering, to draw a closer experience to the film.

In addition, Pizzahut also uses Twitter as a platform to favourite and retweet humourous tweets affliliated to Pizza to give off a good impression to their followers and to retain a positive image.

However, not all businesses that have made use of the social media strategy have been successful with examples such as .....

1) Strip club chain Spearmint Rhino's Melbourne team thought they'd be naughty and have Facebook users guess whose baby picture they uploaded. It didn't take long for users to look at the VHS sceenshot's time stamp and realize that the future stripper was now only 14 years old. Spearmint Rhino "liked" its own post.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-worst-social-media-marketing-fails-of-2013-2013-11?op=1#ixzz3DAvyDzh7

2)Kmart was excited to reveal they would be open earlier than ever this Thanksgiving and would stay open through all of Black Friday. So when customers complained about the ethics of the decision, a stumbling Kmart social team responded with over 100 caveman-like statements.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-worst-social-media-marketing-fails-of-2013-2013-11?op=1#ixzz3DAwNVGd7

3) Few things hurt a brand more than an accusation of racism. So even though it's impossible to tell if this tweet from Home Depot was indeed racist or simply stupid, the fact that the Twittersphere was up in arms over it made corporate delete the tweet, apologize for two days, and fire the social media agency responsible.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-worst-social-media-marketing-fails-of-2013-2013-11?op=1#ixzz3DAwpq5Xu

As such, we all know that not every companies that make use of the social media strategy are always successful, with brains, they said, comes with great power.

The social media marketing strategy is very powerful when it comes to advertising for businesses, however, with the proper strategy then can one be able to successfully promote their businesses and that even such, proper proposals and plans need to be drafted and modified before launching their campaigns online.