Research Articles Base: Web Writing

Web Writing

The “you” attitude   Web Writing should present facts and ideas in terms of the reader’s advantage. So be sure to talk more about your reader than about yourself. Instead of writing.   I’ve listed the top 15 companies I consider a treat to the environment—you can write:   You can email your protest to the top 15 environmental polluters.   This is more than simple courtesy. Your readers have their own purposes for coming to your site, and you are there to serve those purposes. If you understand what you readers want and you anticipate their needs, your site will succeed and your readers will return.   Consideration is an important part of the nonverbal message that conveys the “you” attitude. Your readers are doing you a favor by visiting your site, and you owe them a rewarding experience. Will they stick around for that killer graphic to download if they’ve only got a 14.4 Kbps modem? Will they really want to scroll through your list of the 100 worst movies of all time? Will they follow one of your links to a File not Found message? An out -of –date site with “link rot”(links that nowhere) wastes readers’ time.   So put yourself in your readers’ shoes: If you were a stranger arriving at you own site, would you feel as if the site’s creator had made a special effort to make life easy for you?   If we accept these three principles of the Webwriting, several useful guidelines for structuring content emerge from them. These are discussed in detail in the next chapter.        ORGANIZING WEBSITE CONTENT      Orientation: Navigation Cues     Provide readers with a site overview               Robert E Horn, in his book Mapping hypertext, points out that linear text is full of cues that help the reader navigate. Organization of print text is hierarchical, for example. We expect each section to include some general statement or thesis, supported by various kind of evidence or illustration. We start a book with an overview or introduction that summarizes important points, and we often find that chapters of the book feature similar introduction. In hypertext, says Horn, we need to present the whole hierarchy of the text in some kind of overview, such as a navigation bar whose buttons will take us to different section within the text.   Your front page may include a big headline and summary about the purpose of the site, but it should essentially be a table of contents. You can organize your hypertext in a number of ways, including—-         •  alphabetically,     •  numerically,     •  chronologically,     •  graphically, or     • completely at random (which I don’t recommend)                 A list of employees’ telephone numbers and email addresses would naturally be alphabetical —- probably just a string of letter- links ( A, B, C , etc.) across the screen. So would you a list of department within your organization. A sequence describing a process in the time might be a numbered list; so might a categorical list of topics running from most important to least important.               Many website use graphical contents pages .These can range from something as an organization chart to an elaborate map full of graphic cues: a cartoon of a policeman in a kiosk, for example, linking to the name and telephone number of the company’s security officer. Be careful when using graphical cues in the place of textual ones as many new Web users may not organize the cartoon of link, which will defeat its purpose.                        If you’re confident that your graphics are intuitive and self-explanatory to anyone from any cultural or educational background, you don’t have to worry about refining the text on your contents page. Otherwise, you should try to make your text as clear possible, even if it seems redundant to those who do understand the graphics.               A pop song of yesteryear might be the anthem of Webwriters: “Shut the door, they’re coming the window.” Web suffers can directly access just about any page on site that doesn’t require the password. You can create a detailed, well- organize front page with a clear statement of your site‘s purpose and good table of contents, but if I ask a search engine to find pages that mention snowboarding, and one of your other pages features the word “snowboarding,“ I will go to that page without ever seeing the rest of your site, let alone your front page. I won’t even know much about your site unless you give me information and navigation aids on your snowboarding page.                         Every page on your site should at least have link to your front page or display a table of contents, so your readers who have entered your site “through the window “ will at least know where they are and what else your site as to offer. The terms your use in the table of contents should be identical to the headings you have use in the text. Your readers want to find their way around your site with the least possible hassle. If each page has consistent, clear navigation guides, readers will be grateful.               Many site are now offering not only a table of contents, but an index page that provides a direct link to each individual page on the site. An index page may not have room for blurbs, but it’s a good idea to group page into section. So if your Website on the town of Chesterton has a page for each hotel in Chesterton, list those pages in the index under a section on logging —- not in alphabetical order by hotel name interspersed with all the other index entries.               You many want to create a “frames “ page, in which screen is subdivided into two or more windows. One window may offer your table of contents as a list of links; click on link and it displays in the main window. The advantage of this is that your table of contents is always visible and readers don’t have to scroll to the top or bottom of your site to access it. Many dislike frames, however, or still don’t have browsers that can display them. Some people also are unable to print hard copies of frames pages. You can still provide some basic links on each page by creating a page template with those link built in. (Most Web authoring programs will let you create frame sand templates when you start to create pages.)                                          Signal transitions with navigation buttons                           In print text, paragraph indentions signal new topics or subtopics, punctuation marks define relationships between words and phrases, and transition words and phrases ( e.g., Meanwhile, Secondly, Nevertheless, A day later, another arguments) let readers know how each paragraph connects to the previous one. In hypertext, such transitions are generally meaningless because readers may jump from section in various sequences.   Linear text often prepares us for sequence         Your journey to Mexico will include stays in Cuernavaca, Puebla, and Acapulco.       When we read sentences like this one, we expect description of each Mexican city. Hypertext can prepare us for such sequences only by some cue outside the sequence, such as navigation buttons labeled Cuernavaca, Puebla, and Acspulco.                                 Your front page may include not only links to section of the site but also links to different passages within a single page — especially if it’s along, scrolling page. This allows readers to skip up and down the page to the paragraphs they’re most interested in.               Be careful about the directional terms you use to label your navigation buttons since you readers aren’t all arriving at your site via your front page. If readers arrive via Alta Vista, Hotbot, or same other search engine, and land on your Puebla page, a navigation links that says back to home page doesn’t make much sense. How can they go “back to“ to some place they’ve never been? Why have the button that says next if the page it links to has nothing to do with Puebla? It would be better to create navigation links that say to Mexico Home Page or to Acapulco page.               If you are working with long, scrolling documents, at the bottom of the page, and perhaps at intermediate stages:           To Top of Financial Aid Pages To Chesterton Collage Policies Page To Chesterton Collage Home Page               Your readers may bring some print-media habits with them. If so, they’ll assume that any items listed near the top of the Web page are either introductory material or the most important material on the page .They may also scan from lift to right and then pay most attention to whatever is in the upper right hand corner— very much as we do when we scan a newspaper’s front page. If you would rather direct readers to same other part of the page, you may need to spell out your preferred sequence: Read may first, Introduction, If you’re New to this Site …, or some such cue.       Orientation: Headlines     Headlines can include the title of your site, the titles of individual page, and subheadings that break up text. Like the thesis sentence of a paragraph, headlines tell readers what to expect, so they deserve some thought before you write them.               Ideally, the title of your site should tell readers what it’s about: In Praise of Holly Cole, or your Guide to Chesterton. Many of your readers will find you through a search engine that gives them the site title and the first few words of text. If you title is Paradise! And your introductory text is “ here is the land the conquistadors sought…,” readers searching for Chesterton may not realize this is the site they’ve been looking for .               If you’re skilled in HTML, you can write a meta-tag that some search engines will display instead of the first few words on page. A keyword meta-tag lists words and phrases that searches might use: skiing, snowboarding, winter sports, hiking, alpine environment, recreation. Some sites load such keywords ( invisibly ) onto their front page so that search engines will display the sites in the first batch of “ hits “ the engines turn up. Many search engines, however , will reject sites with lists of meta-tags; if they find the word “skiing “ repeat ten times in a invisible meta-tag, the engines recognize that this is an attempt to get the site to the top of the list of hits, and will not display the site.               If you don’t know how to create meta-tags, don’t worry. Just make sure the keywords that readers are likely to search for are in your title and first few lines of text. Search engines will usually include those lines in their lists of hits. If the first text on your site is just the titles of your navigation buttons—Home, News Releases, President’s message— readers won’t have much sense of what’s really on your site, so they may not take a chance on visiting it.               How you display your title headline is also important. If you’ve turned it into a huge graphic that takes a long time to download, some impatient visitors may leave before they see it. Others will wait, only to be disappointed that it’s just your company logo, or a photograph of you with your name in 3D letters. Better to keep your title as regular text, in a legible font.               Keep your headlines close to the text they introduce. Usually, headlines, should be just one double space from the first line of regular text that follows.                                    Uses Subheads     Subheads can greatly help your readers. If you’re writing and organizing your text screen-size chunks, subheads will prepare readers for the content that is to appear in the following chunk. You may even find that a single chunk of 100 words can still benefit from two or three subheads.               If you’re providing long, scrolling text, subheads will help to break it up into manageable length. If the documents is over 1,000 words long, break it up with subheads, and create links to chose subheads at the top of the page:         Financial Aid and Awards       General Information                           Services of the                    Publications                     Financial Aid Office   Scholastic Awards                              Deadlines for                     Emergency Founding      Applications     Your readers now have the choice of scrolling through the whole section, or jumping to partic8ular sections of interest.       Hook readers’ interest: Hooks, links, and blurbs    For a word less than 100 years old, “blurb” has gone through some remarkable changes in meaning.               American humorist Gelett Burgess coined the term in 1970.he sketched a voluptuous blonde as covered art for a book jacket, and named her “Miss Blinda Blurb.” For some time, sexy cover art was a blurb, but the word also came to many overdone praise of a book appearing on the jacket.               While that’s still and accepted meaning, the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s picked it up in a different sense—the brief summary of story appearing between the title and the text. Its purpose was to tempt readers into investing the time to read the story.               On the Web, we now use “blurb” to mean a notice about what to expect on the other side of the link. Like the pulp magazines, we want our readers to make that jump and invest some time in our text. They’re more likely to if they have a sense of what they‘re getting themselves into. Without that sense, they me be reluctant to wonder into the labyrinth. In effect we haven’t given them adequate orientation for our site.               A good link should have two parts, though they may appear in single word or phase: a hook and a blurb. The hook—a term borrowed from magazine writing – is something at the beginning of the text that grabs reader attention. In our case, the hook is usually the text of the link itself: Best Snowboarding in Colorado, or Typical House Prices in Lynn Valley. If you think that’s enough to draw readers through the link, then fine. Bear in mind that you have a wide range of hooking devices to choose from:     •  Quotation Marks. “We love to read text that someone is supposed to have actually       spoken,“ says Crawford Kilian.   •  Question. A question promise an answer, and we’ll jump though the link of find it.   •  Unusual statement. Anything surprising will give the reader a jolt and wonder what       other bizarre things you may have to say.         •  Comparison / contrast. Comparisons show how things are similar contrast show how       they differ.   •  News peg. A tie-in with some big current event can draw interest ( but don’t let the     news peg go stale on you.   •  Promise of conflict. An attack or refutation makes us want to read more.   •  Direct address. Web writing needs “you “ attitude, so talk right to the reader.                 These hooks may stand on their own, but sometimes you’re trapped the with text that may be confusing or ambiguous. It teach in a communications department, and I get a lot of mail intended for our public- relations people (who work in what’s called “college relations”). What if you’re trying to show the different between your company’s Information Systems department and your Information Services department? That’s where a blurb comes in handy:   Information System                     Computer support, Webmaster, staff training.     Information services.         Public relations, technical editing, company newsletter advertising purchases.   Even if your text link seems self—explanatory, a blurb may make it more inviting. Maybe your text links is What makes a good business plan? The implied promise of the answer becomes more explicit with a blurb like:“ Six successful entrepreneurs offer practical advice.               Whatever hook you use, make sure it’s Appropriate. A promise of conflict, for example, had better deliver the conflict.                             You can also make life easier for your readers by turning both hook and blurb into links. Supposed you have a link to Company Personnel Policies. Make the jump and you find yourself on page full of still more links. Give readers the change to go directly to the policy they want:          Company Personnel Policies.    Policies dealing with Hiring, Probationary Period, Employee Evaluation Procedures, Health & Safety Issues, Conflict Resolution, Salary Scale, etc.               If you screen space permits, you can break the blurb into a bulleted list or columns; the point is still to guide readers where they want to go, as quickly and conveniently as possible.               Fight the urge to turn the blurb into a mini-essay of its own. The blurb should always be the least you can possibly do. If the word, phrase, or sentence enables readers to use the link confidently, it’s done its job.               The blurb might also indicate whether the text on the other side is an archive (a text originally written for print on paper) or a chunk (a text of no more than 80or 100 words designed for “ hit and run” reading). Many news site do this when they display a headline and the first paragraph of a story, with (full story) at the end. You might do this with your company’s annual report, with a summary in chunk from and the blurb Full Text in PDF and Full the Text in HTML as links.               With a link to chunked test, the blurb can simply make the link more explicit (again guiding readers where they want to go):   Student Tuition Fees.   Fees for the 2000-2001 academic year of resident and international students.            Whatever page your readers land on, they should have the opportunity to respond to what they find —and to you. An email link may seem self-evident, but it might get more traffic with a blurb:        ckilian@thehub.capcollege.bc.ca       I’d love to hear your opinion of this advice!                Information   Analyze your audience.   How do you structure your site and what content you create should reflect the readers you want to attract to your site, and why. Are you looking for costumers, converts, students, employers, kindred spirits? Are they experienced in using the Web, or complete novices? Do they speak English? Do they read it?               In some cases, you can draw a detailed demographic analysis based on careful research: maybe you’re trying to sell package tours to singles aged 18 to 34, or providing medical advice for parents of children with cystic fibrosis, or celebrating a pop singer who appeals to girls aged 13 to 17. Much of want you have to say—in both content and style—should reflect what you know about that readership.   In other cases, your subject will cross boundaries of age, gender, and nationality. Your audience will care about the research you’ve put in the subject, but it would be impossible to the similar research into the audience itself. This is where research yields to soul search: you have to ask your self what other fans of Holly Cole would really like to find on your sit, or what information would excite potential applicants to your college’s computer- animation program.   Whatever decisions you make about the nature of your desired audience, don’t forget that many in that target group simply don’t have access to the Web, or don’t even know about your site. Meanwhile, many other people who are not among your desired audience may turn up out of curiosity or by accident. Presumably you want them to leave with a good impression of you your organization, and you intended audience, even if they’re not especially interested in the subject of your site. So even if your site is highly specialized it should offer something to the casual visitor.                              Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

Web Writing

The “you” attitude Web Writing should present facts and ideas in terms of the reader’s advantage. So be sure to talk more about your ...

YAHOO: ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS

YAHOO: ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS

THIS IS A M.B.A COURSEWORK HAS TO SUBMIT A REPORT ON GIVEN QUESTIONS. AND I AM GIVING BELOW THE QUESTIONS. 1. ASSESS THE EXTERNAL FACTORS...

YAHOO

THE DEVELOPMENT OF YAHOO INCORPORATED   By:     YAHOO: COMPANY BACKGROUND               Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Masters candidates for Electrical Engineering     and     . It began as an idea, turned into a hobby and later evolved into a full-time passion (2006). The two founders of the company started with a guide in April 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. They later observed that their home-brewed lists were becoming too long and unwieldy and they have gradually invested more time on the task. During the same year    and     converted Yahoo! into a customized database designed to serve the needs of the thousands of users that began to use the service through the closely bound Internet community. They developed a customized software that helped them efficiently locate, identify and edit material stored on the Internet. The name Yahoo!  was supposed to stand for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle” but      insisted they selected the name because they considered themselves “yahoos”. Yahoo! itself first resided on    ‘s student workstation, “” while the search engine was lodged on  ‘s computer, “.”                         Today, Yahoo! contains organized information on tens of thousands of computers linked to the Web and has evolved into a global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, conduct transactions and access, share, and create information. An executive team that includes Chairman and CEO      , Chief Operating Officer      , Chief Financial Officer     , Chief Technology Officer   , and Co-Founders/Chief Yahoos       lead the world’s largest global online network of integrated services. The company is headquartered in, California, with offices around the globe. The company offers a broad and deep array of products and services that provide users with the power to connect, communicate, create, access, and share information online (2006; 2000).     THE EXTERNAL FACTORS IN THE GROWTH OF YAHOO AS AN ORGANIZATION               The success story of Yahoo began with         purpose to establish an efficient and elegant way to find things and information on an obscure part of the Internet, the World Wide Web, and therefore assist their fellow students at Stanford.  They decided to collect all the sites they have visited and categorize them.  Then, they took the dozens of categories and reorganized them into larger classifications.  Their customized database and software was made available through the service of the local Internet community (2003).  As the number of users accessing the database and the number of websites that it contained increased,        saw problems with Stanford’s limited hardware capacity. The university could not afford more servers so          were advised to find another host (2002, p. 13). In early 1995     , co-founder of in, California invited      to move their files over to larger computers housed at (2000).  After solving the server problem, the two Stanford geniuses were faced with financing issues regarding their creation. They teamed up with classmates, the founder of      computers, and      , a sophomore M.B.A student at Harvard, to come up with a business plan.  In March 1995,     , with the help of      , had their business plan, and they asked        , a Stanford M.B.A., to critique it. The business plan set forth Yahoo’s ambition to become the “TV Guide” of the Internet. The plan clearly called for an advertising-based model that, in some ways, was remarkably similar to Yahoo as it exists today. To attract advertisers and build market share, Yahoo would add content such as “news feeds” and create a sense of community through bulletin boards and chat groups. Personalization, as it would later appear in My Yahoo, was already part of the package, and one the company’s founders were considering a potential source of subscription revenue. The business plan further listed     as president and CEO while     appeared as chairman and chief financial officer (CFO). On March 5, Yahoo was incorporated, and in April, it landed million in venture funding from, in its first investment in a dot-com (2002, pp. 15-17).  realized that Yahoo! could be much more than a stopping point on the way to millions of other sites so he pursued meetings with media companies like Reuters and Ziff-Davis, and began referring to Yahoo as a full-fledged media brand, akin to any major magazine or TV network (2003).               Yahoo is a leader in clever business practices, such as targeted advertising: as users searched for their personal interests, the company displays advertisements based on those interests. As a result, Yahoo is able to charge high advertisement rates and is one of the first Net companies to show a profit (2003).  The company aims to provide a comprehensive set of Internet marketing solutions for advertisers.  There is a continuous growth in the advertising market and an increasing shift in advertisers’ use of online media as consumers and audiences seek more convenience from the Internet than the traditional media.  Yahoo is committed to capitalizing on the online advertising trend through creation and execution of Internet marketing solutions that both engage users to interact with advertisers’ brands as well as provide valuable insights into the customer base (cited in 2005, pp.4-5). The company is also committed to empowering its users and employees through programs, products, and services that inspire people to make a positive impact on their communities. The mission of Yahoo! for Good, the company’s community relations program, is to connect people with causes through its products and services, as well as through partnerships with nonprofit organizations such as,  (2006).   THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT, VIRTUAL ORGANIZATIONS AND VIRTUAL TEAMS IN THE OVERALL SUCCESS OF YAHOO                 The Internet was more or less virgin territory in 1994 when hatched an idea for a directory service to help people navigate the Web (2000, p.1). As years passed, the Internet has undergone complete metamorphosis. The first wave was the standard HTML browser. Now, blogs are burning with speculation, many connecting the dots to the concept of the web as a computing platform. All that guesswork underlines another fundamental shift in the web: the move away from static web pages to a more interactive; real-time environment.  The second wave was mobile devices like phones and PDAs that can access online content.  The Third Wave will be literally thousands of different devices and designs that show information people care about in forms that are embedded in things like watches or umbrella handles, increasing the utility of everyday objects. Another sign of the changing web environment is AJAX- Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, a web development technique for building interactive web applications so they behave more like regular software that resides on the user’s personal computer. Some examples of AJAX in use include Google Maps and photo-sharing site    (2006, p.1). Today, the Internet has dramatically changed the way in which individuals exchange information and the amount and types of information that are readily available. To most, the Internet provides a relatively seamless conduit across computer platforms, remote locations, and time zones. The best Internet minds and organizations continue to tackle the challenges of enhancing this Internet seamlessness, making the Internet faster, more robust, more versatile, more effective and more convenient for sharing research efforts with and among students and professionals across the globe (2006).               (2006) reported that there is a need for an enormous and extensive amount of innovation to try to keep up with the increasing popularity of the Internet. Right now, most entrepreneurs are spending their intellect and efforts on keeping their websites updated, improving search engine rankings and investigating online marketing opportunities.        vice president and general manager of Yahoo! Small Business, is keeping an eye on the future of growing businesses and the web. He also sees more businesses adopting blogs as a way to communicate frequently with customers (p. 2).  Presently, Yahoo not only evolved into an all-important interactive portal and gateway for advertisers to reach potential consumers and investors; it also became an actual destination and a strong Web community. The Yahoo founders indeed made a big contribution to the evolution of the web. With its many electronic commerce initiatives, Yahoo! is now perfectly positioned to take home the billion online consumer sales projected this year by     . Yahoo rules the Net and has filled the need for an effective surfing tool to drill through the Web’s seemingly complex environment. Yahoo is conceived by        as a destination where Web surfers could get whatever they wanted from the site’s personalized content, electronic commerce offerings, special promotions and other interactive data (2000, p.1).   YAHOO UNDER DAVID FILO AND JERRY YANG               , a Taiwanese native raised in San Jose, California, co-created the Yahoo! Internet navigational guide in April 1994 with      and co-founded Yahoo! Inc. in April 1995.   , a leading force in the media industry, has been instrumental in building Yahoo into the world’s most highly trafficked Web site and one of the Internet’s most recognized brands. A member of Yahoo’s board of directors, works closely with the company’s chief executive officer and executive team to develop corporate business strategies and guide the future direction of the company (2006).                           A Stanford professor named      said that one of     ‘s strengths is his ability to apply what he learns in daily life. He can channel his everyday experiences well (2002, p. 15).       disclosed that on the outside, Yahoo is a fun and irreverent place, but on the inside they are extremely competitive. Yahoo is a pretty recognizable brand name. He said that Yahoo is continuously concentrating on what it has always done, which is to create the best possible online directory, adding content and other features along the way when it makes sense (2006). Yahoo has grown powerful, in part, due to     ‘s insistence, prescience and determination on cutting deals with hundreds of partners rather than making exclusive agreements with just a few. As a result, the company’s market power has attracted some of the world’s top marketers, including Pepsi-Cola Co., Procter & Gamble Co. and Ford Motor Co.       has also put Yahoo in the forefront of broadband content delivery. With the acquisitions of      , he is clearly ready to play in a multi-channel universe with multiple content delivery systems. Yahoo! Everywhere, the company’s wireless initiative, enables users with wireless data phones to access Yahoo! from wherever they are. Yang is committed to continue to make Yahoo a bigger part of its users’ lives and to work for the ultimate goal of building the Yahoo brand to be something that makes users feel empowered on the Internet and, ultimately, form a long-lasting relationship that the users trust (200, p.1).               , a native of, Louisiana, is      ’s partner in conceptualizing the search engine in 1994 and co-founder of Yahoo! Inc.     serves as a key technologist, directing the technical operations behind the company’s global network of Web properties (2006).  He believes that the basic function of Yahoo corporation is to take all the new websites and online information that thousands of people are producing everyday and organize them to make them useful.  He sees their effort since the beginning as a work of passion and not geared towards fast money. Yahoo is regarded by      as working to be a significant part of the Internet industry. declares that generally, the Internet is not that reliable, so the company’s blips in service do not cause major problems. However, they are certainly working on improving the company’s own reliability as well as those sites that it depends on (2006). THE CHALLENGES AHEAD AND RECOMMENDATIONS                          (2004) stated that ten years ago, he and     were concerned on a simple yet vast problem: finding better ways to aggregate and organize information so people can find it. Today, the challenge for the two founders of Yahoo is different. There is a lot more information to aggregate and it is not just more in terms of quantity; there is a larger variety of content as well — from products and images to news and business information. In addition, Yahoo is pulling content from more sources than ever before. Meanwhile, the users’ expectations have also changed.  Provision of simple structures for users to find what they want and need on the Web no longer suffice. Today, people expect to find precisely what they are looking for exactly as it relates to them. People want to define what is relevant to them in their own personal way. They also want to tap into the source of their information at will and they want to manage it all to personally suit their needs.             The challenges that will keep Yahoo busy for at least another ten years are the issues on what else can it do to take online search to the next level.  It has to address the growing need to make search even more useful and accessible to the users.  Yahoo’s job is to stay ahead of consumer needs and expectations and, based on the responses of the users, it is doing a good job so far.  But the road is still a long way off and the company is young. The challenges that lay ahead are the reasons for the excitement and drive of the Yahoo employees, especially the two Founders. They are anticipating the possible future real solutions to people’s problems and thus, make a difference. The Yahoo people firmly believe that the technology they are building today makes the future of the Web even more useful, informative, and entertaining. As long as there is a way to help people find more precise and more relevant information on the Web, Yahoo will be in the midst of things searching for it (2004).               Another powerful weapon for the company it its spirit since the start which has to be maintained. The Web site is still one of the most powerful forces in the Internet revolution that is transforming the global media. The big shift is that Yahoo is no longer trying to create the revolution in opposition to the establishment. It is fomenting revolution from within.     , the company’s chief sales officer, has a mission to promote the Web as the future of advertising. Yahoo’s front page draws about 25 million visitors a day, and it has become a powerful tool for launching new product lines, such as Coke’s C2 and Ford’s F-150.  Buying all the advertisement space on the front page for 24 hours now costs an estimated 0,000 to million, and the advertisment will be seen by more consumers than the typical daily audience of the Today show. Yahoo has to make a good impression to advertisers as they are less impressed than the audience and the public (2005).              Moreover, the company has to rethink its centralized management structure to accommodate a changed competitive landscape. Yahoo had accumulated 44 operating units, each headed by a general manager, few of whom had budget responsibilities and the authority to make sweeping changes. Major deals and shifts in strategy were still dictated by upper management, slowing the pace of progress and leaving the real power concentrated at the top. Yahoo’s continuous need is a seasoned executive to run a business with 3,000 employees and about 200 million monthly users that had no real prototype (2002, p. 231).                   REFERENCES     Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

YAHOO

THE DEVELOPMENT OF YAHOO INCORPORATED By: YAHOO: COMPANY BACKGROUND Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Masters candid...

DISTRIBUTED WEB SERVER: ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS

This project is about a home delivery service that delivery CDs, Tapes, DVDs and so on upon receipt of an order from a customer. Initially orders are receved through the post and by telephone (confirmed in writing with appropriate payment) but eventually the business will also be conducted via the internet. - Learning Outcomes covered in this Assignment: 1. Be able to develop appropriate applications to demonstrate the techniques of Web Services and to critically evaluate their effectiveness. Task #1 You must create a distributed application. It may serve any purpose you like, though due to obvious time constraints it is better to produce a complete small application than an incomplete large one. The restrictions are as follows: 1. At the very least, it must provide a Web Service, and it must consume the same Web Service. The Web Service must be implemented using generally accepted Web Service standards, such as SOAP, WSDL, etc. 2. The portion of the application that provides the Web Service must be implemented using a different language, tool set, platform and/or development environment from the portion of the application that consumes the Web Service. For example, you might implement the Web Service in C#, and the Web Service consumer (i.e., client) in PHP. You may not implement both in C#, or both in Java, or both in PHP. Furthermore, developing both under the .NET platform, though using different languages (such as C# and Visual Basic), is not acceptable. You must use significantly different platforms. If youâ€™re not sure about your choice of platforms or languages, please ask your tutor. 3. It must be written by you. You may employ third-party libraries or source code as part of your application, but the essential functionality â€“ especially the Web Service, above â€“ must be your own creation. Any third-party libraries or source code you use must be credited in comments within your source code, and in the report described under Task #2. 4. It must not simply be a duplicate of one of the applications covered in the tutorial/practical exercises. You may extend one of the tutorial applications, but if you do so, you must add significant functionality. 5. You must arrange with your tutor to demonstrate your application prior to the hand-in deadline. Failure to demonstrate your application without appropriate extenuating circumstances will result in a failing grade. 6. Your application must be approved by your tutor prior to starting the assignment. Some examples: â€¢ Create a parallel computation application employing one or more Web services to solve a problem, such as determine a sequence of large prime numbers, decrypt a string, or use brute-force to guess a password. â€¢ Create a simple, distributed file-sharing utility similar to bittorrent, but employing Web services. â€¢ Create a Web service to act as a front-end for a SQL database, which will respond to arbitrary SQL queries. â€¢ Create an e-Commerce Web site using a service-oriented architecture. â€¢ Create a Web service or set of Web services to securely manage a remote server. â€¢ Create a Web service and associated functionality that allows users to submit student assignments, and check for plagiarism against other submitted assignments and Google searches. Task #1 is worth 50% of this assignmentâ€™s grade, and will be assessed according to the following scale: A â€“ code is fully functional, highly readable, properly formatted, using consistent style and appropriate clarifying comments. The application is clearly designed to be secure, reliable, and is intuitive and easy to use. B â€“ code is functional and moderately readable, but may demonstrate some flaws in style. The application may have some minor confusing or awkward aspects. C â€“ code is functional, but demonstrates a number of flaws. D â€“ code is barely functional, and demonstrates extensive flaws. F â€“ The application does not work, and the code is significantly flawed. You may use any de Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

DISTRIBUTED WEB SERVER: ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS

This project is about a home delivery service that delivery CDs, Tapes, DVDs and so on upon receipt of an order from a customer. Initially...

WEBSITES

Rockport-Fulton   The website comes off as rather boring in the sense that the design of the website and the color combinations comes off as rather stale. From this, the question of selecting the most effective colors consistently arises. Since the  selection of the proper color palette for a website is a substantive element to convey the message, brand your product or service, and if you are in online ecommerce – marketing your commodities. Everyone has his own favorite colors and the significance of colors varies from culture to culture. Color communicates far more than most people realize, and the use of the wrong colors can be a to be a hindrance to attaining succes.   The colors of the site must be based upon the statistics of its clientele group, as this can also make a difference. Younger people more enticed by concentrated colors than adults who on the other hand are often put off by them. Strong color contrasts can also drive older audiences away. While young people often react positively to new color trends, these stylish colors are most of the time overused and go out of style as promptly as they come to fashion.   Color harmony also one of the most significant aspect to conceive when selecting colors. It is considered enough when the number of colors used are no more than 4 including black and white. Too many colors create confuse and distract the user.   Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce               The Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce website was absolutely much more better than the one offered by Rockport-Fulton in the sense that it used more nuetral colors and the integaration of flash as its navigation method. Another interesting aspect which is worth notice is the advertisements at the bottom of the page. This Is considered as the norm nowadays with regard to most websites as it offers them the chance to earn revenues while managing the cost of maintining a website.               While the website may have its share of properness in context of user friendly websites, it does have it fair share of rather below quality works. This refers to the horizontal template of the website and this tends to cut off the main page whenever a viewer scrolls down. It would have been better if then removed the horizontal cut altogether and take use the space more properly.               Another thing of which the website fails is its portability, The writer viewed the page In Mozilla Firefox (FF) and the page shown was skewed in comparison when when the website was opened on Internet Explorer (IE). The authors of the page must designate that their website must be portable and support most existing browsers.   South Padre Island   The South Padre Island website congregates the typical aspects of an effective website and does good good job on it. It offers a easy interface complemented by the subtle hues of color and pictures, this creates an enticing and less hassle for the web visitors upon navigating the website.   Furthermore, it offers the visitors access to comprehensive details which are important for potential clients of the resort. This gives the visitors a general idea of their expenses and what the resort offers and the corresponding rates.   Another noteworthy aspect of the website in contrast to which Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce website used was the flash navigation interface. Instead of using a flash interface they came up with a smaller size website but catches up with regards to the visual aspect in the sense that they used a simper but still an effective website objects.   While the website is generally good, what they need  to keep in mind is the fact that while the website may look good for now, as time goes on, this can become stale. What they need to do is revert to another design / template every now and then to keep the website fresh and new. Overall, the website authors needs to take a pro-active stance on maintaining their website.   Report:             When generating a website, many concepts have to be taken accordingly. These concepts determine the efficiency of the project and ultimately determines the usefullness of the finished project.The contexts go as follows: (1) The navigability of the website, as this enables the user to identify what they are looking for. Poorly designed navigation interfaces tend to confuse viewers and leave them disappointed. (2) The interactivity of the website. Interaction brings life and eases the general feelings of the customer. When customers transact online, they tend to be wary of these transactions and the appeal of interaction eases this predicament. (3) The design enhancements. These enhancements add life to a website and raises the appeal for the website. (4)  Integrated approach to the e-store design. Clients must not be left in the dark after requesting or aplying for a package. They must be constantly guided not only for their pleasure but for the fact that  service must always come with it. Finally, the objectives of the website must be higlighted and kept in mind throughout the time of making the website. This gives the web authors a guiding path as to what their main objective is. This concepts coupled with the other concepts are efficient ways to create a website which lives up to what it was intended for. Furthermore, the design and the template, no matter how effective it is for the mean time must be constantly updated. This prevents the site from becoming stale and keeping the concept of why the website was created.   Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

WEBSITES

Rockport-Fulton The website comes off as rather boring in the sense that the design of the website and the color combinations comes of...

WEB-BASED SYSTEM

Web-Based Systems 1. The Next Big Thing: Adaptive Web-Based Systems  (2004). The Next Big Thing: Adaptive Web-Based Systems. . 5(1). Article No. . The article defends the position that personalization, and in particular automatic personalization or adaptation, is the key to reach the goal of offering each individual user (or user group) the information they need. During a discussion there was debate about whether the user should always have access and control over the entire (hypertextual) information space. There were different views on whether the “right” to all the information is best guaranteed by offering tools that reduce the information space the user perceives so that the user can actually find and reach the information, or by offering unfiltered access to an ocean of information in which everything is available but in which perhaps nothing can be found. The article argues in favor of adaptation but at the same time point out flaws in the way adaptive hypermedia has been used until now. The paper then proposes a new, modular adaptive hypermedia architecture that should lead to adaptive Web-based systems as the “Next Big Thing” indeed. In this manner, different applications can collaborate in creating and updating a user model. Shared user model servers are not just needed for adaptive Web sites, but are also the key to enabling the development of ambient intelligence. Sharing user models can of course cause a “big brother” problem. Legislation is already in place to protect users’ privacy by placing legal limits on the kind of user modeling and sharing of user models that is allowed. The paper briefly reviews the legal issues of user modeling and adaptation in order to provide not just a future outlook based on “wild imagination” but based on a realistic vision of what will not only become technically possible but also of what will be “acceptable”. 2.  Self-Adapting Web-Based Systems: Towards Universal Accessibility  (1997). Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology.  Also available at .             This article discusses the employment of self-adaptation techniques in World Wide Web-based interactive systems, as a tool for ensuring their universal accessibility.  The paper initially elaborates on the underpinnings of universal accessibility and their relevance to Web applications and services.  Then it provides a contextual definition of self-adapting systems and an account of how self-adaptation relates to accessibility.  Self-adaptation is termed to denote those variations of system-controlled-adaptation capable systems (., 1993) that are able to implement adaptations themselves, irrespective of the policy they employ in ensuring user control over them.  Subsequently, different adaptation approaches that may be employed on the Web are presented, as well as their potential correlation to accessibility solutions.  These are the accessibility through adaptation in user interface level and in content level.  Finally, the application of some of the proposed approaches in the development of Web-based information systems is presented.             The paper concluded that the importance of iteration of the capability of any interactive system to adapt any specific aspect of interaction, or information, does not necessarily imply the necessity, or, for that matter, the usefulness of doing so. 3.  Adaptive Hypermedia and Collaborative Web-based Systems (AHCW’04) International Conference on Web Engineering. Adaptive Hypermedia and Collaborative Web-Based Systems. Munich, Germany. July 30, 2004.              The article is concern on the exchange and dissemination of information that sometimes does not seamlessly fit to the users’ actual needs.  It supports the personalization of the information presented to the users.  This paper tends to increase the functionality of the internet for each user to access the most appropriate information according to his/her needs, as well as the presentation of information in its most suitable way for its comprehension.             The paper strongly suggested a need of formalisms, languages, mechanisms, methodologies and systems that both support the description of adaptive websites and facilitate this task, by performing it, in some cases, semi-automatically or even under no supervision.  It also encourages collaboration and cooperation activities that help users acquire and improve personal skills such as working in team, making ideas explicit, arguing and interacting with others. 4.  Web-Based Management: Beyond the Browser ; Business Communications Review, Vol. 28, April 1998.             The study focused on the advantages that Web-based Systems offered in the area of managing information.  It had been enumerated as the (a) ease of access; (b) platform independence; and (c) ease of use.  The second key feature of Web-based management (i.e. b) is crucial for flexible access since few companies are likely to install an X-terminal (which is higher-cost) in the network manager’s house.  Products can be developed in less time and at lower cost which then leads to the Web’s third main advantage: ease of use.             The paper also cited the advantages of today’s Web-based Wide Area Network (WAN) Management.  However, the system’s ease of access has also a potential negative aspect: security – access might be getting a little too easily available with some firms allowing access to a corporate network from the internet.  Due to this issue, firewalls seem to be the only answer to security threat.             Web-based systems, as stated in the article, serve the dual purpose of giving network administrators quicker, easier access to information and providing that information to end users.  Finally, Web-based systems can make network managers’ lives easier by facilitating software updates.  5.  Considerations for Developing Constructivist Web-Based Learning ; International Journal of Instructional Media, , 2004.             This article discusses the relationship of Web-based systems into the facilitation of learning.  According to  &  (2000), Web-based system possesses five characteristics generally.  These are (1) the multimedia environment; (2) integrate various kinds of information and construct information bases; (3) support interactive communication; (4) support networks to access information; and (5) provide a cross-platform environment.  These factors directly aid in making learning easy.               (1997) stated that a Web-based learning course could be designed to address all students’ learning styles by incorporating a variety of multimedia.  In Web-based systems, several search engines that are integrated with the Web can quickly and easily access information.  Interaction in Web learning is not just to select simple menus or to click objects on the screen. Instead, the interaction should involve complex activities by the learners (, 1999).  (1997) also stated that learners in Web-based environments could interact with each other, with instructors, and on-line resources by Internet tools, hyperlinks, browsers, and authoring programs.   (1997) noted that a Web-based system went beyond static Web pages and page linking, by creating truly interactive networks with information exchange between users and servers.  In a cross-platform environment, Web systems can be executed independently on various computer operating systems.              Technology supported instruction has been traditionally more suitable to step-by-step development processes but the paper studies considerations for such statement.  There are five considerations to be exact.  These are pedagogy, instructional structure, interaction, technology, and learners’ characteristics.  In Web-based learning, to sum up the article, the problem is that when instructional programs add the complexity needed for the design of instructional purposes, it becomes itself increasingly complex to use (, 1998). 6.  Sp Issue: Computational Intelligence in Web-Based Education Guest Editors: , Greece; ; , New Zealand; , Canada.             The article addresses special issue on the perspective of another important category of technologies, collectively known as computational intelligence (or Soft Computing).  This computational intelligence raises a number of challenges and important questions to support the increasing intelligence of educational applications.  The articles in this special issue cover a whole range of interesting and important topics. , , , and  present an in depth tutorial for Computational Intelligence (CI) technologies for web-based education (i.e., Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic, Genetic Algorithms) [., & . (2000)].  and  present a general framework for building concept-based digital course libraries. The framework is based on the idea of using a conceptual structure that represents subject domain ontology for classification of the course library content.              The paper generalizes two overlapping aspects of web-based education; the content transmission (to deliver instruction), and support for communication between teachers and learners, or among learners. Discussion             The six articles on Web-based systems have no difference or contrasting ideas but instead it is a flow order from the first item up to the last.  Web-based systems in all the articles developed as with regards to its nature and uses.              The Next Big Thing talked about the personalization or adaptation in reaching the goal of offering user(s) the information they needed.  This is then directly supported by the third article – Adaptive Hypermedia and Collaborative Web-Based Systems which showed concern on the proper dissemination and exchange of information that would exactly fit to the users’ actual needs.  Both articles offered and proposed approaches for the development of Web-based information systems also to increase the functionality of the internet for each user to access the appropriate information according to each needs.              The second article on Self-Adapting Web-based Systems discussed the self-adaptation techniques for universal accessibility.  Although the fourth article on Web-based Management: Beyond the Browser uttered the advantages of Web-based systems in managing information, it found imperfection on the part of the first advantage – ease of access.  This closely relates the two articles about accessibility.  The fourth article is concern on the emergent threat of security since Web-based systems are getting a little too easy to access that proliferate unlawful access.  Nevertheless, such concern had already found a solution to this apprehension – firewalls.             The next and last two articles focused on the application of Web-based systems.  This would be now what is called the representation of how much Web-based systems can do for mankind.  The fifth article dealt with the association of Web-based systems to the facilitation of learning.  With such, it had found five environments that Web-based systems possess for the comfort of learning.  It had mentioned the quick and easy access to several search engines in gaining information from the Web.  Interactions in Web learning would then be more of just clicking menus but instead involve complex activities by learners.              Even though Web-based systems have been found to have huge impact to smooth the progress of learning, there were still considerations stated that have to be tackled in checking its importance in such areas of consideration.  Moreover, the article had also established a setback in Web-based learning.  With its increasing instructional programs adding up to the complexity needed for the design of instructional purposes, it becomes itself more complex to use.  The sixth and final article dealt with the special issue on Web-based system – Computational Intelligence.  In the article, this computational intelligence raises challenges and important questions to support its mounting importance in the field of education.  It had been fairly evident that in the two overlapping aspects of web-based education (content transmission and support for communication), traditional education had been replaced by an increasing number of technologies important for web-based education.  Such application range initially as simple to sophisticated intelligent web-based systems that ensure personalization of the learning process, rich interaction between the application and the learners, as well as effective collaboration among the learners.    REFERENCES                 Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

WEB-BASED SYSTEM

Web-Based Systems 1. The Next Big Thing: Adaptive Web-Based Systems (2004). The Next Big Thing: Adaptive Web-Based Systems. . 5(1). Ar...