Internet Research Project

Blinkx is a great tool for finding up-to-date video news on popular culture as well as political news. It also serves as a means to find travel information in video form as well as media relevant to kids, teens and adults. The only problem I find with Blinkx is the requirements to actually view content. Many videos I attempted to watch were in a specific media type that my computer as well as a couple others could not view. A special media player was needed to view content; which made this website almost unnecessary. I then went to YouTube and was able to view the videos with no problem. So the hype and glamour of this relatively new database was downplayed by the inconvenience of installing a specific program.

RJA #7c: Field Research Plan

I have come up with two different options for my field research plan. (1) interview and (2) survey. I am still in the preliminary stages of deciding on questions.
(1) Annjanette Alejano-Steele is the former director of the department for Womens Studies and a current professor.
(2) Questions that could be included in the survey:
>When a man and woman have identical garments dry cleaned, who pays more? for what
reason?
> Identify two areas of obvious sex discrimination
>What is the wage gap? How much is it?

RJA #7b: Internet Research Tool Test

Resource Searched: Blinkx.com
Keywords: Women's rights, Rights disparities, incongruous rights
Strategies: To my knowledge, search operators do not work well in Blinkx. Boolean operators worked.
Date of Search: 10/1/09, and 10/5/09
Number of Hits: 1437, and 983
Relevance: 1 or 2 (Blinkx is a video or digital media database which doesn't prove to be extremely effective for an academic search)

RJA #7a: Internet Research Tools

Most often I use Google as a primary search tool. I use Google because it is convenient, simple and fast. While Google is simple and convenient, it is non-specific and time consuming. Most of the time I spend on Google is to refine my search and actually find relevant information. I may search for a specific cause of Lyme disease and come back with results detailing recipes for Key Lime pie, or an address for a tile company that sells limestone tile.