Cyber Quiz-7: Providing the Internet Service: The World of the Internet Service Providers
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The following six quizzes in the cyber quiz series have already been published:
Cyber Quiz-1: The Internet
Cyber Quiz-2: The World Wide Web
Cyber Quiz-3: Check Your Email
Cyber Quiz-4: Browsing the Web
Cyber Quiz-5: Have Data? Will Search
Cyber Quiz-6: Check the Blog
Here is the 7th quiz in the series.
Enjoy it.
Happy quizzing!
Dr D.C.Misra
New Delhi, India
Email: dcmisra[at]hotmail.com
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CYBER QUIZ–7: PROVIDING THE INTERNET SERVICE: THE WORLD OF INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS
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Providing Internet access at the desktop of a Web surfer, the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have a crucial role in a chain of services, which make a problem – free surfing possible. For a typical surfer the dial - up connection continues to be the only form of Internet connectivity in India though broadband connectivity is making rapid strides. Let us check.
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1. How many Internet service providers (ISPs) are there worldwide?
2. Which are top ten Internet service providers (ISPs)?
3. (a) What types of licenses are issued to the Internet service providers (ISPs) in India and how many licenses have been issued to the Internet service providers (ISPs), and (b) How many Internet service providers (ISPs) are active in India and how many Internet service providers (ISPs) have applied for setting up their own international gateways?
4. Which are Top Ten Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in India?
5. (a) What was the total number of Internet subscribers in India in 2000 and what was the share of public sector ISPs in it, and (b) What was the total number of Internet subscribers in India in 2004?
6. Which were top five Internet service providers (ISPs) in India going by the number of Internet subscribers in (a) 2000, and (b) 2004?
7. Which are the first five most popular Internet Service Providers (ISPs)?
8. What are the (a) cost of Internet customer acquisition in India, (b) extent of accumulated losses of Internet service providers (ISPs) in India, and (c) Total estimated investment made by ISPs in India?
9. (a) Which are the top three Internet service providers (ISPs) in Asia, and (b) Which is the largest Internet service provider (ISP) in Asia?
10. First there were Internet service providers (ISPs), then application service providers (ASPs), and now there are management service providers (MSPs). What then are MSPs?
11. How many root servers manage the Internet traffic and where are they located?
12. Now that private operators have been permitted in India to set up international gateway for the Internet, how many gateways are being planned by 26 licensed gateway service providers (GSPs)?
13. It is neither Karnataka, nor Andhra Pradesh, nor Maharashtra, then which state in India has the highest number of Internet service providers (ISPs)?
14. The subscriber value for (a) Dial up, (b) Cable, and (c) Mobile Internet connections were (a) $2,567, (b) 1,085, and (c) $450, respectively in February 2001.What were the respective values in August 2001?
15. What is common between (a) WorldNet, (b) IBM Global Network, (c) MCI, (d) Netcom, (e) UUNet, and (f) PSINet?
16. (a) What is common between (i) Vsnl.com, (ii) Mantraonline.com, (iii) Sify.com, (iv) Now.com, (v) Spectranet.com, (vi) Netcracker.com, (vii) Dishnetdsl.com, (viii) Mtnl.com, (ix) Tatanova.com, and (x) Caltiger.com, and (b) Which Indian Internet service provider (ISP) went bust in 2002 by incurring accumulated losses of Rs 37 crore?
17. What are the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) guidelines on quality of service (QoS) norms for Internet Service Providers (ISPs)?
18. (a) In Internet, which is a network of networks, what is the difference between adjacency, reachability, and connectivity, and (b) What are active and passive measurements in network traffic?
19. What are the following: (a) oversubscription, (b) latency, (c) link utilisation, (d) mononumerosis, and (e) ping?
20. What is the number in India by end of December 2004 of (a) Internet subscribers, (b) High Speed Internet connection (<256>256 Kbps), (d) Minutes of Use (MOU/subs/month), and (e) ARPU (Rs/sub/month)
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ANSWERS TO CYBER QUIZ– 7: PROVIDING THE INTERNET SERVICE: THE WORLD OF INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS
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1. About 14,000 / 15,000 out of which some 8,000 are in the United States.
2. 1. America Online – 22.8 (24.0), 2. United Online – 6.6 (6.9), 3. Comcast 6.5 (6.8), 4. Eartlink – 5.2 (5.7), 5. SBC – 4.7 (4.9), 6. Road Runner – 3.9 (4.1), 7. Verizon – 3.3 (3.5), 8. Cox – 2.4 (2.5), 9. Bell South – 1.9 (2.0) and 10. Charter – 1.8 (1.9) (Figures indicate subscribers in millions while figures in parentheses indicate market share in percentage) (Source: http://www.isp-planet.com/research/rankings/usa.html, accessed: February 13, 2005).
3. (a) Three. 1. Class A – National, 2. Class B – Regional, and 3. Class C – Local; Only 225 applications were received out of which licenses were issued to 175 applicants as follows: – National - 5 per cent, Regional- 6: 25 per cent, and Local – 60 per cent. As on quarter ending September 30, 2004, there were 188 Internet service providers (ISPs) in India out of which 50 had Category A license, 80 Category B and 59 Category C licenses (one ISP has B and C licenses). See TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India): The Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicators July-Sept’04, New Delhi, the Author, December 2004,Table 3.1 from which above figures have been compiled, available:
http://www.trai.gov.in/indicator17dec.pdf (accessed: February 12, 2005), and (b) About 70; About 25.
4. 1. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) (A - All India) - 16,78,617, 2. Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) (B - Mumbai and Delhi) – 9,49,405, 3. Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL) (A - All India) - 9,35,426, 4. Sify Ltd. (A - All India) – 7,71,787, 5. Data Infosys (A - All India) – 2,48,397, 6. Reliance Communications Infrastructure Ltd. (RCIL) (A - All India) - 2,19, 212, 7. Bharti Infotel Ltd. (A - All India) 1,04,166, 8. BG Broadband India Pvt. Ltd. (B - Surat SSA, Mumbai) – 75,275, 9 HCL Infinet Ltd. (A - All India) 45,577, and 10.Shyam Internet Service Pvt. Ltd. (A - All India) 45,247 (Note: 1.Figures are at the end of December 2004, 2. Figures at the end of each entry indicate the number of subscribers, and A and B indicate the type of license).
(Source: http://www.trai.gov.in/report22mar05.pdf, accessed April 1, 2005).
5. 8,43,000 as on March 31, 2000. The public sector ISPs had a share of 4.75 lakh subscribers and private sector ISPs had a share of 4.68 lakh subscribers in it. As in mid-June, 2000, however, the total number of Internet Subscribers in India was 12 lakh with private sector ISPs surpassing the public sector ISPs by 1.5 lakh subscribers, and (b) 53.21 lakh as on quarter ending September 30, 2004 (Source: TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India): The Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicators July-Sept’04, New Delhi, the Author, December 2004, http://www.trai.gov.in/indicator17dec.pdf (1 lakh=100,000) (accessed: February 12, 2005).
6. (a) 1. Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) (3.43), 2. Satyam (1.51), 3. Department of Telecommunications (DOT) (0.96), 4. Dishnet DSL (0.71), 5. Bharti BT (0.70). (Data as on March 31, 2000) (Figures are in lakh), and (b) 1. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) - 14.94, 2. Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL) - 9.85, 3. Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) – 9.15, 4. M/s Sify Ltd. - 7.25, and 5. Data Infosys - 2.26 (Figures are in lakh; 1 lakh = 100,000) (Source: TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India): The Indian Telecom ServicesPerformance Indicators July-Sept’04, New Delhi, the Author, December 2004, p-5, http://www.trai.gov.in/indicator17dec.pdf (accessed: February 12, 2005).
7. 1. America On Line (AOL) (2.2 per cent), 2. U U Net (0.6 per cent), 3. @ Home (0.6 per cent), 4. Road Runner (0.3 per cent), and 5. Planet On Line (0.2 per cent) (Figures in Parentheses indicate the percentage of Web surfers) (Data as on June 8, 2000) (Source: http://websnapshot.mycomputer.com).
8. (a) Rs 250 per customer, and (b) The accumulated losses of 140 operational Internet service providers (ISPs) in India as on November 2001 added to Rs 1,350 crore, according to the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI). (Source: The Economic Times, Editorial, May 22, 2002), and (c) Rs 6,600 crore (1 crore= 10 million) (Source: http://www.ispai.com/overview.html, accessed April 1, 2005).
9. (a) 1. Reach, a Hong Kong – based ISP, 2. Dacomnet, a Korean ISP, and 3. Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL), earlier a public sector and now a Tata group company, according to the UK-based network specialist NetConfigs Ltd. The VSNL has been ranked as the third best ISP in Asia and 29th in the world from among a total of 11,000 ISPs globally, in an independent survey conducted on efficiency, maintenance and linkages with other networks, according to NetConfigs Web site. (Source: The Economic Times, New Delhi, September 29, 2003, Monday, p-11)., and (b) Pacific Internet (CEO: Nicholas Lee) with a revenue of $ 15.2 million in the first quarter of 2000.
10. They help monitor, measure, and report on performance of networks and companies.
11. 13.They are located throughout the United States and in Tokyo, Stockholm and London. These computers are controlled by universities, corporations, government agencies and research centres.
12. 101 (Source: The Indian Express, New Delhi, October 7, 2000).
13. Gujarat, according to a survey by Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB). Gujarat has about 40 Internet service providers (ISPs).
14. (a) $ 927, (b) $ 323, and (c) $ 450, respectively (Source: www.isp-planet.com). Note: The subscriber values are continuously declining.
15. They are among the largest national and regional Internet service providers (ISPs) in the USA.
16. (a) They are all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in India, and (b) Wipro’s NutKracker. It had a subscriber base of 1,12,000. For all practical purposes it is being shut down. It is being merged with company’s fluid power business. The combined company has been renamed as Wipro Fluid Power Limited effective March 1, 2002 with Azim Premji as its Chairman. (Source: The Economic Times, New Delhi, March 13, 2002).
17. (a) For Dial – Up users – (i) Activation time of 6 hours, (ii) Access within 30 seconds, (iii) Probability of accessing ISP node – 80 per cent on first, 90 per cent on second and 99 per cent on third attempt, and (iv) Only one in hundred attempts should fail, and (b) For Leased Line users – (i) Latency not to exceed 300 msec for OFC and 800 msec for satellite link, (ii) Packet loss not to exceed one per cent, (iii) 99 per cent link availability, and (iv) Rebates for blackouts.
18. (a) Two networks are said to be adjacent if there is at least one link directly between them. A network is said to be reachable from another network if there is a path between them. Reachability is one-way. Two networks are said to be connected if there is a path between them that provides reachability in both directions. (Source : Nevil Brownlee and Chris Loosley 2001, www.keynote.com), and (b) Active measurements are performed by sending test traffic into the network while passive measurements are carried out by observing normal network traffic so they do not perturb the network. Both of them are commonly used to for measuring network traffic flows.
19. (a) It is a ratio of total distal capacity to proximal capacity, total distal capacity being average customer capacity of access provider and proximal capacity being the capacity of transport provider, (b) Time delay in an event to take place, for example, time taken by a packet to travel along the physical links. A widely used measure of network latency is round-trip time (RTT), (c) Throughput for the link expressed as a percentage of access rate, throughput being the rate at which data is sent through the network and access rate being maximum data rate (Rates are measured in terms of bits / bytes / packets per second ), (d) Coined by Cindy Bickerstaff, it is undue focus on a single measured value, and (e) Packet Internet Groper, a utility to determine whether a specific Internet protocol (IP) address is accessible. Ping sends an Internet control message protocol (ICMP) echo request packet to a specified (server) host, and the server sends back an ICMP echo reply packet. The ping program displays the time taken for the round trip. (Source: http://www.keynote.com and Margolis 1999).
20. (a) 5.45 million, (b) 0.66 million, (c) 0.047 million, (d) 275, and (e) 167 (Source: http://www.trai.gov.in/report22mar05.pdf, accessed: April 1, 2005).
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* While reasonable care has been taken to compile the quizzes, neither the author nor the publisher is responsible for accuracy of information. Readers are, therefore, advised to consult authoritative sources before acting on any information contained here. Reproduction of material given here for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited. The material given here can, however, be reproduced for non-commercial and educational purposes, particularly for students and teachers provided due credit is given to the author.
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© Dr D.C.Misra 2005 Beta Version April 1, 2005.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Friday, February 11, 2005
Friday, January 21, 2005
Cybe Quiz Group on Yahoo!
Check the Cyber Quiz Group on Yahoo! ( http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz) - an online think tank on ICTs - created by me on May 28, 2004 and owned by me since then.
Dr D.C.Misra
January 21, 2005
Dr D.C.Misra
January 21, 2005
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Cyber Quiz: Book Review-3: Keniston and Kumar (eds.) (2004): IT Experience in India by Dr D.C.Misra
Cyber Quiz: Book Review-3: Keniston and Kumar (eds.) (2004): IT Experience in India: Bridging the Digital Divide, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks and London, Sage, 194 pp
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This rather slim volume* on India’s information technology (IT) experiences in bridging the digital divide is a collection of 10 updated papers by eminent contributors originally presented at a Workshop on “Equity, Diversity, and Information Technology (EDIT) in Bangalore, Karnataka, India edited by Kenneth Keniston, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Human Development and Director of Projects, Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Deepak Kumar, Deputy Editor, softwaredioxide.com.
In the first introductory Chapter 1: Introduction: The Four Digital Divides, Keniston provides an overview raising basic issues confronting information technology (IT) including questioning the trade off between investment on IT and other basic needs like education, health, etc. and draws attention to four digital divides: the first divide, which exists in each country, namely, between the rich (technology included) and the poor (technology excluded), secondly, the linguistic and cultural divide between English language and Anglo-Saxon culture and the rest, the north-south divide,
In Chapter 2: Towards a Knowledge System for Sustainable Food Security: The Information Village Experiment in Pondicherry, Balaji et al. urge for recasting of the new agricultural paradigm in India to secure “the triple goals of increased income, increased jobs, and increased food.” (p-37). Their conclusion that “Content creation to suit local needs is the key element” is a truism though is likely to be overlooked in project design with often-disastrous consequences. They also incidentally note that the coastal and fishing village of Veerapattinam received information on wavelengths in the next 24 hours downloaded from the web from a US Navy site (http://www.nemoc.Navy.mil). In the light of the Asian Tsunami Disaster of December 26, 2004, it would be instructive to know if the villagers indeed receive any warning of the impending tsunami waves.
In Chapter 3: Liberalization of Indian Telecom: Regulation in the Era of Convergence (For Information Infrastructure and Services), T.H. Chowdary describes the decisions and the decision-making process in the rather complicated information and communication technology (ICT) sector in India. This complication arises from two facts: the revolutionary and evolving nature of “convergence of technologies” and the turf wars that have ensued between various players as a result of progressive liberalization of the sector. The author describes evolution of various telecom policies in India.
In Chapter 4: Information Technology to Support Diversity in a Global Economy, Professor Pat Hall of Open University, United Kingdom makes an unexceptional plea that “information technology, and in particular the Internet should be available to all peoples in their own mother tongue, whatever that might be and however small that community (p-71). He argues that technology can help people bridge the gap between local communities and the global economy (p-72). More evidence, however, is needed to lend full support to leaned professor’s premise as prima facie a community should have a reasonable size for securing any social or governmental support.
In Chapter 5: Telecom and Regulation Scenario in India, Ashok Jhunjhunwala and Bhaskar Ramamurthy, both of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras (now Chennai), urge for providing special policy dispensation for rural connectivity primarily basing their policy prescriptions on the unique success of public call offices (PCOs) in India in providing telecom services to rural India and replicating this model for Internet connectivity. They then describe their own efforts in this direction, particularly their n-Logue achievement and urging India (may be along with China) to take a lead in the development of wireless technology.
In Chapter 6: An Agenda: Electronic Government for the Poor, Dr P. D. Kaushik of Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, in a rather lengthy contribution, focuses on e-governance for the poor, typically dealing with the role of e-governance in collection and dissemination of information for anti-poverty programmes, describing in the process the ways and means of providing rural connectivity and creating a knowledge base. He concludes by observing that “Info-communication technological developments cannot end poverty but they are crucial element of a successful anti-poverty strategy.”
In Chapter 7: Digital Development, Deepak Kumar, co-editor of this volume and Deputy Editor at softwaredioxide.com (formerly of Express Computer, a business weekly) divides his contribution in two parts. In the first part, he makes over-arching observations on themes like emerging “micro-multinationals” (which are multinationals from day one), the definition and many dimensions of poverty including its relativity, and C.K. Prahalad’s proposition for treating “poor” as a market (asset) (his book on the subject has also come out since then). In the second part Kumar draws different conclusions synthesizing various contributions made in this book declaring in conclusion the arrival of the “discipline of digital development.”
In Chapter 8: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Computers in Indian Languages, Harsh Kumar, who directs the IT operations and initiatives for Western Railways in Mumbai, describes the intricacies involved in Indian language computing including existence of different types of keyboards (C-DAC, DOE, Remington and Godrej, comparing and contrasting with one developed by his organisation, the market for software in Indian languages and the work done in Bharatbhasha, a not-for-profit organization started by him in 1997. various conclusions drawn by Harsh Kumar are based on sound footing.
In Chapter 9: Collaborative Creation of Digital Resources in Indian Languages, Rajeev Sanghal, Professor at the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad and Head of its Language Technologies Research Centre (LTRC), Akshar Bharti, a group on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Vineet Chitanya, also of LTRC, rightly emphasize the need of availability of affordable computing (they suggest use of free software, GIST terminals and sharing of the resources) as well as availability of resources in Indian languages (for example, digital content - text, images, information, etc) advocating collaborative efforts by way of shramdan (donation of labour) in digital development and lexical resources in Indian languages.
In the last, Chapter 10: The Bangalore Boom: From Brain Drain to Brain Circulation, Annalee Saxenian, Professor at the Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California at Berkeley, who is a familiar figure for any one who has tried to understand the Silicon Valley phenomenon as she has done commendable work in monitoring its evolution and characteristics extensively, points out to the success of Indians in Silicon Valley and urges the policy makers to learn from the success of Taiwan, “where brain circulation was critical to its shift from a peripheral source of cheap labor to a global leader in computer hardware.” (p-170).
Overall, the publication of this compilation of workshop papers on digital divide, reasonably priced, is timely. The compilation helps us to understand the existence of various types of digital divides and the nature and extent of different challenges posed in any attempt to bridge the digital divides. The eminent contributors also offer useful suggestions, which can help in narrowing the digital divides. It would be difficult to call the ongoing information and communication technology (ICT) revolution a “revolution” if it bypasses the masses in the developing world. Hence the urgency to tackle the various issues of digital divides competently pointed out in this book under review.
Dr D.C.Misra
January 16, 2005.
Cyber Quiz: Book Review-3: Keniston and Kumar (eds.) (2004): IT Experience in India: Bridging the Digital Divide, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks and London, Sage, Publications, 194 pp, © Dr D.C.Misra 2005
__________________________________________________________________
This rather slim volume* on India’s information technology (IT) experiences in bridging the digital divide is a collection of 10 updated papers by eminent contributors originally presented at a Workshop on “Equity, Diversity, and Information Technology (EDIT) in Bangalore, Karnataka, India edited by Kenneth Keniston, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Human Development and Director of Projects, Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Deepak Kumar, Deputy Editor, softwaredioxide.com.
In the first introductory Chapter 1: Introduction: The Four Digital Divides, Keniston provides an overview raising basic issues confronting information technology (IT) including questioning the trade off between investment on IT and other basic needs like education, health, etc. and draws attention to four digital divides: the first divide, which exists in each country, namely, between the rich (technology included) and the poor (technology excluded), secondly, the linguistic and cultural divide between English language and Anglo-Saxon culture and the rest, the north-south divide,
In Chapter 2: Towards a Knowledge System for Sustainable Food Security: The Information Village Experiment in Pondicherry, Balaji et al. urge for recasting of the new agricultural paradigm in India to secure “the triple goals of increased income, increased jobs, and increased food.” (p-37). Their conclusion that “Content creation to suit local needs is the key element” is a truism though is likely to be overlooked in project design with often-disastrous consequences. They also incidentally note that the coastal and fishing village of Veerapattinam received information on wavelengths in the next 24 hours downloaded from the web from a US Navy site (http://www.nemoc.Navy.mil). In the light of the Asian Tsunami Disaster of December 26, 2004, it would be instructive to know if the villagers indeed receive any warning of the impending tsunami waves.
In Chapter 3: Liberalization of Indian Telecom: Regulation in the Era of Convergence (For Information Infrastructure and Services), T.H. Chowdary describes the decisions and the decision-making process in the rather complicated information and communication technology (ICT) sector in India. This complication arises from two facts: the revolutionary and evolving nature of “convergence of technologies” and the turf wars that have ensued between various players as a result of progressive liberalization of the sector. The author describes evolution of various telecom policies in India.
In Chapter 4: Information Technology to Support Diversity in a Global Economy, Professor Pat Hall of Open University, United Kingdom makes an unexceptional plea that “information technology, and in particular the Internet should be available to all peoples in their own mother tongue, whatever that might be and however small that community (p-71). He argues that technology can help people bridge the gap between local communities and the global economy (p-72). More evidence, however, is needed to lend full support to leaned professor’s premise as prima facie a community should have a reasonable size for securing any social or governmental support.
In Chapter 5: Telecom and Regulation Scenario in India, Ashok Jhunjhunwala and Bhaskar Ramamurthy, both of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras (now Chennai), urge for providing special policy dispensation for rural connectivity primarily basing their policy prescriptions on the unique success of public call offices (PCOs) in India in providing telecom services to rural India and replicating this model for Internet connectivity. They then describe their own efforts in this direction, particularly their n-Logue achievement and urging India (may be along with China) to take a lead in the development of wireless technology.
In Chapter 6: An Agenda: Electronic Government for the Poor, Dr P. D. Kaushik of Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, in a rather lengthy contribution, focuses on e-governance for the poor, typically dealing with the role of e-governance in collection and dissemination of information for anti-poverty programmes, describing in the process the ways and means of providing rural connectivity and creating a knowledge base. He concludes by observing that “Info-communication technological developments cannot end poverty but they are crucial element of a successful anti-poverty strategy.”
In Chapter 7: Digital Development, Deepak Kumar, co-editor of this volume and Deputy Editor at softwaredioxide.com (formerly of Express Computer, a business weekly) divides his contribution in two parts. In the first part, he makes over-arching observations on themes like emerging “micro-multinationals” (which are multinationals from day one), the definition and many dimensions of poverty including its relativity, and C.K. Prahalad’s proposition for treating “poor” as a market (asset) (his book on the subject has also come out since then). In the second part Kumar draws different conclusions synthesizing various contributions made in this book declaring in conclusion the arrival of the “discipline of digital development.”
In Chapter 8: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Computers in Indian Languages, Harsh Kumar, who directs the IT operations and initiatives for Western Railways in Mumbai, describes the intricacies involved in Indian language computing including existence of different types of keyboards (C-DAC, DOE, Remington and Godrej, comparing and contrasting with one developed by his organisation, the market for software in Indian languages and the work done in Bharatbhasha, a not-for-profit organization started by him in 1997. various conclusions drawn by Harsh Kumar are based on sound footing.
In Chapter 9: Collaborative Creation of Digital Resources in Indian Languages, Rajeev Sanghal, Professor at the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad and Head of its Language Technologies Research Centre (LTRC), Akshar Bharti, a group on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Vineet Chitanya, also of LTRC, rightly emphasize the need of availability of affordable computing (they suggest use of free software, GIST terminals and sharing of the resources) as well as availability of resources in Indian languages (for example, digital content - text, images, information, etc) advocating collaborative efforts by way of shramdan (donation of labour) in digital development and lexical resources in Indian languages.
In the last, Chapter 10: The Bangalore Boom: From Brain Drain to Brain Circulation, Annalee Saxenian, Professor at the Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California at Berkeley, who is a familiar figure for any one who has tried to understand the Silicon Valley phenomenon as she has done commendable work in monitoring its evolution and characteristics extensively, points out to the success of Indians in Silicon Valley and urges the policy makers to learn from the success of Taiwan, “where brain circulation was critical to its shift from a peripheral source of cheap labor to a global leader in computer hardware.” (p-170).
Overall, the publication of this compilation of workshop papers on digital divide, reasonably priced, is timely. The compilation helps us to understand the existence of various types of digital divides and the nature and extent of different challenges posed in any attempt to bridge the digital divides. The eminent contributors also offer useful suggestions, which can help in narrowing the digital divides. It would be difficult to call the ongoing information and communication technology (ICT) revolution a “revolution” if it bypasses the masses in the developing world. Hence the urgency to tackle the various issues of digital divides competently pointed out in this book under review.
Dr D.C.Misra
January 16, 2005.
Cyber Quiz: Book Review-3: Keniston and Kumar (eds.) (2004): IT Experience in India: Bridging the Digital Divide, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks and London, Sage, Publications, 194 pp, © Dr D.C.Misra 2005
Friday, December 31, 2004
CYBER QUIZ – 6: Check the Blog : A Tribute to Word of Year 2004
CYBER QUIZ – 6: Check the Blog: A Tribute to the Word of Year 2004
WELCOME TO YEAR 2005!
And wish you All,
A VERY, VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR.
And, as promised, here is my
NEW YEAR MYSTERY PRESENT-
The First Cyber Quiz of Year 2005.
Read it. Enjoy it. And be HAPPY.
Dr D.C.Misra
January 1, 2005 _____________________________________________________________________ CYBER QUIZ – 6: Check the Blog: A Tribute to the Word of Year 2004
by Dr D.C.Misra*
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With Blog having been declared as the word of year 2004 by Merriam Webster,* this cyber quiz is a tribute to the year gone by for recognizing this unique phenomenon in cyberspace. The blogs played a unique role from the U. S. Presidential election to tackling the Asian Tsunami tragedy. With some of the blogs becoming more popular than some of the big media portals, blogs truly arrived in 2004. Let us check.
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1.What are
(a) blog,
(b) alpha bloggers or A-listers,
(c) blogrolls,
(d) permalinks,
(e) comments, and
(f) trackbacks?
2.(a) When did the present-day format of "weblog" first appear, and
(b) When was the term "weblog" first applied to it?
3.Who coined the word "blog" and when?
4.Which are top ten independent tech blogs 2004?
5.Which are top ten blogs by average daily traffic?
6.(a) How many new blogs are created every day, and
(b) What is the number of posts every day?
7.(a) If the book "We the Media" has been described as the`blogging manifesto," who wrote it? and
(b) It claims to be the most comprehensive blog monitoring service, tracking over 6.5 million blogs. Name it.
8.About 63 percent of American adults, that is, 128 million American adults, go online. What percentage of those with Internet access
(a) Read some one else's blog, and
(b) Create a blog?
9.(a) This blog, described by a media observer as the "GrandCentral Station of the cyberset,"and launched by Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor in August 2001, drew an estimated 50,000 people on a weekday. What was it called? and
(b) If it has something to do with law, what is blawg?10.What is the number of blogs with monthly traffic of (a) 1 million, and (b) 10 million pageviews per month?
11.(a) What percentage of bloggers is (i) ) Female, (ii) Male,
(b) How many of them are in the age group (in years) (i) Below 20, (ii) 21-30, and (iii) 31-40,
(c) How many of them had been to college/university,
(d) How many of them live in the United States, and
(e) How many of them had been blogging for over (i) one year, (ii) two years?
12.(a) What is a "filter weblog" or "filter,"
(b) How many currently active weblogs are filters, and
(c) How many of the currently active weblogs contain no links to other weblogs at all?
13.Which are top ten languages in weblogs?
14.Which are top five popular weblog authoring tools?
15.The most gripping account of the Iraq conflict came from a web diarist known as the Baghdad Blogger, says The Guardian, London. But no one knew his identity - or even if he existed. Who was he?
16.(a) A London-based think tank, named after a well known 18th century Scottish philosopher and economist, which researches "practical ways to inject choice and competition into public services, extend personal freedom, reduce taxes, prune back regulation, and cut government waste," runs a blog. Name the institute, and
(b) In which country and when did bloggers go to Parliament to convince politicians that they should take up their blogging tools to forge closer links with their electorate?
17. If at all proof were needed that blogs have arrived, many blogs have more links now than big media portals. Which of these then has more links:
(a) Slashdot: News for Nerds or guardian.co.uk,
(b) Plastic: Act Like Nothing's Wrong or wired.com,
(c) Davenetics or salon.com
(d) Boing Boing or slate.com, and
(e) Instapundit or slate.com?
18. SEA-EAT is the name of the blog set up by three bloggers in Mumbai as a clearinghouse for disaster relief in the wake of Asian Tsunami disaster on Sunday, December 26, 2004 which, days later, had 50 contributors and 100,000 visitors. Name the bloggers.
19. This post titled "61st minute," claimed to be probablythe "most famous post in the young history of blogosphere,"led tochallenging a network news legend and won. What is the name of the blog on which it was posted?
20. When did the Webby awards, popularly known as the Oscars of the Internet, include blog as a specific category for the awards for the first time?_____________________________________________________________________
ANSWERS TO CYBER QUIZ – 6: Check the Blog: A Tribute to the Wordof Year 2004 by Dr D.C.Misra
_____________________________________________________________________
1. (a) A Web log, or blog, is a personal website where somebody self-publishes an electronic journal, often linking it to other things on the Web that strike the author's fancy,
(b) The feisty elite of super-bloggers who set the tech agenda. They show how the power can shift in the age of Internet. (Source: Levy, Steven (2004-2005): The Alpha Bloggers, Newsweek, Special Edition, Issues 2005, December 2004-February 2005, p- 76),
(c) A list of other weblogs that the author (of a weblog) reads regularly,
(d) reference to specific posts instead of an entire weblog,
(e) reader-contributed reply to a specific post within the site (Dash, Anil (2003): Interview with Paul Bausch, http://www.sixapart.com/log/2003/09/interview_with_.shtml), and
(f) an automatic communication that occurs when one weblog references another. (Source: Marlow, Cameron (2004): Audience, structure and authority in the weblog community, MIT Media Laboratory, http://web.media.mit.edu/~cameron/cv/pubs/04-01.pdf, Presented at the International Communication Association Conference, May, 2004, New Orleans, LA.
2. (a) 1996, in a site created by Dave Winer as part of the 24 Hours of Democracy Project (Source: Festa, P. (2003, February 25): Blogging comes to Harvard., CNET News.com, http://news.com.com/2008-1082-985714.html?tag=fd_nc_1], and
(b) 1997, by Jorn Barger. The clipping 'blog' came into use after Peter Merholz started pronouncing 'weblog' as 'wee-blog' in early 1999 (Source: Blood, R. (2002): The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog. Cambridge, MA, Perseus Publishing], as cited in Susan C. Herring, Lois Ann Scheidt, Elijah Wright, and Sabrina Bonus (2005): Weblogs as a Bridging Genre, http://www.blogninja.com/it&p.final.pdf (accessed: December 15, 2004).
3.Peter Merholz in 1999. In his post "Play With Your Words,"posted on May 17, 2002, he, among other things, writes: "SometimeinApril or May of 1999 (I can't say for sure when I exactly did it), I posted, in the sidebar of my homepage:"For What It's Worth I've decided to pronounce the word "weblog" as wee'- blog. Or "blog" for short."He also notes: `Blog' would have likely died a forgotten deathhad it not been for one thing: In August of 1999, Pyra Labs released Blogger. And with that, the use of "blog" grew with the tool's success (Source: http://www.peterme.com/archives/00000205.html).Check also http://www.tbtf.com/jargon-scout.html#blog (accessed: December 18, 2004).
4. 1.Groklaw (Pamela Jones) (Legal issues of open source technology), http://www.groklaw.net,
2.AliceandBill.com (Alice Hill and Bill O'Brien)(tech topics),http://www.aliceandbill.com,
3.CrackTalk (Terry Blount) (Update and links concerning tech issues), http://cracktalk.blogspot.com/,
4.Slashdot ("News for Nerds"), http://slashdot.org,
5.Daily Dose of Excel (Dick Kusleika) (tips-n-tricks for Excelenthusiasts), http://www.dicks-blog.com,
6.jkOnTheRun (James Kendrik) (mobile technologies), http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun,
7.Longhorn Blogs (Next version of Windows), http://longhorns.com,
8.The Enterprise System Spectator (Frank Scavo) (Observations on enterprise systems), http://fscavo.blogspot.com,
9.Smallbiztechnology.com (Ramon Ray) (Technology for small businesses), http://smallbiztechnology.com, and
10.VarLinux (Open source), http://www.varlinux.org (Source: http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/186, originally from http://www.techweb.com/blogawards/winners.html, accessed: November 30, 2004).
5.1. Daily Kos: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation. (288,400),
2.Gizmodo (152,986),
3.Instapundit.com (140,794),
4.Gawker (108,260),
5.Eschaton (84,168),
6.lgf: skiing through the revolving door of life (77,022),
7.www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish (57,578),
8.Wonkette (54,630),
9.Power Line (49,938), and
10.Defamer (47,174)(Figures in parentheses indicate number of visits per day) (Source: The Truth Laid Bear (TTLB), volume 1310, Southern California, December 13, 2004, 11:28 pm, http://www.truthlaidbear.com/TrafficRanking.php, accessed: December 14, 2004).
6.(a) 12,000. A new weblog is created every 7.4 seconds, and
(b) 275,000 or about 10,800 blog updates an hour. (Source: http://www.technorati.com/about) (accessed: December 11, 2004).
7.(a) Veteran Silicon Valley journalist Dan Gillmor. As columnist with the San Jose Mercury News, Dan Gillmor has covered "thebubble, boom, bust and continuing evolution of the tech industry for over a decade." Check the book, Gillmor, Dan (2004): We theMedia: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, O'Reilly,July,at the online catalog at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wemedia/index.html. Also check the author's blog at http://wethemedia.oreilly.com/] (accessed:December 10, 2004), and
(b) PubSub (http://www.pubsub.com).
8.(a) 17, and
(b) 5 (February 2004) (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Tracking surveys (March 2000 - present) (Last updated: June 30, 2004), http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/Internet_Activities_4.23.04.htm (accessed: December 11, 2004).
9. (a) Instapundit.com (Source: Scott, Esther (2004):"BigMedia" Meets the "Bloggers": Coverage of Trent Lott's Remarks atStrom Thurmond's Birthday Party, Cambridge, MA, John F. KennedySchoolof Government, Harvard University, Case Program, http://69.20.62.53/dns.php?url=www.ksg.harvard.edu (accessed: December 12, 2004). Reynold's chief interest is "in theintersection between advanced technologies and individualliberty." Visit his blog at http://www.instapundit.com/ (accessed: December 12, 2004), and
(b) Blogs in the United States "in which law students across the country record their musings about their daily experiences in law schools." (Source: Rosen, Jeffrey (2004): Your Blog or Mine? New York Times, December 20, http://tinyurl.com/3m47t (accessed: December 31, 2004).
10. (a) 200, and
(b) 20, according to the former editor-in-chief of the "Silicon Alley Reporter." (Source: McGann, Rob (2004): The Blogosphere By the Numbers, November 22, ClickZStat, http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/traffic_patterns/article.php/3438891 (accessed: December 12, 2004).
11.(a) (i) 36, (ii) 63 (with undisclosed 1 per cent),
(b) (i) 10.5, (ii) 46.3, and (iii) 28.2,
(c) 59,
(d) 67, and
(e) (i) 67, (ii) 36.(Figures are percentages) (Note: Based on an online survey conducted for seven days between January 14-21, 2004; n=486). (Source:Viégas,Fernanda (2004): Blog Survey: Expectations of Privacy and Accountability, Summary of Findings, http://web.media.mit.edu/~fviegas/survey/blog/results.htm(accessed: December 14, 2004).
12. (a) A weblog which links to ("filters") web content,
(b) 12.6 percent, and
(c) 48.8 percent (Source: Herring et al. (2005): Conversations in the Blogosphere: An Analysis "From the Bottom Up," http://www.blogninja.com/hicss05.blogconv.pdf (accessed: December 15, 2004).
13. 1. English (12,86,508),
2. French (87,506),
3. Portuguese (81,077),
4. Farsi (64,049),
5. Polish (42,754),
6. German (35,149),
7. Spanish (26,389),
8. Italian (10,402),
9. Dutch (9,826), and
10. Chinese-big5 (8,986) (Source:http://www.blogcensus.net/?page=lang, accessed: December 16, 2004).
14.1. Movable Type (44,000),
2. b2 (4,078),
3. PHP-Nuke (3,105),
4. Microsoft Visual Studio (2,067, and
5. Postnuke (1,013) (Source: http://www.blogcensus.net/?page=tools (accessed: December 16, 2004).
15. A 29-year-old architect in Baghdad. (Source: McCarthy, Rory (2003): Salam's Story, Guardian Unlimited, May 30, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,966819,00.html (accessed: December 19, 2004). Check also Maas, Peter (2003): Salam Pax is Real, Slate, June 2, Monday, http://slate.msn.com/id/2083847/#ContinueArticle (accessed December 19, 2004)Salam Pax's blog, "Where is Raed? v.2.0,"available athttp://dear_raed.blogspot.com/, has last entry on Wednesday, August 18, 2004.
16.(a) Adam Smith Institute (ASI), London. Check the blog at http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/ (accessed: December 18, 2004), and
(b) United Kingdom in July 2003. (Source: Ward, Mark (2003): A blog for everyone, BBC News, UK Edition, July 22, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3078541.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3078541.stm (accessed: December 15, 2004).
17.(a) Slashdot: News for Nerds. It has 9,244 links while guardian.co.uk has 8,505 links,
(b) Plastic: Act Like Nothing's Wrong. It has 8,324 links while wired.com has 7,197 links,
(c) Davenetics. It has 7,590 links while salon.com has 6,166 links,
(d) Boing Boing has 5,692 links while slate.com has 5,051 links, and
(e) Instapundit has 5,170 links while slate.com has 5,051 links. (Source: Levy, Steven (2004-2005): The Alpha Bloggers, Newsweek, Special Edition, Issues 2005, December 2004 - February 2005, Box: Bloggers Bite the Bigs, p- 76).
18. SEA-EAT (The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami) or http://www tsunamihelp.blogspot.com was set up by Peter Griffin, Rohit Gupta and Dina Mehta (Source: Wagner, Mitch (2004): SEA-EAT Blog Mobilizes Fast For Tsunami Relief, Security Pipeline, December 29, http://www.securitypipeline.com/56700192 (accessed: December 31, 2004).
19.Powerlineblog (http://www.powerlineblog.com). This blog was set up by three amateur journalists, John Hinderaker (Hindrocket), Paul Mirengoff (Deacon) and Scott Johnson (Big Trunk) in 2002. Scott Johnson posted the message on September 9, 2004 at 7-51 a.m. The thread included a posting of a 1973 document by a reader and is widely believed to have led to the announcement of resignation by Dan Rather of CBS. Powerline blog scored half a million hits on the Election Day. (Source: Grossman, Lev (2004): Person of the Year 2004: Blogs Have Their Day, Posted Sunday, December 19, TIME, http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/personoftheyear/2004/poyblogger.html (accessed: December 19, 2004).
20. Only in 2004, the Year of the Blog! The category is defined as "Sites that serve as weblogs or online journals for anytopic." The Webby Awards recognize outstanding websites in morethan 60 categories. Established in 1996, the Webby Awards are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.The deadline for making nominations is January 28, 2004. Check for details the website http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/categories.php#webby_entry_blog.______________________________________________________________________
** http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/04words.htm, Blog, the short term for web log, is defined by Merriam-Webster Online as: "noun [short for Weblog] (1999): a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer." (ibid.).
______________________________________________________________________
*Independent eGov and IT Consultant based in New Delhi, India. Dr Misra maintains a blog on Cyber Quiz at http://cyberquiz.blogspot.com/. Email: dcmisra[at]gmail.com. ______________________________________________________________________
Cyber Quiz Series: Dr Misra's five earlier quizzes in this mainCyber Quiz series are also available on this Cyber Quiz Forum. Check the archives:
1. Cyber Quiz 1: The Internet
2. Cyber Quiz 2: The World Wide Web
3. Cyber Quiz 3: Check your E-mail
4. Cyber Quiz 4: Browsing the Web
5. Cyber Quiz 5: Have Data? Will Search
______________________________________________________________________
Disclaimer: While reasonable care has been taken to compile the quiz, neither the author nor the publisher is responsible for the accuracy, inclusion, exclusion or the interpretation of the contents. Readers are advised to consult authoritative sources before acting on the information contained here. The purpose of the quiz is educational and popularization of information and communication technologies (ICT). No responsibility for the content is, therefore, assumed. Use of Content: Use of content here for educational and non-commercial purposes is encouraged provided due credit is given to the author. Its use for commercial purposes is, however, prohibited. ______________________________________________________________________
© Dinesh Chandra Misra 2005 (Beta Version – January 1, 2005).
______________________________________________________________________Dr
D.C.Misra
January 1, 2005.
WELCOME TO YEAR 2005!
And wish you All,
A VERY, VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR.
And, as promised, here is my
NEW YEAR MYSTERY PRESENT-
The First Cyber Quiz of Year 2005.
Read it. Enjoy it. And be HAPPY.
Dr D.C.Misra
January 1, 2005 _____________________________________________________________________ CYBER QUIZ – 6: Check the Blog: A Tribute to the Word of Year 2004
by Dr D.C.Misra*
______________________________________________________________________
With Blog having been declared as the word of year 2004 by Merriam Webster,* this cyber quiz is a tribute to the year gone by for recognizing this unique phenomenon in cyberspace. The blogs played a unique role from the U. S. Presidential election to tackling the Asian Tsunami tragedy. With some of the blogs becoming more popular than some of the big media portals, blogs truly arrived in 2004. Let us check.
______________________________________________________________________
1.What are
(a) blog,
(b) alpha bloggers or A-listers,
(c) blogrolls,
(d) permalinks,
(e) comments, and
(f) trackbacks?
2.(a) When did the present-day format of "weblog" first appear, and
(b) When was the term "weblog" first applied to it?
3.Who coined the word "blog" and when?
4.Which are top ten independent tech blogs 2004?
5.Which are top ten blogs by average daily traffic?
6.(a) How many new blogs are created every day, and
(b) What is the number of posts every day?
7.(a) If the book "We the Media" has been described as the`blogging manifesto," who wrote it? and
(b) It claims to be the most comprehensive blog monitoring service, tracking over 6.5 million blogs. Name it.
8.About 63 percent of American adults, that is, 128 million American adults, go online. What percentage of those with Internet access
(a) Read some one else's blog, and
(b) Create a blog?
9.(a) This blog, described by a media observer as the "GrandCentral Station of the cyberset,"and launched by Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor in August 2001, drew an estimated 50,000 people on a weekday. What was it called? and
(b) If it has something to do with law, what is blawg?10.What is the number of blogs with monthly traffic of (a) 1 million, and (b) 10 million pageviews per month?
11.(a) What percentage of bloggers is (i) ) Female, (ii) Male,
(b) How many of them are in the age group (in years) (i) Below 20, (ii) 21-30, and (iii) 31-40,
(c) How many of them had been to college/university,
(d) How many of them live in the United States, and
(e) How many of them had been blogging for over (i) one year, (ii) two years?
12.(a) What is a "filter weblog" or "filter,"
(b) How many currently active weblogs are filters, and
(c) How many of the currently active weblogs contain no links to other weblogs at all?
13.Which are top ten languages in weblogs?
14.Which are top five popular weblog authoring tools?
15.The most gripping account of the Iraq conflict came from a web diarist known as the Baghdad Blogger, says The Guardian, London. But no one knew his identity - or even if he existed. Who was he?
16.(a) A London-based think tank, named after a well known 18th century Scottish philosopher and economist, which researches "practical ways to inject choice and competition into public services, extend personal freedom, reduce taxes, prune back regulation, and cut government waste," runs a blog. Name the institute, and
(b) In which country and when did bloggers go to Parliament to convince politicians that they should take up their blogging tools to forge closer links with their electorate?
17. If at all proof were needed that blogs have arrived, many blogs have more links now than big media portals. Which of these then has more links:
(a) Slashdot: News for Nerds or guardian.co.uk,
(b) Plastic: Act Like Nothing's Wrong or wired.com,
(c) Davenetics or salon.com
(d) Boing Boing or slate.com, and
(e) Instapundit or slate.com?
18. SEA-EAT is the name of the blog set up by three bloggers in Mumbai as a clearinghouse for disaster relief in the wake of Asian Tsunami disaster on Sunday, December 26, 2004 which, days later, had 50 contributors and 100,000 visitors. Name the bloggers.
19. This post titled "61st minute," claimed to be probablythe "most famous post in the young history of blogosphere,"led tochallenging a network news legend and won. What is the name of the blog on which it was posted?
20. When did the Webby awards, popularly known as the Oscars of the Internet, include blog as a specific category for the awards for the first time?_____________________________________________________________________
ANSWERS TO CYBER QUIZ – 6: Check the Blog: A Tribute to the Wordof Year 2004 by Dr D.C.Misra
_____________________________________________________________________
1. (a) A Web log, or blog, is a personal website where somebody self-publishes an electronic journal, often linking it to other things on the Web that strike the author's fancy,
(b) The feisty elite of super-bloggers who set the tech agenda. They show how the power can shift in the age of Internet. (Source: Levy, Steven (2004-2005): The Alpha Bloggers, Newsweek, Special Edition, Issues 2005, December 2004-February 2005, p- 76),
(c) A list of other weblogs that the author (of a weblog) reads regularly,
(d) reference to specific posts instead of an entire weblog,
(e) reader-contributed reply to a specific post within the site (Dash, Anil (2003): Interview with Paul Bausch, http://www.sixapart.com/log/2003/09/interview_with_.shtml), and
(f) an automatic communication that occurs when one weblog references another. (Source: Marlow, Cameron (2004): Audience, structure and authority in the weblog community, MIT Media Laboratory, http://web.media.mit.edu/~cameron/cv/pubs/04-01.pdf, Presented at the International Communication Association Conference, May, 2004, New Orleans, LA.
2. (a) 1996, in a site created by Dave Winer as part of the 24 Hours of Democracy Project (Source: Festa, P. (2003, February 25): Blogging comes to Harvard., CNET News.com, http://news.com.com/2008-1082-985714.html?tag=fd_nc_1], and
(b) 1997, by Jorn Barger. The clipping 'blog' came into use after Peter Merholz started pronouncing 'weblog' as 'wee-blog' in early 1999 (Source: Blood, R. (2002): The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog. Cambridge, MA, Perseus Publishing], as cited in Susan C. Herring, Lois Ann Scheidt, Elijah Wright, and Sabrina Bonus (2005): Weblogs as a Bridging Genre, http://www.blogninja.com/it&p.final.pdf (accessed: December 15, 2004).
3.Peter Merholz in 1999. In his post "Play With Your Words,"posted on May 17, 2002, he, among other things, writes: "SometimeinApril or May of 1999 (I can't say for sure when I exactly did it), I posted, in the sidebar of my homepage:"For What It's Worth I've decided to pronounce the word "weblog" as wee'- blog. Or "blog" for short."He also notes: `Blog' would have likely died a forgotten deathhad it not been for one thing: In August of 1999, Pyra Labs released Blogger. And with that, the use of "blog" grew with the tool's success (Source: http://www.peterme.com/archives/00000205.html).Check also http://www.tbtf.com/jargon-scout.html#blog (accessed: December 18, 2004).
4. 1.Groklaw (Pamela Jones) (Legal issues of open source technology), http://www.groklaw.net,
2.AliceandBill.com (Alice Hill and Bill O'Brien)(tech topics),http://www.aliceandbill.com,
3.CrackTalk (Terry Blount) (Update and links concerning tech issues), http://cracktalk.blogspot.com/,
4.Slashdot ("News for Nerds"), http://slashdot.org,
5.Daily Dose of Excel (Dick Kusleika) (tips-n-tricks for Excelenthusiasts), http://www.dicks-blog.com,
6.jkOnTheRun (James Kendrik) (mobile technologies), http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun,
7.Longhorn Blogs (Next version of Windows), http://longhorns.com,
8.The Enterprise System Spectator (Frank Scavo) (Observations on enterprise systems), http://fscavo.blogspot.com,
9.Smallbiztechnology.com (Ramon Ray) (Technology for small businesses), http://smallbiztechnology.com, and
10.VarLinux (Open source), http://www.varlinux.org (Source: http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/186, originally from http://www.techweb.com/blogawards/winners.html, accessed: November 30, 2004).
5.1. Daily Kos: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation. (288,400),
2.Gizmodo (152,986),
3.Instapundit.com (140,794),
4.Gawker (108,260),
5.Eschaton (84,168),
6.lgf: skiing through the revolving door of life (77,022),
7.www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish (57,578),
8.Wonkette (54,630),
9.Power Line (49,938), and
10.Defamer (47,174)(Figures in parentheses indicate number of visits per day) (Source: The Truth Laid Bear (TTLB), volume 1310, Southern California, December 13, 2004, 11:28 pm, http://www.truthlaidbear.com/TrafficRanking.php, accessed: December 14, 2004).
6.(a) 12,000. A new weblog is created every 7.4 seconds, and
(b) 275,000 or about 10,800 blog updates an hour. (Source: http://www.technorati.com/about) (accessed: December 11, 2004).
7.(a) Veteran Silicon Valley journalist Dan Gillmor. As columnist with the San Jose Mercury News, Dan Gillmor has covered "thebubble, boom, bust and continuing evolution of the tech industry for over a decade." Check the book, Gillmor, Dan (2004): We theMedia: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, O'Reilly,July,at the online catalog at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wemedia/index.html. Also check the author's blog at http://wethemedia.oreilly.com/] (accessed:December 10, 2004), and
(b) PubSub (http://www.pubsub.com).
8.(a) 17, and
(b) 5 (February 2004) (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Tracking surveys (March 2000 - present) (Last updated: June 30, 2004), http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/Internet_Activities_4.23.04.htm (accessed: December 11, 2004).
9. (a) Instapundit.com (Source: Scott, Esther (2004):"BigMedia" Meets the "Bloggers": Coverage of Trent Lott's Remarks atStrom Thurmond's Birthday Party, Cambridge, MA, John F. KennedySchoolof Government, Harvard University, Case Program, http://69.20.62.53/dns.php?url=www.ksg.harvard.edu (accessed: December 12, 2004). Reynold's chief interest is "in theintersection between advanced technologies and individualliberty." Visit his blog at http://www.instapundit.com/ (accessed: December 12, 2004), and
(b) Blogs in the United States "in which law students across the country record their musings about their daily experiences in law schools." (Source: Rosen, Jeffrey (2004): Your Blog or Mine? New York Times, December 20, http://tinyurl.com/3m47t (accessed: December 31, 2004).
10. (a) 200, and
(b) 20, according to the former editor-in-chief of the "Silicon Alley Reporter." (Source: McGann, Rob (2004): The Blogosphere By the Numbers, November 22, ClickZStat, http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/traffic_patterns/article.php/3438891 (accessed: December 12, 2004).
11.(a) (i) 36, (ii) 63 (with undisclosed 1 per cent),
(b) (i) 10.5, (ii) 46.3, and (iii) 28.2,
(c) 59,
(d) 67, and
(e) (i) 67, (ii) 36.(Figures are percentages) (Note: Based on an online survey conducted for seven days between January 14-21, 2004; n=486). (Source:Viégas,Fernanda (2004): Blog Survey: Expectations of Privacy and Accountability, Summary of Findings, http://web.media.mit.edu/~fviegas/survey/blog/results.htm(accessed: December 14, 2004).
12. (a) A weblog which links to ("filters") web content,
(b) 12.6 percent, and
(c) 48.8 percent (Source: Herring et al. (2005): Conversations in the Blogosphere: An Analysis "From the Bottom Up," http://www.blogninja.com/hicss05.blogconv.pdf (accessed: December 15, 2004).
13. 1. English (12,86,508),
2. French (87,506),
3. Portuguese (81,077),
4. Farsi (64,049),
5. Polish (42,754),
6. German (35,149),
7. Spanish (26,389),
8. Italian (10,402),
9. Dutch (9,826), and
10. Chinese-big5 (8,986) (Source:http://www.blogcensus.net/?page=lang, accessed: December 16, 2004).
14.1. Movable Type (44,000),
2. b2 (4,078),
3. PHP-Nuke (3,105),
4. Microsoft Visual Studio (2,067, and
5. Postnuke (1,013) (Source: http://www.blogcensus.net/?page=tools (accessed: December 16, 2004).
15. A 29-year-old architect in Baghdad. (Source: McCarthy, Rory (2003): Salam's Story, Guardian Unlimited, May 30, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,966819,00.html (accessed: December 19, 2004). Check also Maas, Peter (2003): Salam Pax is Real, Slate, June 2, Monday, http://slate.msn.com/id/2083847/#ContinueArticle (accessed December 19, 2004)Salam Pax's blog, "Where is Raed? v.2.0,"available athttp://dear_raed.blogspot.com/, has last entry on Wednesday, August 18, 2004.
16.(a) Adam Smith Institute (ASI), London. Check the blog at http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/ (accessed: December 18, 2004), and
(b) United Kingdom in July 2003. (Source: Ward, Mark (2003): A blog for everyone, BBC News, UK Edition, July 22, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3078541.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3078541.stm (accessed: December 15, 2004).
17.(a) Slashdot: News for Nerds. It has 9,244 links while guardian.co.uk has 8,505 links,
(b) Plastic: Act Like Nothing's Wrong. It has 8,324 links while wired.com has 7,197 links,
(c) Davenetics. It has 7,590 links while salon.com has 6,166 links,
(d) Boing Boing has 5,692 links while slate.com has 5,051 links, and
(e) Instapundit has 5,170 links while slate.com has 5,051 links. (Source: Levy, Steven (2004-2005): The Alpha Bloggers, Newsweek, Special Edition, Issues 2005, December 2004 - February 2005, Box: Bloggers Bite the Bigs, p- 76).
18. SEA-EAT (The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami) or http://www tsunamihelp.blogspot.com was set up by Peter Griffin, Rohit Gupta and Dina Mehta (Source: Wagner, Mitch (2004): SEA-EAT Blog Mobilizes Fast For Tsunami Relief, Security Pipeline, December 29, http://www.securitypipeline.com/56700192 (accessed: December 31, 2004).
19.Powerlineblog (http://www.powerlineblog.com). This blog was set up by three amateur journalists, John Hinderaker (Hindrocket), Paul Mirengoff (Deacon) and Scott Johnson (Big Trunk) in 2002. Scott Johnson posted the message on September 9, 2004 at 7-51 a.m. The thread included a posting of a 1973 document by a reader and is widely believed to have led to the announcement of resignation by Dan Rather of CBS. Powerline blog scored half a million hits on the Election Day. (Source: Grossman, Lev (2004): Person of the Year 2004: Blogs Have Their Day, Posted Sunday, December 19, TIME, http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/personoftheyear/2004/poyblogger.html (accessed: December 19, 2004).
20. Only in 2004, the Year of the Blog! The category is defined as "Sites that serve as weblogs or online journals for anytopic." The Webby Awards recognize outstanding websites in morethan 60 categories. Established in 1996, the Webby Awards are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.The deadline for making nominations is January 28, 2004. Check for details the website http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/categories.php#webby_entry_blog.______________________________________________________________________
** http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/04words.htm, Blog, the short term for web log, is defined by Merriam-Webster Online as: "noun [short for Weblog] (1999): a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer." (ibid.).
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*Independent eGov and IT Consultant based in New Delhi, India. Dr Misra maintains a blog on Cyber Quiz at http://cyberquiz.blogspot.com/. Email: dcmisra[at]gmail.com. ______________________________________________________________________
Cyber Quiz Series: Dr Misra's five earlier quizzes in this mainCyber Quiz series are also available on this Cyber Quiz Forum. Check the archives:
1. Cyber Quiz 1: The Internet
2. Cyber Quiz 2: The World Wide Web
3. Cyber Quiz 3: Check your E-mail
4. Cyber Quiz 4: Browsing the Web
5. Cyber Quiz 5: Have Data? Will Search
______________________________________________________________________
Disclaimer: While reasonable care has been taken to compile the quiz, neither the author nor the publisher is responsible for the accuracy, inclusion, exclusion or the interpretation of the contents. Readers are advised to consult authoritative sources before acting on the information contained here. The purpose of the quiz is educational and popularization of information and communication technologies (ICT). No responsibility for the content is, therefore, assumed. Use of Content: Use of content here for educational and non-commercial purposes is encouraged provided due credit is given to the author. Its use for commercial purposes is, however, prohibited. ______________________________________________________________________
© Dinesh Chandra Misra 2005 (Beta Version – January 1, 2005).
______________________________________________________________________Dr
D.C.Misra
January 1, 2005.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Dear All,
On the last day of the year, here is the fifth quiz in our continuing endeavour to create world class literature on information and communication technologies (ICTs) in our mainstream CYBER QUIZ series. Enjoy it.
Check this Forum on New Year's Day - January 1, 2005, and find a specially designed quiz for the NEW YEAR - a tribute to the year which will become history in some 15 hours from now!
Meanwhile, here is wishing you all
A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR.
And happy quizzing!
Dr D.C.Misra
December 31, 2004.
___________________________________________________________________
CYBER QUIZ –5: Have Data? Will Search by Dr D.C.Misra
___________________________________________________________________________
An engine is a clever device, a result of ingenuity. So is the case with a search engine, a software program designed to search the vast store-house of information of the World Wide Web. Search engines, far more than portals, are true traffic hubs of the Web. “Have data? Will search” appears to have been a slogan of the year 2004. There appears to be search engine now for every thing and any where. Let us check.
______________________________________________________________________
1. What is a search engine?
2. How does a search engine differ from (a) directory, (b) surf engine, and (c) metacrawler?
3. (a) Which is the largest search engine and how much of the World Wide Web has been indexed by it, and (b) How many major search engines are there for searching the World Wide Web, and (c) Which was the first widely used search engine for searching the World Wide Web?
4. Search engine expert Chris Sherman calls it a “generonym,” a brand name used as a generic name for searching. Which search engine has, thus, become the default search engine of the Web surfers?
5. (a) Who founded the search engine Google, how many queries does it receive per day and after what is it named, and (b) What has BackRub got to do with search engine Google?
6. What are (a) IBM’s Clever Project, and (b) Microsoft’s Stuff I’ve Seen (SIS) Project?
7. Call it the Internet Gutenberg Revolution of the early 21st century. This revolutionary project, to be completed in six years, proposes to make freely accessible the entire collection of world’s books online. Who has launched the project?
8. If it was the most hyped technology craze of year 2000, what is InfraSearch, also known as gonesilent.com (http://.gonesilent.com)?
9. Who won the gold, the silver, and the bronze medals at the Search Site Olympics 2002?
10. What is common between the following: (a) Highway 61, (b) Bigfoot, (c) Dogpile, (d) Colossus, and (e) Internet Sleuth?
11. What is common between the following: (a) Hot Bot, (b) Lycos, (c) Alta Vista, (d) Excite, and (e) Northern Light?
12. A number of search engines now exist for specialized searches. What do the following engines then search: (a) Blinkx, (b) CiteSeer.IST, (c) EESE (d) Technorati, and (e) Google Scholar?
13. Which are (a) five best Indian search engines, and (b) (i) most accurate, and (ii) most usable Indian search engines?
14. What is common between (a) Kenjin, (b) Web Check, (c) First Direct, (d) The Brain, and (e) Mohomine?
15. (a) What is the percentage of search result pages out of the all page views, and (b) How much traffic to websites is generated by the search engines?
16. (a) What is the percentage of all Internet sessions that start with a visit to a search engine, (b) How many searches are made worldwide each day, (c) How many searches are made each day from UK computers, and (d) What is the percentage of searches that goes no further than the first page of results?
17. (a) What is common between Overture, Espotting, FindWhat, IQSeek.com and SPRINKS, and (b) What is buzz index, who invented it, and what are buzz movers and buzz leaders?
18. This is a special kind of google, which searches not text, but three-dimensional (3-D) shapes, and that too in industrial databases, and its prototype has been developed by an Indian. Name him.
19. The search market has become highly competitive as it holds the key to Internet. Giants like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Amazon are in the fray. If so, what is A9, when was it launched and who launched it?
20. With desktop search suddenly becoming hot in the year 2004, when did the following release their desktop search tools: (a) Google, (b) Copernic, (c) Yahoo!, (d) Microsoft, and (e) Ask Jeeves?
______________________________________________________________________
ANSWERS TO CYBERQUIZ–5: Have Data? Will Search by Dr D.C.Misra
______________________________________________________________________
1. A search engine is a program that creates its listings automatically by crawling the World Wide Web. It has three major elements. First, the spider which reads the pages on the Web. Second, the index which is a collection of pages, found by the spider. Third, a software which sifts through millions of pages recorded in the index to match a search and rank them in order of relevance. Also sometimes called a spider, a crawler, a worm, or a knwbot (knowledge robot), it searches the World Wide Web by looking for titles of documents, uniform resource locators (URLs), headers, or text.
Search engines are of two types – 1. General, and 2. Specialized. The general search engines cover a wide variety of subjects (for example, http://www.google.com/) while specialized search engines cover special subjects or topics, for example, news search engines (say, http://news.altavista.com/), speciality, for example, computer search engines (say, http://download.cnet.com/), medical search engines (say, http://www.hon.ch.MedHunt/), etc.
2. (a) A directory, unlike a search engine, is based on listings prepared by human beings. A short description of a Web site is submitted to the directory, on the basis of which listings are prepared. A search then finds matches only in the descriptions submitted and not the entire website. Examples of directories include Yahoo! and Lycos which started as small university projects (Yahoo! at Stanford University and Lycos at Carnegie Mellon University), (b) A surf engine provides information, constantly updated, about the sites visited, their ownership, popularity, ratings and related sites. The term was invented by Jaquith. Its example is Alexa (short for Library of Alexandria which made an attempt to collect all human knowledge at one place), founded in 1998 by Brewster Kahle, the inventor of Wide Area Information Server (WAIS, pronounced ways), a precursor to the Web (For free download of Alexa, visit its Web site http://www.alexa.com/). It is based on uniform resource locators (URLs) and not on keywords as is the case with search engines, and (c) A metacrawler, also called a meta search engine, is a search engine of search engines, that is, it searches other search engines and directories. Examples include All4one (four search engines) (www.all4one.com), Beaucoup (10 search engines) (www.beaucoup.com), MetaCrawler (www.metacrawler.com), Mamma (http://www.Mamma.com), Dogpile (http://www.Dogpile.com), Web Ferret (http://www.ferretsoft.com/), and Search (800 search engines) (http://www.search.com/).
3. (a) Inktomi (purchased by Yahoo! in December 2002). It has indexed only about half Web. (Source: Michael Spector, The New Yorker), (b) Only about two dozen, and (c) WebCrawler. This program became the first widely used search engine in 1993.
4. Google (http://www.google.com/). It was awarded the best brand name on the Internet. It went online on September 15, 1997. Google, Inc., founded in 1998, went public in August 2004. Google uses an advanced search technology – PageRank™ technology and hypertext – matching analysis developed by its founders. The importance of Web pages is calculated by solving an equation of 500 million variables and more than 2 billion terms. All this is done under half a second!
5. (a) Lawrence Page, 29 (son of a computer science professor) and Sergey Bin, 28 (a native of Moscow), Stanford University graduate students. Their company (more than 1,000 employees with more than 50 Ph.Ds) – Google – is based in Mountain View, California. Google search engine receives more than 200 million queries each day. More than half of the search requests come from outside the United States. It searches more than 8 billion web pages (8,058,044,651 web pages (http://www.google.com/, as on December 25, 2004, to be exact and up to date). It is named after google which is a number - 10 raised to the power of 100 or the numeral one followed by hundred zeros, and (b) A precursor to search engine Google. By January 1996 Larry Page and Sergey Brin had begun collaboration on a search engine BackRub. It was so named for its unique ability to analyze the “back links” pointing to a given website. (Source: http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html).
6. (a) It is a search engine which is being used only at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California (http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/k53/clever.html). It is an attempt to fine-tune the search on the Web by identifying ‘hub pages’. The ‘hub pages’ are identified by rating the links. The approach thus does not look only at keywords. The Clever project is a part of the Computer Science Principles and Methodologies Department at the IBM Almaden Research Center, and (b) Stuff I’ve Seen (SIS) is a “prototype tool that makes it easy for you to find information you've seen before, whether it came as email, attachments, files, web pages, appointments, tablet journal entries, etc. (http://research.microsoft.com/adapt/sis/index.htm). Stuff I've Seen is developed by the Adaptive Systems and Interaction Team at Microsoft Research.
7. Google (http://www.google.co.in/intl/en/press/pressrel/print_library.html). The company announced on December 14, 2004 that it has reached agreements with five of the most celebrated libraries in the world to digitise more than 15 million books and make them freely accessible on the Internet. Costing $10 per book, the project involves Oxford (Bodleian – up to 1.5 million out of 8 million books), Stanford (8 million books), Michigan University (7 million books), Harvard (40,000 out of 15 million books) and New York Public Library (fragile works). (Source: Reid, Tim and Amy Hunter, Washington (2004): World's leading libraries agree to put books online, Times on Line, December 15, http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1403621,00.html).
8. It is a search engine with super powers based on peer-to-peer (P2P) computing Gnutella. The traditional search engines search a central index of Web content while InfraSearch searches all the computers in the network giving latest information. InfraSearch is being designed by Gene Klan, a 23-year old programmer and his friends. InfraSearch was acquired by Sun Microsystems in February 2001 to become part of Sun's JXTA (Juxtapose) project. It has roots in University of California, Berkeley's Experimental Computing Facility.
9. Google got the gold medal (with an amazing 65.95 out of 72 points), Lycos edged out MSN (with 49.57 points as against MSN’s 49.08 points) to obtain the silver medal, and MSN (with 49.08 points) obtained the bronze medal. There were five finalists for the Search Site Olympics 2002: 1. Alta Vista (46.40), 2. Excite (disqualified), 3. Google (65.95), 4. Lycos (49.57), and 5. MSN Search (49.08) (Figures in parentheses indicate the scores obtained out of 72 points). The Search Site Olympics were organized by Cnet (http://www.cnet.com/software). The search engines did not participate in the Olympics as such. On the other hand, they were evaluated against set criteria by a panel of judges by virtue of their existence on the World Wide Web as search engines.
10. (a) Highway (http://www.highway61.com), (b) Bigfoot (http://www.bigfoot.com), (c) Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com), (d) Colossus (http://www.searchenginecolossus.com), and (e) Internet Sleuth (http://www.isleuth.com) are all meta search engines.
11. They are all search engines. (a) Hot Bot (http://www.hotbot.com), (b) Lycos (http://www.lycos.com), (c) Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.com), (d) Excite (http://www.excite.com), and (e) Northern Light (http://www.nlsearch.com) are all general search engines.
12. (a) An integrated search tool (http://www2.blinkx.com/overview.php), (b) An academic search engine and digital library hosted by Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)'s School of Information Sciences and Technology ((http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/citeseer.html), (c) An engineering electronic journal search engine, based at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, United Kingdom’s EEVL, "the Internet Guide to Engineering, Mathematics andComputing." (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/about.htm), (d) A real-time search engine for blogs (http://www.technorati.com/about.), and (e) Google’s academic search engine launched on November 18, 2004 (beta version) (http://scholar.google.com/scholar/about.html#about).
13. (a) 1. 123 India (http://www.123india.com), 2. Digital HT (http://www.digitalht.com), 3. India Times (http://www.indiatimes.com), 4. Khoj (http://khoj.com), and 5. Locate India (http://www.locateindia.com), (ii) Digital HT and India Times belong to the newspapers The Hindustan Times and The Times of India respectively, and (b) (i) Locate India (http://locateindia.com), and (ii) 123 India (http://123india.com) (Source: Computers@Home, January 2000, a New Delhi magazine which has since ceased publication).
14. (a) Kenjin (http://www.kenjin.com), (b) Web Check (http://www.webtop.com), (c) (http://www.firstdirect.co.uk), (d) The Brain (http://www.thebrain.com), and (e) Mohomine (http://www.mohomine.com) are all new search engines.
15. (a) 3.5 per cent or one in 28 pages (Source: Alexa Insider, June 1, 1999), and (b) 7 per cent (Source: SatMarket, December 19, 2000).
16. (a) 86, (b) Upwards of 400 million, (c) Upwards of 20 million, and (d) 48. (Source: Alasdair Reid, Campaign © Brand Republic / The Economic Times, New Delhi, April 23, 2003, Wednesday, Brand Equity, p-3).
17. (a) They are top five paid-for (pay per click) search engines (SEs). For details, visit the website http://www.thewebseye.com/pay-per-click.htm, and (b) It is daily index of popularity of a subject as revealed by the search queries made for it. Invented by Yahoo.com (Yahoo, Inc.), which has been selling it to companies since May 2000, a subject’s buzz score is the percentage of users searching for that subject on a given day multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read. Each point is equal to 0.001 per cent of users searching on Yahoo! on a given day. For example, a buzz score of 500 for “Pokeman” translates to 0.5 per cent of all users searching on Yahoo!
Buzz movers are the subjects with the greatest percentage increase in buzz score from one day to next. The subjects with the greatest buzz score (most searched subjects) on a given day are called buzz leaders. The index is published Tuesday to Saturday and has a time lag of two days (needed for data processing and result verification). The Web site also maintains an archive, which goes back to September 2000. For details, visit the Web site http://buzz.yahoo.com/.
18. Karthik Ramani, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Purdue Research and Education Center for Information Systems in Engineering, or PRECISE. He is a 1985 product of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras. The method has been detailed in a research paper written by Ramani, doctoral student Kuiyang Lou and Sunil Prabhakar, an assistant professor of computer science. In this method a 3-D model of a part is converted into a bunch of cubes called voxels, or volume elements, which are further converted into “skeletal graph” based on “feature vectors.” (Source: http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/information_technology/report-27629.html and Hindustan Times, New Delhi, April 15, 2004, p-21, quoting Press Trust of India, London).
19. A9 is a search engine, which was launched on April 14, 2004 (beta version) by A9.com, Inc., a separately branded and operated subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., opened in October 2003 at Palo Alto, CA. A9 is built on technology licensed from Google but, in addition to web search results, it gives book results from Amazon.com including Search Inside the Book,TM site info and diary. For searching, however, an Amazon.com account is required. For details, visit the website http://www.a9.com/-/company/whatsCool.jsp. See also Gaither, Chris, Los Angeles (LAT-WP) (2004): Amazon.com enters online search market through the back door, The Indian Express, New Delhi, April 15, Friday, p-14).
20. (a) October 14, 2004. Check Google Desktop Search Beta at http://desktop.google.com/about.html, (b) October 18, 2004. Check Copernic Desktop Search (CDS) at http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/, (c) December 11, 2004. Yahoo! has licensed the X1 search software for Windows from tech incubator Idealab (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/11/yahoo_licenses_x1_search/). The search tool is likely to be made available in early 2005, (d) December 13, 2004. Check it at MSN Toolbar Suite Beta (For Windows XP/2000 only) (http://toolbar.msn.com/desktop/results.aspx?FORM=PCHP&q=), and (e) December 16, 2004. Check Ask Jeeves Desktop Search (http://sp.ask.com/docs/desktop/).
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*Independent eGov and IT Consultant based in New Delhi, India. Dr Misra moderates the Cyber Quiz group at http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/ and also maintains a blog on Cyber Quiz at http://cyberquiz.blogspot.com/. Email: dcmisra[at]gmail.com.
_________________________________________________________________
Acknowledgement: The author is grateful to Ms Beth Blakely for editorial advice.
__________________________________________________________________
Cyber Quiz Series: Dr Misra’s three earlier quizzes in the series are also available on Tech Republic for download:
1. Cyber Quiz 1: The Internet (December 3, 2004) at
http://techrepublic.com.com/5138-6249-5464809.html
2. Cyber Quiz 2: The World Wide Web (December 10, 2004) at
http://techrepublic.com.com/i/tr/downloads/support/fun_games/CyberQuiz2.WWW.doc
3. Cyber Quiz 3: Check your E-mail (December 17, 2004) at:
http://techrepublic.com.com/i/tr/downloads/support/fun_games/Cyberquiz3_Email.doc __________________________________________________________________
Disclaimer: While reasonable care has been taken to compile the quiz, neither the author nor the publisher is responsible for the accuracy, inclusion, exclusion or the interpretation of the contents. Readers are advised to consult authoritative sources before acting on the information contained here. The purpose of the quiz is educational and popularisation of information and communication technologies (ICT) .No responsibility for the content is assumed.
Use of Content: The use of the content here for educational and non-commercial purposes is encouraged provided due credit is given to theauthor __________________________________________________________________
©Dinesh Chandra Misra 2004 (Beta Version – December 31, 2004)
Dr D.C.Misra
December 31, 2004
.
On the last day of the year, here is the fifth quiz in our continuing endeavour to create world class literature on information and communication technologies (ICTs) in our mainstream CYBER QUIZ series. Enjoy it.
Check this Forum on New Year's Day - January 1, 2005, and find a specially designed quiz for the NEW YEAR - a tribute to the year which will become history in some 15 hours from now!
Meanwhile, here is wishing you all
A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR.
And happy quizzing!
Dr D.C.Misra
December 31, 2004.
___________________________________________________________________
CYBER QUIZ –5: Have Data? Will Search by Dr D.C.Misra
___________________________________________________________________________
An engine is a clever device, a result of ingenuity. So is the case with a search engine, a software program designed to search the vast store-house of information of the World Wide Web. Search engines, far more than portals, are true traffic hubs of the Web. “Have data? Will search” appears to have been a slogan of the year 2004. There appears to be search engine now for every thing and any where. Let us check.
______________________________________________________________________
1. What is a search engine?
2. How does a search engine differ from (a) directory, (b) surf engine, and (c) metacrawler?
3. (a) Which is the largest search engine and how much of the World Wide Web has been indexed by it, and (b) How many major search engines are there for searching the World Wide Web, and (c) Which was the first widely used search engine for searching the World Wide Web?
4. Search engine expert Chris Sherman calls it a “generonym,” a brand name used as a generic name for searching. Which search engine has, thus, become the default search engine of the Web surfers?
5. (a) Who founded the search engine Google, how many queries does it receive per day and after what is it named, and (b) What has BackRub got to do with search engine Google?
6. What are (a) IBM’s Clever Project, and (b) Microsoft’s Stuff I’ve Seen (SIS) Project?
7. Call it the Internet Gutenberg Revolution of the early 21st century. This revolutionary project, to be completed in six years, proposes to make freely accessible the entire collection of world’s books online. Who has launched the project?
8. If it was the most hyped technology craze of year 2000, what is InfraSearch, also known as gonesilent.com (http://.gonesilent.com)?
9. Who won the gold, the silver, and the bronze medals at the Search Site Olympics 2002?
10. What is common between the following: (a) Highway 61, (b) Bigfoot, (c) Dogpile, (d) Colossus, and (e) Internet Sleuth?
11. What is common between the following: (a) Hot Bot, (b) Lycos, (c) Alta Vista, (d) Excite, and (e) Northern Light?
12. A number of search engines now exist for specialized searches. What do the following engines then search: (a) Blinkx, (b) CiteSeer.IST, (c) EESE (d) Technorati, and (e) Google Scholar?
13. Which are (a) five best Indian search engines, and (b) (i) most accurate, and (ii) most usable Indian search engines?
14. What is common between (a) Kenjin, (b) Web Check, (c) First Direct, (d) The Brain, and (e) Mohomine?
15. (a) What is the percentage of search result pages out of the all page views, and (b) How much traffic to websites is generated by the search engines?
16. (a) What is the percentage of all Internet sessions that start with a visit to a search engine, (b) How many searches are made worldwide each day, (c) How many searches are made each day from UK computers, and (d) What is the percentage of searches that goes no further than the first page of results?
17. (a) What is common between Overture, Espotting, FindWhat, IQSeek.com and SPRINKS, and (b) What is buzz index, who invented it, and what are buzz movers and buzz leaders?
18. This is a special kind of google, which searches not text, but three-dimensional (3-D) shapes, and that too in industrial databases, and its prototype has been developed by an Indian. Name him.
19. The search market has become highly competitive as it holds the key to Internet. Giants like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Amazon are in the fray. If so, what is A9, when was it launched and who launched it?
20. With desktop search suddenly becoming hot in the year 2004, when did the following release their desktop search tools: (a) Google, (b) Copernic, (c) Yahoo!, (d) Microsoft, and (e) Ask Jeeves?
______________________________________________________________________
ANSWERS TO CYBERQUIZ–5: Have Data? Will Search by Dr D.C.Misra
______________________________________________________________________
1. A search engine is a program that creates its listings automatically by crawling the World Wide Web. It has three major elements. First, the spider which reads the pages on the Web. Second, the index which is a collection of pages, found by the spider. Third, a software which sifts through millions of pages recorded in the index to match a search and rank them in order of relevance. Also sometimes called a spider, a crawler, a worm, or a knwbot (knowledge robot), it searches the World Wide Web by looking for titles of documents, uniform resource locators (URLs), headers, or text.
Search engines are of two types – 1. General, and 2. Specialized. The general search engines cover a wide variety of subjects (for example, http://www.google.com/) while specialized search engines cover special subjects or topics, for example, news search engines (say, http://news.altavista.com/), speciality, for example, computer search engines (say, http://download.cnet.com/), medical search engines (say, http://www.hon.ch.MedHunt/), etc.
2. (a) A directory, unlike a search engine, is based on listings prepared by human beings. A short description of a Web site is submitted to the directory, on the basis of which listings are prepared. A search then finds matches only in the descriptions submitted and not the entire website. Examples of directories include Yahoo! and Lycos which started as small university projects (Yahoo! at Stanford University and Lycos at Carnegie Mellon University), (b) A surf engine provides information, constantly updated, about the sites visited, their ownership, popularity, ratings and related sites. The term was invented by Jaquith. Its example is Alexa (short for Library of Alexandria which made an attempt to collect all human knowledge at one place), founded in 1998 by Brewster Kahle, the inventor of Wide Area Information Server (WAIS, pronounced ways), a precursor to the Web (For free download of Alexa, visit its Web site http://www.alexa.com/). It is based on uniform resource locators (URLs) and not on keywords as is the case with search engines, and (c) A metacrawler, also called a meta search engine, is a search engine of search engines, that is, it searches other search engines and directories. Examples include All4one (four search engines) (www.all4one.com), Beaucoup (10 search engines) (www.beaucoup.com), MetaCrawler (www.metacrawler.com), Mamma (http://www.Mamma.com), Dogpile (http://www.Dogpile.com), Web Ferret (http://www.ferretsoft.com/), and Search (800 search engines) (http://www.search.com/).
3. (a) Inktomi (purchased by Yahoo! in December 2002). It has indexed only about half Web. (Source: Michael Spector, The New Yorker), (b) Only about two dozen, and (c) WebCrawler. This program became the first widely used search engine in 1993.
4. Google (http://www.google.com/). It was awarded the best brand name on the Internet. It went online on September 15, 1997. Google, Inc., founded in 1998, went public in August 2004. Google uses an advanced search technology – PageRank™ technology and hypertext – matching analysis developed by its founders. The importance of Web pages is calculated by solving an equation of 500 million variables and more than 2 billion terms. All this is done under half a second!
5. (a) Lawrence Page, 29 (son of a computer science professor) and Sergey Bin, 28 (a native of Moscow), Stanford University graduate students. Their company (more than 1,000 employees with more than 50 Ph.Ds) – Google – is based in Mountain View, California. Google search engine receives more than 200 million queries each day. More than half of the search requests come from outside the United States. It searches more than 8 billion web pages (8,058,044,651 web pages (http://www.google.com/, as on December 25, 2004, to be exact and up to date). It is named after google which is a number - 10 raised to the power of 100 or the numeral one followed by hundred zeros, and (b) A precursor to search engine Google. By January 1996 Larry Page and Sergey Brin had begun collaboration on a search engine BackRub. It was so named for its unique ability to analyze the “back links” pointing to a given website. (Source: http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html).
6. (a) It is a search engine which is being used only at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California (http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/k53/clever.html). It is an attempt to fine-tune the search on the Web by identifying ‘hub pages’. The ‘hub pages’ are identified by rating the links. The approach thus does not look only at keywords. The Clever project is a part of the Computer Science Principles and Methodologies Department at the IBM Almaden Research Center, and (b) Stuff I’ve Seen (SIS) is a “prototype tool that makes it easy for you to find information you've seen before, whether it came as email, attachments, files, web pages, appointments, tablet journal entries, etc. (http://research.microsoft.com/adapt/sis/index.htm). Stuff I've Seen is developed by the Adaptive Systems and Interaction Team at Microsoft Research.
7. Google (http://www.google.co.in/intl/en/press/pressrel/print_library.html). The company announced on December 14, 2004 that it has reached agreements with five of the most celebrated libraries in the world to digitise more than 15 million books and make them freely accessible on the Internet. Costing $10 per book, the project involves Oxford (Bodleian – up to 1.5 million out of 8 million books), Stanford (8 million books), Michigan University (7 million books), Harvard (40,000 out of 15 million books) and New York Public Library (fragile works). (Source: Reid, Tim and Amy Hunter, Washington (2004): World's leading libraries agree to put books online, Times on Line, December 15, http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1403621,00.html).
8. It is a search engine with super powers based on peer-to-peer (P2P) computing Gnutella. The traditional search engines search a central index of Web content while InfraSearch searches all the computers in the network giving latest information. InfraSearch is being designed by Gene Klan, a 23-year old programmer and his friends. InfraSearch was acquired by Sun Microsystems in February 2001 to become part of Sun's JXTA (Juxtapose) project. It has roots in University of California, Berkeley's Experimental Computing Facility.
9. Google got the gold medal (with an amazing 65.95 out of 72 points), Lycos edged out MSN (with 49.57 points as against MSN’s 49.08 points) to obtain the silver medal, and MSN (with 49.08 points) obtained the bronze medal. There were five finalists for the Search Site Olympics 2002: 1. Alta Vista (46.40), 2. Excite (disqualified), 3. Google (65.95), 4. Lycos (49.57), and 5. MSN Search (49.08) (Figures in parentheses indicate the scores obtained out of 72 points). The Search Site Olympics were organized by Cnet (http://www.cnet.com/software). The search engines did not participate in the Olympics as such. On the other hand, they were evaluated against set criteria by a panel of judges by virtue of their existence on the World Wide Web as search engines.
10. (a) Highway (http://www.highway61.com), (b) Bigfoot (http://www.bigfoot.com), (c) Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com), (d) Colossus (http://www.searchenginecolossus.com), and (e) Internet Sleuth (http://www.isleuth.com) are all meta search engines.
11. They are all search engines. (a) Hot Bot (http://www.hotbot.com), (b) Lycos (http://www.lycos.com), (c) Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.com), (d) Excite (http://www.excite.com), and (e) Northern Light (http://www.nlsearch.com) are all general search engines.
12. (a) An integrated search tool (http://www2.blinkx.com/overview.php), (b) An academic search engine and digital library hosted by Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)'s School of Information Sciences and Technology ((http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/citeseer.html), (c) An engineering electronic journal search engine, based at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, United Kingdom’s EEVL, "the Internet Guide to Engineering, Mathematics andComputing." (http://www.eevl.ac.uk/about.htm), (d) A real-time search engine for blogs (http://www.technorati.com/about.), and (e) Google’s academic search engine launched on November 18, 2004 (beta version) (http://scholar.google.com/scholar/about.html#about).
13. (a) 1. 123 India (http://www.123india.com), 2. Digital HT (http://www.digitalht.com), 3. India Times (http://www.indiatimes.com), 4. Khoj (http://khoj.com), and 5. Locate India (http://www.locateindia.com), (ii) Digital HT and India Times belong to the newspapers The Hindustan Times and The Times of India respectively, and (b) (i) Locate India (http://locateindia.com), and (ii) 123 India (http://123india.com) (Source: Computers@Home, January 2000, a New Delhi magazine which has since ceased publication).
14. (a) Kenjin (http://www.kenjin.com), (b) Web Check (http://www.webtop.com), (c) (http://www.firstdirect.co.uk), (d) The Brain (http://www.thebrain.com), and (e) Mohomine (http://www.mohomine.com) are all new search engines.
15. (a) 3.5 per cent or one in 28 pages (Source: Alexa Insider, June 1, 1999), and (b) 7 per cent (Source: SatMarket, December 19, 2000).
16. (a) 86, (b) Upwards of 400 million, (c) Upwards of 20 million, and (d) 48. (Source: Alasdair Reid, Campaign © Brand Republic / The Economic Times, New Delhi, April 23, 2003, Wednesday, Brand Equity, p-3).
17. (a) They are top five paid-for (pay per click) search engines (SEs). For details, visit the website http://www.thewebseye.com/pay-per-click.htm, and (b) It is daily index of popularity of a subject as revealed by the search queries made for it. Invented by Yahoo.com (Yahoo, Inc.), which has been selling it to companies since May 2000, a subject’s buzz score is the percentage of users searching for that subject on a given day multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read. Each point is equal to 0.001 per cent of users searching on Yahoo! on a given day. For example, a buzz score of 500 for “Pokeman” translates to 0.5 per cent of all users searching on Yahoo!
Buzz movers are the subjects with the greatest percentage increase in buzz score from one day to next. The subjects with the greatest buzz score (most searched subjects) on a given day are called buzz leaders. The index is published Tuesday to Saturday and has a time lag of two days (needed for data processing and result verification). The Web site also maintains an archive, which goes back to September 2000. For details, visit the Web site http://buzz.yahoo.com/.
18. Karthik Ramani, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Purdue Research and Education Center for Information Systems in Engineering, or PRECISE. He is a 1985 product of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras. The method has been detailed in a research paper written by Ramani, doctoral student Kuiyang Lou and Sunil Prabhakar, an assistant professor of computer science. In this method a 3-D model of a part is converted into a bunch of cubes called voxels, or volume elements, which are further converted into “skeletal graph” based on “feature vectors.” (Source: http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/information_technology/report-27629.html and Hindustan Times, New Delhi, April 15, 2004, p-21, quoting Press Trust of India, London).
19. A9 is a search engine, which was launched on April 14, 2004 (beta version) by A9.com, Inc., a separately branded and operated subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., opened in October 2003 at Palo Alto, CA. A9 is built on technology licensed from Google but, in addition to web search results, it gives book results from Amazon.com including Search Inside the Book,TM site info and diary. For searching, however, an Amazon.com account is required. For details, visit the website http://www.a9.com/-/company/whatsCool.jsp. See also Gaither, Chris, Los Angeles (LAT-WP) (2004): Amazon.com enters online search market through the back door, The Indian Express, New Delhi, April 15, Friday, p-14).
20. (a) October 14, 2004. Check Google Desktop Search Beta at http://desktop.google.com/about.html, (b) October 18, 2004. Check Copernic Desktop Search (CDS) at http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/, (c) December 11, 2004. Yahoo! has licensed the X1 search software for Windows from tech incubator Idealab (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/11/yahoo_licenses_x1_search/). The search tool is likely to be made available in early 2005, (d) December 13, 2004. Check it at MSN Toolbar Suite Beta (For Windows XP/2000 only) (http://toolbar.msn.com/desktop/results.aspx?FORM=PCHP&q=), and (e) December 16, 2004. Check Ask Jeeves Desktop Search (http://sp.ask.com/docs/desktop/).
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*Independent eGov and IT Consultant based in New Delhi, India. Dr Misra moderates the Cyber Quiz group at http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/ and also maintains a blog on Cyber Quiz at http://cyberquiz.blogspot.com/. Email: dcmisra[at]gmail.com.
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Acknowledgement: The author is grateful to Ms Beth Blakely for editorial advice.
__________________________________________________________________
Cyber Quiz Series: Dr Misra’s three earlier quizzes in the series are also available on Tech Republic for download:
1. Cyber Quiz 1: The Internet (December 3, 2004) at
http://techrepublic.com.com/5138-6249-5464809.html
2. Cyber Quiz 2: The World Wide Web (December 10, 2004) at
http://techrepublic.com.com/i/tr/downloads/support/fun_games/CyberQuiz2.WWW.doc
3. Cyber Quiz 3: Check your E-mail (December 17, 2004) at:
http://techrepublic.com.com/i/tr/downloads/support/fun_games/Cyberquiz3_Email.doc __________________________________________________________________
Disclaimer: While reasonable care has been taken to compile the quiz, neither the author nor the publisher is responsible for the accuracy, inclusion, exclusion or the interpretation of the contents. Readers are advised to consult authoritative sources before acting on the information contained here. The purpose of the quiz is educational and popularisation of information and communication technologies (ICT) .No responsibility for the content is assumed.
Use of Content: The use of the content here for educational and non-commercial purposes is encouraged provided due credit is given to theauthor __________________________________________________________________
©Dinesh Chandra Misra 2004 (Beta Version – December 31, 2004)
Dr D.C.Misra
December 31, 2004
.
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Cyber Quiz: Website Watch: Management-9: Ezine- 5: Capital Ideas: Chicago GSB
Cyber Quiz: Website Watch: Management-9: Ezine- 5: Capital Ideas: Chicago GSB
Check
“Capital Ideas” of
The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (Chicago GSB) at
http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/news/capideas/
Dr D.C.Misra
December 24, 2004.
Check
“Capital Ideas” of
The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (Chicago GSB) at
http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/news/capideas/
Dr D.C.Misra
December 24, 2004.
Cyber Quiz: Website Watch: Management-8: Ezine- 4: stanfordknowledgebase
Cyber Quiz: Website Watch: Management-8: Ezine- 4: stanfordknowledgebase
Check
“stanfodknowledgebase” of
Stanford Graduate School of Business,
“An information source for thoughtful teachers,” at
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/knowledgebase.html
Dr D.C.Misra
December 24, 2004.
Check
“stanfodknowledgebase” of
Stanford Graduate School of Business,
“An information source for thoughtful teachers,” at
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/knowledgebase.html
Dr D.C.Misra
December 24, 2004.
Cyber Quiz: Website Watch: Management-7: Ezine- 3: HBS Working Knowledge
Cyber Quiz: Website Watch: Management-7: Ezine- 3: HBS Working Knowledge
Check
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge at
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/.
Dr D.C.Misra
December 24, 2004.
Check
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge at
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/.
Dr D.C.Misra
December 24, 2004.
Cyber Quiz: Website Watch: Management-6: Ezine-2: Knowledge@Wharton
Cyber Quiz: Website Watch: Management-6: Ezine-2: Knowledge@Wharton
Check Knowledge@Wharton, the ezine of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania at
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/
Dr D.C.Misra
December 24, 2004.
Check Knowledge@Wharton, the ezine of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania at
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/
Dr D.C.Misra
December 24, 2004.
Cyber Quiz: Website Watch: Management-5: Ezine-1: Sloan Management Review
Cyber Quiz: Website Watch: Management-5: Ezine-1: Sloan Management Review
Check Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT)
Sloan Management Review at
http://www.sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/.
Dr D.C.Misra
December 24, 2004
Check Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT)
Sloan Management Review at
http://www.sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/.
Dr D.C.Misra
December 24, 2004
CYBER QUIZ - 4: Browsing the Web
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Dear All,
My Best Wishes to You for A Very Merry Christmas.
And what follows is my Christmas present!
Read it and enjoy it this festive season. Feedback is always welcome.
Dr D.C.Misra
December 23, 2004.
P.S. There will no doubt a New Year Cyber Quiz. But can you guess the topic?_____________________________________________________________________
CYBER QUIZ–4: Browsing the Web by Dr D.C.Misra
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A browser is what enables us to surf the World Wide Web–enabling us to jump from one link to another and getting packaged pages withclick of a mouse. The technology track has been very short –Mosaic – Mozilla – Netscape Navigator / Internet Explorer, a journey from revolutionary beginnings in 1993 to a dead end in 1995 till late in 2004 when Firefox suddenly exploded on the scene. Let us check.
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1. (a) What is a browser, and (b) What is the difference between information retrieval and browsing?
2. What is the difference between surfing and browsing?
3. What is a layout engine and how does a browser differ from it?
4. Which was the first browser and what was explosive about it?
5. What is the original name of Netscape's Web browser which is now called Netscape Navigator?
6. Who released Netscape 1.1 and when?
7. Which were the three most popular Web browsers in (a) 2000, and (b) 2004?
8. Which were the latest versions of the Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer in 2001?
9.What is Netscape Gecko?
10.Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator are well known Webbrowsers. Name any other five Web browsers?
11.What is the name of the multi-media Web browser designed in 1993 by Marc Andreesen, a twenty-three year old programmer, and his colleagues at the University of Illinois which enabled us to browsethe Web?
12.When was Opera 1.1 launched?
13.What do the following browser error messages indicate: (a) 400,(b) 401, (c) 403, (d) 404, (e) 500, (f) 502, and (g) 503?
14.What are the following: (a) iCab, (b) Sensus, (c) Cello, (d)WinZip, and (e) Grail?
15.What do the following have in common:(a)ChiBrow, (b)Bounce,and(c)Prowler?
16.And what do the following have in common: (a) Mozilla, (b)Konqueror, (c) Amaya, (d) Enigma, and (e) Arena?
17.What is a microbrowser and how many of them are currentlyavailable?
18.What are the following: (a) Yospace, (b) WAPalizer, (c) WinWAP,(d) WAPMan, (e) WAPsody, and (f) WAPsilon?
19.Named after a famous Indian mythological bird, this company is thefirst Indian company to come out with a palm-top browser and thirdcompany in the world to do so. What is the name of the company?
20.When was Mozilla Firefox 1.0, the Web browser developed byMountainView, CA-based not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation, released?_________________________________________________________________
ANSWERS TO CYBER QUIZ – 4: Browsing the Web by Dr D.C.Misra
_________________________________________________________________
1.(a) It is a software program, which is used to access and view thepages on the World Wide Web called Web pages. Often called anInternet browser, its correct name, however, is World Wide Webbrowser or just Web browser, and
(b) In information retrieval,information is obtained as it is. For example, under the filetransfer protocol (ftp), on retrieval, a file is obtained as it is,without any contents, etc. On the other hand, in browsing not onlythe contents of the information are obtained but one can retrieve the information indicated in the contents.
2. None. These two terms are used interchangeably.
3. A layout engine takes content (such as HTML, XML, image files,applets, etc.) and formatting information (such as cascading stylesheets, hard – code HTML tags, etc.) and displays the formattedcontent on the screen. It thus defines the placement policy for adocument and places content on a page. A browser, on the other hand, packages various components, includingthe results of the layout engine, in a coherent, user–friendlyWeb applications (including menus, tool bars, etc.)
4. Mosaic, designed by Marc Andreeson and Eric Bina , and released bythe U.S. National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois in 1993. It was the first Web browser andit triggered the World Wide Web (WWW) explosion as it enabled displayof images over the Web. Mosaic was created by government funding fordeveloping a standard Web browser. The NCSA gave a license to Spyglass, Inc. for its commercialization. However, the attempt did not succeed as it was eclipsed by Netscape Navigator.
5.Mozilla, the Mosaic–killer. It was developed in six months by Mosaic Communications Corporation started by Jim Clark of SiliconGraphics in 1994 and subsequently called Netscape Communications. Mozilla was an in–house name, developed by creators of Mosaic who left NCSA and it was designed to be incompatible with Mosaic.
6.Marc Andreesen in 1994. He distributed the browser free of chargeon the Internet which helped its explosive growth.
7.(a) 1. Microsoft (76 percent), 2. Netscape (20 percent) and 3. America On Line (AOL) (1 percent) (Figures in parentheses indicatethe percentage of web surfers) (Data as on June 8, 2000). (Source:http://websnapshot.mycomputer.com), and
(b) 1. Internet Explorer (71.7 percent) (IE 6 - 67.0 percent; IE 5–4.7 percent), 2. Mozilla (21.2 percent) and 3. Opera (2.1 percent–Opera 7) (Netscape, at the 4th place has a share of only 1.6 percent (Netscape 3 – 0.2 percent; Netscape 4 - 0.2 percent; andNetscape 7 –1.2 percent) (Data as for December 2004) (Source:http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp).
Internet Explorer was launched by Bill Gate's Microsoft Corporation and Netscape Navigator by Netscape Communications Corporation, now a subsidiary of America Online (AOL). Though Netscape Navigator was launched first and believed to be technically superior by many, an aggressive marketing strategy by Microsoft, particularly its bundling with the Windows operating system, has made the Internet Explorer as the dominant Internet browser to-day.
8. Netscape Navigator 6.1 (Download size: 26 MB for Windows, 36 MB forMacOS) and Internet Explorer 6 (Download size: Minimalinstallation – 45 MB, typical installation – 70 MB, and fullinstallation – 111 MB) (October 2001).
9. It is small, fast, standards – compliant layout engine on whichNetscape 6.1 (which includes Netscape Navigator, the Web browser) is based.
10. 1. Opera 3.61 (1.3 MB), 2. Smart Browse (3.9 MB), 3. Net Quest(3.2 MB), 4. Net Captor 5.04 (770 k), and 5. Neo Planet 5.0 (3.5 MB).(Figures in parentheses indicate download size).
11.Mosaic. This was subsequently commercialized as Netscape Navigator.
12.1996. It was offered as a shareware for Windows platform. It has now been made free. Opera Software ASA is Oslo, Norway – based company with satellite offices in US, UK, Sweden, and theNetherlands. For details visit http://www.myopera.com.
13.(a) Bad request (for example, URL may not exist),
(b)Unauthorised,
(c) Forbidden (for example, it is password protected or restricted),
(d) Not found (for example, the page may no longer exist),
(e) Internal error (for example, something wrong with the server),
(f) Bad gateway, and
(g) Service unavailable.
14.(a) A Web browser for the Macintosh (http://www.icab.de) ,
(b) AnInternet browser for the visually impaired (http://www.sensus.de),
(c) A multipurpose Internet browser developed by Thomas R. Bruce ofthe Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School(http://www.law.cornell.edu/cello/cellotop.htm),
(d) A Web browsersupport add–on which works with WinZip and automats much of thework associated with downloading compressed files from the Internet(http://www.winzip.com/browser.htm), and
(e) An extensible Internetbrowser written in Python, a free object–oriented language(grail.sourceforge.net/).
15.They are all Web browsers for children.
16.They are all open source Web browsers.
17. Like the Web browser, it is a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) browser. It is thus a software designed to run on a handheld deviceand to interpret Wireless Markup Language (WML). As many as 50 microbrowsers are currently available.
18.They all are Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) browsers.
19. Jataayu Software Ltd., a 100 per cent subsidiary of Bangalore–based Integra Micro Systems (P) Ltd. (Source: Sanjay K. Pillai,Business Standard, July 11, 2000).
20. November 9, 2004. It is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems (OSs) - as a free download from mozilla.org(http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/).
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Cyber Quiz Series: My three earlier quizzes in the series are also available on this Cyber Quiz blog .
1. Cyber Quiz 1: The Internet,
2. Cyber Quiz 2: The World Wide Web
3. Cyber Quiz 3: Check your E-mail
____________________________________________________________________
Disclaimer: While reasonable care has been taken to compile the quiz, the author is not responsible for the accuracy, inclusion, exclusion or the interpretation of the contents. Readers are advised to consult authoritative sources before acting on the information contained here. The purpose of the quiz is educational and popularisation of information and communication technologies (ICT). No responsibilityfor the content is, therefore, assumed.
__________________________________________________________________
© Dinesh Chandra Misra 2004 (Beta Version – December 23, 2004)
__________________________________________________________________
Dr D.C.Misra
December 23, 2004.
(Source:http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/264)
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