Chris Nolan

Mr. Christopher Nolan came and talked to us about surfing the web. He gave us valuble information such as the uses of search engines, how to manipulate your search criteria, and why you get the results that you do. While there are many different search engines, Google is by far the most popular with a search engine market share of 66%. The next closest is Yahoo with only 16%. Search engines, such as Google, use algorithms to determine what websites to pull up. They also keep track of the number of hits a website obtains and give more weight to websites that are deemed as credible sources. Search Engine Optimization is a huge business now. Advertizers are all over the internet. Just how big is it? Well, Google is considering changing its search algorithms and that could cost businesses one BILLION dollars.

Power Point

Power Point can be a very useful application to present a large amount of information in a condensed form. While it is a great tool, many people cannot properly convey the information in a way that is not boring to the audience. Ever have to sit through a powerpoint that's not interactive, the person is reading every slide (like we can't do it ourselves...), and every slide is white with black text? Yeah, I've sat through a few of those. Another thing that is annoying are the text, flashing photos, and sounds. They can completeley trash a good presentation and distract the audience. Power Points need variety, but it should be done in moderation. Also, why do people give handouts of the presentation before giving it? Why would we even pay attention to it when we can flip through the handout and finish it 30 minutes quicker? Just a thought...