One of my desires is to develop this site into a useful resource for others and an easily accessible resource for myself. A key aspect of achieving this desire is the ‘LINKS’ page. On this page I list links to some of my favourite websites, web engines, wikis, and online learning resources.

Today, I would like to highlight the ‘Web Engines’ section. I recently decided to create this section after discovering QuadLook and Wolfram Alpha: two unique web engines offering beneficial information services to users.

QuadLook is a useful search engine for searching and viewing results from multiple sources on a single page. Information from different sources is displayed in windows that can be maximized with a ‘+’ symbol in the top right corner. QuadLook aggregates results from credible sources like Google, Bing, Twitter, YouTube, WordPress, Wikipedia, and news publishers to provide a holistic representation of relevant information in a single location. The major search categories QuadLook offers include web sites, YouTube, blogs, Wikipedia, Twitter, and news.

Wolfram Alpha is an engine for computing answers and providing knowledge. Wolfram Alpha is a computational knowledge engine, not a search engine. Search engines index web pages, seek out textual (and sometimes visual) clues and matches, and provide users with a list of links and other information. This is in contrast to Wolfram Alpha that uses information curated by human experts to compute a specific answer and analysis for every query. Wolfram Alpha has users input queries into a minimalist text box. Once submitted Wolfram Alpha may prompt users to confirm assumptions or input more information for clarification. Wolfram Alpha provides users with additional information they may find useful, including related queries, definitions, notes, and source information. Users are provided with a personalized experience that features favorite queries for quick access, query history, and the ability to set preferences such as result width and font size. The major categories of knowledge you can query Wolfram Alpha about include:

• Mathematics
  
• Words & Linguistics
  
• Units & Measures
  
• Statistics & Data Analysis
  
• People & History
  
• Dates & Times
  
• Chemistry
  
• Culture & Media
  
• Money & Finance
  
• Physics
  
• Art & Design
  
• Socioeconomic Data
  
• Astronomy
  
• Music
  
• Health & Medicine
  
• Engineering
  
• Places & Geography
  
• Food & Nutrition
  
• Education
  
• Materials
  
• Earth Sciences
  
• Shopping
  
• Organizations
  
• Life Sciences
  
• Weather & Meteorology
  
• Technology World
  
• Sports & Games
  
• Computational Sciences
  
• Transportation
  
• Web & Computer Systems
  
• Surprises
  

Although not available for free, Wolfram Alpha offers a pro version that provides users with many additional features, including step-by-step solutions to problems, the ability to input over 60 different types of files for automatic analysis and computation, an extended keyboard for more user friendly input of mathematical symbols and special characters, and the ability to upload, analyze, and process images.

In addition to QuadLook and Wolfram Alpha, I have included links to Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Google.

Bing is a web search engine by Microsoft. The major search categories Bing offers include web, images, videos, maps, news, and translator. Bing provides users with search suggestions when typing and after a search if it thinks users misspelled any words. Users can obtain instant answers to specific types of questions, including sports, finance, unit conversions, definitions, mathematical calculations, and more. Advance computations comprise part of the instant answers Bing offers. Wolfram Alpha powers these computations. Bing changes the background image for its search engine daily.

DuckDuckGo is a web search engine that emphasizes protecting user privacy and provides users with results not personalized based on search history or location. All users with the same search inputs receive the same search results. The major search categories DuckDuckGo offers include web, meanings, images, videos, about, news, and definition. DuckDuckGo compiles results from a multitude of sources, including Yahoo, Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha, and Bing.

Google is the world’s most popular search engine. The major search categories Google offers include web, images, news, maps, videos, books, flights, and apps. Google provides users with search suggestions when typing and after a search if it thinks users have misspelled any terms. Google allows users to input search syntax and trigger words for increased search functionality. For example, adding a ‘-’ symbol before a term is equivalent to the ‘NOT’ Boolean operator. Another example is using Google search for currency conversion by typing a currency value (e.g. 100) followed by a currency code (e.g. “CAD” for Canadian dollars) and the word “in” followed by a different currency code to compute the equivalent monetary value. Yet another example is “filetype:” followed by a type of file (e.g. “pdf”) to only return search results of a specific type of file.

One of my favorite things about all the web engines mentioned is that every one features a minimalist user interface focused around a clean and tidy text box. A simple uncluttered interface is one of my chief desires when deciding on web engines to use.

If you have not heard of any of these web engines before I highly recommend you check them out. You might just discover a new tool that quickly becomes indispensable in your everyday life.

Now that you’ve heard what I’ve got to say I want to know what you’ve got to say. What do you think of the search engines mentioned? Do you know of any other useful search engines you’d like to highlight? Do you have any interesting information to share about search engines?

In order to streamline the scanning process I set out to create an organization plan. This plan will encompass a hierarchical filing system and data storage strategy.


Hierarchical Filing System

First, I brainstormed categories by which to organize materials hierarchically. Some of these categories were:

• Course
  
• Subject (e.g. Philosophy, Icelandic Studies, etc.)
  
• Semester/Term
  
• Education Level (e.g. High School, Bachelor, and Masters)
  
• Education Facility (e.g. Steinbach Regional Secondary School, University of Manitoba, and University of Alberta)
  
• Notes
  
• Note Booklet
  
• Tests
  
• Essays
  
• Handouts
  
• Time
  

Next, I browsed through all the materials I wanted to scan. After browsing, I decided to organize materials by course (or workshop) as every material I wanted to scan was associated with a course and many materials were already organized in this manner.

I considered organizing materials by education level followed by semester/term. This is the file system I employed while attending university. In the end I decided against this system as organizing materials by semester/term made sense when the folders most valuable (i.e. likely to be needed or used) were those in the current or most recent semester, but this value diminished once courses were finished.

While considering other filing hierarchies I determined the most important thing is being able to locate materials from a specific course. Once determined, I considered the following hierarchy: Education level, subject area, course, type of material (e.g. notes, note booklet, tests, essays, handouts, etc.), then time, date, or number for sequential ordering to mirror when materials were actually created or acquired. I decided against this system for three main reasons.

1. Subject area would not be very useful as I completed one or few courses in many areas, so this would lead to many situations where a specific subject area folder would only lead to a single course folder. 
   
2. Type of material is not particularly relevant for all courses, but may be useful for some. This led to my decision to employ type of material on a case-by-case basis. 
   
3. When materials were actually created or acquired is not particularly useful information to locate materials, all materials do not possess a date, and this would add a lot of work. 
   

After learning from the faults of the previous filing system I played around with potential hierarchies a bit more. In the end the hierarchy filing system I decided upon involved organizing materials by education facility or workshop followed by course (if applicable) in the format seen in the following example: PHIL 1200 – Introduction to Philosophy (i.e. Course Code – Course Name). Writing out the course in this manner would make it easy to determine the subject area with a simple glance. I decided on education facility instead of education level, because I completed a university level course in high school and it made more intuitive sense to organize by facility. While organizing the materials for scanning I decided against setting up rigid categories beneath the course level, because every course did not consist of the same types of materials and I would have to consult every page to be scanned in order to create relevant categories. As a result I decided to leave the creation of additional hierarchies for the scanning process where I would be in an optimal position to create relevant categories.


Data Storage Strategy

In order to ensure the accessibility of materials and ensure materials are not erased or lost I plan on saving copies of every file on two hard drives. I recently acquired a new terabyte hard drive and I also own a 320 GB hard drive. As two hard drives are unlikely to fail at the same time this should ensure copies are not lost and a new copy can be created relatively easily should one drive fail. Throughout the scanning process I plan on regularly backing up scans. In addition, I may save an additional copy of materials to a USB flash drive for ease of use and added peace of mind.