Module 1, Part 2

1. a. Blackboard Learn, https://mymasonportal.gmu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp
   b. This is the default homepage. If I visit a page, I can drag it over to the homepage icon over to the side of the web address bar.
2. Yes, you can change the appearance. All of these options can be found under "view," which allows the user to zoom or to change character settings.
3. The default search engine is Google. It is possible to search by typing into the address bar.
4. a. I got 314,000,000 results in Google for "learning to make web pages." I would guess that 25% are about this search.
   b. I got 35,600 results.
   http://pwr.gmu.edu/courses/375/mod1-2.htm
   http://www.com.uri.edu/com271/course/notes/1_intro_learning.htm
5. Google had more results. If I were looking for something that was question/answer, then I might use Yahoo's Altavista. Bing is not connected to Google+ for obvious reasons, so it might be better for searching through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
6. I would not consider this a search engine. They call themselves a "computational knowledge engine" and I would have to agree. It searches through "built-in" knowledge rather than from other sources. It is also a niche rather than a broad search.
7. a. Dogpile compiles the "best" results from other search engines.
   b. It did not tell me how many results I got from the search, but it had over 7 pages of results. It was organized by Ads, then web results, then Ads. The top web results were what came up verbatim as my search query.
   c. About half of the results will be about designing web pages.
8. a. Mamma.com did not give me the number of results I got from my search. There was over 16 pages of results.
   b. The results look similar, if not almost the same. Mamma.com has less ads at the top of the search results, and the website opts to put many of them in a sidebar.
9. a. Metacrawler allows the user to search for multimedia.
   b. It has the option of searching for images, videos, etc.
   c. I searched for "cat" in the video tab. It did not tell me how many results there were total, but it displayed 12 per page.
   d. There were no warnings displayed. It displayed the source website prominently.
10. I have personally used Godaddy.com for a website with no issues. While popularity is not necessarily synonymous with quality, plenty of other people use the site without a lot of issue for web hosting. Hostgator.com looks like a very good value since its most affordable plan is 3.95 per month. They have different levels of web hosting that include emails from the website. There is unlimited disk space and subdomains. I would consider this a viable option because the price cannot be beat and it allows users to host WordPress websites. Since I am most familiar with WordPress than any other blogging platform, I would likely consider this as an option.