1a. blank page.
1b. You can set this in "preferences > general" in Safari. This is what I did to get a blank page when I hit the "home" button.
2. You can change the font and font size under "preferences > appearance" which may be a desirable thing if you are having readability issues with the text.
3. The default search engine is Google. There is a box to the right of the address box specifically for searches.
4a. About 325,000,000 results. Pretty much everything on the first page does relate to making web pages. Some have their own little apps they want you to use instead of html. On the second page, more sites have less to do with the subject.
4b. About 24,300 results. The very first one is your own module 1-2 page!! In general, the results seem more irrelevant than in the first search, and more outdated. You can still find what you need, but you also get a lot of questions from people asking how to make web sites, and links from bulletin boards from years past to information that probably isn't that relevant anymore. Here are some results:
Bing, Altavista, Teoma, and Blowsearch all have fewer overall results, but similar relevancy results for each search as the google searches. Kartoo was unavailable at this writing.
5. The results numbers differ. Google has the most. Some (such as Blowsearch) did not display the total number of results found. I was unable to find an advantage to using the other search engines - perhaps I will after the next class.
6. Wolfram Alpha is not a conventional search engine. There appears to be a learning curve to understanding how to use the data, which puts it perhaps one step past - or sideways of - what a regular search engine does. It does look through its data for results, but they are not conventionally used search engine results.
7a. The main difference is that a metasite can contain results from several different search engines. The opposite is not true.
7b. I don't see result totals, however they appear to be coming up in about the same way they did on google. In fact, I have several of the same links show up for both the unquoted and quoted versions of our search term.
7c. With the quoted version, I can list the same sites I listed in number 4b above. With the unquoted version, I seemed to get a lot more stealth advertising, and pages that looked like information that turned out to be selling something. Examples from Dogpile:
8a. I can't tell how many results I got. I saw nothing unusual about the order of the results for the quoted search (See 8b below for more on that).
8b. The quoted search brought a lot of similar results that I got on other search engines. However, the unquoted search brought unexpected and unique results. Clicking through, the first result had not the first thing to do with web site building. It was this link:
9a. I went to Google. On the home page, there is no way to search for specific types of multimedia; however, on the first results page of any search, you do get that option.
9b. You can search for images, video, maps, and books.
9c. Google does not provide the number of matches in an image search; I searched for images of country singer Ashley Monroe and found plenty, and could also narrow my search to specific sizes.
9d. There was a tab called "Usage rights" which made clear that these images might be copyrighted.
10. I actually have a web site, and my host is LunarPages. I get 350 gigs of space and, for my purposes, unlimited bandwidth. I could set up 10 or more email accounts, and separate ftp permissions for different users. I pay less than $100 a year for their services. My site will be redesigned after I complete this class, but you can find it at GlennFink.com. Here are things I would look for in a web host: