Sometimes I feel like Johnny Mnemonic. My brain has a maximum capacity of 160 Gigs but I need to be able to store 320 Gigs of information in it.
In the almost nine years since I got my first home computer I’ve been reading and learning and relearning everything I can about computers, the Internet and the porn business. Everything I know I learned on my own but no matter how much I know it will never be enough. Even if I did know it all, there will always be new technologies, new business models and new niches. I could study and research 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the rest of my life and I still wouldn’t know it all.
Being that I’m your humble professor, I probably shouldn’t be admitting my ignorance to you. I should hold my head up high and keep my insecurities to myself. It’s a little hard to have confidence in a teacher who secretly believes she’s a fraud. But I think I’d be a bigger fraud if I were to present myself as the grand wise master of cyberporn. I’m a gal who happens to know a little about a lot. In the words of a friend "I may not know everything but I know how to look it up."
Normally I like to keep my sources to myself. Not because I’m selfish. Not because I’m greedy. I do it because I’m afraid that if I point you to the swell places I go to get my answers, you won’t need me anymore. If I show you where the good stuff is, maybe you’ll leave old Titmowse without a job. But then I realize that kind of thinking is silly.
The places I go to get information are freely available to anyone with an Internet connection. I can’t hoard these great resources of wisdom because there’s nothing to hoard. These sites are in plain view of anyone who finds them. The only thing I could keep to myself is the fact that I found them at all.
I have bookmarked several sites that I consistently use and peruse to get definitions, descriptions and data. There are websites that list different statistics on Internet behavior. There a URLs that always contain at least one tutorial on a subject I’m researching. I have favorite places I go to in cyberspace where I know I’ll get the answers I need to the questions you ask. My list of favorites is long and getting longer every day.
I could share some of those places with you but I’m not going to. Instead I’d rather teach you a more important lesson. I want to give you my gift. The gift of knowing how to look things up on the Internet.
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The first, absolute truth of Internet research is this:
Whatever you need to know, there’s a web page for it.
The second truth is this:
At least half of the information you find on the web is bullshit.
These two truths will carry you far when searching the Information Highway for information. Keep them in mind always and you’ll do just fine.
Next in this lesson on looking, we come to my favorite Internet invention, the search engine. When you want to find information through a SE, don’t think like a surfer. Think like a webmaster.
As an example, say you need to find the physical address of a huge corporate entity named CompanyCo. If you type the name CompanyCo into the submit box on a search engine, the first link you’ll get in the results is the CompanyCo homepage. Then you’ll probably waste a lot of time on the CompanyCo site searching all the tiny text and menu pages for that address. This kind of effort is draining and unnecessary. Think like a webmaster. Instead of using the name CompanyCo for your search, use these words/terms: "CompanyCo, contact us, about us". If you search this way you save yourself a lot of frustration. If you imagine the language the webmaster would use when they build the site, you’ll be able to perform more productive searches.
Thinking like a webmaster is one way to get the most out of a search, thinking like a search engine is another. Keep in mind that most search engines basically look for text on a web page. There are image search engines but they too look for images via the text names of those images or the words used to describe them on webpages. So when using a search engine to find information, try to think textually.
For instance, when you want to look up the definition of the word 'interoperability', don’t just type 'interoperability' into the search box and click the button. Chances are you’ll probably end up with tons of result pages that have nothing to do with interpreting the word 'interoperability'. Instead type this: "definition interoperability".
Perhaps you need statistics on a type of Internet activity like chat. Don’t waste your time on an SE by typing only the word 'chat' in the submit box. Type in: "chat statistics study research". Search engines look through thousands of webpages. You’ll better refine your search if you use more specific keywords and terms.
I admit it. I don’t know everything. I don’t even know one tenth of one millionth of everything. What I do know about this business I learned by looking it up. I will continue to search and research for you because I like doing it. The more I learn the better I become as a teacher. I hope the most valuable lesson you learn from me is how to find your own knowledge.