Quantitive Evaluation of Web site Content and Structure

Describes an approach automatically to classify and evaluate publicly accessible World Wide Web sites. The suggested methodology is equally valuable for analyzing content and hypertext structures of commercial, educational and nonprofit organizations. Outlines a research methodology for model building and validation and defines the most relevant attributes of such a process. A set of operational criteria for classifying Web sites is developed. The introduced software tool supports the automated gathering of these parameters, and thereby assures the necessary ``critical mass'' of empirical data. Based on the preprocessed information, a multi-methodological approach is chosen that comprises statistical clustering, textual analysis, supervised and nonsupervised neural networks and manual classification for validation purposes

Quantitative analysis in a heuristic evaluation of web-based encyclopedia for children

Anapedia is a web-based encyclopedia designed specifically for children. The web was built because there are still very few Indonesian-language encyclopedias for children. This paper presents an evaluation of the usability of the Anapedia website developed for children in Indonesia to retrieve information available in a wide range of areas. In the context of usability evaluation of children encyclopedia, this is the first study to analyze usability problems identified by experts during the heuristic inspection on their overall evaluation score. This evaluation, performed by seven usability experts, involved the identification and analysis of usability problems in the selected website. The assessment process was mainly based on the Sirius framework evaluation mechanism. The web considered as having high usability level, but they identified many usability problems for further improvement of the site. The most violated heuristic item was found to be “help” whereas the least violated heuristic item was “labelling” aspect

Investigating the Impact of the Blogsphere: Using PageRank to Determine the Distribution of Attention

Much has been written in recent years about the blogosphere and its impact on political, educational and scientific debates. Lately the issue has received significant attention from the industry. As the blogosphere continues to grow, even doubling its size every six months, this paper investigates its apparent impact on the overall Web itself. We use the popular Google PageRank algorithm which employs a model of Web used to measure the distribution of user attention across sites in the blogosphere. The paper is based on an analysis of the PageRank distribution for 8.8 million blogs in 2005 and 2006. This paper addresses the following key questions: How is PageRank distributed across the blogosphere? Does it indicate the existence of measurable, visible effects of blogs on the overall mediasphere? Can we compare the distribution of attention to blogs as characterised by the PageRank with the situation for other forms of Web content? Has there been a growth in the impact of the blogosphere on the Web over the two years analysed here? Finally, it will also be necessary to examine the limitations of a PageRank-centred approach

SNAP : the social network adaptive portal

Since the boom of social networking lead to people using multiple account on many platforms in order to keep in touch with hundreds of contacts, managing one's contacts risks becoming a burden for many users. Following and finding information about friends and family has become an issue too. Guided by these observations and by careful research of existing adaptive web technologies, our team worked on the development of SNAP - an adaptive social network integrator which aimed to amalgamate four social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Buzz) in one adaptive environment, which to unobtrusively sort the users' feed according to his/her preference. To achieve data transfer and authorisation, SNAP used APIs and the newest version of the OAuth protocol. Adaptivity was achieved through statistical filtering. Despite efforts, the initial field tests show that the system is not as yet ready to be launched for wider use. However, there is room for improvement in terms of Social Network Integration, and tester users expressed an interest in the idea of using an adaptive social integrator such as SNAP.peer-reviewe

Taking social networks to the next level

Since the boom of social networking lead to people using multiple account on many platforms in order to keep in touch with hundreds of contacts, managing one's contacts risks becoming a burden for many users. Following and finding information about friends and family has become an issue too. Guided by these observations and by careful research of existing adaptive web technologies, our team worked on the development of SNAP - an adaptive social network integrator which aimed to amalgamate various social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Flickr) in one adaptive environment, which unobtrusively sorts the users' feed according to his/her preference. To achieve data transfer and authorisation, SNAP uses the newest version of the OAuth protocol. Adaptivity was achieved through statistical filtering. The initial field tests show that the system works, however there is definitely room for improvement in terms of Social Network Integration, and testers generally expressed an interest in the idea of using an adaptive social integrator such as SNAP. On top of this, we will be suggesting a number of improvements which will change the way we use social networks forever.peer-reviewe

Shaping Metrics for HEI Cultural Engagement - Knowledge Transfer

An application was submitted to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for support for a project that would identify and define activities deemed relevant to Knowledge Transfer (KT) - Cultural Engagement (CE), and propose appropriate means to evaluate them. It was acknowledged from the outset that efforts at agreeing “metrics” for the impact of such activities had been attempted before, albeit with limited success. (One such notable example has been lately provided by the Higher Education and Business Community Interaction Survey (HEBCIS) which has collected some data on social, community, and cultural engagement for some years; however, the robustness and consistency of the data for these purposes have often been questioned.

Website evaluation measures, website credibility and user engagement for municipal website

This paper attempts to explore website evaluation measures specifically for information driven website such Municipal electronic government website toward website credibility and user engagement. Despite overwhelming of information source in online environment, the role of government website as a prominent government information provider becomes less preferred. Even, rapid development and continuous assessment been done by the government bodies to enhance and make utilize their website by the users, issues such usability problem, low popularity ranking and less user engagement still been reported. Therefore, the first part of this article reviews on existing assessment measures for websites done by scholars and also by practitioners. Then, in the second part of this article presents some finding on self evaluation of ten municipal website around Klang valley, Malaysia in term of popularity ranking and user engagement measure (bounce rate, Daily Pageviews per Visitor, and Daily Time on Site). Through related literatures reviewed, less study done previously includes overall or multiple measures for evaluation of information driven website. Estimation result of popularity ranking and user engagement percentage among municipal website also shows that there is still need some improvement to make the gateway of Malaysia electronic government become more favorable and engaging

A comprehensive comparison of arXiv and the Web of Science (WoS)

Scientific exchange is increasingly shifting to the Internet. Today, online literature and citation databases are important tools for scientific work, e.g. for exchanging information or investigating the current state of the art on a topic. Due to the large number of literature and citation databases that exist, and the limited amount of time available for a search, it is necessary to choose few or even only one database. In this paper, we carry out a comprehensive comparison between Web of Science and arXiv. We compile a list of criteria for the comparison of these resources based on a literature analysis. Finally, 62 documents were found that dealt with comparisons between literature databases. Based on these comparisons, a concept matrix was created according to Webster & Watson (2002), in which the criteria for the comparison were summarized. These criteria were then integrated into an adapted version of the criteria catalogue for the comparison of software packages from Jadhav & Sonar (2009) in order to provide a comprehensive picture, not only of content aspects, but also of functionality and usability issues. Based on these criteria, the Web of Science and arXiv databases were compared. The main results can be summarized as follows: arXiv covers only a limited number of disciplines and has a strong focus on physics, mathematics and computer science. Web of Science covers significantly more subject areas and generally includes significantly more papers, which in contrast to arXiv all come from peer-reviewed journals. arXiv's biggest advantage is the topicality of the articles, since preprints are also accepted and thus the peer-review process can be bridged. Both databases are intuitive to use and have a similarly good simple search, but Web of Science’s advanced search gives an experienced user much more possibilities to refine searches and to formulate distinctive queries. In general, Web of Science offers significantly more possibilities to conduct comprehensive literature searches due to the additionally stored citation data and corresponding analysis functions. arXiv, on the other hand, is particularly well suited to learn about the latest state of the offered disciplines