Thursday, January 28, 2010

Hoax Site?

Blog Post: Identify one of the sites from the list above that is a hoax site (or find another on your own) and detail why you think the site is fake. be sure to include the URL in your blog post.

The site that i choose to evaluate was http://descy.50megs.com/akcj3/bmd.html (Bernese Mountain Dog site)

What is the author of this site? Does the author have contact information?
At the bottom of the site under the copyright section there is a credit to
Dr. Charlie White, Ph.D., DVM., AECT. There is no contact information for the authors of this site.

What is the publishers reputation?
The publisher of the site says it is the,
Burmese Mountain Dog Club of America. Below the publisher is a link to http://burmesemountaindog.inf. When clicking the link, the browser brings you back to the initial page you started it. All in all this link doesn't really do anything. It may just be there to make it look like the publisher has a website.

How broad minded or biased is the content?
The first thing i noticed is that the site isn't even about Burmese Mountain dogs. It shows several pictures of German Shepard's. When goggling "Burmese Mountain Dog" it showed the correct picture, totally different from the one on the web site.

Information on the page?
The copyright date dates back to 1994. There is a lot of information on the site but the site does not look professional. It resembles a basic HTML page you learn to make if you were taking a web design class in high school.

RESULT- This site is a hoax. The information/ pictures are not correct. The site is not professional, and the links do not bring you to other pages.

The second site i choose was http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

What is the author of this site? Does the author have contact information?
The author of this site is stated at the bottom of the page. The web site is by google. Next to the author is a link to an "about us" page. When clicking there it brought me to a seperate page with links for contacting, Google blogs, etc. When clicking the "contact" link information was displayed. An address, phone number, and fax were available.

What is the publishers reputation?
Google is widely known throughout the web. The site's address starts with Google.com and leads into its archives. The bottom of the site shows "copyright 2010 Goggle". All in all the publisher seems realistic.

How broad minded or biased is the content?
The subject of the content is weird. It is about "PigeonRank's" working for Google. If you read the information it all seems silly but if you look at the bottom of the page there is a statement that states, "Note: This page was posted for April Fool's Day - 2002." Which tells us this site's purpose was for an April fool's joke.

RESULT- The actual publisher is legitimate but the context of the site is based on April Fool's day. So i would have to say this site is a hoax as well, based on it's content.


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