Week 11: Free Software vs Open Source

There are several expressions in use in the field of software licensing to describe the software and its conditions to use. Open source and free software are two approaches which are often confused. To compare to the proprietary software these two stand at one side but still they are not the same.

The founders of open source approach did not approve all the ideas of Richard Stallman - the founder of free software approach - and started their own initiation.

In 2002 to ZDNet interview Richard Stallmann has stated his view to the differences between the free software and open source approach:

The open-source movement differs from the free-software movement in that they never say we're entitled to these freedoms -- the freedom to study and change and redistribute. They never say it's particularly wrong for software to be proprietary; they say they don't particularly like it. They would rather that software is not proprietary, but they will never say that it's wrong. Whereas we in the free-software movement say our freedom is at stake here; don't you dare try to get us to use proprietary software. I don't want it in my life.

As I get it, both open source and free software enthusiasts are producing software to be used with no fee, with openly shared source and peer production. Both agree that you can make business with your products (meaning also to sell them) but not to make it proprietary. A great difference is that free software supporters do not agree with any kind of proprietary software but the open source supporters do not fight against it.

Week 10-2: Copying restrictions

With emergence of digital information making copies and distributing it has become very easy and prevention of it much more complicated. Big companies profiting from proprietary distribution have come up with numerous ways to fight for their income and rights to their products. Is it the question of digital rights or digital restriction? Are the restrictions useful?

One can agree to the need to protect the income and rights to products and the will to restrict unauthorized copying by the corporations - it is their money they will lose. "Their" in the meaning that they have already counted on it and the law formally is still on their side. But as the world is changing an intellectual property regulations under question by already great amount of users, the things have changed ant the corporations need to come up with new measures.

Tapscott and Williams in Wikinomics bring an example of Sony Corporation programming the restriction of three copies per OS user on their discs. The user playing the disc did not know that a piece of software was installed automatically to send information back to Sony where as more personal information was sent than on the copying process. Sony argued that no harm was done and a regular user had no idea anyway what was going on, so it did not hurt. The discs wre called back from market butthousands of users were already "infected". This is a measure for the company that goes way too far and for the company will be worse rather than useful as it will not be a secret for long.

The restrictions made are not acceptable the users today and the ways to go around are found. To protect against massive unauthosized copying some other new measures must be found while the restrictions that interfere to users rights and privacy won't stand still. With growing community of free and open-source software supporters and the new generation of people growing in digital world the corporations also need to find new ways.

Review of wiki on "Advertising in Video Games"

This is a post to review a group-wiki "Advertising in Video Games". The review covers the content, argumentation and formal side of the wiki.

I start with what I see first when looking at the wiki - the way the wiki is built and presented by the group. The front page consists of the list of group members followed by the title of their section of the article. From this list understanding the structure and the logic of the article is not as easy as could be - there is no logical sequence of the parts, no correct table of contents.

Derived from the tool used - Wikiversity - the wiki parts have good functional side of the content and referencing. It is easy to move inside the article and to see the references using the links. Again there is a weakness in the consistency while authors do not share the approach to references and use different styles for that. Not all the authors have made use of the wikiwersity functionality concerning the referencing.

Content

The wiki contains the following articles:

• History and the involvement
• The business of the in-game advertisement
• In-game advertising on mobile
• Impact of video games advertising - introduction and review
• Types of financing development of the games and players attitudes toward in-game advertising

History and involvement gives overview of the beginning and first advertisements appearing in games. The content is brief but comprehensive to get the understanding of the birth and following development and the ways the advertisements are used. The discussion ends up with examples of profitability to companies, developers as well as the players. The section could be better structured and have some subtitles to clarify it. The references of this part are in wiki style but not enough detailed, as the reference section give no hint to the web page listed.

The in-game advertising business section is well-built, has logical sequence and structure with subtitles. It includes target audience, numeric data about the market and different types of advertisement. The section sums up both the benefits and the controversies or weaknesses. There are some factual controversies between two authors, which indicates lack of collaboration of the authors.

In-game advertising on mobile is probably the latest approach of the field and well covered by the author. It seems to me it could be better structured or structured some other way around while the article contains several very short subtopics which could be connected to one. The whole part is a bit shorter in comparison to other authors, but it is also reasoned while being a new field and additional information on that is surely to be growing fast in coming years.

Impact of video games is a long and thorough section. The introduction is very long in comparison to other parts and could have been either shorter or left aside in cooperation with other team mates who also covered the introduction to the field. The main topic comes at the second part of the article and is covered fully and is a very interesting reading.

Players attitudes and financing development gives a lot of interesting information. Even if the connection between title and contents stay somehow confusing all together, the content is very good. The questions raised are well answered and reasoned. References are well formed and used.

All authors have reached the goal of giving thorough overview of their topic and reasoning the argumentation. The reader can find sufficient facts about the development of in-game advertising, reasons behind it, different ways of placing the ads as well as the aimed audience and their attitudes toward the games with several kinds of ads.

To point out the main weakness and strength would be - lack of coordination and cooperation on covering the topic as a whole on the one hand and giving great amount of information and analyze the variety of sides of the field.

It was very good reading and for sure with some more effort on cooperation and integration a great consistent wiki article could be constructed.


(I am aware that the group did not know there was a request for a consistent article worked on as a team, therefore their approach was not wholesome. Even though I give my critique/opinion based on how I understood the task.)

Week 10-1: The future of software licensing

The task is to predict the future of software licensing landscape in 2015... It is already in 5 years. During last five years the new version of GNU GPL was released and the amount of open-source free software has risen. Proprietary licenses stand for many products and are also widely used, in the meantime also violated. Which changes could be faced and in which direction the licesing will develop?

As the amount of people respecting the idea of free software is growing, the amount of software and products under free licenses will also grow. Even Microsoft has made an effort to step closer to the approach with its Shared Source Initiative, even though it is not so much evaluated by the enthusiasts of open source and free software.

I believe that the majority new comers would go towards open source and free software licensing and try to benefit the project from the collaboration with other programmers. But in five years time the proprietary licenses will not disappear. I guess the stand between those different licenses will change towards more free licensed software emerging but the usage of big proprietary software (like those of MS) will not drop drastically.

Week 9-2: The Millenium Bug in WIPO Model

The science business case described in the lecture was the publishing of academic journals and other materials which end up being too expensive for wide audience. As not everyone will be able to reach the materials, it has and effect on the digital divide.

I was in search of additional examples and read my course mates blogs and I must agree with the examples of medical patenting, academic and other publishing by Jakob, Norbert and Maibritt. The medical sphere might be not exactly digital divide case, but the controversy in the industry is great indeed.

What I could point out in addition is the publishing and availability of encyclopedias. I came to it while reading Benkler's chapter on The Freedom of Culture from the Wealth of Networks. According to Benkler there are six commercial encyclopedias online from which one is available for no fee - the Columbia Encyclopedia.

To take into account the fact that in academic writing Wikipedia is not a valid source to add to references, the students need the access to the academic encyclopedias. And if those are the best source of information to any citizens, having no free access therefore could be taken as a reason for increasing digital divide.

But I must say that as we do have Wikipedia, in my opinion, there will not be a bigger digital divide in that reason only. Wikipedia can fill the gap and be even more diverse, thorough and up-do-date than the commercial encyclopedias developed by selected authors.

Week 9-1: Free Licenses - GNU GPL

GNU General Public License developed by Richard Stallman in 1989 (second version in 1991 and third in 2007) is used for 70% of free software projects. My opinion on the GPL using SWOT analysis model:

Strengths
One of the strengths I find is having authorship in the focus. A developer shares the work on grounds of public license and should be appreciated as well as any other who will contribute to produce something more of it. The support to spread the modified codes as much as possible whereas GPL assures that patents cannot be used to render the program non-free assures the author that the development and usage of created product or piece continues it the desired way and there will be no situation where the genuine author of a piece will be faced with a license fee in the future.

Weaknesses
There do exist weaker versions of the license giving allowance to some parts becoming proprietary. As it is a development probably derived from the need, it must be useful and valued, but it seems to be against the initial idea of no proprietary products to be produced of codes under GPL. This is a step towards what the license aimed to avoid.

Opportunities
Through free circulation and development and again ongoing circulation of new pieces and codes, the community of developers and supporters of free software and public licensing grows and becomes stronger. The growing community can become a strong base for new innovative solutions born through the collaborative knowledge developed also thanks to the licensing systems that support it.

Threats
As the latest version was released in 2007, earlier users have still stayed to the version 2. It indicates the unwillingness to go with the changes in the known license. Therefore it may become a threat as well as the competing licenses in the field.

Week 8: Anglo-American vs Continental European

The two main systems for protecting intellectual products - Anglo-American and Continental European school of Intellectual Property - have long been considered as totally different, but since 1989, when U.S also signed the Berne Convention they have formally become quite similar. The big difference lies mainly in the idea behind the development of those laws.

The Berne convention states that a creator owns the rights to his/her works at any stage (a sketch or finished piece) with no formality and in addition to economical rights, gains also certain moral rights to it. These were the main points that U.S did not want to follow.

Another difference lied in the period of protection granted. In Continental-Europe model the minimum has been the lifetime of the author plus seventy years, whereas in Anglo-American system (in Universal Copyright Convention created after WWII) the minimum was set at twenty-five and maximum at fifty-six years since the first publication.

As the need of equalization of the rules was realized due to the export of works between different countries, U.S started making modifications (1950's-1970's) in order to join the Berne Convention. Main changes towards joining were: dispensing the Manufacturing Clause, change the period of copyright protection to author's lifetime plus fifty years. Only as late as 1988 did they agree to drop the copyright formalities and finally "join the club".

The weakness of the Berne system is the suing part, as detecting moral rights and the absence of protected works database make it complicated. For the strongest and clearest protection of ones works, it is benefitial to use the registration under copyright sign. The rights of an author are protected universally also without the sign if one can prove to be the genuine author, but to evaluate and request recovery of moral damages still stays more complicated than this of economical damages.

Week 7: The Author vs the Information Society

Brian Martin discusses in the 3rd chapter of his book 'Information Liberation' the reasons behind Intellectual Property and the regulations associated to it as well as the strategies for change in the field.

Patents, copyright and other legislation are created to protect the authors right to it and to guarantee economical support or benefit to endorse further work. But who support (or benefit from) the intellectual property the most? The most powerful governments and the largest corporations.

With technological developments and the emergence of World Wild Web, the control over spreading intellectual property is losing its point. The change is needed and the crowd against the constraints growing. Martin gives his perspective to intellectual property and its alternative:

"The alternative to intellectual property is straightforward: intellectual products should not be owned. That means not owned by individuals, corporations, governments, or the community as common property. It means that ideas are available to be used by anyone who wants to."

His strategy to change consists of following steps:

• Change thinking
  
• Expose the costs
• Reproduce protected work
  
• Openly refuse to cooperate with intellectual property
• Promote non-owned information
  
• Develop principles for crediting intellectual work

These points are rather radical all together. I agree to the idea that the way we think of things and therefore frame them makes change in legislation and it is a way to go around the property. Exposing the costs makes sense to me, it would help to understand the way things really work in the system and is in the interest of reducing the legitimacy of the world intellectual property system.

The point of reproducing the protected work freely, openly and with no respect to it, to show ones confrontation to the system may be understood. I like the approach that if you do it hidden and secretly, you accept the system but violate the rules whereas with free and not hidden copying of copyrighted property one shows disapprobation of the system. As much as I like the approach I would not start fighting for it on my own.

Promoting non-owned information and developing the measures to credit intellectual work are softer points and make sense to take into consideration. I find it important to credit the work of the creator, whereas I evaluate the free distribution of ideas and intellectual products.

Week 6-2: Social Engineering

A Social Engineering Case from Mitnick's "The Art of Deception" (Ch.2)

Private Investigator at Work
Three calls were made by the same person: a private investigator we'll call Oscar Grace. Grace had a new client, one of his first. A lady planning on asking for a divorce from her husband but had a problem with their money and savings being moved to an unknown account. Mr Grace had to find out whereto.

The First Call: Kim Andrews
"National Bank, this is Kim. Did you want to open an account today?"
"Hi, Kim. I have a question for you. Do you guys use CreditChex?"
"Yes."
"When you phone in to CreditChex, what do you call the number you give them--is it a 'Merchant ID'?"

A pause; she was weighing the question, wondering what this was about and
whether she should answer. The caller quickly continued without missing a beat:
"Because, Kim, I'm working on a book. It deals with private investigations."
"Yes," she said, answering the question with new confidence, pleased to be helping a writer.
"So it's called a Merchant ID, right?"
"Uh huh."
"Okay, great. Because I wanted to make sure I had the lingo right. For the book. Thanks for your help. Good-bye, Kim."

The Second Call: Chris Talbert
"National Bank, New Accounts, this is Chris."
"Hi, Chris. This is Alex," the caller said. "I'm a customer service rep with CreditChex. We're doing a survey to improve our services. Can you spare me a couple of minutes?"

She was glad to, and the caller went on:
"Okay - what are the hours your branch is open for business?" She answered, and continued answering his string of questions.
"How many employees at your branch use our service?"
"How often do you call us with an inquiry?"
"Which of our 800-numbers have we assigned you for calling us?"
"Have our representatives always been courteous?"
"How's our response time?"
"How long have you been with the bank?"
"What Merchant ID are you currently using?"
"Have you ever found any inaccuracies with the information we've provided you?"
"If you had any suggestions for improving our service, what would they be?"
And:
"Would you be willing to fill out periodic questionnaires if we send them to your branch?"
She agreed, they chatted a bit, the caller rang off, and Chris went back to work.

The Third Call: Henry McKinsey
"CreditChex, this is Henry McKinsey, how can I help you?"
The caller said he was from National Bank. He gave the proper Merchant ID and then gave the name and social security number of the person he was looking for information on. Henry asked for the birth date, and the caller gave that, too. After a few moments, Henry read the listing from his computer screen.
"Wells Fargo reported NSF in 1998, one time, amount of $2,066." NSF – non sufficient funds - is the familiar banking lingo for checks that have been written when there isn't enough money in the account to cover them.
"Any activities since then?"
"No activities."
"Have there been any other inquiries?"
"Let's see. Okay, two of them, both last month. Third United Credit Union of Chicago." He stumbled over the next name, Schenectady Mutual Investments, and had to spell it. "That's in New York State," he added.

Countermeasures against Social Engineering

Kevin Mitnick, in his book 'The Art of Intrusion', gives a list of countermeasures against social engineering attacks inside the company. It is important to motivate the employees to adhere to the protocols. A series of coordinated efforts include:

• Developing clear, concise security protocols that are enforced consistently throughout the organization
• Developing security awareness training
• Developing simple rules defining what information is sensitive
• Developing a simple rule that says that whenever a requestor is asking for a restricted action (that is, an action that involves interaction with computer-related equipment where the consequences are not known), the requestor’s identity must be verified according to company policy
• Developing a data classification policy
• Training employees on ways to resist social engineering attacks
• Testing your employee’s susceptibility to social engineering attacks by conducting a security assessment

The list gives suggestions to the company - what can they do to reduce the chance of an employee (and therefore the company) becoming a victim of social engineer. What measures could there be just of the human, not technical, aspect. Also in the same book Mitnick gives guidelines to Training. From there I would bring out the following that should be indicated to any person and computer user:

• Aim to establish a sense in the trainees that they will feel foolish if manipulated by a social engineering attack after the training.

It seems strange but at the same time.. it could give an impact, a little fear of becoming the fool one to fall into the trap.

• Modify organization politeness norms — It’s okay to say “no”!

I find this an important one as I think one should really give out minimum of information concerning any kind of personal data or any passwords or codes and feel free to say "no".

Week 6-1: Hacktivism

Hacker culture has given many useful solutions to the computer users and has helped developing many open-source applications, free software and more. This is the clearly positive side to the public, but there is a darker side to it where it is hard to define if it stays in the good boundries. Whether hacktivism should include directly malicious methods like systems cracking, website defacement and DDoS attack, is debated even inside the movement. Both opinions do exist.

One example of hacktivism through DDoS attack:

In August 2009, the Melbourne International Film Festival was forced to shut down its website after DDoS attacks by Chinese vigilantes, in response to Rebiya Kadeer's planned guest appearance, the screening of a film about her which is deemed "anti-China" by Chinese state media, and strong sentiments following the July 2009 Ürümqi riots. Rebiya Kadeer is a business woman and political activist figthing for the rights of Uyghur minority group living in North-West China, who by Kadeers words are subject to systematic oppression by the Chinese government.

The hackers booked out all film sessions on its website, and replaced festival information with the Chinese flag and anti-Kadeer slogans. Spokeswomanof the festival, Asha Holmes said all sessions on the site had posted "sold-out" messages. She said it was not immediately known whether the rush on tickets was real. But when the bookings were traced to Chinese websites it soon became clear they were fake. Internet technicians have been unable to keep up with the speed of "shopping carts" filling once the sessions have been cleared of the fake bookings, she said.

The 19th Century Surrogate Travel

While reading the second chapter of Virtual Art: from Illusion to Immersion I witnessed with pleasure that my thoughts of surrogate travel discussed in my earlier post connects delightfully to the history of painted illusions by Oliver Grau. From frescoes and wall paintings in historical buildings the story gets to the development of giving stronger illusional effect. In the end of 18th century the panorama view was invented by Robert Barker.

By the means of traditional painting the panorama has been the most sophisticated 360 degree illusion space crated forming an optical illusion. The first on purpose Panorama (1972) showed publicly in London was a two-storied circular house built for illusional experience. Inside the building there was 360 degree painting with upper and lower edges not to be seen to the observer, as well as the light from above which was illuminating the picture in a way that it seemed to be the source of the light itself. The Panorama became enormously popular among the citizens and a new job was started - panorama painters. (Grau, 58, 62)

Painting panoramas from cities became so popular that patents were released and industrial production started. The panoramas toured in several cities in Europe and North-America and depicted great scenery, well-known, distant or exotic places. The fact that the panoramas were touring around and were reachable for the entrance fee that was a fraction of what a travel would have cost, made them "economical surrogate for travel" (Grau, 69, note 178) or a "travel with the eye." (Grau, 69)

In the end of the 18th and at the beginning of 19th century travelling to distance places and other continent was extremely time consuming in comparison to nowadays, as well as expencive and therefore unthinkable to great part of the population. The invention of circular painting and panoramas gave the citizens surrogate travel feeling being in their own town. The illusion of being in another place may be compared to the effect that Google Streetview gives us in the 21th century - no cost, no time spent to get to another geographical point in the World.

Virtual Art: from Illusion to Immersion

Artists, scientists, scholars and researchers that present innovative discourse on the convergence of art, science and technology - MIT Press publishes their texts and has published a book called Virtual Art: from Illusion to Immersion, written by Oliver Grau. Computer graphics, video, interactive art, animations, Internet art, sound installations, digital poetry are some disciplines of the genre called media art or new media art. With the tools available today dazzling illusions and feeling of immersion can be produced.

Interactive media has given new dimensions to the idea of an image; what looks like an image on the first glimpse may give a "multisensory interactive experience with a time frame." It is often complicated to make difference between the original and an illusion of it while the time and room parameters are subject to manipulations. The latter makes the environments excellent for experiences and simulations. (Grau, 7)

Using new design and technological capabilities, virtual reality can be composed with unique feeling of time and space, producing the illusion of really being in another place at another time, being immersed. I agree with Grau that virtual art is not always directed to being illusional, nevertheless it does "operate within the energy field of illusion and immersion - the paradigm of this medium" (Grau, 9).

The goal of virtual artist is to achieve for the viewer the strongest possible feeling of being in the picture. The picture the artist has created with strong cognition of reality bounded together with illusion. For example the illusion of changing distances between the objects is a technical solution that works as an immersive effect thanks to human imagination. To maximize the experience multiple human information channels can be manipulated through sound, odour, movement, change in temperature and many more.

The world of design and virtual reality is delightful. Simply looking at some photos of virtual art projects brings sensuous pleasure. For example an interactive virtual-reality project Osmose (1995) by a Canadian artist Char Davies. Osmose combines 3D computer graphics and interactive 3D sound, a head-mounted display and real-time motion tracking based on breathing and balance.

Oliver Grau gives more facsinating examples of the image development through the history. I go on exploring his writing and the various aspects of design on behalf of illusions and virtual world.

Colour appeal II

As discussed before colours in web design have strong impact on user's trust, satisfaction and resulting e-loyalty. This could be generalized for any kind of coloured graphical user interface - how pleasing it is to learn and use one and which effect it gives to the mind through eyes and perception. Certain combinations may result in illusions that when created on purpose can make great art but in the wrong place at the wrong time can decrease user's trust and lower the user experience level.

The authors of 'Techniques and Tools for Using Colour in Computer Interface Design' (Wright, Mosser-Wooley, Wooley. 1997) make distinction between two important parts for achieving successful colour interfaces - Human Visual System and Colour Display System - and give theoretical overview. This short paper includes several guidelines for selecting suitable background, foreground and text colours. Being more than 10 years old the ideas about colour combinations for successful web and interface design may not be fresh enough for applying in todays' projects, but the theory behind it is still valid. Not to mention the facts about anatomy of human visual system that origin from diversity of used literature dating back even as far as 20 or more years.

Very important aspect the authors (Wright et al. 1997) mention is certain colour combinations and organizations that create illusions as a result of the eyes' anatomy. While blue suits very well on the background, it is complicated to focus on the foreground as text or other small graphics. The sharp edges are lost when having side by side the colours differing only in the amount of blue and having the same level of green and red. Uneffectively chosen colours can cause eye fatigue, strain and stress.

Designers should help users develop mental models in order to better learn, understand and manipulate the system by taking use of colour effects on the mind. Wright et al (1997) suggest colour choice guidlines as follows: simplicity, consistency, clarity, and language of color. By simplicity they mean the number of different colours on the site to be used (human short term memory 7+/-2). Consistency counts for assigning meanings to colours, for different concepts different colours should be used. Clarity makes it easier and faster to interpret the meaning of elements, for example green for 'go' and red for 'warning' not vice versa. And last the intriguing language of colour - which mental models do people have in that certain cultural space and how does our brain translate the information coming through our eyes?

One aspect of colour appeal is the learnability and usability of the application, but much intriguing one to match the aimed audience, their already developed mental models and the right colour combinations and organization in order to influence them in desired way. Another theoretical base giving directions for further research in design of human-computer interaction field.

Reference:
Wright, Mosser-Wooley, Wooley. 1997
http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds3-3/color.html#4

Colour appeal in web design

Colours have an effect on mood and feelings of people. There are several studies carried out to specify the impact colours have on human psychology and behavior; The results are used for therapy and for example interior design. Colours also have an important role to play in the web design and the designers should take advantage of the effects different combinations have. Still, loads of strange solutions are there to be seen online. On the one hand it might be poor knowledge on design, on the other hand it could just as well be an approach from different culture. The research carried out in Canada amongst three cultural groups - namely Candada, Germany and Japan - tried to specify the impact colour appeal has on user's trust, satisfaction and e-loyality using experiment, survey and previous research.

In todays web, with the variety of web 2.0 solutions available, catching attention, gaining and keeping the users by providing them with trustworthy and satisfactory environment has crucial role. Dianne Cyr (2009) states that little research has been done to reveal the effect of online applications' colours on the users of different cultures. For this study an experimental environment was created based on an e-commerce site for purchising electronics.

The site was redesigned in three versions - grey, yellow and blue, representing respectively the hypotetical preferances of canadians, japanese and german users. These preferances were found browsing through 30 municipal websites from each country. The authors expected to get confirmation to the hypotesis through the experiments and survey among 30 students from each country. However, it is rather radical to expect japanese to prefer yellow, germans blue and canadians grey design. The results were in this direction but did not meet authors expectations fully.

Nevertheless, the results showed that colour appeal does have effect on the user's trust and satisfaction towards the site and these implicate the e-loyality. For these questions, the results of the eye-tracking experiment and survey were used. All participants browsed all three webs ites with different colour schemas. The authors are rather unsatisfied with their results but find that the research gives good impulse and beginning for further studies in the field. The knowledge of colour appeal in web design, the way colours affect user behaviour, mood, reactions and perception will benefit the designers as they put it into practics.

Reading the material given leads to discover more on the relationship of colours and human-computer interaction, successful interface design and perceptions among different cultures. One very interesting tool used in given research was eye-tracking. A great tool to evaluate the reactions person has in a fraction of a second, where is the most catchy point in the design, for how long the eyes stay there before finding the next point etc. Many ides to be followed from this readig. Until the next post.

Reference:
Cyr, D., et al., Colour appeal in website design within and across cultures: A multi-method evaluation. International Journal of Human Computer Studies (2009),
doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2009.08.005

Week 5-2: Different People, Digital World

A minority group that can make use of Internet to reduce alienation and prejudice might be students that for some reason do not come to campus very often. Our study program is also a version of this situation and the alienation is already minimized by different means - video conference, blogosphere, forums and chat. The students taking part of programs that are not aimed as IMKE is, could also benefit when the possibilities of network would be used intensely.

I found a study on this problem stating that the students who come to campus once a week or even less are therefore cut off of the intellectual community on campus. The study is called Implementation of an Online Intellectual Community in a Graduate Educational Setting and has been carried out in Claremont Graduate University. To see the importance and test the means for providing better communication online environment was settled and tested. The results showed that the students were very satisfied and felt stong connection towards other members after being active in the environment.

Week 5-1: Hacker Ethic

A funny and intriguing definition or term I found when browsing the Jargon File lists the characteristics of hackers told by themselves. The term is "You know you've been hacking too long when". And from the list another great letter combination "SO". Funny was first of all to find a term like that and also the fact that hackers have reported those measures themselves, noting that they have been hacking for too long.

Hacker Ethic is widely found in today's web in several portals and communities. While looking around in the web to read more about hacker ethic and the usage I found an example of the "Real World" hacker ethic in wine production. A blog called Open Business discusses the implementation of hacker ethic in producing innovative wines using the shared technology by other producers. So some great Sauvignon Blanc was created in South Africa using Kiwi and Aussie technology - great produc from mundane sources.

Successful online community development

In the article on online community success the authors point out the metrics for success evaluation and integrated success factors for different life-cycle stages they have discovered from various literature, research and practitioners experiences.

Integrated and orderly guidelines for initiating and developing a successful online community are of great importance to the developers, but it had not been studied earlier. Previous research only shows the impact different components have on communities separately and not depending on the life-cycle stage it is in.

The success factors of online communities derived from previous research in different disciplines that are not integrated to a certain stage are:

• Management: Customer loyalty, business models, organizational knowledge
• Sociology: Identity, physical community, social capital, collective action
• Psychology: Sense of community, uniqueness and motivation
• Computer Science: Internet technology
• Information Systems: Life cycle and Web development, user needs - sociability and usability, privacy and safety etc.

In the article the authors integrate most important success factors found by researchers and practitioners to stages. The life-cycle stages in this research are labeled as inception, creation, growth, maturity, and death. The authors reason the choice by following the widely known concept - the stages in the information systems life-cycle, which is highly reasonable as the intended readership belongs mainly to the group of information technology practitioners.

The online community success factors by life-cycle stages are as follows.

Inception:

• Purpose (transparency of goals)
• Focus (target audience; focusing on one target group)
• Codes of conduct (establishing codes of behavior to contain conflict potential; facilitator to monitor and control behavior)
• Trademark (building a strong trademark; tag line)
• Funding/revenue sources (defining sources of revenue as a starting condition for building a virtual community; advertising and subscription fees)

Creation:

• User-centered design and evolution (focus on the needs of users, design with users in mind)
  
• Interface usability (ease of use, intuitive user guidance)
  
• Security and privacy (handling member data sensitively, authorization)
  
• Anonymity (discretionary levels of identity disclosure)
  
• Identity persistence (identification and history viewing of other members)
  
• Reliability (stability of the site, interface)
  
• Performance (fast reaction time of the Web site)
  

Growth:

• Attracting members
• Growth management
• Integration of new members
• Up-to-date content
• Content quality
• Interaction support
• Trust building
• Neutrality/non-partisan offers
• Reaching critical mass
• Transparency
• Personalization of portal
• Personalization of offers
• Offline events and meetings

Maturity:

• Regular online events
• Sales and offers
• User tools
• Permeated management and control
• Recognition of contributions
• Subgroup management
• Recognition of loyalty
• Member satisfaction management

From maturity the community may continue to grow on and succeed or face the termination. Determinants of online community termination:

• Under-supply of content
• Poor participation
• Unorganized contributions
• Transient membership
• Members with week ties
• Willingness to share information
• Lack of anonymity
• Concerns about privacy and safety
• Shyness about public posting
• Time limitations

The authors have reviewed great amount of different databases and literature and used it throughout the article. The result has practical value and is worth reading for developers and other researchers. The practitioners probably do not see much new or surprising in the results but the list is rather useful to keep in mind as a guidance and checklist for developing an online community.

Week 4-2: Ubicomp

"Military Estonia", "Subcontractor Estonia", "Merchant Estonia" or "Innovation/ICT Estonia". Which one is closest to Estonian reality? I would exclude Military while I believe Estonia does not lack freedom or openness and Merchant while purely transit-based is Estonia not. Innovation Estonia as "Grand Slam" would be desirable but the "Silicon Valley" with no respect to social aspects should be avoided. I agree with the evaluation from lecture that "Subcontractor Estonia" is the closest to reality at the moment. There has been and still is strong will to belong to Europe and develop towards Northern Europe. Innovation is much spoken about, in reality it could be more represented by successful projects and developments and Estonia could reach something between Subcontractor and Grand Slam.

Social dimension has important part in developing future network society. Reaching ubiquitous computing needs strong input from 'hacker society' which also means that social cohesiveness and caring in society have to be improved. Concentrating stricktly on business interests would hinder the process.

Week 4-1: Digital Divide

Digital divide is the gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regard both to their opportunities to access information and communication technologies and to their use of the Internet. The digital divide reflects various differences among and within countries (OECD 2001).

Digital divide may also be caused by poor design of application. According to some surveys by Emor there were 42% of Internet users of age 15-74 in February 2002 and 66% in 2007. The number of people who are able and willing to reach Internet is rising but while they are interested in some kind of usabilities they are often not aware of the variety of services they could access or the design of the applications is confusing, not at good level of usability or difficult to learn. Consequently they avoid those. For example the e-Tax Board was first launched with so poor architecture that even technically experienced users had difficulties to navigate and reach the destination. I suggested some acquaintances to use e-Tax Board to get overview of some tax problems they had and they looked at me with great surprise asking if I thin they are some scientists to use this.

So I think one criteria to get computer users to use more Internet applications is to design them suitably for the user group they are intended to. Another problem causing great digital divide is the lack of interest from the group not acquainted to the new technologies. In rural areas the youth is certainly motivated to use computers and surf the Net but older generations are more difficult get involved.

Based on "Digital divide and how to bridge it" Emor (RISC study) survey indicates that non-users of the Internet account for 58% of the Estonian population bracket in the age group 15–74, i.e. 607,000 people, as of February 2002. So there was 42% of Internet users. In the end of 2007 there was 687 000 Internet users of age 15-74, which is 66% of the population of that age.

The Internet availability in Estonia is rather high in my opinion. First of all I guess it is possible to have Internet at almost any household if there is interest for it. There are very many public networks in towns. Without personal laptop there are libraries and several other Internet access points, but not so much in rural areas. In rural areas there are less possibilities for almost anything (to leave nature out) so it seems logical. But this may be one reason for digital divide for elderly people as they have less interest and skills for technology.

Week 3 - 2: Scams

The internet frauds may be either technological solutions or social engineering. I guess the technological side is more understandable at the first point - someone has the knowledge, time and interest to hack something and get access to critical data to profit. The social engineering part seems to be difficult for me. To combine social engineering and technological solution for example using DNS and visibly cheat users to give out their data is more understandable than to just get someone to make a bank transaction for me as a stranger.

It seems unbelievable that someone gives huge amount of money just like that. But reading more about it, I must believe there are so many people who just get scammed. I know some people who make a monthly trasaction to another side of the Earth while "they have a child there". A child who does not have parents and who is very poor. The "parents" receive some photos and see "their child". I suppose there are organizations dealing with the problems of orphans and raising money but having not much knowledge of those I would be very suspicious. And hearing an adult happily saying that she has a boyfriend in Africa who tells her when to be online for chat or if she is allowed to go to a party or not - "he cares you know" .. is just unbelievable but true. And the african "came to my skype just like that, he found me himself"...

On the websites like Scam O Rama.. I am just asking how do anyone find time and will to deal with sending back emails to such time wasters if he/she already gets that it is a scam. I never open emails from "strange" senders. If a stranger needs to write me they better explain the reason at the subject field. And "click to win one million" or "super offer only for you" is not a good one. Reading one case of Scam O Rama was enough. I find it to be good study material for those who tend to believe such offers. Otherwise it may be amusing to read it if one has nothing else to do. To react as a scambaiter.. I can not understand.

From the ethical point of view the sites telling about scambaiting are useful for study purposes on internet safety. On scambaiting, in my opinion, it is not unethical to fool back on the scammer but I do not think one should do it as it is such a waste of time. You never know the person behind it and you feel him/her important enough to get a share of youd time? I do not think so. Trying to get some profit from someone who scammed you is not ethical. It is not ethical at any point to act according to: "I do it because he/she did it to me" if it is a negative thing. Ofcourse it is subjective to evaluate on things but as long as the evaluation is made legally - a crime or not - it should be clear.

Week 3 -1: Echelon

Reading the article about Echelon system surely makes one think more about the way things work in the business and defense sector. Information from the Echelon network and other parts of the global surveillance system is used by the US and its allies for diplomatic, military and commercial purposes. If needs dating back to the years of war concerned mainly military and defense questions, they now follow the information about businesses abroad to get better contracts to help the well-being of their countries. This seems highly inappropriate in the means of international competition and ethics of the action is highly questionable.

To the global community such information seeking has different effects. Firstly, if communities know about the surveillance, they probably change the way they communicate, trying to avoid being intercepted. Secondly, when being unaware of probable interception, the outcomes, contracts and new deals are altered in comparison to what they might have been without someone getting inner information. The memory storage capabilities today are growing so much that on the one hand it seems like it is possible to follow and save everything. On the other hand the load of information going around has grown at least at same speed and finding the important one needs more and more work.

Week 2-2: Net censors

I read the reviews of my coursemates and I really struggle getting to the point of downloading and trying out one of the software mentioned in the lecture. I understand that there is more trouble than reward of them. If I think of downloading the software to the computer for my children to be protected from harmful information, I first come to the idea that if they want to search for some restricted materials, they must have spoken about it with friends and will see it anyway. If they get the idea of having a censor on their computer they will figure out how to remove it. If I wish them not to enter some sites.. I would ban them through router and hope they won't get to that themselves. So I have not completed the assignment on time but maybe I will in close future before the end of our course to truly see the trouble myself.

Week 2-1: Non-market production

The real applicability of non-market production on my field of interests. I had hard times finding an example here. Being a student and mostly interested in design solutions and practice I browse through lots of tutorials that are free online. Some practitioners share their work and experience and I get to train myself thanks to them. I also use some clearly market production tutorial sites but only the free parts of it. So I can profit personally from the number of tutorials they share freely hoping for me to become their customer and pay for more tutorials, training and conferences. I find it great that the professionals share their experience and help beginners to get on going with new software more easily.

Week 1 - 2

Robert Theobald's question of "mind-quake" - It is better if our shifts in thinking are small and frequent rather than large and catastrophic. All of us must become more competent at managing mind-quakes. The big changes in everiday procedures might bring us to mind-quake if the change has been so fast and enormous that we had no transformation time or means.

First example to come to my mind is the closest to us - the way we work at IMKE. It is not much difference to many of us. But to imagine giving an old-school professor the task to make a lecture so that he has hypertext materials and students should produce a collective conspect. No papers, pens just open laptops, projector etc.

Another mind-quake is the way elderly people must react when have always received their pensions from post office and suddenly have to go and get it from ATM. What does the machine mean to a person who never dealt with one. On the news there was an interview with a bank assistant who was helping people coming to the ATM first time. There was a long queue behind one machine whereas the one next to it was idle. The assistant invited the next lady in line to come to this machine. The lady stood still saying that her money has always come from this certain machine and she will not go the next one.

Charles Handy formulated paradoxes to come in the society. One of those is the paradox of intelligence. Intelligence is the rising form of property; yet such assets never appear on company balance sheets. I imagine it is also a kind of mind-quake to the people who are used to the idea that you must physically work hard to receive your salary and this can be calculated in the work hours. Nowadays companies must take into account their intelligence rate to be competitive. The way I see it, is that companies do profit from their intelligence if it comes to creation of software or any other creative product but the way to write it down still remains the same - working hours of this and that worker. Still the salaries of the workers differ while they are evaluated by their intelligence (and resulting productivity). On the other hand there are companies selling business intelligence as a service. They could name their outcome as intelligence and have it on the balance sheet?

Manuel Castells has described information society also with the transformation of work and employment. There will be a growth of self employment, temporary and part-time work. Particularly for women, he adds. I feel related. Flexi-workers who work without fixed time, place or regulations are certainly emerging phenomenon while professionals feel the earge to be more independent and choose freely their working hours. I share the idea that in future there will be a shift in employer-employee relationship as employers become the clients of those who were employees so far. Castells claims that this shift will procuce more stress and discontent. I do not agree on that while I find that the flexi-worker, temporary or self employed worker needs to have stron self discipline to achieve what he/she has taken as a goal. Without the ability to push yourself to work it is really easy to get stressed. In this case I suppose it is easier to stick to traditional work relationships.

Week 1 - 1: Himanen

Pekka Himanen' review on Information Society looks not to the far future but takes into account the changes ahead before 2010. The paper discusses different trends in Europe that affect the development of information society, the values to be kept in mind during the change process, different development models and concepts for social change. Interesting points I found: agreement on flexible working hours, problems with health coming from no physical activity at work, leisure time or teleworking and proactive behaviour.

My experience so far has shown that making the agreement on flexible working hours is not a complicated task. For sure it depends totally on the nature of the company. I have chosen companies that respect the values given in the paper - the balance between work and leisure must be met. I value highly the opportunity to choose your own best time for working while all the people do not share the most productive times of the day. Creative workers often get maximum out of themselves late at night therefore the company can profit the most when allowing the person rest in the morning and start later on. Seems reasonable for me. At that point of course it might come in handy to agree on some hours of the day when all employees must be accessible so that the "morning" and the "evening people" could meet up for teamwork purposes.

Employers should take into account the effect that sitting infront of a computer eight or more hours a day has on his/her workers. Himanen also points out the importance of physical activity during the day. My experience again shows that it has been counted with and various possibilities have been provided to takse some time off and relax at the office as well. Somehow more complicated for me was to share the work and leisure while working at home. Telework can have stronger effect on the health than working at the office with collegues.

Himanen describes three scenarios for future development in information society: Silicon Valley, Singapore and Finnish. The latter seems rather odd at that point, maybe a better name could be found. But the idea is that none of those is a positive scenario and bringing in the fourth combined model is needed. He uses terms proactivity and innovation to describe it. Innovation has been discussed a lot, we know we need to be innovative and find new ways to do things to become more productive. In addition he says that we should no longer focus on reacting to something that has already happened; instead we should act beforehand and boldly lead the way. I find the approach very approximate, saing a lot but not much.

Digital audio assignment

I started off following information about the Design Night. The Design event in Tallinn 24-27 Srptember. I had in mind making a podcast on the program and intentions of the event. But as the assignment was to be finished by the 1st of October I felt it was a bit off-topic. So I went on thinking and kept in mind the four keywords from The Design Night: Ingenuity, Innovation, Sustainability and Recycling. It seems to me that Innovation is the term most close to our themes and topics here that I just decided to pick out some statements about it and work with them for my podcast.

Podcast
1. I chose a background track by Bonobo
2. I recorded my text about innovation. (text_originaal)
3. Edited recording

• Normalyze
• Edit clipping (3)
• Noise removal
• Compression at -18
  

4. Record "Innovation" and add it to separate track, edit and "repeat", manual fadeout.
5. Manual duck for background
6. Adding the "repeat" tracks in total two at the beginning and two at the end. Adding Change speed to "repeat 3&4"
7. Naming the tracks
8. Labeling intro, text and outro.

InnovationPodcast Maarja by maarja

Ad
1. Background is a track beginning from Bonobo again
2. Recording three times my text (ad_original)
3. Naming the tracks
4. Editing recorded tracks - silence, normalize, compression, change speed (up, down and 0)
5. A dding a sound from freesound (glass)
6. Adding one more track

AdProject Maarja by maarja

Here is the original recording of my text.

Text originaal by maarja

Online protest

An online protest against Ongoing Animal Killings in Kerala.

Having in total 65 signatures to support the protest.. not exactly a success.

Interaction design

I appreciate finding interviews with different professionals from the field in "Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction". The first interview is with Gitta Salomon who has over 20 years experience as a practicing interaction designer. It is nice easy reading getting to know her practices and experience on how to reach the best results in communication between the client and the team. I would like to state out something that has been a topic also in our lections - the principle of sharing vocabulary well-known to all participants. In case of (and mostly it is so) not having clear idea of the terms used, they have to be made clear and understandable so that the following conversations and cooperating will be carried out using these terms. Miss Salomon evaluates her success with clients also based on the development of information exchange quality. If her clients easly start using incommon terminology, she has met one of her goals.

I will continue with this book, so maybe following opinions are soon to appear here.

Surrogate travel

I have used GoogleMaps for some years now to find the best way reaching a destination - will I be on time on foot? Should I take public transport? Which alternative way to choose? Some time ago I discovered GoogleMaps StreetView functionality and became a huge fan of it as I can '"walk around" in the places I have been to or where I will be in close future and look around as if I was really there. I have become familiar with the house, streets and the surroundings of my future home. I find paths to prefer for walking from one point to another. Maybe I will choose to avoid it in the future to let the new places surprise me and introduce themselves to me in live but at the moment my excitement over the application exceeds the will to wait for getting there.

I have introduced this great novelty to many of my friends and family members. And now I read over the history of hypertext and must admit: there is nothing new in this world, also not StreetView by Google. In 1978 Aspen Movie Map developed by Andrew Lippman and his colleagues at MIT Architecture Machine Group was introduced and said to be probably the first hypermedia system whereas the hypermedia aspects of the system come from accessing these pictures not as a traditional database but as a linked set of information.

I find it better to quote to give the overview of the technology used: "The Aspen system was implemented with a set of videodisks containing photographs of all the streets of the city of Aspen, Colorado. Filming was done by mounting four cameras aimed at 90° intervals on a truck that was driven through all the city streets, each camera taking a frame every ten feet (three meters)." The system also allowed the user to choose the speed of moving around in the city up to 110 km/h and to step into the buildings as they were also filmed from inside. The city was also filmed in different seasons of the year allowing the user to switch the time of the year of "visiting" Aspen.

Visiting different locations of the world like that gives the possibility of surrogate traveling and reaching the best travel target. It can also be an excellent educational environment or used for training soldiers in hypothetical locations.

More on the GoogleMaps StreetView (the original google site for it is not working for some reason):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View

The history of hypertext:
http://www.useit.com/papers/hypertext-history/

Complexity == Unreliability

The text by Vannevar Bush was an interesting reading. First of all the moments of surprise or amaze how at that time he described his visions for future developments. And secondly I find it quite amusing to read "... picture a future investigator in his laboratory..." and then the ideas of Bush, because for us it is no question of imagination, we just think of some processes close to which his thoughts had reached but we now relate to as something usual.

I loved this sentence, it just made me laugh and read it over again: "..for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous." I am happy this has changed.

Living in multilingual environment and facing from time to time some problems with misunderstandings has made me think of 'one-language-fits-all' environment.. But I never thought of having one 'transmitting and recording fitting' language. Bush did. I find it also a remarkable idea for his time. Has anyone produced it yet?

Assignment: Locative media

Assignment:
Find Internet hot-spots in Tallinn

We went to Kadriorg with a group of course mates and spotted several open Wifi areas on Narva street, Weizenbergi and at Kadrioru Park.

Assignment: Bike trails

Assignment:
Web site design mock-up for biking trails

Persona:
Interested in sports, likes active life-style, goes often biking after work, takes family to tours in other cities and country side. Would like to find trails and additional information online.

Features:
User profiles - users can join, secure their profile with password, connect with other users, share photos and information (can use their already created profiles and openIDs)
Community - discussions, events, etc
Map adding, editing, sharing (based on GoogleMaps)
Interactive maps (with illustations of scenery, hot spots, bike rentals, bike shops, train stations, etc)
Photo adding, naming, sharing, removing
Bike site (bike parts, fixing, designing, driving rules, bike ettiquette, etc.)

Thoughts on the 'cocktail party effect'

If I am listening to someone but not paying much attention to it and suddenly understand that there was a question asked, my first reaction often is - 'what did you say?". But before hearing the question again I already answer, usually at the same time with the repeated question and then we both can ask - 'what? what did you say?' as neither of us was listening any more. I always thought that I suddenly understood what I had been asked. Now I found out that it is my temporary memory acting out and helping me reproduce the information and bringing me the understanding of my partner in conversation.

We have all attended numerous lectures given by a variety of lecturers. I am sure I do not speak for myself alone if I say that it is rather exhaustive to sit an hour and a half in a lecture if the voice of professor is silent, monotonic and the text far from dynamic. I have always thought it is just boring. Now I know that trying to get that information has just been silly optimism. I simply do not receive it as my ears and consciousness can not work that message out.. the signal has been weak. While hearing text spoken in monotonic voice and having little clue about the meaning of the text it becomes technically difficult for the receiver to get the message.

On the other hand, we can perceive a voice and message even if it has strong background noise and other voices around it. It is the cocktail party effect that lets us selectively hear one voice and get the message. This is human capability that is researched to develop into computational application for speech user interfaces - hand-free, eyes-free applications. The conclusion of given paper introduced me to another angle of user interfaces that I now wish to explore a bit more.

Thoughts on:
http://pubs.media.mit.edu/pubs/papers/arons_AVIOSJ92_cocktail_party_effect.pdf

Good night.

"Viewers" against "Users"

I have found some nice questions and comparisons while reading the chapter ''Who was dissatisfied with old media?' in the 'New media: a critical introduction.' As it says, it is critical.. It really is a critical approach and no celebration to the arrival of new media. For sure interesting reading, great volume and density of text offers a variation of viewpoints and discussions.

In class we have discussed a variety of terminology that has to do with knowledge sciences and consciousness. Also this chapter discusses psychoanalytical aspect of new media reception.

Did we need the 'new' media to overcome the limitations of the 'old' one? - the culturally dominant analogue media? The dominant media that was followed by a number of inactive viewers.. even masses. In case of new media we can speak of users instead of viewers (so called 'couch potatoes') and expect them to be active. From here on we can ask if media was something negative in pre-digital days or if just something better was sought.

For the closer framing of the concept the development and reception of new media are considered. I like the idea of the 'technological imaginary' that stands for 'dis-satisfactions with social reality and desires for a better society are projected onto technologies as capable of delivering a potential realm of completeness' (Lister)

I will return this critical approach book to TLÜ library and go on with 'A Review of The Cocktail Party Effect' by Barry Arons...

In search of up-to-date articles on interaction design

My interests are mostly connected to user experience and therefore the user interface or interaction design issues. I have searched the scholar.google.com and read some from there but I must admit, in search of up-to-date problems in field I could not find what I was hoping for.

Still there was a simple quality criteria paper for effective interaction design that I found compact and helpful for starters and good to use as a checklist when going through the process of planning and designing an interface or user application. It is composed for The ACM interactions Design Awards that are the awards acknowledging quality in interaction design, as distinct from software engineering and research. The paper rounds up the essential questions to be asked for understanding the level of the quality of user experience.

I am sure there is good material on the topic to find online. I will be glad to receive your suggestions also for more deeply going into the technical aspects of it. Just for the purpose of academic reading I was trying out the given sources. I now hope to find some good chapter from a book and try to share my thoughts next time.

Startup

Welcoming at new media course..