Book Review - Designing Social Interfaces

I have chosen a new book (2009) from the field of interface design and in more detail about designing social interfaces - “Designing Social Interfaces – Principles, Patterns and Practices for Improving the User Experience” by Cristian Crumlish and Erin Malone.

The book provides the reader with a collection of features and functions used in social interfaces. The functions are grouped together according to their type – profile related, organising and presenting created content, contributing etc. All functions are described in turns of why, how and where to be used.

Patterns are defined as “Common, successful interaction design components and design solutions for a known problem in a context.” The aim of patterns is developing a common language for designers and developers to produce user interfaces that provide the user with high quality user experience.

The patterns have detailed descriptions on when and how to use each of them, why is it used and examples are presented from known popular networks. For each pattern, other related patterns are named, so it is very useful for finding the best solution among similar ones.

The book is organised growing from explaining what are social patterns to going mobile with it. The authors start with historical overview of network development and analysing the activities around them – forums, blogging, tagging, linking, etc. The second section describes everything that has to do with defining the users personal identity and visibility – signing up, profile, friends and network, testimonial etc.

Third section goes with user's desired objects and activities for that – collecting data/objects and organizing them via tagging or news feed, bookmarking, blogging, feedback opportunities, communication and collaboration between users, following and filtering interesting objects and users. Fourth part is about the relationships between the users and managing groups. Fifth section is about making business with social interfaces, application programming interfaces and going mobile.

In my opinion, the book could be beneficial for people studying social interface design, starting or already developing a social network or an extension to one. Authors describe the social objects (some media objects or things like calendar events) and the activities people can do with these objects or with one another, through social interfaces. I see it more as an encyclopaedia type of book used to find information about certain feature than a linear book.

In comparison to "Don't Make Me Think!" and "About Face 3", this book is more detailed about one certain field - the features and patterns. Therefore it seems to be a great addition or extension after reading the others.

Review of blue team

For reviewing the blue teams work I have browsed their campaign files and trac communication. It seems they had well organized work and comments on it. Their graphics were close to ours in the meaning they were processed images not created artwork for wesnoth criterias.

From the copyright problematic they had with the names of characters, I have not understood if it is a problem using existing copyrighted name but the images of the characters are perfectly fine to use. Or were those not in the category? The images are humorous as is the storyline.

Storyline and scenario use various combinations - like having a character to be used on your side if you have found it in the previous scenario or realising that one has killed a substitute to the character not the real one.

Report of Role and Contribution

Working in the red team of the open source management project was an experience that gave knowledge in variety of fields. The task was to develop a new scenario for the open source game the Battle for Wesnoth. We had a rather big group that needed strong organisation to start working and organise the tasks. The roles were divided - I was at first supposed to be one of programmers, which I chose myself. My role changed later on while at the moment our team was ready to program, I lost my laptop (it broke down) and was unable to contact the team.

So my role and contribution was mostly the design part - I was studying the way things work around Wesnoth with graphic files and I also learned the Wesnoth art and art forums, even though our characters were not done according to these guidelines.

I worked on the portraits and some icons as well as cooperated with Jindrich in the design questions while he was working on the maps. My other part of the contribution was in connection to the programmers. We were in skype conversation during the programming and I was searching for information to overcome the problems met and find solutions to the ideas we had. For that I also used browsing default codes and code of some other campaigns.

On the one hand we had complications in getting the work started and organize ourselves, but on the oher hand we finished the work and got different experiences through that. As everyone got more active we managed to divide the tasks so that the community work got better and better. Everyone worked on their piece and the collaboration was successful. So I did get the feeling of the community work as well.

Concerning the tool used - Wesnoth - I must say that I was not too exited about it, while it is a time consuming game and over all I have not been a game fan myself. I cannot bring an example but I guess there could be some alternative tool to get the idea and experience of open source management and community cooperation.

To summarize - I have worked together with the team, experienced the community cooperation and learned from both positive and negative sides of our team work organisation.

Ideastorming for Better Wesnoth Campaign Building: Artwork

The community of the Battle of Wesnoth is big and the forums have numerous topics and various subthemes. From my interest towards the graphical solutions and artwork I have searched for the ways the community works in this field. In the forums people post their artwork both in progress and finished and wait for critique towards it. There is a thorough post by development team on how to critique. I started from that and firstly would like to point out the skill set needed for being a good Wesnoth (and probably overall) designer:

(a) conceptual/stylistic judgement and design skills;
(b) a technical understanding of how to model aspects of reality eg. knowledge of human proportion, realistic lighting and perspective; and
(c) the ability to translate the concept and understanding into an artwork. eg. skill at drawing & ability to work a paint program.

The problematics of design derived from insufficiency in one of the above mentioned fields are illustrated and divided into levels. Understand your level of proficiency and notice hwo you should or should not critique.

It sounds a bit harsh and funny the way the author states: "Who should critique?: Someone with superior skill in the pertinent area (or subarea) only. Anyone else is incapable of providing useful advice." I guess it might happen that useful advice comes from anyone, but probably the author speaks of experience and it should be followed.

From all the points listed in the post about how to critique and how to take the critique, when to do it and when to drop it, I think it is very important to give out exact info on what do you think at which stage your work is, mention the problems you see yourself and ask upfront what would you like others to comment on precisely. This all helps make the communication more clear, faster and more practical.

As a coclusion. It seems to me the community is growing and evolving. There are lots of people putting their effort to the development and the community is working its ways to create the guidelines to go to a higher level of organisation in the campaign building process.

Cory Doctorow and His Business Model

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction writer, active blogger and an author known for his attitude towards digital ownership. He finds the laws limiting the spread of works and complicating the usage of products already owned by someone (i.e installing a product to another machine). He has published his works - the first one Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom in 2003- under different Creative Commons licenses which restrict the user from commercial derivates.

In his interview with Greg Grossmeier he reasoned his choise as follows:

“Not only does making my books available for free increase the number of sales that I get, but I also came to understand it artistically as a Science Fiction writer that if I was making work that wasn't intended to be copied, then I was really making contemporary work.”

His business model of publishing his works consists of free sharing of his books and stories, gaining fame with it and earning from everything else around his works. He earns from hardcover books, films, theatrical adaption, writing columns, giving speeches and many more. In Fawny blog following to a comment Doctorow has given to The Digitalist his high total estimate of income covering years 2008 and 2009 could be $622,750 as the low estimate is above $400,000. So they estimate his average income for a year between $200,000 and $300,000.

I find the strategy very nice while the cultural product itself can be purchised for no cost. On the one hand, audience gets to experience his creation and share it freely to others. On the other hand, the producers and commercial media channels can publish his ideas and work for money and the author with principals gets his share. The author also gets to keep his non-commercial and non-economical imago.

Companies Using Open Source as Business Strategy

Case study about three companies

Companies with open source business strategy take use of open source products and either gain their profit by providing the software and side services or using it as a part of their business. Using this strategy reduces research and development costs while the open source community does a lot of work that the company can use. The company wins from using open source products and the community whereas the clients profit from the cooperation between open source product and the service provider. This kind of companies have strong belief into open source communities.

Acquia is a company providing its clients with technical support and site monitoring for sites built upon open source platform Drupal. Acquia is not building the sites but helps to get started with Drupal. Drupal is an open source content management platform that allows its users to easily manage all sorts of web sites including community sites, e-commerce applications, blogs, personal sites and many more. Acquia uses Drupal in its business and needs it to be excellent, so they also give back to Drupal through fixing bugs, implementing missing features and writing documentation. Acquia works with the community of Drupal to solve variety of problems and therefore does not need to have all the resources inside the company.

Red Hat is the best known company using open source as its main business strategy. With being a strong competitor for proprietary software providers Red Hat has gained lots of critique but also fought aggressively against software patenting. Red Hat is world's leading open source and Linux provider. Its Open Source strategy provides customers with plan for building infrastructures that are based on open source technologies with focus on security and ease of management.

Another company using free software and commecial know-how is Canonical - the commercial sponsor for Ubuntu. Its mission lies in realising the potential of free software and supporting it through high quality professional services, input to its further development and community. Canonical offers full scale of commercial services to help businesses benefit from Ubuntu and Free Software. Among all services there is custom engineering, support, training and certification.

All above-mentioned companies use open source products for their business, they also carry the mission to support and develop open source software and contribute to the communities. On the same time they make profit, help other businesses profit from their services and also work for the ongoing innovation and free development of software as they find patenting slowing down the process.

Copyleft

What is copyleft and its variants?

Copyleft is characteristic of some free licencies for software, art, music or other creations. Copyleft has different versions according to the distribution and freedom terms attached to it. The types are strong, weak and non-copyleft. Work under strong copyleft license may not be used as a part of a project or work with other type of license that is not compatible with the strong copyleft. Weak copyleft on the other hand, allows linked works be licensed under other types of licenses whereas the changes made to the work under weak copyleft must be licensed as weak copyleft. Non-copyleft free licenses allow producing proprietary work.

The best known real-life example of strong copyleft is GNU Public License. Weak copyleft licensed example is GNU Lesser General Public License and also Mozilla Public License. The first use of non-copyleft license was with Berkeley Software Distribution for the first free Unix. From there on the license is often named BSD-like free license. Under this category is also Apache License.

The Battle for Westnoth first review

As asked in the Open Source Management course I have started to play The Battle for Westnoth a bit. I have got acquainted to it through the tutorials and also tried out some campaigns. The beginning was rather rough but I guess it is normal for an unexperienced player.

My first impression was not very positive as I am not a great fan of games like that at all. But what I was wrong about, was the way it really works. The idea that you can take as much time to think through your next step as you need was surprising. I thought that time matters. So I discovered that it gives a great challenge to strategical thinking.

The game has a set of characters and settings that form the whole thing and I need some more time to realise the possibilities and complexity of it. I will go on discovering the strategy and the possibilities in the game. After making bigger efforts to playing, I will try out some simple modifications in code and also designing new maps.

Even if not being such a fan of playing games, I am excited about the outcome of our team work as well as the whole course. The game and the additions or modifications to be done will surely be teaching us the OSM through a very realistic experience.

FSF vs OSI

Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiation - the two terms have evolved from the same principle - being against the proprietary software. While being on the same side in this matter, the two movements differ in basic principles. The FSF stresses the freedom and is therefore not willing to be connected to OSI from which mentioning freedom has dropped out.

There has been a lot of buzz around the terms used. Both movements question the choice of the other's name as they were confusing and not clearly presenting the main idea of the movement. "Open source" initiators proposed to replace free software with open source everywhere but Richard Stallman has been against it and insists on standing for the concept of freedom.

A difference also lies in the use of licenses - OSI has accepted some licenses that FSF would not approve. Nevertheless, the main contradiction is in the philosophy and other values besides the question which should the software development really look like.

All in all my opinion is that the movements aimed the same until one started fighting/standing for the idea of freedom and the other went more realistic and practical way to support the same type of software development. Free software is a social movement, open source is a development methodology and this makes the change between the way those movements act and which are their aims.

Aquarium MockUp

Interactive Digital TV Program II

Interactive TV show II - guide or direct the acrobats or for example dancers. It would be a cultural, artistic and also a study program. Normally there is action going on and a list of steps or elements (keywords) on the side with the phone number for texting.

As a keyword is sent by a viewer, the clip with according element or step is presented. Then, either the next element will be presented if there was another message, or the default improvisational show goes on.

There could be several shows with different styles (classical, street-dance, pop etc.) and in case of numerous messages a routine could be formed based on the sequence of "ordered" elements.

Interactive Digital TV - Program Concept

Peeter Oja and Piret Laurimaa on the TV3 show "Vilde Tee"

My solution here is an elaboration to the idea we worked out yesterday with Maibritt and Kirke. The task was to come up with an idea for interactive TV program and explain it through the functionality or flowchart, some possible show set and photos for illustrating the feeling of the show.

The show would be based on improvisational theater - actors on stage begin with some default play and will be guided by sentences given by for example show leader. The sentences will be shown on screen with phone numbers of each actor. The audience can then call or send a text message to vote which actor has to act the situation out.

I suppose there should be a time limit, maybe 1 minute, for voting. The results are also shown on screen live and as the time is up, the show will go on according to the vote results. Soon next sentence shall be on the screen.

On the mock-up there is the possible screen during the show. The time limit on left, text provided by the show and possible actors at the right. The layout needs to be reconsidered in case of more actors on stage.

While in search of a photo for describing the atmosphere of the show I became to another possible

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.