Presentation for Contemporary Contextual Studies

Instead of extending one of my blogs into a presentation, I have decided to look at an different subject.

Machinima (pronounced Machine-ama)

VOIP Session Notes

VOIP or Voice over Internet Protocol, IP Telephony, Internet telephony, Broadband telephony, Broadband Phone and Voice over Broadband is a way of routing voice conversations (talking on the phone) over the Internet or through any other IP-based network.

Typical Applications for making VOIP Calls

Skype
Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. With Skype you can talk to anyone, anywhere. And if you are both on Skype, it’s free.
It is available in 27 languages and is used in almost every country around the world. They generate revenue through its premium offerings such as making and receiving calls to and from landline and mobile phones, as well as voicemail and call forwarding.

Other features
You can send SMS messages, see who you are calling and be seen with video calling, chat with IM instant messaging.

Free Features
• Calling other people on Skype
• Video calls on Skype
• One-to-one and group chats
• Conference calls with up to 5 people
• Forwarding calls to other Skype names

Sipgate

• Sipgate is a free Internet telephone service provider.
• Sipgate is like a fixed line ...
• Real phone numbers across the country
• Conversations in perfect ISDN quality
• Call to and from every telephone in the world

No need for the PC, just use your normal phone

Usability features

• Calls from 0 p/min
• No basic costs, no setup costs, no minimum balance
• Comfort & functionality i.e. voicemail service, itemised billing entries, calls list
• Additional possibilites: Calling from your PC with free software from sipgate
• Useable from almost any broadband connection in the world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VoIP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_VoIP_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VoIP_Providers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_VoIP
http://blog.voipally.com/2006/07/25/wifi-phones-for-skype-and-sip-available-now-but-be-careful-what-you-buy/
http://www.whitedust.net/article/30/VoIP%20Security:%20Uncovered/
http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/helloagain.html

session six: doug englebart & Ted Nelson

Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart is an American inventer of German descent who is best known as the as the inventor of the computer mouse, alongside Bill English.

Engelbart reasoned that the state of our current technology controls our ability to manipulate information, and that fact in turn will control our ability to develop new, improved technologies. He thus set himself to the revolutionary task of developing computer-based technologies for manipulating information directly, and also to improve individual and group processes for knowledge-work. Engelbart's philosophy and research agenda is most clearly and directly expressed in the 1962 research report which Engelbart refers to as his 'bible':Augmenting Human Intellect: A conceptual Framework. The concept of network augmented intelligence is attributed to Engelbart based on this pioneering work.

Theodor Holm Nelson is an American sociologist, self styled philosopher , and pioneer of information technology. He coined the term "hypertext" in 1963 and published it in 1965. He also is credited with first use of the words hypermedia, transclusion, virtuality, intertwingularity and teledildonics. The main thrust of his work has been to make computers easily accessible to ordinary people. His motto is:

A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.

Ted Nelson promotes four maxims: "most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong".

Nelson founded Project Xanadu in 1960 with the goal of creating a computer network with a simple user interface. The effort is documented in his 1974 book Computer Lib/Dream Machines and the 1981 Literary Machines. Much of his adult life has been devoted to working on Xanadu and advocating it, dispite the fact that vit has failed to flourish.

http://dfim-ccs.blogspot.com/2006/11/session-six-doug-englebart-ted-nelson.html
http://dfim-ccs.blogspot.com/2006/11/seminar-six-englebart-nelson.html
Watched Ted Nelson movie interview - Maverick - Rows and Columns - Article in Scientific America (Cosmology for the computer era) - Xerox Park mentality 74/76 - in California developed Doug Engleberts ideas, resarch and developments lab - Zig zag simple programming language - Failed Zanadoo project article in wired - Ted Nelson ADD Attention Deficiency Disorder - MOMEX System.

Session 7 VIOP
http://dfim-ccs.blogspot.com/2006/11/session-7-voip-voice-over-ip.html

Locative Aware Services-Locative Media

Locative media is a truly location specific medium. It can bring users out of the office or classroom and deliver the spatial qualities of information to where they have relevance (space specific). Not only does it refer to all the information in the physical location but to other contextual cues as well.

Many of the various locative media projects researched have concentrated on social interaction with a place and with technology and have a social critical or personal background.

The types of technology that enable locative media are; (GPS) Global Positioning Systems, laptop computers, Palm computers (PDA’s) Personal Digital Assistants, Mobile Phones, Bluetooth and Satellite Navigation Software.

Whilst these technologies are the catalysts for locative media, they are not the goal for the development of projects in this area of research. Rather

"Locative media is many things: A new site for old discussions about the relationship of consciousness to place and other people. A framework within which to actively engage with, critique, and shape a rapid set of technological developments. A context within which to explore new and old models of communication, community and exchange. A name for the ambiguous shape of a rapidly deploying surveillance and control infrastructure." (Russell, 2004)

Context-aware computing represents a relatively new area of research. Context awareness means gathering information from the environment to provide a measure of what is currently going on around the user and the device. Activities and content that are particularly relevant to that environment can then be made available. Mobile devices are especially well suited to context-aware applications simply because they are available in
different contexts, and so can draw on those contexts to enhance the learning activity. Context-aware mobile devices can support learners by allowing a learner to maintain their attention on the world and by offering appropriate assistance when required.

The museum and gallery sector has been on the forefront of context-aware mobile computing by providing additional information about exhibits and displays based on the visitor’s location within them.

Partitipation session notes

Web 2.0, stumbleupon.com, delicious, useit, sitepoint.com, istumbler-bluetooth
http://dfim-ccs.blogspot.com/2006/10/seminar-four-participation.html
session 5 location aware services/locative media
software and systems that are aware of their locations. Google-earth-maps-multimap. Tom Tom how do they use maps.
Follow Taff Trial no these maps
phones know where they are so you can ask for services near it eg cinemas, banks
Commercial services
Locative media - art term
"The shape of locative media" MUTE by Simon Pope
GPS-Smartphones services
HP USA
Create-a-scape
How stuff works phone technology
Japanese phone GPS
Schengen zone at airports
degree confluence project.
http://dfim-ccs.blogspot.com/2006/10/session-five-location-aware-services.html

Participation

People are starting to participate with work in our field in a variety of ways.

YouTube is one of those mediums that you participate with twofold, not only can anyone watch videos on it but anyone can post videos to it as well. It is a place on the web where you can engage in new ways with video by sharing, commenting on, and viewing. If nobody participated in these ways then YouTube would be as redundant as the shelves at a Betamax video store.

The National Trust is encouraging people to record a diary of their day (the 17th of October 2006) on a website, as part of what is being called "Britain's biggest blog". They are trying to get people to participate and help create a “fascinating social history” archive of everyday life for future generations. People who want to contribute to the project have until the 31st of October 2006 to upload their accounts of the 17th of October 2006.
As you can see from the above examples these new forms of audience participation are nothing without your contributions. The artists of the work are in essence now conductors of a multi varied canvas.

In terms of the work I want to produce I could make use of the YouTube technology to have visitors upload video blogs of their experiences at the memorial sites they have been to.


http://www.art-themagazine.com/pages/tokyo2.htm
http://www.artinteractive.org/curatorial.php
http://www.chapter.org/7088.html
http://www.youtube.com/t/about
http://video.google.co.uk/video_about.html
http://www.historymatters.org.uk/output/page96.asp
http://www.myspace.com/Modules/Common/Pages/AboutUs.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About
http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/361871/jakob-nielsen-s-tips-on-increasing-community-participation.html
http://technokitten.blogspot.com/2006/01/participation-tv-as-part-of-mobile.html

Sustainability

On November 29th 2006 The Green Awards For Creativity In Sustainability are being held at The London Guild Hall. The reason for these awards is to spotlight brands and organizations that have demonstrated their commitment to sustainable development in a creative and effective way using various marketing and media platforms.

The awards are open to all types of businesses in both the public and private sectors who are willing to nominate themselves. The event is supported by The United Nations Environment Programme(UNEP), Media Guardian, City of London, Marketing Week and CSR Wire.

"The overall objectives for the Green Awards are as follows:

• To recognise and reward outstanding creative work that communicates sustainability.
• To set the agenda for brands to brief agencies to include CSR within the creative process.
• To create a forum for how the media can help solve some of the environmental issues in a creative way.
• To develop the notion of 'Reform Advertising' i.e. advertising which includes environmental and social considerations during its planning and execution."

What they have to say about the reasons for the awards are “Today brands and organisations built on strong ethical and environmental credentials are becoming more influential across sectors as diverse as banking and retail, to food and pharmaceuticals. Marketeers and communications experts understand only too well the strong link between corporate reputation and customer trust, which in turn feeds through into brand strength and an organisations public positioning.

According to Mori, 82% of consumers want companies to make more effort to show what social, environmental and fair trade activities they are engaged in. The good news is that many businesses and corporations today see social and environmental issues as being critical to their overall success.”

The field that we work in ideally placed to encourage innovation in sustainable development, by

• practicing greener lifestyles,
  
• using energy efficient devices,
  
• producing our own green energy via solar panels and wind turbines,
  
• fitting in to our environment,
  
• encouraging social interaction eg blogs,
• recycling technologies,
  
• producing less waste heavy and toxic products,
  
• putting people first.

http://www.greenawards.co.uk/
http://www.csr.gov.uk/index.shtml
http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability
http://www.leeds.gov.uk/sustain/
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,,1924434,00.html
http://www.hydrogeneration.co.uk/intro.htm
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/contentlookup.cfm?ucidparam=20060918141449
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4445060.stm#
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6040536.stm
http://laptop.org/

wireless networks review

Looked at bluejacking but simons software wasn't able to communicate properly with our phones.
pico net
The cloud wireless in jukeboxes
Use blimps or balloons to broadcast wireless networks
pringles can antenae
MESH AP

Free, Open Wireless Networks

Seeing that I live in a small part (Rhoose Point) of a small village (Rhoose) on the edge of Cardiff (Rhoose) Wales Airport I thought I’d try to find out how many wireless networks there are in a this small rural area.

To start with I have a wireless network on NETGEAR shared between 2 laptops, which is open and free to use for anyone who wants to try.

Looking from home I found closed networks on BTVOYAGER a network called HORACE and one called SABAD. I then drove round the village with my laptop and found several networks - cxl-wifi, another BTVOYAGER, belkin54g, SABSW, NETGEAR, HILLNET, Livebox-2FAD, WANADOO-550D, linksy_nth, and at Cardiff Wales Airport BT Openzone.

Out of the above only 3 are open wireless networks free to use by anyone who finds them and the others are all secure. The exception to this is the network at the airport which uses BT Openzone. To use this you have to buy access time, walk into a hotspot, which could be a train station, café, shopping centre, restaurant/bar or airport open your wireless laptop or PDA, and connect to the internet using wireless broadband. Although not free to use it does give you access to thousands of public hotspots in the UK and tens of thousands global hotspots worldwide.

A completely free wireless network would allow people greater access to the internet no matter what their income and would create greater mobility of use for laptops and PDA’s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1707753,00.html
http://www.nycwireless.net/articles
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/technology/05wireless.html?ex=1299214800&en=de3c127408552e0a&ei=5089
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warchalking
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/wireless/0,39020348,39195421,00.htm

CCS Notes

notes for ccs taken by Kirsty

Chatted about what info we’d found out about peer-to –peer

Napster or a link – unstructured – p2p
Tapestry – structured p2p

Discreet (closed to outside world) networks for specialised areas
Another social network

History of internet – internet is simply inter networks –

How computer networks mirrored social net

6% of separation we’re all only 6 connections away from each other

Trace through address books 6 times to get to who you want

Hub
http://www.flickr.com/blog.gne?photo=258439096

Small world theory

The hub would be the most likely to know others in different groups

GOOGLE – searches Documents are most trustworthy if there are lots of links to them

Dark net (underground)

Nutella napster – issues behind them p2p – legal issues

List of companies of people are not happy with p2p
E.g. Sony, MGM

Copydex – underground movement – giving music away free
Embrace – play to enjoy music not to make money – hold secret gigs
Don’t believe in the copyright for music – just on name

Pre internet copyright movement

Music Industry

Producers (view) - people listening , merchandising, press & promotions,
How to get known
PureVolume – can lead to record deals
My space –

Distributors – charge – approx 50% of profits

Strategy of promotion
Merchandising
Maintaining brand of the band
Most of the revenue is through merchandising and live events
Self Distribution
Internet promotion
Pod casts
I Tunes 99p download
New bands have pop up of samples
Frattellis
Mass protest against record companies (people power)
Donate money to the band
Using the networks to promote
E.g. DJ’s / bands if you listen \ download a set and you like them you’ll be likely to pay to go and see there next gig/ dj set


Technical p2p
Social p2p
Cultural impact
Marketing – Significant word of mouth


In a peer 2peer networks if you can find the hub you can contact them for their contacts

If you want something rare important it is hard to get into the closed social networks
Spys undercove

Contempory Contextual Studies 2

Kirsty took notes of this session and Simon recorded it to put on a podcast. We talked about what we'd found out about P2P networks.
6 degrees of seperation, we are only 6 steps away from knowing each other-Small world theory.
Next blog to be on : Stars of CCTV

www.ubermatic.org/life/

P2P File Sharing

P2P

Peer to peer (P2P) software allows the sharing of files between computer users. Files can be shared between users without the hassle of having to email them.
One of the earliest P2P file sharing systems was Napster. Users connected to one of a many servers from which they could obtain files, which had been made available by the other users.

The latest generation of P2P "systems" (e.g. Grokster, Streamcast, KaZaA) are far less centralized Napster was. There are no centralized servers; rather users download software (normally free), which effectively turns each user's computer into its own separate Internet server, creating a totally decentralized system.

P2P on Kazaa

Kazaa uses P2Ptechnology. This means that individual users connect to each other directly, without need for a central point of management.

All you need to do is install Kazaa and it will connect you to other Kazaa users.

Overview of the legal issues.

Loosely speaking, you are not infringing copyright by just using P2P software. This is because the software is, in most cases, made available freely by the owners of copyright in circumstances giving rise to an implied license. Of course, if this is not the case then the mere use of the software without license may infringe copyright.
Nor will the use of P2P to share files involve a copyright infringement where the owner of copyright in the material being shared has consented to this.
In our case (me, lecturers and my peers) we may use P2P to share our work (these blogs) in order that others can provide critical comment and evaluation.
It is the use of P2P to share or trade copyright works without the consent or license of the copyright owner that has the potential to give rise to an action for infringement of copyright.

http://www.grokster.com/
http://www.kazaa.com/us/index.htm
http://www.streamcastnetworks.com/FullPress-vs.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grokster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/4104827.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/imp/

Contempory Contextual Studies 1

Start of a new course having previously been on a HND in Bridgend and already a day behind with my blog (this is the entry for yesterday). Simon talked about peer to peer networks, copyright-creative commons, located media (google earth), sustainable development.
Report on various assignments are going to be in the form of online blogs like this one.
Journal - 1. Identify - Examples
2. Describe -URLs/Source
3. Analysis - grouping
4. Evaluation - Criteria -(you, other/society, field of interactive media)
www.charade.org.uk
creativearchive
spope@uwic.ac.uk