DFIM-CSS/Notes

Locative Media

2007-02-01T05:52:00.001-08:00

Locative Media are media of communication bound to a location. They are digital media applied to real places and thus triggering real social interactions. While mobile technologies such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), laptop computers and mobile phones enable locative media, they are not the goal for the development of projects in this field.

Media content is managed and organised externally of the device on a standard desktop or laptop. The device then downloads this formatted content with GPS coordinated triggers applied to each media sequence. As the location-aware device enters the selected area, satellites trigger the assigned media, designed to be of optimal relevance to the user and their surroundings. Location based media allows for the enhancement of any given environment offering explanation, analysis and detailed commentary on what the user is looking at through a combination of video, audio, images and text. The location-aware device can deliver interpretation of cities, parklands, heritage sites, sporting events or any other environment where location based media is required. The content production and pre-production are integral to the overall experience that is created and must have been performed with ultimate consideration of the location and the users position within that location. The media offers a depth to the environment beyond that which is immediately apparent, allowing revelations about background, history and current topical feeds.

The technology used in locative media projects is e.g. Global Positioning System (Tom Toms GPS), laptop computers, the mobile phone, Geographic Information System (GIS), Google Maps. Whereas GPS allows for the accurate detection of a specific location, mobile computers allow interactive media to be linked to this place. The GIS supplies arbitrary information about the geological, strategic or economic situation of a location. Google Maps give a visual representation of a specific place.

Art movements like Blast Theory is renowned internationally as one of the most adventurous artists' groups using interactive media. Led by Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj the group has a team of seven and is based in Brighton. The group's work explores interactivity and the relationship between real and virtual space with a particular focus on the social and political aspects of technology. It confronts a media saturated world in which popular culture rules, using video, computers, performance, installation, mobile and online technologies to ask questions about the ideologies present in the information that envelops us.

Participation

2007-02-01T05:08:00.000-08:00

Today participation has become a major factor in the field in which we wor. People are starting to use a variety of mediums for work and social reasons to help develope community.

YOUTUBE

YouTube is a popular free video sharing Web site which lets users upload, view, and share video clips. Founded in February 2005 by three employees of PayPal, the San Bruno-based service utilizes Adobe Flash technology to display video. The wide variety of site content includes movie and TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as videoblogging. Currently staffed by 67 employees, the company was named TIME magazine's "Invention of the Year" for 2006. In October 2006, Google, Inc., announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for $1.65 billion USD in Google's stock.

YouTube.com was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. Prior to PayPal, Hurley studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The domain name "YouTube.com" was activated on February 15, 2005, and the website was developed over the following months. The creators offered the public a preview of the site in May 2005, and six months later, YouTube made its official debut.

At present, YouTube is one of the fastest-growing websites on the World Wide Web,[9] and is ranked as the 10th most popular website on Alexa, far outpacing even MySpace's growth.[10] According to a July 16, 2006 survey, 100 million clips are viewed daily on YouTube, with an additional 65,000 new videos uploaded per 24 hours. The site has almost 20 million visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, where around 44% are female, 56% male, and the 12- to 17-year-old age group is dominant. Youtube's pre-eminence in the online video market is staggering. According to the website Hitswise.com, Youtube commands up to 64% of the UK online video market.

VOIP (Voice over internet protocol)

2007-02-01T04:57:00.000-08:00

Voice over Internet Protocol, also called VoIP, IP Telephony, Internet telephony, Broadband telephony, Broadband Phone and Voice over Broadband is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or through any other IP-based network.
Companies providing VoIP service are commonly referred to as providers, and protocols which are used to carry voice signals over the IP network are commonly referred to as Voice over IP or VoIP protocols. They may be viewed as commercial realizations of the experimental Network Voice Protocol (1973) invented for the ARPANET providers. Some cost savings are due to utilizing a single network to carry voice and data, especially where users have existing underutilized network capacity that can carry VoIP at no additional cost. VoIP to VoIP phone calls are sometimes free, while VoIP to PSTN may have a cost that's borne by the VoIP user.

There are two types of PSTN to VoIP services: DID (Direct Inward Dialing) and access numbers. DID will connect the caller directly to the VoIP user while access numbers require the caller to input the extension number of the VoIP user. Access numbers are usually charged as a local call to the caller and free to the VoIP user while DID usually has a monthly fee. There are also DIDs that are free to the VoIP user but chargeable to the caller.

Skype is a proprietary peer-to-peer Internet telephony network founded by the entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, also founders of the file sharing application Kazaa. It competes against existing open VoIP protocols such as SIP, IAX, and H.323. The Skype Group, acquired by eBay in October 2005, is headquartered in Luxembourg, with offices in London, Tallinn and Prague.

Skype has experienced rapid growth in both popular usage and software development since launch, both of its free and its paid services. The Skype communications system is notable for its broad range of features, including free voice and video conferencing, and its ability to use peer to peer (decentralized) technology to overcome common firewall and NAT (Network address translation) problems.

Doug Englebart and Ted Nelson

2007-02-01T04:22:00.000-08:00

Douglas Engelbart has always been ahead of his time, having ideas that seemed far-fetched at the time but later were taken for granted. For instance, as far back as the 1960s he was touting the use of computers for online conferencing and collaboration. Engelbart's most famous invention is the computer mouse, also developed in the 1960s, but not used commercially until the 1980s. Engelbart wanted to use technology to augment human intellect. He saw technology, especially computers, as the answers to the problem of dealing with the ever more complex modern world and has dedicated his life to the pursuit of developing technology to augment human intellect. Douglas Engelbart was born in 1925, in Oregon, where he grew up on a small farm. In 1942, he graduated high school and went to Oregon State University to study electrical engineering. His studies were interrupted by WWII. He joined the Navy and spent two years in the Philippines as a radar technician. While stationed in the Philippines he read Vannevar Bush's "As We may Think." Engelbart would later write to Bush acknowledging the influence Bush's article had had on his own work.

In 1968, at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, Engelbart demonstrated NLS in a 90 minute multimedia presentation that included a live video conference with staff members back in his lab 30 miles away. To this day, Engelbart's demo is still known as "the mother of all demos. Engelbart has continued to work on augmenting human intellect, seldom receiving the acknowledgement many believe he deserves. In 1989, he founded the Bootstrap Institute to foster high performance organizations by developing enabling technologies and promoting collaboration.

Ted Nelson is a somewhat controversial figure in the computing world. For thirty-something years he has been having grand ideas but has never seen them through to completed projects. His biggest project, Xanadu, was to be a world-wide electronic publishing system that would have created a sort universal libary for the people.He is known for coining the term "hypertext." He is also seen as something of a radical figure, opposing authority and tradition. He has been called "one of the most influential contrarians in the history of the information age. He often repeats his four maxims by which he leads his life: "most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong."

Nelson was raised by his grandparents in Greenwich Village, New York. His father is a movie director and his mother an actor. He had little contact with his father and almost none with his mother. He was lonely as a child and had problems caused by his Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Nelson attended Swarthmore college where he earned a BA in philosophy. In 1960, he enrolled in graduate school at Harvard. During his first year he attempted a term project creating a writing system similar to a word processor, but that would allow different versions and documents to be linked together nonlinearly, by association. This was, in part, an attempt to keep track of his own sometimes frantic associations and daydreamings brought about by his ADD.

XANADU

Nelson continued to expound his ideas, but he did not possess the technical knowledge to tell others how his ideas could be implemented, and so many people simply ignored him (and have ever since). Still, Nelson persisted. In 1967, he named his system XANADU, and with the help of interested, mainly younger, computer hacks continued to develop it.

Xanadu was concieved as a tool to preserve and increase humanity's literature and art. Xanadu would consist of a world-wide network that would allow information to be stored not as separate files but as connected literature. Documents would remain accessible indefinitely. Users could create virtual copies of any document. Instead of having copyrighted materials, the owners of the documents would be automatically paid via electronic means a micropayment for the virtual copying of their documents.

Xanadu has never been totally completed and is far from being implemented. In many ways Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web is a similar, though much less grand, system. In 1999, the Xanadu code was made open source.

Participation

2006-12-03T05:59:00.000-08:00

Today participation has become a major factor in the field in which we work. People are starting to use a variety of mediums for work and social reasons to help develope community.

YOUTUBE

YouTube is a popular free video sharing Web site which lets users upload, view, and share video clips. Founded in February 2005 by three employees of PayPal, the San Bruno-based service utilizes Adobe Flash technology to display video. The wide variety of site content includes movie and TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as videoblogging. Currently staffed by 67 employees, the company was named TIME magazine's "Invention of the Year" for 2006. In October 2006, Google, Inc., announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for $1.65 billion USD in Google's stock.

YouTube.com was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. Prior to PayPal, Hurley studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The domain name "YouTube.com" was activated on February 15, 2005, and the website was developed over the following months. The creators offered the public a preview of the site in May 2005, and six months later, YouTube made its official debut.

At present, YouTube is one of the fastest-growing websites on the World Wide Web,[9] and is ranked as the 10th most popular website on Alexa, far outpacing even MySpace's growth.[10] According to a July 16, 2006 survey, 100 million clips are viewed daily on YouTube, with an additional 65,000 new videos uploaded per 24 hours. The site has almost 20 million visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, where around 44% are female, 56% male, and the 12- to 17-year-old age group is dominant. Youtube's pre-eminence in the online video market is staggering. According to the website Hitswise.com, Youtube commands up to 64% of the UK online video market.

Sustainability

2006-12-03T05:51:00.000-08:00

Sustainability

Sustainability is an attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the indefinite future. It relates to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society, as well as the non-human environment. It is intended to be a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society, its members and its economies are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals in a very long term. Sustainability affects every level of organization, from the local neighborhood to the entire planet.

The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development expanded this definition identifying the "three overarching objectives of sustainable development" to be (1) eradicating poverty, (2) protecting natural resources, and (3) changing unsustainable production and consumption patterns.

Types of Sustainability

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has identified considerations for technical cooperation that affect three types of sustainability:

*Institutional sustainability.

Can a strengthened institutional structure continue to deliver the results of technical cooperation to end users? The results may not be sustainable if, for example, the planning authority that depends on the technical cooperation loses access to top management, or is not provided with adequate resources after the technical cooperation ends. Institutional sustainability can also be linked to the concept of social sustainability, which asks how the interventions can be sustained by social structures and institutions;

*Economic and financial sustainability.

Can the results of technical cooperation continue to yield an economic benefit after the technical cooperation is withdrawn? For example, the benefits from the introduction of new crops may not be sustained if the constraints to marketing the crops are not resolved. Similarly, economic, as distinct from financial, sustainability may be at risk if the end users continue to depend on heavily subsidized activities and inputs.

*Ecological sustainability.

Are the benefits to be generated by the technical cooperation likely to lead to a deterioration in the physical environment, thus indirectly contributing to a fall in production, or well-being of the groups targeted and their society. The United Nations has declared a Decade of Education for Sustainable Development starting in January of 2005. A non-partisan multi-sector response to the decade has formed within the U.S. via the U.S. Partnership for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. [2] Active sectors teams have formed for youth, higher education, business, religion, the arts, and more. Organizations and individuals can join in sharing resources and success stories, and creating a sustainable future.

Useful Links

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

Free, Open Wireless Networks

2006-12-03T05:42:00.000-08:00

Wireless community networks or wireless community projects are the largely hobbyist-led development of interlinked computer networks using wireless LAN technologies, taking advantage of the recent development of cheap, standardised 802.11b (Wi-Fi) devices to build growing clusters of linked, citywide networks, or in rural areas where conventional DSL services are unavailable. Some are being used to link to the wider Internet, particularly where individuals can obtain unmetered internet connections such as ADSL and/or cable modem at fixed costs and share them with friends. Where such access is unavailable or expensive, they can act as a low-cost partial alternative, as the only cost is the fixed cost of the equipment.

Such projects started to evolve in 1998 with the availability of 802.11 equipment, and are gradually spreading to cities and towns around the world. In mid-2002 most such networks have been still embryonic, with small groups of people experimenting and gradually interconnecting with each other and thus expanding the domain and utility of the networks. As of mid-2005, wireless community networks have become increasingly popular and exist throughout many cities. Such networks have a distributed rather than a tree-like topography and have the potential to replace the congested and vulnerable backbones of the wired internet in most places.

These projects are in many senses an evolution of amateur radio, and more specifically packet radio, as well as an outgrowth of the free software community (which in itself substantially overlaps with amateur radio), and share their freewheeling, experimental, adaptable culture. The key to using standard wireless networking devices designed for short-range use for multi-kilometre linkups is the use of high-gain antennas. Commercially-available examples are relatively expensive and not that readily available, so much experimentation has gone into homebuilt antenna construction. One striking design is the cantenna, which performs better than many commercial antenna designs and is constructed from a steel food can.
Most wireless community network projects are coordinated by citywide user groups who freely share information and help using the Internet. They often spring up as a grassroots movement offering free, anonymous Internet access to anyone with WiFi capability.

The community networks are different from wireless hotspots, which are usually put up for commercial purposes, often offering paid-for internet. It is also different from independent privately owned open wireless access points offering anyone within range free internet access.

Many of these community networks are run on a voluntary basis and can be compared to other voluntary groups focussed around local issues. Like other voluntary groups they have sometimes found their greatest challenges are not technical (e.g. developing affordable internet access in a local area) but social; encouraging and sustaining volunteer input, a critical mass of users, and devising a sustainable organisational model. Some groups have splintered as individual participants follow their own goals or found it difficult to maintain a user base when large corporate internet service suppliers have reduced the price of broadband connectivity and increased availability.

An alternative to the voluntary model is to use a co-operative structure. This is the model which has been encouraged by Community Broadband Network in the UK. A successful example is Norwich where they have made their city centre a wireless free network. User can connect to the internet for up to 60 minutes for free, they will then automatically sign out after their time is up but they can easily reconnect to stay online for longer.

The gadget show on channel 5 has recently launched a UK campain to try and get a free open wireless networks in every major UK city. For more onfo you can go here

http://gadgetshow.five.tv/campaign/wifi/

Other Important Links

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

Stars of CCTV

2006-12-03T05:38:00.000-08:00

Closed-circuit television (CCTV) is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific, limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly transmitted, though it may employ point to point wireless links. CCTV is often used for surveillance in areas which need security, such as banks, casinos, and airports or military installations. Increasing use of CCTV in public places has caused debate over public security versus privacy. In industrial plants, CCTV equipment may be used to observe parts of a process that are remote from a control room, or where the environment is not comfortable for humans. CCTV systems may operate continuously or only as required to monitor a particular event.

The first CCTV system was installed at Test Stand VII in Peenemünde in 1942, for observing the launch of V2-rockets. CCTV recording systems are often used at launch sites to record the flight of the rockets, in order to find the possible causes of malfunctions. Film cameras are also used for this purpose. Larger rockets are often fitted with CCTV allowing pictures of stage separation to be transmitted back to earth by radio link. CCTV is also used to observe the launch pad before the launch, especially when no person may be there, because of safety reasons.

Many cities and motorway networks have extensive traffic-monitoring systems, using closed-circuit television to detect congestion and notice accidents. The London congestion charge is enforced by cameras positioned at the boundaries of and inside the congestion charge zone, which automatically read the registration plates of cars. If the driver does not pay the charge then a fine will be imposed. Similar systems are being developed as a means of locating cars reported stolen.

Opponents of CCTV point out the loss of privacy of the people under surveillance, and the negative impact of surveillance on civil liberties. Furthermore, they argue that CCTV displaces crime, rather than reducing it. Critics often dub CCTV as "Big Brother surveillance", a reference to George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which featured a two-way telescreen in every home through which The Party would monitor the populace.

CCTV has also recently been used to aid media attention in the celebrity world with such shows like Big Brother where for around three months, a number of contestants (normally fewer than fifteen at any one time) try to win a cash prize by avoiding periodic publicly-voted evictions from a communal house. The show, a kind of 'real life soap'. YouTube a popular free video sharing website which lets users upload, view, and share video clips has also taken advantage of this technology.

P2P File Sharing

2006-12-03T05:32:00.000-08:00

A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies primarily on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively low number of servers. P2P networks are typically used for connecting nodes via largely ad hoc connections. Such networks are useful for many purposes. Sharing content files (see file sharing) containing audio, video, data or anything in digital format is very common, and realtime data, such as telephony traffic, is also passed using P2P technology.

A pure peer-to-peer network does not have the notion of clients or servers, but only equal peer nodes that simultaneously function as both "clients" and "servers" to the other nodes on the network. This model of network arrangement differs from the client-server model where communication is usually to and from a central server. A typical example for a non peer-to-peer file transfer is an FTP server where the client and server programs are quite distinct, and the clients initiate the download/uploads and the servers react to and satisfy these requests.

The earliest peer-to-peer network in widespread use was the Usenet news server system, in which peers communicated with one another in order to propagate Usenet news articles over the entire Usenet network. Particularly in the earlier days of Usenet, UUCP was used to extend even beyond the Internet. However, the news server system also acted in a client-server form when individual users accessed a local news server in order to read and post articles.

Some networks and channels, such as Napster, OpenNAP, or IRC @find, use a client-server structure for some tasks (e.g., searching) and a peer-to-peer structure for others. Networks such as Gnutella or Freenet use a peer-to-peer structure for all purposes, and are sometimes referred to as true peer-to-peer networks, although Gnutella is greatly facilitated by directory servers that inform peers of the network addresses of other peers.

Peer-to-peer architecture embodies one of the key technical concepts of the internet, described in the first internet Request for Comments, "RFC 1, Host Software" [1] dated 7 April 1969. More recently, the concept has achieved recognition in the general public in the context of the absence of central indexing servers in architectures used for exchanging multimedia files.

The concept of peer to peer is increasingly evolving to an expanded usage as the relational dynamic active in distributed networks, i.e. not just computer to computer, but human to human. Yochai Benkler has developed the notion of commons-based peer production to denote collaborative projects such as free software. Associated with peer production are the concept of peer governance (referring to the manner in which peer production projects are managed) and peer property (referring to the new type of licenses which recognize individual authorship but not exclusive property rights, such as the GNU General Public License and the Creative Commons License).