Week 11: Assistive Technology

Single-switch access

Single-switch access is used by people with very limited mobility. If a person can only move his head, then this switch can be put near head, so it would be possible to click and navigate using this switch with head movements. This allows a person to navigate through the computer system.

Large Print Bluetooth Mini Keyboard

This keyboard was designed for vision impaired and mature aged iPad and iPhone users. It has big buttons and big sharp letters, which are easy to see. This helps to reduce eye strain. The keyboard uses Bluetooth technology, so it can be connected to any Bluetooth compatible device.


I was suprised how big the prices are for these kind of devises.

Week 10: Hackers

This week's task is to describe an IT-project, which is done by people with “hacker's” mind-set. According to Steven Raymond hacker is someone, who has strong skills and knowledges in the field where he is dealing. As opposed to crackers, hackers build things, solve problems and believe in freedom and voluntary mutual help. There are many free analogues to operation systems and programs with commerce purpose, that have been done by people with hacker's mind-set. One of the most significant for me is Linux. Linus Torvalds started to build this project by himself, to make a truly free Unix-like operation system. Nowadays Linux is a free open-source project and a lot of people working on it every day. It is used in many areas: on desktop computers, as a platform for other operation systems, on servers and super computers... I recently installed Ubuntu on my laptop and didn't regret about it.

Week 9: Digital enclosure

Every minute 100 hours of video are uploaded to youtube, 800+ million daily active users in facebook, 280+ monthly active users in twitter and users of other social media share a great amount of information about themselves. Devices that are connected to “Internet of Things” share information about it's users. All this data is being gathered and stored into cloulds. It is not a secret, that this information is being analyzed by companies for statistics which can then be distributed to marketing companies, advertising and government.

I personally do not like the fact, that primary purpose of this system is to make profit on customers and that my information is being collected unknowingly, so i choose carefully what information I share.

Week 8: Virginia Shea rules of Netiquette

Virginia Shea rules of Netiquette are as below:


1. Remember the human
2. Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life
3. Know where you are in cyberspace
4. Respect other people's time and bandwidth
5. Make yourself look good online
6. Share expert knowledge
7. Help keep flame wars under control
8. Respect other people's privacy
9. Don't abuse your power
10. Be forgiving of other people's mistakes


Rule nr. 6 Share expert knowledge.

I am very grateful to the people who share their knowledges and experiences. I follow many thematic blogs, news sites from IT, computer science, to business and politics and listen to podcasts where top specialists and experts are discussing the latest events and issues. Knowledge sharing is very important and thanks to the internet, it is done very fast nowadays. These people make an invaluable contribution to the society.

Week 7: It Proff?

As IT filed is one of the fastest developing and constantly changing fields nowadays, I would say, that IT professional is a person who constantly dealing with self-development, has great IT skills, deep interest and knowledges. This person has to follow up ethical principles and not to use his skills in destructive activities.

Week 6: Ergonomics

Mozilla Firefox

The positive example in terms of ergonomics can be Mozilla Firefox web browser. For me it is the most convenient web browser, that provides great flexibility. It can be customized according to the needs. User interface is done very well. There are a lot of useful extensions also, that may add to your browser more functionality. “Firefox was named the ”speed king” in independent benchmark and performance tests against other browsers”.

Windows 8

The negative example is Windows 8, which may be good for tablets or some other touch devices, but not the best solution for a laptop or home PC. As old habits die hard, for many users it was hard to get used to the new design and user interface without beloved Start button, so many went back to Windows 7.

Week 5: Three examples of license choise and its infuence on a project

Linux

Linux main difference from other operating systems is that Linux is free and open-source software under GPL license, which means that anyone can study, share, copy, modify it for free and use it commercially or non-commercially. Due to this strategy Linux has achieved big popularity. Nowadays it has a lot of distributions, it is a leading operating system on servers and supercomputers. Even one of the main mobile operating systems such as Android is based on it. Hardly Linux could achieve such popularity if it was payment-based from the beginning.

Gimp

Gimp is a free and open source (under GNU GPL license) graphics editor, that is used for image editing. It is a good alternative for Adobe Photoshop for those, who do not want to pay for this kind of software. GIMP is powerful user friendly software with a good functionality and free updates due to what GIMP won a lot of users.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is a free and open source office suite under LGPLv3 license. It is the default office suite of most Linux distributions, it is also developed for Microsoft Windows and OS X. In comparison with Microsoft Office, for me LibreOffice is less comfortable to use and has lack of functionality. But as LibreOffice is free and provides base functionality it got a lot of users (around 25 million downloads in 2013)