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)

Week 4: The Case for Copyright Reform

Nowadays copyright violation and piracy is really a hot topic. From one side authors who produce their products for commercial purposes want to receive money for it and from other users who can easily download these products due to technology development and use them without any payment. In The Case for Copyright Reform book wrote by Rick Falkvinge and Christian Engströmi, it is proposed to use below solutions:

• Moral Rights Unchanged
• Free Non-Commercial Sharing
• 20 Years Of Commercial Monopoly
• Registration After 5 Years
• Free Sampling
• A Ban On DRM

I find these solutions logical and would agree with them. The thing is that it is really hard to verify what kind of contents users are sending to each other without an invasion of privacy what would mean violation of fundamental rights, such as freedom of information and private communication. And it doesn't seem that any restrictions taken by authors can solve this problem, as users will find a way to circumvent it.

Week 3: Network and information society

In “Challenges of the global information society” raport (2004.) Finnish philosopher Dr. Pekka Himanen gives an overview of technology and economy models for three leading regions – United Stated, Asia and Europe and talks about the future of the Finnish and European information society. According to Dr. Himanen developed countries should rely on creativity and competence in order to increase productivity through innovations, it is not possible to compete with countries with low tax rates in routine jobs and routine productions. His arguments seems logical and I agree with them. Europe should take the right direction for development in order to be competitive and independent. But implementing this will take a lot of time. Changes should be done on government level first in plans of development. Also the way of thinking should be changed.

Week 2: New media

Web search engines 

Nowadays, technology is changing extremely fast and you can hardly predict how it will transform society in 20-30 years. Things are getting more convenient and simpler and some tasks, that took a good amount of time a few decades ago now can be fulfilled in a couple of seconds. Information searching by web search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, Aol Search etc., can be a good example. In most cases, there is no more need to go and search for the right book in library or a book shop and browse it's contents for some kind of information. Just send a request to a search engine and get information in some seconds. Also search engines are used by companies, who want to be in top of search results and get clients and popularity. For me it is really hard to imagine life without Google nowadays.

Week 1: Tech failures

Nexus Q

Nexus Q is not-mobile digital media player, that was developed by Google. On June 27, 2012 this device was originally announced. The reason why this media player failed badly is it's high price and lack of streaming options comparing to alternative devices. Nexus Q streams from Google Play and YouTube only and there is no options to play from other media servers like Netflix, Hulu Plus or an attached drive. Most similar media devices are much cheaper and provide more functionality. New York Time's technology columnist David Progue wrote about this "It’s wildly overbuilt for its incredibly limited functions, and far too expensive. For now, I can think of only one class of customer who should consider buying the black Nexus Q sphere: people whose living rooms are dominated by bowling-ball collections."

 Nintendo Virtual Boy

The Virtual Boy is a 32-bit 3D video game console, developed by Nintendo. It was released in 1995 and discontinued next year on March 2, 1996. Virtual boy failed for many reasons, some of them are high price, poor marketing campaign, discomfort and painful physiological symptoms while playing.
Although Nintendo had promised a real virtual reality experience, in fact it was weak red and black monochrome graphics, that hardly gave any feeling of immersion. Howard Lincoln, the chairman of Nintendo of America said, that the Virtual Boy "just failed."

Nice Virtual Boy review below:) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyVAp0tOk5A

 

Sony Tablet P

The Sony Tablet P was released in November 2011. Due to it's unique clamshell design with a big black hinge splitting up the screen in 2 parts thereby increasing portability, this device failed badly. It was awkward to play games, read or browse internet on such screen, so the whole experience became a mess.

By the end of 2012 this device was taken off from Sony's American website.