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The EU doesn't get the internets

Why?

Firstly because they still feel they need to fight piracy, and secondly they feel the need to implement a 'Virtual Schengen Border', an European internetfilter. And third, which is in my opinion the most moronic; the anti-cookie law, because cookies are used to track consumers for marketing goals the EU feels the need to make the use of cookies very annoying for visitors of websites.

What?

What they're obviously missing is that websites are stateless, so unless your goal is to cripple the internets it's better to look at more intelligent alternatives, like Do not track. Forcing the user to confirm every cookie is like shooting at a fly with the death star.

Another example is today's attempts to regulate the internet by giving governments more control over it, claiming it is to protect citizens but in effect it is more like an attempt to gain the ability to censure material more effectively.

How?

Instead of fighting the current the EU should try to understand the nature of the internet and how vital it is to keep it open and free of censorship. You cannot condemn the use of such technologies in the middle east and at the same time strive to have such technology yourself. Let's hope that coming generations who grew up with the internet will understand it better and instead of trying to ruin it with silly legislation.

#mediause #piracy #censorship #cookie

ARTificial Intelligence - Prof. Dr. Eric Postma teaches about Artificial Intelligence at the University of Tilburg, one of his recent studies focuses on using computer vision techniques to detect fake paintings. In this interview we discuss this study as well as other topics that he works on that go beyond using computer vision for just paintings. One of these techniques is Facial Expression Recognition, to allow the computer to detect the nonverbal cues that humans make while interacting. One of the goals is to allow computers to engage in a nonverbal dialog with the user. For those interested in AI and Computer Vision be sure to check out the interview! For more information about Prof. Dr. Postma and what he's currently working on take a look at; http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/nl/webwijs/show/?uid=e.o.postma

#AI #Art #Computer Vision #Intelligence

Sharing Knowledge freely; Open Books.

Why?

As I explained in a post a while back about how Piracy is Great, publishing your book for free, online, can actually boost the sales of the printed copy. But it also comes closer to the true goal of books, to share and spread knowledge and information. By sharing your knowledge with others you can boost innovation, simply because many minds can come up with more, and better, ideas than only a few minds.

What?

There are some great examples of free books, Clever Algorithms for one, a book that I've ordered and which I'm currently reading. Which discusses different algorithms for a variety of problems and shows an implementation of the algorithms in Ruby. Another book I'm currently reading is Learn you a Haskell for Great Good!, which is a great (and hilarious) introduction to Haskell.

A good repository for Open Books is the O'Reilly Open Books Project, which has a great variety of books published under various forms of "open" copyrights.

Interestingly enough most Open Books are books covering topics associated with Computer Science. It seems we geeks are ahead of the wave once again!

How?

In my post To License or to Unlicense? I discussed some licenses, but a a widely used source for licenses for open books seem to be the Creative Commons.

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.

So share your knowledge and maximize innovation instead of limiting the availability and as such reducing the people exposed to your book!

#mediause #Open Books #Unlicense #Open Source

Don't interrupt the flow, unobtrusive design

Why?

Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book, accurately named 'Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience'.

Especially in gaming people can achieve Flow, games have a lot of goals one can achieve, with build-in reward mechanisms. These goals combined with the need for focus, one cannot be successful in video games without concentrating. All factors contributing to flow.

What?

Two games that implement quite a bit of unobtrusive design features are Assassin's creed and Mirror's Edge. Let's start with Mirror's Edge, take a look at the image below. Quite distinctively there are red objects throughout the image, these objects help you navigate through it, clearly displayed in this trailer. The player doesn't have to look around for signs or textual directions, the flow isn't interrupted, instead the next target is obvious and you can keep going.

As mentioned, Assassin's Creed also have some unobtrusive design elements, perhaps the game play isn't as centered around it as it is in Mirror's Edge, but they're still very good examples!

In Assassin's Creed there are certain high up locations from where the player can explore a part of the map, viewpoints. These viewpoints are marked by an eagle either sitting on it, or flying around it, as pictured below.

The eagles fit in perfectly with the game, and when one isn't looking for them you won't notice them but when you are they're very easy to find. Great design!

Another feature in Assassin's Creed is the Leap of Faith, where the player dives off a tower/building into a pile of hay. However when you're in a high speed pursuit, you cannot first check if there is a pile of hay and then jump. So solve this issue the designers put pigeons on the edges of buildings from where the player can jump.

Another example of great design, they sit in so well with the game and yet are still very informative to the player all in a natural manner. Of course this does not mean everything in Assassin's Creed is like this, and perhaps this isn't even a bad thing. But I prefer eagles and pigeons over quirky arrows and icons, despite how informative they might be.

How?

These examples show how unobtrusive design can be implemented in a natural and game improving way. These things can also be implemented in regular user interfaces, as the website littlebigdetails.com shows. Of course there are a lot of differences between game interfaces and application user interfaces, but that shouldn't stop anyone from trying to make their interface intuitive and self-explanatory to use.

#mediause #design #unobtrusive #unobtrusive design

Finding requirements, why is it so hard?

Why?

I have done many projects, and as expected, every last one of them had specific requirements. That however does not mean the definition of them we used was very specific. Actually the requirements were described quite inaccurate, no matter if it were database, interface or software designs. But this isn't (just) a case of sloppy work, accurately defining requirements is just REALLY hard.

Imagine a tailor. Measuring his customers, their chest, back, legs and arms. Tailors measure everything, they gather exact numbers. And guess what? These numbers are requirements, and they're exact. So why can't this be done for IT projects, or other 'business' projects?

I'd like to play the complexity card here and pretend that it's not our fault, it's the project. But that's simply not true, because the complexity can be reduced by dividing the projects in smaller chunks, chunking.

So the complexity can be tackled, and we know that we can accurately define the requirements for less complex projects (Though I am not in any way saying making tailor made clothing is easy ;). So why is it still so hard, what can we do?

What?

To accurately define requirements one needs to explore the domain to get an overview of what matters, what doesn't how things are connected. But this is quite hard without submerging yourself in the domain and thus losing your perspective. So how can we keep our fresh perspective but still learn enough about the domain to accurately define the requirements.

How?

One of the things I came across not too long ago is contextual task analysis.

The Contextual Task Analysis (CTA) focuses on the behavioral aspects of a task, resulting in an understanding of the general structure and flow of task activities.

Which is exactly what we need. An understand of the structure and the flow of task activities. But CTA isn't as much of a method as it is a methodology, it is a toolkit of different methods.

Two of these methods are Concept Mapping and the Critical Decision method (CDM). CDM is an interview method, albeit very interesting we won't discuss here, be sure to read up about it if you're interested in knowledge elicitation of course!

Concept mapping however has pretty diagrams, which I as an IT-geek love. For example one about Mars. Concept maps shows relationships between concepts, and look a lot like mindmaps. But they have one important difference, the relationships are defined, using linking phrases. These linking phrases add a lot of information, which is why Concept Maps are so valuable for understanding a certain knowledge domain.

So next time you have to define requirements, stop making excuses and do it properly. I promise I will too.

#mediause #requirements #design

To License or to Unlicense?

Why?

The intent of a license is to grant or prevent access in a certain fashion to a product made by the licensor. Generally a license is used to protect the intellectual property of a party. For closed source and/or commercial products this is quite clear cut, after all for those products you want people to only use the product on exactly your terms.

For open source or better yet for your hobby project where you couldn't care less about if someone used it, it could be somewhat more complicated. I am not denying there's still a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo involved with closed source/commercial products, but even for a small hobby project there's too much involved. Just look at this list, it'll take you more than a few minutes to pick the right one. ;)

The public domain is something which is beautiful yet confusing in my opinion. Beautiful in the way that it stimulates creativity, sharing and innovation in general. Confusing in that it's almost never clear when you're allowed and how you're allowed to use it. I hardly ever read licenses any more, most of it doesn't make sense to me anyway.

What?

As a creator I never really paid much attention to the whole ordeal, figuring that whoever finds my code can figure it out. But admittedly that's not a very friendly approach, so when I came across Unlicense I was quite content. In short the Unlicense license allows you to waiver your copyright to your code (since that seems to be the main product for the license atm) completely.

The first line of Unlicense;

This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.

Is actually formulated in such a way that googling it will show you the software you can freely use/edit/compile/copy/etc. Which I think is pretty awesome! Now I can set my code free without confusing anyone who wants to use it.

How?

If you want to start using Unlicense I advise you to just read their website, it's clearly explained there, no legalese either.

Stuff like this does make me proud to be a coder/geek, because in a world where everybody just thinks about themselves, coders/geeks seem to be setting new trends for the public domain. With 'organisations' like Anonymous being the front-line combatants for internet freedom and free-speech.

I'd like to close off with the blessing SQLite uses instead of a license;

May you do good and not evil

May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others

May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

Geeks are going to change the world, just you wait! ;)

#license #unlicense #mediause

Rant2.0, or rather a 2.0 rant

Why?

A rant: a loud bombastic declamation expressed with strong emotion. So I should probably type this blogpost with caps lock on and use a lot exclamation marks. But I won't, instead I'll start by explaining why I am annoyed by the over-usage of the 2.0 thing. A few weeks ago I attended a symposium, and one of the topics discussed was Education 2.0 and 3.0. Afterwards an elderly man approached me, looking somewhat confused, and he asked me what the meaning of this 2.0 and 3.0 was.

At first I was somewhat surprised by the question, but I'm not totally oblivious to people not understanding the IT lingo, or more fitting for 2.0, the 'overused marketing' lingo.

I had never really wondered why, so it took me a second to come up with an answer. What I ended up telling the elderly man was that 2.0/3.0 are version numbers, used to indicate a different version, or a (complete) renewal. And that it was a thing most commonly seen in software development. Of course it's also used in other areas, but by mentioning software development the man wouldn't have to feel bad about not knowing and I could feel good about helping someone.

So far we haven't reached the rant part yet, I know. But since that conversation I've started to see it everywhere, and I mean everywhere (don't think about pink elephants). 2.0 this and 3.0 that, but having in the back of my mind the fact that apparently this isn't clear to everyone I started getting annoyed. First off, most of these so-called 2.0's hardly even qualify for a 1.0.0.1 increment with the level of innovation they're showing. Also I couldn't help but thinking; "Why can't they be more original?!".

What?

To illustrate how not-original the 2.0 crowd is, here's some examples:

Web 2.0, Classroom 2.0, Museum 2.0, Health 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Gov 2.0, Government 2.0, Library 2.0, Emotional IQ 2.0, Career 2.0, Mobile 2.0, Publishing 2.0, Business 2.0, Travel 2.0, Ecommerce 2.0, Women 2.0 and many, many more (about 1,040,000,000 more).

There might be more popular uses of the same name, but this is just to illustrate how many there are. Nor am I affiliated with any of these sites, I merely did a search for "2.0" on Google, Wikipedia and Twitter.

It's also funny to note that the 'Point' in 'Two Point oh' doesn't really work, or at least not in domain names. They either end up with having just "2" or "20" in the domain name, both conveying a different meaning than 2.0.

How?

I don't have a clear cut solution for my frustrations, other than taking a deep breath though I'm sure the 2.0 hype will fade. The sooner the better ;). Mostly I hope people will put some effort into thinking of better, funnier and more original names. I am personally attracted to weird, funny, geeky names while the 2.0 thing makes me lose interest right away, so please be more creative, I know you can do better!

Some awesome names:

We Were Promised Jetpacks, I saw their name, loved it and then I started listening to their music, cool names work!

Google, have you ever heard it before?

37Signals, don't forget to read the article this links to!

Know more awesome names? Let me know and if I like them I'll add them!

#caps lock is cruise control for cool #2.0 #clarity #Bullshit Bingo #mediause

Piracy is great

Why?

So why is piracy great? Let's start with this video:

Neil Gaiman explains "piracy" leads to more sales, it is like lending someone the book. So how can that be bad? When someone downloads your creation it's not a possible sale gone to waste, it's someone new introduced to your work. Duplicating data is free, it doesn't cost you anything to copy a string of 0's and 1's from location A to location B. So why not use this to your advantage and make money on products and services that when 'pirated' aren't as good as the real thing.

Anti-piracy measures go so far that they ruin the legit product. If you rent a DVD you end up having to watch 15 minutes of anti-piracy notices and ads. While if you download the pirated version you get the same quality without the ads and notices. So the big companies don't get it, but there are people who do understand it.

What?

Radiohead understands it. In 2007 they released their new album and told fans they can pay as much or as little as they wanted, which actually resulted in them earning money from it plus getting a bulk load of publicity. And more recently their lead singer even announced that Record Labels are a sinking ship.

Severed Fifth gets it. They're releasing their albums under Creative Commons licenses allowing people to legally download, share and edit their music, all in the name of creativity!

Steve Lieber gets it. When his comic got posted online it boosted his sales.

And research proves it. Anime DVD sales got boosted by the episodes appearing on youtube.

How?

So how does this work? It is actually rather simple. The increased advertising generated from putting it online for free, plus giving potential paying customers a chance to get introduced to your product in an easy way, draws them in. People try your product, they enjoy it and might even love it. And then there's a good chance they'll buy it.

So instead of ruining legit products with anti-piracy notices and horrible security. Embrace the internet and let it work for you.

And we'll conclude with a video of another person who gets it, Joss Stone:

#piracy #internet piracy #mediause

Mediause Blog Aggregator

On http://bitaggregator.appspot.com/ you can find the first version of an (easy to use) aggregator that allows you to keep track of what's going on with the #Mediause lecture blogs.

If you want to be listed make a tweet that contains the #Mediause hashtag and the word "blog". For example: 'You can find my blog at http://blog.verbose.nl/ #mediause', would be a tweet that gets picked up by the aggregator. It can however still take up to an hour before your blog gets listed, so be patient!

I hope this is a useful contribution to the course. If it isn't I at least had fun and learned Python while making it!

PS: It's still Beta, so be gentle! ;)

#mediause #Python #Blog

Search Engine Mania

Why?

Search Engines used to be about wanting to find something, or to be more precise, finding the things you were looking for. And this worked well when Google first emerged, after all it was the first proper search engine (I know, I know, but bear with me..). With other search engines emerging, the race to become the best search engine became rather fierce as recent examples show. Search engines are the cookie monsters of data, they want it all, and once they had that they still want more.

But as a consumer, why would you choose? I realize that sticking with one search engine might allow it to mine enough data about you so that it can improve the returned results. I don't know about you, but I see search engines as companies, and I've never felt the desire to be altruistic towards companies. I want the result that shows me what I'm looking for, so I'll repeat, why would you choose?

What?

So which options are there? Let's list some of the big contenders.

Google - What is there to say? Also check out their other search products for more specific tasks.

Bing - Microsofts search engine

Yahoo! - A Little more cluttered, but does the job.

blekko - Slashtag search, traditional search engine techniques combined with user contributed slashtags for narrowing the search space.

The invisible or deep web, is a part of the internet that doesn't get indexed by regular search engines due to some entrance restrictions, here is a list of search engines to search there too.

There are also a bunch of "fun" search engines, let's list some of those.

Bing vs. Google - Search and see the results from both search engines next to each other.

Google Fight - Let two search queries battle it out and see which is more popular.

TinyEye - Reverse Image Search. If you have an imagine and want to see where else it's been on the web, search here.

How?

Just jump in! But instead of choosing one search engine, typing in a search query and then go over the first 10 pages. Try different search engines with the same query and just look at the first 2 pages. This way you get the best of all the search engines, and you'll learn for yourself which one is best for you.

Additional reading:

http://searchengineland.com/turning-the-tables-on-the-google-toolbar-disclosure-claims-63596

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_alternative_search_engines_feb07.php

http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-accusations-63279

#mediause #search #search engine

Internet Anonymity

Why?

The recent situation in Egypt shows, crystal clear, how important it is that people have the freedom to browse the World Wide Web without a 3rd party intervening and filtering/censuring what you’re browsing. And I know, what you’re thinking right now “Hey, I’m living in a democratic country, nobody is going to censor me”. Well, guess again, just read this article. Though the thing is, I wouldn’t even blame you if you took the, perhaps somewhat naïve, point of view and assumed that this kill switch would never be abused. But the whole idea behind the internet is that it enables the exchange of information, independent of your geographic location. It is an open architecture, so why do governments feel the need to limit this?

In this respect, governments are a lot like marketing managers, or manager in general. They want control, they want to know what you’re doing, when you’re doing it and most preferably why you’re doing it. Is this a bad thing? You could simply state that, when you’re doing nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to hide. But does that give others the right to know everything about you?

This question is for you to answer, some argue that privacy is a modern invention and that it’ll pass. Some argue that ‘national security’ is more important than the privacy of individuals and then there are those who value their privacy.

What?

For this last group, there are solutions. Some simply intended from preventing the nosey marketing manager knowing your every move on their website, others to give you complete anonymity online. A short list of solutions to achieve these goals:

Mozilla Firefox – DoNotTrack. So far this is just a proposal, but keep your eye on this if FireFox is your favorite browser. Update, DoNotTrack is now included in the last nightly build.

Google Chrome – Keep My Opt-Outs. “Keep My Opt-Outs is an extension for users who aren’t comfortable with personalization of the ads they see on the web. It’s a one-step, persistent opt-out of personalized advertising and related data tracking performed by companies adopting the industry privacy standards for online advertising.“ Internet Explorer 9 – Tracking Protection. “While “Do not track” is a meaningful consumer promise around data use, the web lacks a good precise definition of what tracking means. Until we get there, we can make progress by providing consumers with a way to limit or control the data collected about them on sites they don’t visit directly. That kind of control is already technically feasible today in a variety of ways. It is important to understand that the feature design makes no judgment about how information might be used. Rather, it provides the means for consumers to opt-out of the release of that information in the first place.”

HideMyAss! – Online free proxy. “Hide My Ass! helps hundreds of thousands of people daily by protecting their privacy and identity online. Our job is to make online security fun and easy to use and we offer a range of unique services, from our web proxy enabling you to surf the web anonymously to our advanced VPN encryption service. Use our services to hide from hackers, insecure networks, online identity theft and much more.”

The Tor Project - Anonymity online. “Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis”

How?

The individual websites for each of the solutions contains explanations of how to install it. Just check out which solution works best for you and you’re free to browse, explore and be private.

Or do some further reading:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/01/4-more-projects-to-create-a-go.php

http://mashable.com/2011/01/28/data-privacy-day/

http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/01/28/five-privacy-protection-firefox-add-ons-for-data-privacy-day/

http://h30501.www3.hp.com/t5/Following-the-White-Rabbit-A/What-Ever-Happened-to-Privacy-Insight-into-Internet-Privacy-with/ba-p/19921

#Egypt #mediause #internet anonymity

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

-- T.S. Eliot

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