MCDM

2006-07-17T00:02:00.000-07:00

Class # 8 Blog Assignment
Where and how is digital rights management is failing. If you can give a first person account of where managing the portability, delivery or re-use of digital media didn’t got the way you think it should.

I was a victim of DRM. Jaime Collum’s Twenty Something CD release does not allow me to play it on my computer. Don’t ask me how they do but it made me ticked. I bought his CD and now I’m not allowed to play it in my computer. I figured it out because I was trying to use my computer and head phones so that I did not disturb my house guests. I haven’t gone through the rest of my CDs to find out if similar problems exist. Instead I’ve avoided the issue all together by just listening to streaming audio on the web. I would still like to know why listening to a disk on a computer should be prohibited.

2006-07-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

Class #8 Reading

DRM is a mess. Wooten’s dizzying recapitulation of the current state of affairs is not only confusing but disconcerting. Why can’t everyone use content easily and still make money? And why do those who “offer little contribution” to the end product, as Wooten says, get a piece of the licensing fee?

I think Wooten brings up a very simple solution. He suggests that licensing should be administered through a centralized clearing house just as music royalties have been for decades. What a fantastic idea! That would take all the guesswork out of determining where content has been licensed (either with VLA or MPEG LA), if content needs to be cleared for encoding and if it can be distributed/redistributed. I even think that content distributors would be willing to absorb the costs of such a service for the convenience.

But everyone wants to hold onto their little piece of territory to maintain their revenue streams. I am especially appalled by the movie industries particular aversion to redistribution. Why does music burned to your personal computer for easy mobility differ from ripping a DVD? DVD ripping differs because Hollywood presumes you are ripping their content for the purpose of redistribution. Perhaps Hollywood is nervous about letting the genie out of the bottle. Perhaps Hollywood does not want to allow ANYONE to have the convenience of ripping a disk so that that content is not easily distributed electronically without any media backup. But this is unrealistic in our current world.

People are mobile and like their content to move with them. Although viewing full feature films on your phone doesn’t seem reasonable, complete prohibition of ripping a DVD movie which you rightfully own doesn’t seem reasonable. But until some standards are put in place this is our current state of affairs. Hopefully change comes soon.

2006-07-16T22:47:00.000-07:00

Class #7 Assignment - Brightcove site comparison

Cooking Up a Story: http://cookingupastory.com/index.php/2006/06/06/a-ministers-daughter/

This is a site for “people with a passion for storytelling surrounding food.” There is a weekly live broadcast but old version have been archived on the site. I wish I could see them though. Instead of having a screen shot of the clip I see a black screen where it should play and nothing else. But it turns out it was my fault. I was Internet Explorer.

When I switch to Firefox it works just fine. I see a still of the current segment and a listing of the previous three stories below it. I chose to watch the most current “Going Whole Hog” which was hosted by champion BBQer Mike Davis. Mike talks about how he started his restaurant after having cancer. He gives you practical ways to grill chicken and then tells his personal story. It’s a good formula.

Image quality was fantastic on every clip. The clip loaded right away without buffering. There are only slight hiccups in image frames. Considering the quality of the image, I presume the hiccup is not the encoding issue it is a pipeline issue. But it is negligible really. Considering a lot of audio was captured in a kitchen it turned out quite good. There is not issue with the tin can effect. Sound is also very good. Stories run right into one another so you get the sense you are on a regular TV channel.

This site is Beta so I’m totally impressed with the quality. Not only are the technical aspects seamless but the tips, recipes and stories are very engaging. It’s a great formula!

Dave Locity: http://www.davelocity.com/glowtv/
This site provides dance music and video syndication for club parties internationally. There isn’t much content surrounding the site other than a few links to videos. I presume this is because the audience is just about the music. Not surprisingly, image quality of the corresponding video is completely grainy.

You presume you are going to have a little tradeoff in image quality when you are talking about night shots but the intro piece just emphasizes that this site is about the music and nothing more. The image quality is so bad I click it off and start typing a couple of seconds after and I don’t miss it. I’m just listening now. The first few clips are clean sounding. Then I click on 18 May Tiesto and the sound is bad. They didn’t spend a lot of effort on encoding their product which disappoints me because I’m actually feeling the music. It seems like this might have been encoded by the artist himself rather than getting somebody who knew something about web delivery to produce the best possible quality.

2006-07-12T22:12:00.000-07:00

Class #7 Mobile Delivery

Well of course, my favorite section of reading for this class was the mobile delivery section in Chapter 28. I do lament that the pithiest and most direct sentence I’ve read since delving into this book was “keep the clips short.” And yet so many networks are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in streaming TV support on mobile phones. But it looks like the investments might pay off.

M:Metics (www.mmetrics.com) Monday released a mobile usage benchmark study indicating that smart phone adopters in European countries view video 14 times more often than standard phone users. As smart phones users represent the early adopters in mobile telephony, smart phone user’s acceptance of motion content is likewise an indication of upcoming trends.

So where does this leave us as far as the technicalities? Well, I think that Wooten makes a strong argument against “garbage in, garbage out” by encouraging that mobile video be captured in high quality. This is so that as the content is compressed, a high quality source video has the greatest possible chance of achieving a compressed form that translates as it is rendered into small mobile screens.

I also found discovered some interesting areas that I think are worth further exploration. Particularly , HSDPA or High Speed Downlink Packet Access which has been developed by Motorola in order to deliver 2Mbps to the mobile devices. Consequently, I have chosen to refocus my paper on this area.

2006-07-09T21:29:00.000-07:00

Week 6 Reading: Windows Media Player and Content

On Sunday May 21st the Sunday Washington Post reviewed Windows Media Player saying it is “no iTunes.” In May, Microsoft announced its Urge music service, a joint venture with MTV.

Urge is similar to other media services except it offers Windows Media Compatible DRM. Microsoft has thought of the future of its player and offers upgradable music that goes with upgrades to your player. It does cost $5 more a month. But these rented songs can not be burned to CD and they go silent if you stop paying the fees.

It’s an aggressive approach. Especially since Napster and Rhapsody offer the same price plans but also let people play entire songs for free for a monthly fee. Yahoo costs about 1/3 less than Urge and both it and Rhapsody give subscribers a discount on song purchases.

Downloads also don’t come with any extras, such as lyrics, printable booklets and bonus videos that are bundled with many new albums on iTunes. You can’t print a CD cover or a track listing either.

All of this hinders music pirating, but since iTunes has already provided these features it is sort of difficult to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak. The success of the Urge service is based on adoption of the Windows Media Player and essentially holds users hostage by wiping out their privileges unless they continue to pay fees. This is bad business. You shouldn’t force patrons to buy your service by holding their songs hostage. I’m a strong believer in controlling content but preventing access to legally purchased content is just going to force people to find illegal methods to get content. Microsoft’s overzealous position is not going to help it achieve success in the content market.

2006-07-06T17:42:00.000-07:00

I would like to qualify my point about Microsoft's future in the mobile media market (see 6/30/06 post). Today The Seattle Times announced that Microsoft plans to launch an iPod-like device by Christmas (See Microsoft Plans for iPod Rival to be Launched by Christmas, 7/6/06). Given the strength of iPod's market share, which constitutes 77% of the mobile media I think it unlikely that Microsoft will completely obliterate iPod. Microsoft's previous ventures into the hardware arena have not been as successful as their business side. The big M's relationship with Hollywood is therefore a stronger driver for Microsoft's success. If that relationship leads to exclusive content and lower price points than iTunes, Microsoft might have a very good chance at making a strong foothold in the mobile media market . . . as long as they don't break the bank on the hardware.

2006-06-30T10:38:00.000-07:00

Wooten Class #5
I have a prediction: Microsoft will own the predominant technologies for mobile content. Right now QuickTime is predominant. It makes sense that QuickTime is ahead of the curve since Mac has been the pioneer for creating original content. However, I predict that Microsoft’s relationship with Hollywood and it’s already aggressive DRM policies will eventually earn it in a preferred place in content thereby forcing it’s technology to be used predominantly in mobile. Microsoft has no competition from RealNetworks at this point so all they need to do is catch QuickTime as far as market penetration.

2006-06-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

Wooten Class #4 Reading

In reading about protocols, I was considering DRM and mobile content. Since RTSP is preferable for long clips I would presume that this would be the preferable protocol for mobile content. Since RTSP is preferable for long streams this would make watching full feature content like Lost or Desperate Housewives. In addition, RTSP provides some inherent protections against pirating because it is difficult to capture according to Wooten.

However, I’m wondering about those sophisticated users that Wooten references as being capable of capturing RTSP streams. Those users would be able to use mobile technology to pirate content and perhaps distribute to other uses in the same fashion as on a traditional computer. So a solution needs to be found since once content is mobile it’s harder to put it back in the box. The Open Mobile Alliance has proposed DRM 2.0 to be provided in phones but there are still a large percentage of phones that are noncompliant. So how does this content get encoded and protected from the streaming side? It’s something I hope to answer this quarter.

I also have some thoughts about uni-casting. I understand this a method to cut down on multiple streams and reduce the load on the server by having people share the stream. However, I’m thinking that this might be a security issue. I would think Wootens’ claims about sophisticated users capturing streams in RTSP would be the same warning here. Could hackers get in through this stream? Could they capture the content more easily without being tracked? Would you lose control of that content more easily? Anybody know about uni-casting encryption?

2006-06-27T18:10:00.000-07:00

I chose to review the Getty Images Change Me site.

http://changeme.gettyimages.com/main.aspx?isource=changeme

Change me is a community forum about change influence through imagery.

Well, first and foremost, this site has a flash intro. So, we all know what Kathy says about Flash intros - users don't like them. This one is OK. I see why they have taken this liberty. They are trying to set a tone. But I'm easily made impatient and I want to get to the real site. Unfortunately they force me to forward through each slide. I am not able to stop the show and go directly to the main menu.

Then when it gets to the actual content -- a written description of the purpose of the site. Comparitively bland next to the flash intro, but necessary. Still jarring after being in the media section. They could have done a better job. Once you get to the landing page, you still have to wait to load the main menu. I'm still not in the site yet. Annoying.

Next you go into the site. Takes a long time to load and no wonder. Lot's of Flash animation on the left nav. Everytime you mouse over you get a different effect; arrows and stars, etc. Still, I think it was an attempt to evoke a certain feeling but it becomes sort of annoying as being oversribbled. But then again I tend to be a minimalist.

When I use the left Nav the screen actually rotates to the next page. Cool effect but again overkill.

So this site makes me torn. Generally, I feel like the techonology is taking away from the display of the media and the goal of connection with others. Interesting how media can actually compete on the web.

2006-06-27T00:47:00.000-07:00

Streaming Media - Class #3

I find myself focusing on minutia this week, but here it goes.

So I find it interesting that video does not use square pixels and was wondering if that had any affect on how video is compressed and rendered on computer monitors. I would think that resampling would be easier if you had more rounded edges but Wooten never says specifically that video pixels are rounded. Perhaps they are triangular or rectangular. Anyone know? Although this may seem like minutia to some, fore me it is indicative of my own interests. Digital image manipulation is something I have a lot of familiarity with so I find it interesting that the building blocks of images depending on format can be so fundamentally different.

Since digital photography goes straight into the computer, I presume there isn’t a conversion from raw into .tif or .psd or .gif that makes rounded pixels into square. I hadn’t heard of such a thing. My remedial queries might surprise some but I am, in fact, new to digital media. I shoot analog photos and generally scan negatives and prints because I do a lot of restoration work.

Again, Wooten has some cool info on mobile media but only vaguely touches on the technicalities of editing for mobile devices. After all that jargon in the video section I had hoped for more salient info in the mobile segment. I was also a little disappointed that he focused on a PDA which is no longer being made as Sony has gotten out of building the Clié. I guess that leaves the door open for my own personal explorations.

2006-06-22T17:44:00.000-07:00

Streaming Media

Big surprise, I chose a dancing site. But this I think is a great idea since it is a lot of movement and will show up flaws and other things we discussed in yesterday's class.

I looked at http://www.imambo.tv/.

My first frustration with this site is that you have to register to use it.

When I finally get registered, I look at the clip and for some reason it will not play on my machine. It just goes to a black mockup screen in the middle of the page. If I mouse over the screen it says click to activate. So I click and nothing happens. I try a different link and the same thing happens. So I go to a different machine.

I use firefox to browse to the same location, same clip. This time it automatically opens in the proscenium right away in quicktime. But then in the middle of the clip a black box starts to eclipse the image screen.

So I try IE (Windows Media Player). It works but the sound quality is not as good.

Things I like about this site:

It’s truly streaming. You don’t have to download. But you can download it if you would like.

They have both performances and regular club shot clips.

They provide a synopsis of the clip before you click on it. Location, dates, and participants.

http://www.imambo.tv/mambo/index.php?option=com_zoom&Itemid=47&page=view&catid=104&PageNo=1&key=5&hit=1

2006-06-22T17:24:00.000-07:00

Week 1 Reading Synopsis - Streaming Media

Are you saying creatives need to be organized?

One of the most striking things about Wooten's introduction to streaming media is an example which has little to do with the either the technical or the content production side of media. It has to do with business. Something that struck me during last quarter's introduction to Digital Asset Management by celebrated local photographer Dan Lamont is echoed again by Wooten: Be organized or lose the capability to repurpose or keep control of your content. Placing controls on content is a business decision. According to Wooten, keeping archival quality media is something that is often tossed aside by decision-makers who fail to see the long term benefits of keeping their media house neat and orderly. After all, when your business is media, shouldn't it be protected, easily accessible, and LEGAL?

To that aim, I am interested in how highly successful visual media companies like Getty and Corbis maintain their databases. Since they allow users to directly download for a fee, how do they maintain organizational standards and at the same time appeal to creative types? For example, when you are looking for clips that are categorized under the search term "surprise," do you find the same mundane content or something unexpected which appeals to the Getty/Corbis customer base. Obviously in the case of Getty or Corbis, without organizational standards they would lose customers. If customers can’t find material they will get frustrated and take their business elsewhere. At the same time there also needs to be a creative element to organization of assets at a company like Getty or Corbis. This makes their assets more appealing to their target audience. If they can get unusual content they will keep coming back. In other words, media licensing companies have to have searchable, usable databases and yet be different from everybody else. How you do it is a question both these companies certainly struggle with.

Although I understand that Wooten's thoughts might already be outdated, he has provided some forward-looking statements. He discussed the future of mobile media and the H.264 standards. This is an area I plan to explore for my final paper in conjunction with Mobile DRM 2.0 as proposed by the Open Mobile Alliance.

2006-02-19T21:59:00.000-08:00

Week 8: Applicable Technologies

This week's reading was about accessibility. The article on accessibility dovetailed very nicely with my book for this quarter, Jeffrey Veen's The Art and Science of Web Design in the sense that discussion of browsers and appropriate audiences for technologies such as CSS. Veen and this writer concurred that accessibility needs to be the goal of web pages. This means designing for flexibility. As Veen put it, we should design for dynamic behavior, for code to have enough flexibility to behave and make choices based on the applicable technologies.

The ecommerce study was more of an exposition on motivations for ecommerce. While I found the discussion of offline motivations tracking to online motivations interesting, ecommerce is only one of the web genres out there. I did find the convenience and pleasure motivations interesting and how they overlap. I find myself falling into the same distractions on the web. If I do not have a specific purpose determined, and a specified timeline, I often end up distracted. Timeline however was not a major factor in the study and I wish that had been discussed. The sample was college students who according to the study have more time to surf. For adults, convenience shopping may take on a different dimension since it is time efficiency if you are busy; you can research your goods from your home and order them directly to your home so you don't have to do legwork gathering info or even purchasing the item. I feel the study would have been stronger with a discussion of these items.

2006-02-12T21:54:00.000-08:00

Week 7 Comments: Color and Typography

Web 2.0 is user-centric. What works for the user will shape the future of the web. Given the broad variety of users – from preschoolers to advanced users – there are some universal truths to web design.

1. Content should be organized in a way that users understand.
2. Content should be easily located in a flat navigation scheme according to Dorsey.
3. Content should not degrade so as to be distracting. For example, multimedia should be appropriate for the bandwidth and typical modem setup for audience.
5. Web sites should be visually pleasing but not sacrifice intuitive information architecture for “decoration.”

In all these circumstances, planning is paramount. The actual process of determining what content will go on a site will help inform structure, navigation, look and feel – all user-centric experiences. Web 2.0 seeks to make that experience better by introducing the user point of view to the planning process.

According to Greenzweig, the process of user discovery analysis yields more than the results. For those coders and designers this is absolute agony. Just sitting around in our groups last week talking about our vision statement made me realize that. We kept getting into the minute details; trying to think about how people would use the site rather than thinking about what content we were going to put on it. I think all of us would characterize ourselves as action people so sitting around and talking about our vision is foreign to us. Maybe I’m actually speaking only from my own viewpoint but I’m finding this process of talking about high level ideas for our website frustrating. I would rather do and then figure it out as I go.

But in Web 2.0 we are doing things differently than we have before. We are embracing the user viewpoint and brining their perspective to the planning process. I think by putting ourselves in the users position we will have a better conceived better executed site. I’m looking forward to seeing how it all turns out.

2006-01-29T20:30:00.000-08:00

Week 5 Reading Summary: What are the threads that unite these readings? Are there best practices that can be devised from these?

Taxonomy and Hierarchy are the common thread in both articles. According to Jeffrey Veen in The Art and Science of Web Design, Taxonomy is a labeling of a data which is not necessarily a hierarchy (contrary to Wodtke’s statement). The days of the week can be a taxonomy, which are not a hierarchy. So is a train schedule. But ultimately both concepts – taxonomy and hierarchy – are about organization. The readings for this week focus on ways in which to organize content and how to visually present that organization to ensure clarity and consistency.

Christina Wodtke believes that organizing content in accordance with everyday conventions is the best way to ensure that visitors have a good experience at the website. Breaking those conventions, she warns, can have disastrous implications to the effectiveness of your website. While website designers wish to be hip and fresh like the web itself, the medium they are using requires that conventions be closely followed. According to Veen a lack of familiarity with the web necessitates that everything be according to convention. Check your ego at the door! If you’re trying to change the web it isn’t going to happen overnight. Perceptions of data organization are informed by our everyday lives and that doesn’t change very easily.

Margo Halverson also touches on how you can organize data. Halverson provides us with ideas on visual organization of content. After organizing and grouping data in appropriate taxonomies or hierarchies, utilizing contrast can be the key to visually maintaining an organization to content. She suggests utilizing bold contrast sparingly to achieve visual clarity, otherwise visual “noise” can develop. Making one item strikingly different from the others can highlight that element without creating noise. Similarly, font and type can be utilized to visually emphasize organization.

Based on these articles the following laws of design should be applied to website design: 1.) Organize information in a way that everyday people will understand, and 2.) visually organize with simplicity. These tasks are easier said than done. Returning to Veen, presentation can sometimes overwhelm content and content can become a morass for navigation. The ultimate truth is just to keep it simple; we do not need to reinvent the wheel! Still, because our intent is to create a public service piece and not an e-commerce site, we have an opportunity to try some new ideas. What would it hurt to try something new? It’s not like we would lose customers as a result!

2006-01-22T18:59:00.000-08:00

Week 4 Reading Notes: How does HCI design theory relate to Gestalt principles?

Human-Computer Interface Design theory intersects with Gestalt design principles in those assumptions that users already have developed from the world around them. Pretty much everyone understands the principles of Figure & Ground; Similarity, Proximity & Continuity; and Closure, Area & Symmetry. However, some of these conventions have a stronger overlap with HCI Design Theory than others. Specifically the principle of Similarity, Proximity & Continuity in navigating information is most applicable when discussing how HCI and Gestalt relate to one another. According to Gestalt, information that is similar should be closer in proximity in order for continuity to be achieved and thereby easy retrieval. HCI design presumes that information will be best organized in the manner in which people can most easily understand it. People most easily understand information that is organized in the manner of Gestalt. Gestalt is therefore the basis of HCI Design.

Ease of use is the primary reason for the creation of HCI Design. Based on conventions of the non-digital world, website users expect to find the same conventions of information organization on websites. However, HCI design recognizes there are different levels of users ranging from novice to expert. The 8 Golden Rules of HCI are therefore based on the universal truths of Gestalt. Based on these universal principles, errors can be reduced (which is the third tenet of HCI), which leads to confidence, which leads to a better user experience. A better user experience will lead to increased usage.

Gestalt and HCI build upon one another to provide a better understanding of website design. Both are valuable for written and visual content and should be explored to provide the most successful user interface.

2006-01-16T12:28:00.000-08:00

Week 3: User-Centered Design

In this weeks readings it is evident that competing standards can be a real hindrance to obtaining audiences. What is viewable according to ASC X12 standards may not be viewable in other countries which might be using EDIFACT. Although attempts are being made to reconcile these differences, progress has been slow resulting in private companies coming forward to create solutions. In fact, this just creates another layer of complication to the process of standardizing websites. Recently, a successful model for creating and adopting standards has been introduced.

WAP was the creation of several cell phone companies across the world. The benefit of the consortium is that interoperability helps all involved, there is no monopoly since no company owns the source code and there is efficiency because this protocol was adopted with a great deal more speed than previous protocols developed for the web. Standards in this instance do not seem to have become a barrier. However, in the case of the World Wide Web, encumbered by bureaucracy, a standardized system is still far away. This could result in adoption problems. Although ASC is attempting to conform with the UN’s system, that change has been slow. This might be a good reason for individual companies to move beyond standards in this country and adopt protocols observed by the rest of the world.

There is also another layer of standards which we need to concern ourselves with as website designers. Information Design, Sensorial Design, and Interaction Design may necessitate a different approach to website design in a particular field. The relative lack of scholarship in Interaction Design suggests that there is no mold to break in this area so new ideas are still welcome here. As far as Sensorial Design, there is some opportunity to try new things within the limits of the technology. Wouldn’t it be fun to figure out a way to create smells across the web, similar to fragrances in Japanese phones? Information Design is an area which is ripe for a new model in my opinion. Given the over-pollution of a great many e-commerce sites, I can’t help that think that we can find better, more appealing solutions for customers. This is also related to Interaction Design or experience issues.

Applying the readings in our class project will depend greatly on the content. Since this is public service website, I am sure that Interaction Design will be the most complex part. The primary focus will be to educate in some way but ultimately understanding user experience since we are trying to target a very broad audience could be difficult.

2006-01-10T19:46:00.000-08:00

Week 2: C lass Assignment - Project and Examples

I really like elements of all the proposed project ideas. I would have liked to have done a nonprofit as Shanna suggested but every single non-profit I could think of -- RealChange, FareStart, Seattle Girls School, prisoner dog training -- has their own website. There are also some benefits to creating something totally new and different. Based on this, I feel the “I remember. . .” idea is probably the broadest and therefore the most appealing to both the content creators and the end user. I think each team member will be able to find something they can enjoy in it and so will our readers. We might want to also pick up on the idea of who owns what in our project since that is our domain name. Thinking about this in the context of “I remember. . .” we might want to highlight some rather interesting changes in land ownership in Seattle’s history. Land seizures (for example, all of Ballard!!!!) and other outlandish stories are prevalent in Seattle’s Wild West history. I am also thinking of land grabs from immigrant populations. I think it is important not to lose the positive, whimsical tone that Brian is suggesting but for those of us who are hard hitting reporters, there should definitely be ample fodder. “I remember. . .” has my vote.

I found some examples of websites that could be instructive from both a content and design perspective:

Museum of History and Industry:
http://www.seattlehistory.org/ *very cool because they have a searchable photo index! I like the events page. Colors are well coordinated but it seems the spatial relationship visual and written content is a little fragmented. The first page design seems to have puzzle pieces of photographs that don’t fit. I know that is the point but that in combination with the rest of the sites fragmentation just overwhelms. However, the amount of content is appropriate, it just needs to be organized in a more cohesive, visual whole. I think the Washington State History Museum does a better job.

Washington State Historical Society:
http://www.wshs.org/ I really like the visual appeal of this site, I particularly like the article on Chief Leschi’s exoneration http://www.wshs.org/wshm/leschi-trial.htm. I do not like the events calendar page, however. I would have preferred a visual calendar whereas right not it is just a list.

History Link:
http://www.historylink.org/this_week/index.cfm This seems like too much content for a front page. I understand that this is a certain school of thought but I don’t like the design. I do like the written content! I like the featured article in the center that talks about what happened in Washington State History this week. It would be cool to have a smaller version of that perhaps on our first page.

Narrative journalist for overall design aesthetics is ideal but I would like to see the content better organized. It’s not intuitive where you might find things. I think that is sort of the nature of the project; things don’t fall neatly in categories but I still think we can do better.

Those are my thoughts. . .

2006-01-10T18:04:00.000-08:00

Week 2 Class Assignment: Redefining Goals and Preferred Project Role

My primary experience and my chief enjoyment in the design process is content development. Whether visual or words, content creation is the area I tend to gravitate towards in all the projects I undertake. I have strong visual literacy but I am also a very good with words. I think I am a better editor than most and can often create coherent messages from the sometimes frenetic text generated by others. I would like to take all these more aesthetic inclinations and apply them in this project. Ultimately I want to understand how the content I enjoy creating is best displayed and integrated into a website. Issues of visual design and usability for the web are therefore the strongest area of interest for me.

In rethinking my goals for this quarter I would also like to learn some new areas of content creation. I know flash might be overly aggressive but I would like to try and I would love to learn video-editing software. Which brings up an idea. . . . I think it would be really beneficial if each of us could shadow someone in a stretch area. The whole benefit of working for a team is that you get a broad understanding of a lot of different things but when you are in a very large team sometimes you just become a jack of all trades but master of none. I feel like if we could each work closely with one other person in the group in a stretch area not only would we be learning high level skills from the group as a whole but we could also come away with some new in depth knowledge. I have to say that the most effective groups I have ever worked in have had this element of teams within teams. So, I guess I would like some elements of Brian’s suggestions. There are, however, a couple of scenarios I would like to avoid. I would like to avoid a strict project manager role. Since we will need someone leading us I understand we will need someone in that role but since we do not have a larger organization to answer to or a client to manage I think that whoever fills this role should be a substantive contributor to the team, not just a manager.

I also have to say that I want to learn more deliberately about organizational dynamics through the design process. Have you ever had an experience where you are supposed to be in charge or have emerged as the natural leader and someone in the group doesn’t want to listen to you or wants to do something else? Have you ever been in a position where you are the workhorse and someone takes credit for your work? Have you ever been in the situation where you have been lead but someone who is not really that confident in that position and so the team goes astray? While I like Drew’s idea of participatory design, it seems inevitable that one person emerges as a leader in a group. Or do they? What if all the spaghetti just falls off the wall? These are all things I have experienced in groups and I would like to understand why.

Based on my past experience I would be willing to take on writing and photography. I am also willing to take on a role of a managing editor or editor. I would be willing to copyedit only if I can also make some creative content contributions. I would really like to have the opportunity to apply the html knowledge I will be learning this quarter but I have to be honest and say this will be a stretch. Although I do not think it is particularly applicable in this instance, I would not be interested in producing. I think I am also not a good person to be an information architect or usability expert because these are areas I still need to learn a lot about!

2006-01-09T01:13:00.000-08:00

Week 1 Reading Synopsis:

While McGovern and Norton discuss the structure of the publishing team and its various roles, Erickson provides a more detailed understanding of the design process. The two aspects of Erickson’s article focus on how organizations who design communicate and on how individuals communicate within a design team. According to Erickson, we should think about design in terms of a process of communication among various audiences. Based on this approach, Erickson feels there are six areas in the design process: Problem setting, Team Building, Involving users, Collaborative Design, Design Transfer, and Design Evangelism. Within each of these areas, the design process should be thought of as a communication element in and off itself. After all, the ultimate product -- the designed element -- is the synthesis of many conversations over time.

During the design process there are three audiences for communication: design team, end users, organization within which the design takes place. According to Erickson, these audiences require “design artifacts” or concrete elements “constructed or collected during the design process” in order to facilitate communication. The artifacts are therefore not the designed element but rather an aid to the overall design process; they are the textual, visual and audio evidence of the design development. Accordingly, different design audiences require different design artifacts. What is easily understood by the organization might not be understood by the product users. Therefore, design artifacts must be comprehensible to all types of people in order to be effective. Utilizing design artifacts leads to shared understanding and higher chance of success in the design process.

Based on my past professional experience, I am interested in how the makeup of the design team itself may influence the final product. Marketers have a certain fuzzy vision; they are interested in selling a concept. Managers are concrete. While I understand the benefit of having a heterogeneous team of experts, they need to be able to talk to one another. This is why stories are so powerful in the design process.

Everybody tells stories. Everybody has stories. The ambiguity of stories lends itself well to the initial phases of the design process. Because stories are memorable but also ambiguous and open to interpretation, they can inspire creativity and a platform for discussion amongst a heterogeneous group of experts. Stories can also help develop more definition in the design process ultimately leading to a prototype in the refinement phase.

Prototypes are beneficial if they are accessible and rough. Accessibility in that all team members should be able to adjust the prototype and roughness in that it has relaxed conventions and by its very roughness shows evidence of a process through which the prototype was created. Roughness leads to ambiguity which leads to more creativity. According to Erickson’s research, deliberate lack of a feature also creates more discussion than if the feature were present.

Erickson writes this article on design process from the perspective of large product development organization. However, many of us have not had or will not have experience with a large product development organization. I wonder how or if any of Erickson’s observations might change if the design process were undertaken by a consultant or other resources external to the organization? A lot of companies do not have resources for design activities to be undertaken in house. It would be interesting to understand how the design process differs based on consultants’ involvement. According to Erickson, exploration, refinement and transition have considerable overlap with in house resources. Do the design process stages change if you use a consultant? How might the product differ based on who undertakes each phase? Would a proscribed scope of work necessary to engage consultants make the process more linear? Will resources independent of the organization mean it the design process will be more fractious and frenetic or more regimented? These are questions which I think are worthy of exploration in assessing how companies might work with consultants.

In addition, I would also like to know the differences between an architect and an interaction designer as discussed under Story Gathering. McGovern and Norton provide a little bit further information in this area but I am still unclear. Is the architect the person who has the overall design of the product in mind but the interaction designer must define the details? Does the architect in essence define the space and the interaction designer defines where to put the door handles? How is an interaction designer different than a usability designer? If anybody has any ideas, let me know.

2005-11-20T13:44:00.000-08:00

Monowail

From Tom Paine to Blogs, the author chronicles the evolution of one-to-many, traditional journalism in the 1800’s to our current age of personal journalistic blogging. Through the reading, I came to realize that bias is a fact of Big Media. I had long been under the impression that Big Media had an interest in telling the truth without bias. The focus on investigative journalism in the 1960s and 1970s was to uncover the truth that was being kept from the American public. Muckrakers like Woodward and Bernstein made Deep Throat legendary. However, covering the truth does not always sell. For example, the decrease of the crime rate in the 1990s was not noticeable because of the emphasis on sensationalistic news casting. The adage “if it bleeds, it leads,” is still the norm of the day. Even more sinister, we have returned to the times of William Randolph-Hearst where editors have agendas. Randolph-Hearst affected our entrance into the Spanish-American war by riling public opinion. Today, I have experienced the agenda of Big Media first hand.

I am appalled by the lack of balanced coverage in the latest election regarding the Seattle Monorail Project. Having been on the front lines and understanding the gross misrepresentation of the Project facts and its finances, I understand first hand what Big Media agenda can do to public opinion. Did you know that the project never cost $11 billion and even the Times and PI couldn’t agree on their figures? Did you know that the ridership numbers were grossly underestimated by reporters and when their information was corrected it was never reprinted? Did you know that the disputed Motor Vehicle Excise Tax rate which was the basis for Monorail funding was never verified by reporters? Did you know that the tax growth rate reporters used to make their gross miscalculations on funding was based on a tax growth rate model which was developed 30 years ago and has NEVER been published? The Times and PI were challenged on these facts but never printed a single story correcting their mistakes. These two papers have the broadest readership in Seattle but by the very fact that they exist in a two paper town competition for those readers is fierce. Therefore, there is an agenda for Big Media in Seattle. If it bleeds, it sells! Thankfully, the small, progressive, local papers, like The Stranger (http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=25275), grass roots movements like 2045 Seattle (http://2045seattle.org/) and bloggers at Mayor Gridlock (http://mayorgridlock.com/).

attempted to expose the fallacies and provide an opportunity for dialogue on the Monorail.
It wasn’t a surprise to those who had followed the Monorail movement that the major supporters of the project were progressives who bypassed the traditional journalistic routes to find their information. Born out of the vision of a of a Seattle cab driver, the Monorail movement enjoyed extremely strong grass roots support and still does to this day. But mainstream always eluded the movement. Because of the bias of Big Media the true facts could never be heard. So, supporters like me bypassed traditional journalism. I am utilizing today’s blog as David Winer did to start a dialogue to set the story straight.

You might say the irony in all this is that I have a bias. I gave my life to the Project for the last three years. I was the 20th official employee and I saw the complete development of the Project from the start. However, the blogging medium provides an opportunity for exploration because it is best when it promotes a dialogue. You notice that my words are strong. Yes! I have a lot of passion about this subject but it is also an opportunity for you to share yours. Yelling at the television is a lot less satisfying than if it would respond to your specific complaints. Blogging is certainly more open to dissenting opinions which I think is its true beauty. Yes, I will provide my own reasoned opinion on a subject, but if you want to bring your factoids to the dialogue it is a great forum for discussion. I welcome your thoughts and questions on this subject. If you would like to check out other discussion groups on this subject you might find the following sites interesting:

http://seattlemonorail.blogspot.com/
http://www.monorails.org/
http://www.monorail.org/
http://www.monorailontrack.org/

2005-11-15T01:15:00.000-08:00

How does the theory of the commons relate to internet, community or politics?

The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin relates to the concerns over population growth. Although this article was printed in 1968, we can gain further understanding of our age by applying Hardin’s concepts to the Internet.

The Internet is often touted as the commons of our age; a free place to exchange ideas, find people with common interests and a place to organize social protest or other forms of political involvement as Kollock and Smith discussed last week. The Internet functions as a commons, in that, once accessed, there is freedom to roam and partake of whatever of these priorities might interest us. Is the internet truly a commons? Hardin would feel that because we have instituted certain controls over it, that the Internet is not a true commons because it is not truly accessible to all.

Everyone may have the right to access the Internet, but it is not free. Internet access costs money. Hardin might conceive of financial access as a method of control in essence moderating the Internet’s usage. Access is certainly limited by money and in essence denies the lower classes or poorer countries from access to the Internet commons.

In addition, infrastructure also moderates access to the Internet commons. There are places in the world where infrastructure does not exist and therefore access is denied. Deterrents to access in essence create a greater divide between the haves and have-nots. Ironically, this financial and infrastructure barriers, according to Hardin, are likely what also promoted the Internet’s growth amongst affluent countries.

According to Hardin, cattle owners are obliged to increase their herds in order to “maximize their gain.” Could we not say the same of internet retailers who have pushed their way into the web for an additional bite at the profit pie? Intuitively, we can say “yes!” In turn, further traffic to utilize the net for shopping and other entrainment activities also pushes additional companies and advertisers to seize their corner of the web regardless of how it might over pollute the Internet commons with spam, phishing and other annoyances. Standards or “legislated temperance” has somewhat moderate this problem.

Anti-spam laws have helped to diminish but not totally obliterate nuisance emails from your inbox. However, laws governing the internet are sparse. For now, there is relative freedom of the Internet. The Internet’s relative freedom has been its major appeal to users. There are opportunities to meet people with common interests and goals in a “safe” environment. A great many of the communities are self-policed which means they are utilizing conscience and the morals of our day to moderate communities. Hardin would be well pleased with appealing to human values of the day in order to moderate Internet usage.

In our age, we are always looking for technical solutions to our problems. Hardin states that a change in human values or morality is the only thing that can save us from the destruction of the commons. The Internet is not the technical solution to all social ills but it does provide a social benefit in its current state. The Internet allows those with common goals and interests to find one another. However, it does not equally benefit all because of lack of access. As time goes on such barriers may cease to exist. Ironically, this universal access might mean the destruction of the Internet commons. However, this is for another generation to fathom.

2005-11-15T01:14:00.000-08:00

The Walls Came Down and the Windows went up:

Friedman writes about a critical moment in the development of our current age of access. The fall of the Berlin was a momentous and visible opening of a once secluded country. The Berlin wall was abolished on November 9, 1989. The Berlin Wall was a vestige of the Cold War battle; fundamentally a battle between the bastions of communism and capitalism. Opening of Germany tipped the balance of power advocating democratic, free-market governance (Friedman, 49). According to Friedman this was elemental for a flattened economic world. After the fall of the Wall, Economics governed from the ground up rather than the top down.

According to Friedman, communism made everyone equally poor. In contrast, capitalism made everybody unequally rich. I would naturally think this is a contradiction to Friedman’s contention that economics were flattening the world. For example, countries like India who were allowed to unleash pent up commercial energy after 1991 actually meant a broadening divide between rich and poor.

Nehru came to power after British colonial rule and imposed regulation as modeled after Russia. The private sector became stifled by regulation. Friedman felt that the 1991 reforms of the Indian economy, initiated by Finance Minister Manmohan was a direct result of the failure of the Soviet Union. In essence this meant the abolishment of India’s Berlin wall.

Friedman further discusses the evolution of flatter economy by discussing the introduction of the Euro some years later. The Euro created a flatter world by merging segregated areas of Germany with the rest of Europe in a single economic zone once divided by and iron curtain. But the world’s flattening is not just about economics.

Abolishing the Wall meant seeing the world as a “seamless whole” (Friedman, 51). The world was accessible now. People began to see the world as a single market, a single ecosystem, and a single community now that they could see past the wall. The abolishment of the Wall encouraged a world view. The view was contagious and an “outbreak” of freedom stimulated other “outbreaks.” Freedom was contagious! As this new world view began to permeate the entire planet, open knowledge sharing was encouraged. The Ability to tap into other knowledge pools led to standards (Friedman, 52) in economics and personal computers. Standardization in turn led to flattening

So, why did the Wall Fall? There are theories that the arms race instigated by the Reagan administration actually bankrupted the Russian government. Friedman firmly believes that the information revolution was in fact the culprit. Friedman states that people’s interest in communicating is what broke the totalitarian control. The Russian monopoly over information was broken and access brought interest in a world view. Communism encouraged a top down method of communication. The introduction of Windows operating software encouraged this more open view by allowing information to be more easily presented. Windows greatly enhanced personal information gathering and when information is more easily understood and disseminated this leads to empowerment.
Windows, first shipped on May 22, 1990. It had a standardized graphical interface allowing users to interact and communicate more easily with their machines. Opening the Windows allowed more production and in turn a flatter world. However, not everyone saw this as an improvement.

Friedman states that only American’s and Europeans celebrated the fall of the Wall. In contrast, there were many other places in the world removing communism but without the same results. Osama bin Laden successfully expelled Russia from Afghanistan on February 15, 1989, a few months before the fall of the Wall. Who is to blame for his success is debatable. Did bin Laden crush the Soviet Union? Did Reagan bankrupt Russia in the arms race? Either way, the sees of political Islam was bin Laden’s alternative to free market capitalism. The rest of the world would continue to flatten as the Middle East continued to be mired in socio-political inequity of its members.

Flattner #2 happened shortly after Windows shipped. Netscape went public on August 9, 1995. Netscape was a broadly popular commercial browser for surfing the Internet. Netscape was easy to use and the visual interface was more palatable to the general public. Marc Andreesen, the co-founder of Netscape, had created Mosaic which was a browsing interface utilized by academics interested in research at other academic institutions. Andreesen understood the importance of the user interface being simple yet visual. Andreesen also found that it was contagious. Once others knew the possibilities of browsing, they wanted to join his twelve original users. Andreesen understood that web browsing that was easier and more easily understandable to the general public would mean more interest in browsing the Internet.

In addition, Netscape was more easily adopted because it was relatively inexpensive. It was free for education or non-profits, free for 30-day trial by individuals and free for business for a 90-day trial. Netscape offered the software for free because they believed that free usage would stimulate massive growth in the network which ultimately is valuable to consumers of the network. They were correct! Compatibility was also key to the success of Netscape.

Netscape dealt with issues of network compatibility by adopting Open Protocols which are now the backbone of the web today. TCP/IP is the basic Internet “plumbing,” FTP allowed files to be mobbed between networks, SMTP and POP moved email, HTML allowed basic website creation for all, HTTP allowed movement of HTML documents and SSL allowed secure e-commerce. All of this openness meant a flatter world. Netscape essentially kept the world flat by commercialization open. Open protocols quashed Microsoft’s market dominance by providing a non-proprietary network.

–Microsoft already had a firm toe hold on the PC operating system market. Microsoft furthered their influence by releasing Windows 95 1 week after Netscape went public. Windows 95 had built in Internet support meaning that applications knew about, and interacted with, the Internet (Friedman, 57). The earlier dissemination of PCs with Windows and built in modems created a platform for adoption of web browsing. But the adoption of Netscape indicated a stronger interest in non-proprietary networks. The Wall had come down in Berlin and people did not accept walls on the Internet. Consumers wanted companies to compete once they were on the Internet not on how they got on the Internet. The value of compatibility was much higher than value of trying to maintain walled networks (Friedman, 62).

Netscape’s adoption made a demand for all things digital even more compelling. The success of Netscape and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 led to over-investment in cable. The bubble busted and many telecommunications companies filed for bankruptcy. New telecoms bought up cable cheaply and passed savings onto customers allowing broader access. Further flattening will be realized with improved receivers.

Friedman writes about two critical moments in the development of our Internet age. The fall of the Berlin was a momentous and visible opening of a country allowing a more unified global view which in turn drove the need to be interconnected on a level playing field with the rest of the world. Shortly thereafter, the introduction of Netscape also promoted this global view. Mar Andreesen, the cofounder of Netscape believed that people would punch through their discomfort with technology to be connected to one another. He was right. We all are craving a flatter world.

2005-10-23T20:04:00.000-07:00

Reading Summary: Technologies of the Third Mediamorphosis by Roger Fidler

This chapter describes the evolutionary precursors of the third mediamorphosis. According to Fidler, the dawn of the information age had its evolutionary precursors far before World War II. It is Fidler’s contention that the evolution of electronic communications concurrent with the burgeoning industrial economy is what drove our current third mediamorphosis. Specifically, Fidler claims that it was a crisis of control that led to rapid development of electronic communications. Tracking the breakneck speed of goods being produced and distributed around the country was the driving need for immediacy of communication at the beginning of the 19th Century. By the instigation of growing industrial age, electronic communications grew alongside commerce. The use of digital language to track shipments and communicate orders eventually developed into the first systematic applications to a computer prototype. Systems or programs were applied by Babbage in 1834 in developing an “analytical engine” which was the prototype of the modern computer. It would still be more than a hundred years before supervening social necessity would create a need for the modern computer.

In the meantime, Bell and Gray started their race to invent the speaking telephone. Similar to the telegraph, it was business that first applied the use of the telephone. However, it was Bell and Watson’s demonstrations for potential entertainment applications that is most pertinent to the evolution of new technology: radio. With Marconi’s introduction of the “wireless” telegraph in 1899, radio was on the cusp of technological development. It was Marconi’s application of electromagnetic radiation that allowed for the eventual transformation of radio waves into the first broadcast medium. The first application of radio was by ham operators who were interested in person to person communications. Over time, amateur ham operators began transmitting entertainment content. Frank Conrad’s regular broadcasting of news and music over the radio waves caused his employers at Westinghouse to take notice. In 1920, Westinghouse began broadcasting the first commercial radio network. This technology grew in popularity and many local stations were developed. However, the drain on resources in running a radio station caused owners to find sources for revenue eventually leading to selling “air” time to advertisers. It was not until the aggregation of several stations throughout the country under NBC that the national placement of advertising really started to allow radio stations to grow their influence and profit margin. Unfortunately, radio programming presumed a white, male audience in their 50’s which led to the continued permeation of racist and sexist attitudes throughout the country.

According to Fidler, television was the next development in entertainment mass media. The introduction of the television in 1939 had long been anticipated by the adoption of radio and photography. In the 1960’s, Marshall McLuhan claimed that television actually created a “global village” rather segregating society. Then came the computer. Efficiencies in developing “chips” is what allowed the modern computer to shrink in size and cost making networking more feasible. The first computer network was created to connect academic institutions but with the introduction of Mosaic a more easily understandable visual map of the internet allowed interconnection of individuals through the web. I find this fact particularly interesting for my own studies in visual communications. Because of the emphasis placed on interconnection created by development of technologies in this chapter, we can presume that Fidler would not concur with Neil Postman’s article regarding the segmenting of society. In fact, we can imply that Fidler believes that the expanding choices in mass media since the early 1830’s actually connects individuals.

2005-10-09T23:59:00.000-07:00

There are a couple of items in Winston's text that I would like to discuss in this posting. First, I was surprised to learn that the seminal development in phototelegraphy technology was possible as early as 1862 (Winston, 29). Since visual content is the focus of my research for this quarter, I have decided that my historical paper will be beginning with Caselli's invention of a device that allows transmission of images. I will be researching what applications Caselli's device would have served and how this affected future developments in image transmission.

My second "ah-ha" moment came from Winston as well. I was struck by the fact that the postal service controlled the usage of the telegraph in the United States. I think this fact is rather interesting being that the telegraph is the precursor for mass communications across large distances. I am certain that the vestiges of federal regulation continued to effect this mode of communication long after this technology was allowed to be used by private companies. Even more dramatic is the fact that the European government also regulated the telegraph through the postal service. Considering that the imperial semaphore had been used and controlled by the military, having the postal service control the telegraph takes the content farther away from the governments information control and influence and brings it closer to the public. Still, the influence of regulation most certainly affected this medium in it's development and it appears this influence is global.

Considering that it's 1:30 a.m. I'll be signing off for the time being. I welcome your thoughts.