Urban studies lecture series, part I

I am attending the open lecture series on urban studies at EKA titled "Urban Study and Action Lectures: Exploring the connections between research and contemporary issues of planning and design" (full programme PDF). In order to get credit points we have to keep a diary and present it at the end of the course. I decided to publish my notes as blog posts here and this is the first part of the series.

Lecture 1 (sept. 13)

Part 1 – Mark Gottdiener (USA): Introduction to New Urban Studies
Mark Gottdiener gave an introductory overview of Urban Studies based on his own book (“Key Concepts in Urban Studies”). He discussed about the topics related with the field of urban studies and gave a roadmap for further reading. Some of the covered topics included:

• Form of Urban Space
• Models of Analyzing Urban Life
• Concepts of Change & Development
• Old and New Spatial Issues
• Politics & Public Policy Issues

It was a very interesting introduction with some good examples mainly from USA and Europe.

Part 2 – Antti Ahlava (FI): The seduction of Architecture
Gottdiener's presentation was followed by Antti Ahlava with his lecture on the topic of architecture and tourism. Ahlava discussed mostly about the influence of tourism on urban space and illustrated this with several examples of architecture oriented on tourism (e.g. Dubai).

Lecture 2 (sept. 20)

Part 1 – Anne Haila (FI): Urban Construction, Asian examples
Anne Haila discussed about urban development in Asia. The speed and scale of urbanization currently happening in China and other parts of Asia is unlike anything previously witnessed. In her presentation Haila mentioned that currently the biggest city in the world is actually a little-known Chinese city called Shenzhen. Unfortunately I could not find any sources to corroborate her statement.

Haila dedicated a large part of her lecture and examples on Hong Kong and Singapore. These two cities are among the most well-known urban centers in the world. It was interesting for me to learn about the land ownership policies in those cities where over 80% of the land (in Hong Kong over 95%) is owned by the government. As far as I understand individuals and companies cannot buy the land, they can only lease it for long periods of time (up to 70 years in China). This is an interesting model because there is no accumulation of wealth as in western countries where the land you buy becomes your inheritance.

Although this system seems successful when you look at the spurring economies of Hong Kong and Singapore it has also raised some questions among local inhabitants who are becoming worried about their future (see Asia Times Online article "Chinese fear homes are castles in the air"). But why is this model still such a success? In my view this probably has it's roots in the way people think. China is a communistic country and hence the population there has (in some ways also forced) a different view of private/public ownership. Nevertheless, the more steps the government takes toward free market principles the more people will start to question the land use rights.

In my view another reason for the success of the system is the limited timespan in which you can generate profits from the use of land. Thus every business wants to get as much profit as quickly as possible from the land they have. There are no speculators who buy land with the only intention of selling it to someone else at a higher price. This is clearly the case with many properties here in Tallinn where no development has happened for years.

Part 2 – Ülar Mark (EE): Architecture in Changing Socio-Economic Context
Ülar Mark is the head of architectural company urban mark and is also the chairman of the Union of Estonian Architects. Mark showed several studies based on locative technologies which can be used to analyze the movement of people in relation to time and space. He has been exploring this subject in depth and has also been involved with several mobile positioning projects as a member of the Positium team.

The benefits of mobile tracking in developing urban environments are obvious - you get a better overview when and where people are actually moving. This is the key data for developing public space in cities for example. Mobile locative technologies are relatively new and don't have much practical applications yet but there is a lot of on-going research in this field.

You can read about some of the mobile positioning projects carried out by Positium on their web portfolio. For example they have studied the movements of tourists in Estonia, the suburb sprawl around Tallinn and the movement of EKA (Estonian Academy of Arts) students and employees with the aim of finding the best location for the new campus building. You can even track the members of the Positium team in real time and try out the tracking interface of Joint Space.

During his presentation Mark also gave an example of one of the more practical cases for the mobile positioning systems. The case was in Tartu where the city was planning to build new bicycle roads but the cyclist were not happy with the locations. They used mobile positioning to track their movements so that city officials could get a better understanding of where the new roads are really needed.

Second Life or Second Wife?

Recently browsing through my list of blogs in NetNewsWire I came upon an article about Second Life, the virtual 3D on-line world where you can literally act out another life. You can go shopping in a mall, build a house, meet people, go to clubs, have a job, start a business, make money and even have a second wife. This is exactly what Ric Hoogestraat does in Second Life (SL) as described by Alexandra Alter in The Walls Street Journal article titled "Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?"

I have always wondered what people find so interesting in SL. For me it seems a bit too boring. I would rather play GTA: San Andreas where I can at least blow something up and generally run amok in a virtual city carrying out missions for mobsters - now that's fun entertainment. But in SL people generally don't do that. It's a community that mimics real life and you are expected to behave in an orderly fashion. This is why I have never actually tried SL (although I should try it so that I know exactly what I'm writing about) but the hassle of registering and creating an avatar seems too much work for me.

Enough about me, let's get back to Ric and his second life. Ric's case is interesting because he is actually married in real life but also has a another "wife" in the virtual world. It's illegal to have two wives in real life but nothing is stopping you from having a dozen in the virtual world. This may all seem like a harmless game but if you spend more than 6 consecutive hours a night (or even 14 on weekends) in the virtual world it should no longer be considered just a game. Especially if you start taking the virtual seriously. It's no surprise that Ric's real wife is not too happy about the virtual competitor:

You try to talk to someone or bring them a drink, and they'll be having sex with a cartoon.

I think the above pretty much sums up the essence but as Ric has never actually met his second wife in person nor talked to her on the phone it's hard to accuse the man of anything other than lack of attention.

The article about Ric and his second life was very intriguing for me because it explains why some people like SL and what they actually do there. In the virtual world Ric is a successful businessman and can act out his fantasies. He can have new friends and be married to the girl of his dreams... he can even have his own island. This sounds nice and all but what do you really do with all that? Here's another excerpt form the article which made me question the point of the whole thing:

Dutch drinks a Corona, Mr. Hoogestraat's beer of choice in real life, and sits at his desk. For a while, Mr. Hoogestraat, sitting at his computer, stares at an image of his avatar sitting at his computer.

I have come to the conclusion that people who get hooked on SL might have some sort of social disorder in the sense that they are not happy with something in their real lives and would rather live in a crude graphical imitation of the real thing. This leads to a whole bunch of questions... But if it makes them feel better then why not? What kind of positive or negative consequences could this have on the community as a whole? Maybe these people are pioneers for a "new" way of life we should all be enjoying in the future?

Needless to say there is a lot of unknown territory in exploring this subject and it's quietly becoming a very hot topic in the field of academic research. Sci-fi writers have long pondered on this subject but thanks to technological development the possibility of living out your life in a virtual environment is already now becoming a reality. In the end there is one question that scratches my brain the most: should we be afraid of these new virtual worlds? For now, I'm sticking with the real thing.

Picture taken from the WSJ article.

And now a word from our sponsors...

UPDATE! (10/07/06): Shortly after I had posted the following post I contacted Pokerlistings.co.ee and received a friendly reply saying that the book was waiting for me at their office. Yesterday I picked it up and I am now the proud owner of Juhan Kivirähk's book "Mees, kes teadis ussisõnu." They have not yet reached the 100 post/book target but are well on their way. The campaign can already be considered a success because they have been mentioned in a few Estonian top blogs and their Google search results have improved dramatically in Estonia (try a search for "pokker" on google.ee).

Before you read any further I should inform you that this post is somewhat commercial in nature but the concept is very intriguing.

Recently I stumbled upon an interesting offer from the on-line casino portal Pokerlistings.co.ee who will give you a book for free ("Mees, kes teadis ussisõnu" by Juhan Kivirähk) if you mention their portal on your blog. I don't go to casinos and I don't like to gamble because it doesn't provide any thrills for me. I also know that casino-addiction is a real problem and can cause a lot of pain and misery for the families of "addicted" people. But I also believe that everybody has the free right to do what they want with their own lives and hard earned money. I am also intrigued by Pokerlistings.co.ee's marketing strategy: in-post blog marketing.

The concept itself is not brand new to the marketing world but has only recently started to gain more attention. Zachary Rodgers discusses blog marketing in his post "Measuring Blog Marketing" and has devoted a large share of it to in-post marketing. There is also a company called PayPerPost making a living off this concept and even claims to have invented it. PayPerPost pays bloggers if they write about products, services and companies. They are the mediator between the company who wants to advertise and the blogger who spreads the word (or in this case ad-writer). But according to their concept PayPerPost approves posts only if they meet the "requirements". In essence you might not get paid if the client does not like your opinion. In my opinion this has a very negative influence on bloggers as they might not express their honest opinion due to the fear of getting their compensation vetoed.

Now let's take a closer look at the specific case at hand. In their campaign Pokelistings.co.ee claims that they don't want you to write articles glorifying their company or services. In fact, they urge you to write honestly about what you think of their services. No strings attached. If you honestly believe that casinos are temples of hell then by all meas say so... and as long as you mention their site you will still receive your free book (at least the first 100 bloggers as the supply of books is not infinite).

So what does Pokelistings.co.ee get out of this? The thing that matters most – web ranking. The more links to Pokerlistings.co.ee on different blogs/websites the higher the search ranking. Simple. Instead of the generic "look how super-good our on-line casino is" banner they get to spread the word, increase their ranking and receive honest feedback. And in the end that's what really counts - what people honestly think without the mumbo-jumbo.

And how did I stumble upon this campaign? Through a blog of course (blog.taavi) while browsing Orkut's social networks. The post seemed interesting enough that I decided to take a look at Pokerlistings.co.ee. I would never have done that with a simple banned or AdSense ad and if I was a casino kind-of-guy I just might have played a few games of online poker.

It's no longer a suprise that ITC development is drastically changing media and the advertising that goes with it. Paul McEnany has written a thought provoking post "Advertising Is Dead" on Hee-Haw marketing about the change that is sweeping through the advertising world:

So, the picture should be even clearer. Advertising is dead, but marketing isn’t. We’ve started to adapt to this new environment by doing the only thing we could do, stop advertising, and just embrace the humanity of it all.

Now, we’ve become conversationalists, trying desperately to elicit some response where before we simply ignored it. And that’s a good thing. The implication is that we no longer own it or control it. Now we earn it.

I haven't received my book yet but I hope that after writing to Pokerlistings.co.ee as instructed I will one day receive my "free" copy of Kivirähk's book. I have also asked them to keep me updated about the results of the campaign so that we could see how well it's actually working. Although I might not be a fan of on-line gambling I think Pokerlistings.co.ee is definitely on the right track when it comes to on-line advertising. It's a win-win situation for all of us.

Prizes instead of patents?

Recently I read Jüri Saar's master thesis titled "Prizes: The Neglected Innovation Incentive" (also available online in PDF format). The thesis looks at the patent system and proposes a possible alternative based on prizes. An interesting concept which is especially compelling in light of the digital revolution and the Internet. The whole system of patents and intellectual property laws has created a complex maze of legislation which requires dedicated lawyers for navigation. The original system was never intended for the fast-paced development of the software industry.

Alternatively prizes could be used instead of patents to stimulate innovation and provide compensation for the efforts put into research & development. There are numerous real-life examples of how prizes have effectively been used to solve problems. Several such cases have been outlined in Jüri's paper such as the Longitude Act in the 18th century all the way up to modern day with the Ansari X-Prize and the open-source prize onmac.net.

Instead of hiring a small dedicated team of researches to work on solving a problem you can have the entire community do the research and only pay for the (best) solution once it's found.
A company called InnoCentive has been set up specifically for the purpose of bringing together the people with a problem and the people with a soution using prizes as the incentive. The service offered by InnoCentive helps to solve problems quickly and effectively but it does not solve the issue of intellectual property laws. The problem is that InnoCentive does not publish the solution and the IP rights are handed over to the seeker (prize offerer). This business model has also become known under the name crowdsourcing. A comprehensive article about this model can also be read here.

But crowdsourcing is not the most beneficial way of innovation from the community's perspective as the new owner of the solution still holds a monopoly over the marketing rights. This might be somewhat acceptable in industries where the research costs are incredibly high (e.g. pharmaceutical manufacturing) but it just doesn't fit for software development.

This is where open-source software prizes seem to offer the best solution. The onmac.net prize is a good example of this. Colin Nederkoorn wanted to use Windows XP on his Intel-based mac (before official possibilities were announced i.e. Boot Camp or Parallels) and offered a prize of $100 to anybody who could make it happen. However the solution would have to be open-source and therefore free for everybody. He also included the possibility for others to increase the prize money with donations. In the end the total cash prize was $13,854 and the solution was found in less than 2 months.

I believe there is a lot of potential for open-source prizes which are beneficial for both the developers and the community. The Internet is perfect for this kind of innovation and makes it relatively easy to coordinate and handle the administrative issues. There are also several examples of the emergence of this trend. The prize model has been adopted by an open-source mobile company called Funambol. They have a program called Funambol Community Code Sniper which lists a number of prizes for developing connectors and plug-ins for their software. Prizes range from $1000 to $3000 and the solutions will be made open-source.

Likewise Computer Associates announced prizes for developing open-source database migration applications. The commercial benefit for the company was clear - get people to switch database software. The largest prize was $400 000 and it was won by a team of software developers from India. All the solutions are now available for use under public licenses like the BSD Open Source License.

The notion of using prizes for future software development has a lot of potential. For further information on this subject I recommend reading Jüri's master thesis and also checking his blog Vabalog where he keeps track of more interesting developments in this field (blog is only in Estonian, use the search term "auhinnad" to find blog posts on this subject).

A Little About Hacker Culture

In this essay written for the History & Visions of New Media course I will try to give a little insight into the hacker culture – it’s origins, ideology and the way it has evolved over time. The hacker mentality was the driving force behind the computer revolution and could possible be the key to the future of the whole computer industry.

The term hacker has several definitions in the English language and can be used in several ways including the description of someone who is bad at golf. In a more wider meaning the term hacker can be applied to any technical field where a person is skilled and motivated to go beyond the expected limits and push the envelope – an expert or enthusiast of any kind.

Today the term hacker is mostly associated with 2 contradicting meanings. From the historical point of view the true definition of a hackers is a person who likes to explore and play with computer systems and is exceptionally talented in understanding and manipulating the inner workings of computer hardware and/or software. This hacker culture originated in the early sixties with the first “true hackers” or “academic hackers” at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab who essentially discovered the spirit and soul of computing. Steven Levy’s book “Hackers” gives a deep insight into the hacker culture established by the likes of Richard Greenblatt, Bill Gosper, Richard Stallman, Lee Felsenstein, John Harris and many others (Levy 1994).

Actually the word “hack” was used at MIT even before computer culture became an integral part of the university. MIT hacks were pranks or practical jokes undertaken by students at the MIT campus. A tradition that is still alive and practiced among new MIT recruits.

The second widely used definition of hackers was adopted by the news media in the early 1980s. Unlike the “romantic” definition of hackers outlined above this one has a negative undertone because it refers to a person who uses his computer skills to break security measures in order to gain access to secured networks and information with malicious intent. Richard Stallman founder of the Free Software Foundation and considered by Levy and many others as “the last true hacker” (Levy 1994, 435) points out in an article about hacking that although some hackers do occasionally break security measures it is not the main intent of hackers. He describes hacking as “playful cleverness” where security measures are occasionally breached in order to learn and explore. However the mass media ignored all the other attributes to hacking and for the most part associated it only with security breaking. In order to help correct the misunderstanding Stallman recommends using the term “cracking” for security breaking which has already been adopted by many. However Eric Gordon Corely (a.k.a. Emmanuel Goldstein) founder of the hacker magazine “2600: The Hacker Quarterly” suggested in an interview given to CNN not to use labels at all because the term “cracker” might also be misleading.

The controversy and discussion surrounding the definition of “hacker” is a long one and it will not be described further in this essay. Instead, I shall delve more deeply into exploring the hacker culture and how it has shaped over time.

As already mentioned above the roots of hacker culture stem from MIT’s AI lab during the early sixties. In his book, Levy divides hackers into 3 generations: the true hackers from the 50’s and 60’s, hardware hackers of the 70’s and game hackers of the 80’s (Levy 1994). As the book was originally published in 1984 it fails to address the later generations and present day.

The 50s and 60s was a time when computers where large bulky machines taking up rooms full of space and requiring a fleet of air conditioners to keep them operational. The first computer at the MIT AI lab that ignited the hacker culture was the experimental TX-0. After that the PDP-1 and several other incarnations became the shrines for hackers at MIT and other universities in the USA. During this era of “academic hackers” the hacker ethics first came to light and the principles were written down by Levy as follows (Levy 1994, 40):

• Access to computers — and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works — should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-on Imperative!
• All information should be free.
• Mistrust authority — promote decentralization.
• Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
• You can create art and beauty on a computer.
• Computers can change your life for the better.

The hacker ethic is not something written in stone – it’s a way of thinking, an ideology if you will. The “The Conscience of a Hacker” written by a hacker called The Mentor gives some insight into the mind of hackers and their culture which has sparked the creative minds of computer programmers around the world.

The hacker ethic is an fundamental part of the hacker culture but not the only aspect of it. There is a whole subculture around hacking and “The New Hacker’s Dictionary” is the guide to this strange world of passionate enthusiasts. Among others it outlines the characteristics of hackers, their speech style, jargon and even sexual habits.

After first originating at MIT the hacker culture quickly spread into other universities and during the 70s the so-called hardware hackers emerged who started making their own personal computers and the culture spread even further. Those who fiddled with computers during the first half of the seventies were mostly hackers because computer technology was still too complex for the average person to use but not for long. Many of these hardware hackers were soon-to-be millionaires as the personal computer industry began taking shape.

During the 1980s the personal computer revolution was ignited by companies like Apple, Atari, Microsoft and IBM who brought computers to the masses. From a hacker culture point of view there was a large shift during this time – computers became big business. This commercialization of software and hardware gave a blow to the hacker ethic because all the information (software source code) was no longer free. According to Levy the 80s generation of game hackers, who wrote software for computers like Atari, the hacker ethic was no longer strictly followed. In some ways this is understandable because there was a lot of money to be made from writing software. Information that used to be free to the original true hackers became proprietary and copyright lawyers made sure that the hacker ethic would not prevail over state laws (Levy 1994).

Richard Stallman was one of the most voiced protestors of this trend and in 1985 established the Free Software Foundation which is dedicated to promoting computer users' rights to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. In essence the free software movement was born to carry on the ideals of hacker ethic in a world of business and lawyers. In 1998 another strand of this movement emerged under the name open source which essentially bares the same values but without such strong ideological overtones. In one of his essays Stallman emphasizes that open source should not be considered a synonym for free software as the first can be combined with proprietary software.

With the computer industry becoming one of the driving economic forces of the western world and the Internet evolving into a mass medium it was clear that the original hacker ethics needed renewing. In the beginning of the 90s it was obvious that the last two points of the original hacker ethics were now common knowledge. It no longer surprised anybody that computers can change lives for the better and they can also be used for artistic purposes. Subsequently the focus of hacker culture shifted more on the first ethical points regarding information freedom and decentralization.

Eric Raymond, one of the founders of the open source movement has formulated his own view of the hacker ethic as "the belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible". Raymond believes that security breaching is ethically acceptable if it is only done for exploration and as long as no theft, vandalism or breach of confidentiality is committed.

Steve Mizrach research paper titled “Is there a hacker ethic for the 90s hackers?” also concludes that sharing and communication with peers is among the most important ethical principals for the new generation of hackers along with fighting cyber-tyranny. Mizrach also notes that the new hacker ethic honors the protection of privacy and “Above all else, do no harm” but at the same time it shares Raymond’s views regarding security breaking in the name of exploration.

In his book titled “Rebel Code” Glyn Moody writes about the free software and open source revolution and gives a more general view of the development of hacker values at the end of the 20th century (Moody 2001). Sharing and community freedom are key concepts in the new hacker ethic as information should be free and benefit the whole of mankind. Moody expresses the view that the success of Linus Torvalds’ open-source operating system GNU/Linux is in many ways credited to hackers and the open-source community (Moody 2001, 56).

Eric Raymond reaffirms this view in his book “Open Sources” by stating that during the end of the 20th century the central activities of hackers became GNU/Linux development and Internet mainstreaming. Raymond believes that along with the spread of the Internet the hacker culture will gain more momentum in the mainstream and possibly even enter political ideology.

To some extent we are already seeing this happening in Sweden with the formation of a political party called the “Pirate Party”. The party wants to reform intellectual property laws in order to give people free access to information as required by the hacker ethic. During their short period of existence (less than 2 years) the political party has gained strong support in Sweden (over 9600 members and 34,918 voters in 2006 Swedish general elections – Wiki source) and the idea has spread around the world with similar parties cropping up in over 10 other countries as well.

It’s clear that the hacker culture is here to stay and is gaining more momentum with every new computer that is connected to the Internet. In his paper titled “Democratizing software” Brent Jesiek analyzes the impact of hacker culture in software development and compares them with the ideas of Andrew Feenberg, a philosopher of technology who tends to promote socialist ideals over capitalism and individualism. Jesiek believes that the wider acceptance of the hacker culture combined with Freenberg’s commitment to democratization could be the future of software development and possibly one of the key values for future communities (Jesiek 2003).

Book references:

1. Levy, S. (1994) Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Delta Books
2. Moody, G. (2001) Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, Perseus Books
3. Jesiek, B., (2003). "Democratizing software: Open source, the hacker ethic, and beyond" First First Monday, volume 8, number 10 (October)

Visualizing the visualization

A recent article on my brother's blog (Vabalog) directed me to a very interesting site which gives a nice overview of different data visualization methods – The Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. I think this table is a nice reference tool for the History and Visions of New Media course and anybody who is interested in visualizing data using new media. Just roll your mouse over any of the "elements" and you see an example of the visualization method. Neat!

You've probably seen most of the visualizations at some point or another but I for one could only name a handful of methods. But as you can see from the chart they all have unique names... I especially like the "heaven 'n' hell chart".

Side note: A special thanks to Nate Weaver for his excellent little app Paparazzi! which enabled me to take a full-scale screenshot of the webpage.

The science and fiction of teleporting

In one of our History & Visions of New Media sessions we briefly discussed teleportation. This is a technological concept well known to every Star Trek fan (including me). I am not going to go into details about how teleportation could scientifically work as claimed by some scientists but rather question the idea of teleporting animate objects.

The principle idea behind teleportation is that you scan an object and build a stream of information which could then be communicated to another location where the same object is assembled based on the scanned information. Sounds a lot like copying, doesn't it? Basically yes and no.... in order to avoid a lot of questions on the topic of "copy vs. original" sci-fi writers often don't leave the original intact. Gene Rodenberry also opted for this choice when he created the world of Star Trek.

Okay, so you could in principle copy or transfer an object from one place to another. Obviously this could revolutionize the manufacturing and courier industry but what would happen when you tried to teleport a live subject? This is where science grinds to a halt and personal religion and/or beliefs take over because in order to answer this question we would have to define life itself. What makes an inanimate object live? Do live beings have a soul? These are ageless questions that have scratched the brains of thinkers throughout history. If anybody has an answer to these questions they are welcome to share them in the comments.

So what's the point of this post? My goal was just to point out that even though replicating inanimate objects might be scientifically feasible it should not be mistaken for the "transporter" from Star Trek. Any talk of actually teleporting something should be treated with skepticism because the fundamental principles are questionable. I'm not saying it's impossible but in order to teleport live beings we will have to boldly go where no man has gone before....

(Star Trek transporter image courtesy of blog.scifi.com)

GPL vs. lawyers

During the last Intellectual Property and New Media lecture we discussed about the GNU Public License (GPL). This is one of the most widely used licenses for open-source software which protects everybody's right to use, copy and modify free software. However there are plenty of companies taking advantage of open-source software and violating the GPL license because it's an easy way to profit and gain credit from the work of others.

Even though GPL has been around since 1989 only recently (after 2000) the first court cases in connection with GPL have emerged. This is probably due to the fact that open-source programmers are not the kind of people to take big name companies and their armies of lawyers to court. Needless to say that making GPL software is not going to make you a millionaire and there is no profit to be made from protecting the GNU Public License in court. This is usually enough to scare lawyers away from taking on a pro-GPL case. However there are a selected few who DO have the time, resources and willingness to fight in the name of free software. Harald Welte and Armijn Hemel are members of this elite group and they are the lone sheriffs in the very wild west of open-source software planes. Luckily they have the courts on their side.

Welte founded gpl-violations.org a website that is dedicated to "gathering, maintaining and distributing information about people who use and distribute GPL licensed free software without adhering to the license terms." The project has successfully resolved over 100 GPL infringement cases both in and out of court. Some of the more well-known court cases have been fought in Germany against D-Link (read the English translation of the verdict here) and Sitecom (unofficial English translation of the verdict also available). News of these cases have echoed around the Internet because GPL related court cases are VERY rare. Most of gpl-violations.org cases have also been resolved outside the court room.

However gpl-violations.org was not the first one to take GPL rights to court. In 2002 MySQL AB along with The Free Software Foundation's chief legal counsel, Eben Moglen, made history by taking Progress Software Corporation to court because of GPL license infringement. In this case Progress was selling a proprietary software product called Gemini that was linked to MySQL's open-source code licenced under GPL. You can read more about the case from a lawyers point of view in the FindLaw article by Laura A. Majerus. The Register also has a news article regarding the case.

But it's not always the pro bono freedom fighters who file suit against profit-hungry corporations. In a very amusing case Daniel Wallace actually sued the Free Software Foundation (the organization behind GPL) for price fixing in 2005. Wallace claimed that by fixing the price of software at 0.- the GPL license was restricting fair trade and prohibiting competitive business practices. It's no surprise that the case was dismissed without prejudice. Nevertheless Wallace was not deterred. He consequently filed 4 amended complaints which were all dismissed. With the dismissal of his last appeal on 20/03/2006 the court ordered him to pay the FSF's legal costs.

This is where any sensible person would realize their foolishness and quietly walk away... but not Wallace. It would seem that the concept of open-source software as a "good thing" was still beyond his reach. In 2006 he filed another lawsuit against IBM, Novell, and Red Hat claiming that they profit from the distribution of open-source software (especially Linux) and were therefore engaging in anticompetitive price fixing. Yet again he failed in his quest to expose the "conspiracy" because the courts dismissed his case... but he STILL kept on trying and filed an appeal in the Seventh Circuit Appeal Court where his case was heard in front of three judges who YET AGAIN dismissed him due to a number of problems with his complaint. Chief Judge Easterbrook definitively stated that "[t]he GPL and open-source software have nothing to fear from the antitrust laws."

For further in depth analysis regarding this comical case I recommend reading The Register's article titled "Free software still legal - judge". After reading about Wallace and his epic court battles it's no wonder that he has a Wikipedia entry in his name.

As far as I understand all court cases in connection with the GNU Public License have been ruled in favor of open-source software and it's principles. This is surely a clear sign that GPL is a good way to protect free software. I'm not saying that it's perfect but if it's good enough to hold up in a court of law then it's good enough for me. If anybody reading this posting has other information I would greatly appreciate it if they would care to share their thoughts in the comments.

My only fear is that with the increasing amount of open-source code the number of companies exploiting the open-source community will overwhelm the small number of lawyers willing to fight against them in a court of law. Hopefully every case won for the GPL team will make it easier for others to protect the principles of free software.

(GNU logo from www.gnu.org)

Visions and screens

I have been wanting to write a post about this for a long time but have never actually gotten around to doing it. The topic here is "viewing, showing, displaying" which was covered in our last "History & Visions of New Media" course session (which I unfortunately was not able to attend). Now on to the point of this post - multi-touch displays.

This concept involves a lot more than just viewing or displaying. It's probably one of the most natural UI technologies between man and machine. According to Wikipedia multi-touch technology has a 25-year history but until recently there has not been much talk about it in public. Bill Buxton has aslo compiled a very nice overview of the history of multi-touch. His page describes numerous research projects but very few commercial devices.

If you have not seen multi-touch displays in action then I really recommend taking a look at Jeff Han's Mutli-Touch Interaction Research page. There are pictures (the one posted here is also from his website) and more importantly a video demonstration of the capabilities of this technology. The video is also available at Google.

Surely touch-screens are nothing new and I'm certain all of my blog readers have used a simple touch-screen but multi-touch screens have still mostly remained an area for research & development... until now that is. If you have seen the Apple iPhone then you have seen one of the first consumer devices for the "average Joe" that incorporates a multi-touch display. Apple has clearly recognized the implications of this technology and is leading the way for innovation by putting this wonderful technology in the hands of users.

Intellectual Property

New year, new semester.... One of the courses I'm taking during the IMKE spring semester is the Intellectual Property and New Media course given by Kaido Kikkas. This is a very interesting subject because intellectual property (IP) is something intangible but is one of the key factors in economic and technological development. It can be a blessing for private companies but a curse for consumers and the whole industry. In todays digital age the laws that regulate the use and rights of IP sometimes defy common sense and seem downright stupid. An example of such a case was pointed out by Kaido in our first lecture: http://webshop.ffii.org/

An interesting subject indeed...

Macs & viruses

It's a widely known fact that Mac OS X is not plagued by computer viruses, worms, Trojans or other forms of malware. As an avid Mac user I enjoy the freedom of not having to deal with the constant threat of malicious software infections. However this might just prove to be the Achilles heel of Mac OS X. This subject has always fascinated me and I decided to do some investigation.

During the past 2 years so-called "proof-of-concept" pieces of malicious Mac OS X code have surfaced on the Internet. None of them are currently of any threat to Mac users as they are not circulating on the Internet and they can't cause any real damage to the system. But this proves that Mac OS X is vulnerable just like any other system and Mac users could one day face a real virus threat.

But why haven't we seen one yet? Mac OS X has been out for over 5 years and the threat has not materialized. I did some research on this subject and wrote a small essay of my findings for our SPI course about Macs and viruses/malware. You can read the PDF version of the essay here. I should mention that the referencing style is not traditionally academic but in the form of hyperlinks. I believe that this is a more comfortable form of referencing for on-line readers.

But for those of you too busy or not motivated enough to go through the entire paper I will do a short recap:

1) There are currently no known viruses or other forms of malware in the "wild" that could infect the average Mac user (a worm called Leap.A is considered the only exception by some).

2) There are a few "proof-of-concepts" worms, trojans and malware but their total number does not exceed 10.

3) Several anti-virus software companies have recently (within the last 1-2 years) issued warnings that a "real" Mac OS X virus could arrive soon and Mac users should beware.

4) There are 3 main reasons for the lack of viruses on the Mac platform:

• Small market share (ca. 2.5% of global personal computer market)
• Mac OS X UNIX based architecture makes it difficult to write malicious code
• "Zero-tolerance" of malware within the Mac community

Ok, that sums up my reasearch in a nutshell. I personally believe that the small market share numbers will keep viruses away from the platform. As long as Apple remains the sole manufacturer of Macs the malware threat similar to the Windows platform will remain small on the Mac platform. However all Mac users should be informed of the possible risks and remain skeptical of all content accessed on-line.

Anyone who disagrees or would like to express their own view regarding this subject is welcome to post their comments.

Mobile Surveillance Application

Using the Pyhton programming language for the Nokia S60 phones I programmed a mobile surveillance application during the Mobile Interaction Concepts and Technologies course given by Jürgen Scheible.

The script itself was programmed during 3 days (4 days excercises/theory as well) and is based on example scripts from Jürgen Scheible's excellent Python for S60 tutorial.

The basic concept of the application is to take pictures and listen-in remotly using only 2 mobile phones. The phone used as the surveillance phone has to be a Nokia S60 model running Symbian with Pyhton installed in order for the script to work. The remote phone on the other hand could be any "dumb" phone which has basic browsing capabilities so that you could see the surveillance photo.

The Pyhton script works like this:

Once activated the surveillance phone shows a small preview picture so that you could position the phone's camera as you wish. The script can also work in the background so that anybody looking at the phone would not know that the script is running.

Once the script is started you can send SMS text messages to the phone for it to take action. In my example I have programmed two take actions for the phone when it receives SMS messages with predefined codewords or the appropriate key is pressed:

1. Sending an SMS with the word "photo" (without quotation marks) will tell the phone to take a picture (reolution 640x480) and send it to a PHP script in a predefined server. The PHP script will then store the photo in the server directory so that it could be viewed from any browser. This action can also be activate by just pressing the SELECT key on the surveillance phone. The following image is the photo uploaded by the Pyhton script:
   
   
   
2. Sending an SMS with the word "call" (without quotation marks) will tell the phone to dial a phone number that has been specified in the script. This way you can have the surveillance phone call you so that you can listen-in on what is going on at the location of the surveillance phone. This action can also be activate by pressing the nr. 2 key on the surveillance phone.
   

The script will keep running and responding to the SMS codewords until it is manually turned off.

The Python script can be download here: jaans_camera_application.py
The PHP script can be download here: phone_surveillance_upload.txt

Further development

The script can easily be modifeid so that after receiving an SMS codeword it will continually upload photos (like a webcam) and another SMS codeword will make it stop.

The script could also be modified so that instead of calling a predifend phone number it would dial the number that sent the SMS codeword "call".

Tagging and social bookmarking

Last week we were given another assignment in our CSC course. We were asked to study popular sites that are related with tagging and social bookmarking: del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati and Flickr.

Del.icio.us

So let's start with del.icio.us - a social bookmarking site based on tags and metadata. I created an account there at the beginning of the IMKE course but I haven't really gotten comfortable with using it. I don't even use bookmarks that much. I used to have a ton of bookmarks but today I only use bookmarks as a reminder to visit some sites later in the future or as a collection of links (reference actually) for some specific project.

The problem with bookmarks is that they often tend to get out-of-date and you can often find newer and more relevant information somewhere else. I am a big fan of Google and it's the #1 tool for me on the web. By constantly searching for new information (instead of browsing old bookmarks) you can discover a lot more on the web and find new useful sites that you newer knew existed.

If it's a great site I will visit it often and over time memorize the address. If I don't visit it regularly I still remember the way I found it in the first place or some keywords so that I can always find it again with the help of... Google.

When I do bookmark something I like to have my own system and hierarchy. I want to have control over the way they are displayed, categorized, bundled etc. Del.icio.us restricts your freedom and forces you to rely solely on tags. I don't like systems that force you to behave in an uncomfortable manner. Maybe I'm still too "old-school" but del.icio.us is currently not for me.

Digg

Next up, Digg.com - a social driven content website where users post links to articles which are commented and voted by others. I haven't used Digg sepcifically but I have found some good links through... you guessed it... Google searches. Out of the 4 sites covered by this post I think Digg.com is probably the one I end up visiting most often. Maybe I will start using it more in the future but right now it's not on my list of "must visit pages".

I do however strongly recommend to check out Digg labs. They have some really cool data visualization applets (Swarm and Stack) which display real-time information of users adding and accessing Digg.com content.

Technorati

Technorati sounds awfully similar to the Estonian technology related tv-/radio show/webblog called Tehnokratt run by Peeter Marvet. Technorati is basically a blog tracker with some good search functionalities. However I still don't see any practical reason why I should be using it instead of Google. It seems to me thah most people use it to promote their own blog and to get some more traffic and/or links. I also tried to register my own blog there just for the hell of it but I couldn't because the site was overloaded with traffic. Oddly this also happened with Digg.com as well.

Flickr

Ahh... the infamous Flickr. The photo sharing site that everybody is talking about. I have used the site numerous times to look for photos under the creative commons license. It's a great database of photos but I wouldn't use it to store my own photos. When I put some picture up I usually do it so that my friends could see them... most of my friends are in Estonia and that is why I wouldn't want to put my photos on a server outside of Estonia. When your viewing or uploading an album with over 100 photos then speed is still a critical issue. This will probably become a non-issue in the near future but currently it can still cause problems. I also like to keep interfaces minimal and have full control over the way my photos are organized and displayed. To better understand what I'm talking about you can have a look at my own photo gallery.

Flickr is a good tool for displaying and/or advertising photos for artistic or commercial reasons and to get some feedback from fellow photographers. Then again, a photo-blog is more personal and unique - check out Kadi's photo-blog for example.

Wrapping up...

I think there are some good features in all of the 4 sites and they each serve their purpose for particular groups of people (apparently I'm not in any of those groups yet... I'm just your average googler). It's definitely going to be interesting to see how they will develop in the future and in which direction. I was particularly impressed with Digg labs and their visualization applets and hope to see more development in this field.

Wireless fidelity in Tallinn

When it comes to WiFi Estonia is probably one of the most covered countries in the world. I have a personal WiFi router at home, I have one in the office, there's plenty of wireless connections at my school... basically I spend most of my time in an accessible WiFi hotspot. It is actually quite difficult to find a place in Tallinn which is not covered with a wireless signal.

But how secure is the average wireless router? Finding some answers to this question was one of our assignments in the SP course. At home I have secured my connection using WPA-PSK encryption and by not broadcasting my network SSID. WPA is not perfect (WPA2 would be better) but it's the best that my router can support - hey at least it's better than WEP and keeps out 99% of the population.

To find out how others are securing their wireless networks we took a small drive with Ivo around Tallinn and stopped in a few locations to monitor wireless network activity. I used a program called KisMAC which shows you all the wireless networks in range of your receiver along with details about it's configuration (SSID, encryption type, supported data rate etc.). KisMAC also has a nifty little feature which enables you to passively monitor wireless network traffic. This way you can even see all the hidden networks (like mine at home) and the client computers connected to the network.

Okay, so without further a due here are the summarized results for locations where we scanned for WiFi networks (click the image for a larger view).

I was actually a bit surprised to discover that most networks (about 70%) were using at least some form of encryption. Indeed most of these were using WEP encryption which can be cracked relatively easily (even KisMAC has built-in tools for this purpose) but nevertheless WEP prevents most people access to your network.

Regarding the frequency of access points the results speak for themselves. While driving from Nõmme towards the center of the city I picked up over 70 networks during the first 4-5 kilometers alone. No matter where you are in Tallinn chances are that there are at least 1 or 2 WiFi networks within your range. Given some time and a few good cracking tools you could probably get Internet access from most of them.

For home users WiFi security might not be such a big concern but for businesses this could have disastrous consequences.

How popular is your blog?

I'm sure that all avid bloggers would love to see more visitors to their blog. But with the onslaught of so many new blogs it is difficult to maintain popularity among readers. How does one make his blog popular? Dave Pollard believes that he has an answer to this question. In his article titled "What makes a blog popular?" he simplifies the popularity formula down to 12 criteria. He believes that a blog will gain popularity if it is

1. Engaging
2. Accessible
3. Useful
4. Original
5. Uses images effectively
6. Thoughtful and thought-provoking
7. Generous
8. Focusing on what's important
9. Positive
10. Credible
11. Just the right length
12. Honest

The criteria are explained in more detailed in Pollard's article so I am not going to do it here. Pollard has collected these criteria from reader feedback and sifted out the most commonly mentioned aspects. Pollard also points out the importance of readability which can be measured with the Flesch–Kincaid Readability Tests. If you want to see some test results then I recommend taking a look at Priit's blog. He has done a pretty good summary but I'm not sure how relevant the results are for blogs in Estonian.

In our CSC course we were asked to analyze some blogs based on Pollard's article. I am not going to do that because I don't really agree with Pollard. At least I don't agree with all 12 of his criteria. Instead of analyzing other blogs I will go through the criteria and provide my own view on this subject.

I agree with Pollard that blogs should be written in an easy to read and understandable manner (criteria 1 and 2). If a posting is difficult to read you will soon get bored and tired of it. The relevance of all the other criteria depend on the subject and content of the blog and their relevance is questionable. They are surely not the popularity formula for all blogs and mostly depend on the preferences of the reader.

There are plenty of good and popular blogs that do not contain a great deal of useful or practical information. This includes blogs that provide snippets of information for amusement or entertainment. Usefulness is in itself a good thing but not necessarily something that is vital for a blog to become popular. Blogs that provide analysis and opinions about theories and/or political views don't offer anything practical. For example Vabalog is a blog that is very thoughtful and thought-provoking but not necessarily practical.

Originality is a very good aspect in a blog but again many popular blogs are just collections of news and links to other sites with some short commentary or opinions. Take for example Gizmodo which is among the most popular blogs. Not much original content but very interesting and popular nonetheless.

I agree with Pollard that the effective use of pictures does add quality to a blog but if you use too many pictures or images that are not relevant to the subject it could disturb the reader. It's always nice to have some pictures but if the subject itself (e.g. political analysis) does not require any illustration then the use of no pictures at all could be concidered "effective use". It's sometimes better to leave out the picture if it's a generic image from the MS Office clip art collection.

Thoughtful and thought-provoking is a criteria I also agree with. Blogs should make you think about something. It doesn't have to be serious it can just be something funny but the more it makes you think the better.

According to Pollard the criterion Generous means "Respectful, giving, modest, no bullshit or condescension." This probably rules out many blogs which provide commentary in the form of jokes and/or satire. Why do we still have comic strips in newspapers (and online) that make fun of public figures and everyday life? Surely they would have been trashed and forgotten long ago if they were not popular.

Focusing on what's important is a good idea for bloggers who want to write news stories. In other cases I think that it's entirely up to the blogger to decide what is important and what is not. Pollard elaborates that the blog should "ask and answer the questions others are asking themselves." Who do you write for? Yourself or for others?

Another criteria that I don't take very seriously is that blogs should be "positive." There are so many subjects that are serious and not very "positive". Take for example the North Korea Zone blog which provides news and analysis of developments in North Korea. The posts are often scary and not very upbeat. Does this make the blog less popular? Maybe for Pollard but not for me. I don't want everything I read in a blog to make me "feel good, empowered" as Pollard puts it. Life is not positive all the time, there are ups and downs, strikes and gutters. That's what makes it interesting.

Just the right length is such a vague criteria that it could be applied to almost any posting depending on the content.

Credibility and honesty are important. Here I agree with Pollard 100% and I would like to see more blogs taking note of this.

All in all I think that Pollard's formula for "popularity" can only be applied to his own and other very similar blogs. In my opinion blogging is all about content and whether or not the writer knows what he is writing about. It's not necessarily about what kind of pictures you use, how long the posts are, how good you think they make others feel or how practical the subject. If you are passionate about what you write and you can express yourself fairly decently then you have the ingredients for a popular blog as long as there are other people out there who share the same interests.

VR applications

As an assignment in our Alternative Input & Output Devices course we had to outline some real-life applications of Virtual Reality. I decided to do a fairly basic overview of the major fields where VR is used. If interested you can download the PDF (1 MB). Image courtesy of Barco.

Presentation about Design as Interactivity

Here you can view a PDF version of my short presentation about Design as Interactivity for the Interface & Interactivity Design course.

My main goal was to give an overall picture of what is Interactivity Design and why is it important?

A PowerPoint presentation file can also be downloaded here.

Social networks assignment

For our assignment in the Communities and Social Software course we had to compare 3 social networking sites and outline their main target groups, main activities, special traits, controversial issues and best/worst features. For this purpose I have chosen to give a short overview of Orkut.com, MySpace.com and Tribe.net.

Orkut

The definition of Orkut.com according to their own website is the following:

Orkut is an online community website designed for friends. The main goal of our service is to make your social life, and that of your friends, more active and stimulating. orkut's social network can help you both maintain existing relationships and establish new ones by reaching out to people you've never met before.

According to Orkut people use the network for four main reasons: friends, activity partners, business networking and dating. Statistics compiled by Orkut indicate that the vast majority, 75% are using the network for friends and only 18% are interested in dating. The other two aforementioned reasons for using Orkut have been selected by about 25% of users.

I think the number one reason why people join orkut is to get an answer to one of the most important social questions of all time – who knows who? This is also evident in the statistical numbers mentioned above. When you have many friends with an orkut account this can be lots of fun. It can also be quite entertaining to check out profiles of people you haven’t personally met to see if they know any of your close friends.

Orkut also comes in handy when you meet somebody for the first time. At first you really don’t know anything about the person but if he/she has an Orkut profile you can go online and get some sort of an overview of the person’s background and social network (at least the way they want you to see it) . It might just happen that a friend of yours knows this person. Companies reviewing job applications have also discovered this neat little source of info and some of them are using Orkut to gather additional background information before inviting a person to a job interview.

In Orkut you can create a very detailed profile of yourself indicating your likes and dislikes in a wide variety of topics ranging from sexual preference to your favorite book. You can specify exactly how much information is displayed to your friends and how much is shown to those who are not on your friends list. The process of joining Orkut however has a slight catch to it – you have to be invited to join by a member of the Orkut network. It’s impossible to join without an invitation and you cannot get access to the network without joining. This makes Orkut a somewhat closed community.

Another social element of Orkut is the ability to join communities with specific interests. You can even start your own community if you wish. These communities show up on your profile and give additional clues about your personality.

There is also a rating system built into Orkut (e.g. you can rate how “cool” or “sexy” a person is) but it is quite minimal and not the main focus of Orkut. You can comment other people by writing so-called “scraps” about them on their profile page but this has become a tool for spammers as well.

As with any system that collects personal information and displays it to others privacy is a very big concern for Orkut. Many people remain wary of the service due to it’s openness. Christopher Allan gives a pretty good overview of why he remains insecure about Orkut in one of his blog postings.

Orkut also has a darker side which is basically a reflection of the unpleasant part of our communities. There have been cases where Orkut has been used for distributing child pornography and racist materials. Orkut has even been involved in the dealing of illegal drugs in Brazil as can be read from this BBC article.

MySpace

MySpace.com has most of Orkut’s features and some additional one’s as well. MySpace defines itself as “an online community that lets you meet your friends' friends.” Unlike Orkut you don’t need an invitation to sign up for the service and MySpace profiles can be viewed by anybody including those who don’t have an account. However you do have the option of disabling anonymous users access to your profile and allowing only your friends to view your personal information.

Compared with Orkut MySpace offers a lot more freedom to customize your profile. In Orkut everybody has a generic looking profile page where you fill in information about yourself in predefined areas and you can only upload picture. MySpace on the other hand gives you more flexibility by allowing you to change the colors and background image, add animated graphics, photos, videos and sounds.

In addition to displaying your personal information MySpace allows you to promote your own music, events and films on special sections of their site. Many independent bands are actively using the social networking site to advertise their music. There is also a classifieds sections where you can post your own ads or browse them according to their geographic location and category. The list of services offered by MySpace goes on further with TV on-demand, blogging, mail and instant messaging. MySpace can be described as an internet entertainment hub.

The amount of customization offered by MySpace is probably the reason why it doesn’t appeal to me as a social networking site. Having browsed the network a bit it seems that many users tend to get carried away with customizing their profile with all sort of sounds, videos, flashing animations and big background pictures. Embedding your favorite music video in your profile page also raises copyright issues. Recently Universal Music expressed it’s concern over copyright violations and might even file a lawsuit against MySpace.

Like all social networks MySpace has many possibilities for abuse. There is actually a website www.myspace-danger.org that is devoted to educating the public about the dangers of MySpace. The site outlines many cases where MySpace has been used to commit sex offence crimes, identity theft, child pornography, racism etc. Luckily the police have also begun to use the network for catching online predators.

Tribe

Tribe.com is social networking site that is oriented mainly towards interest groups. Sure you can link to your friends and see who they are linked to similarly to Orkut and MySpace but the concept of Tribe is focused mainly on building small communities called (surprise-surprise) “tribes”. This is probably the main difference between Tribes and the other two social networking sites covered by this short essay.

Tribe defines itself as “a free online community where members share discussions, pictures, reviews and more. Tribes also promote listings and events to interested members.”

Similarly to MySpace users can sign up without an invitation. Once you have created a profile you can easily find a “tribe” that interest you and join in discussions, read reviews, listings and browse pictures related with a particular tribe.

Similarly to MySpace you have a lot of freedom to display different kinds of information on your profile page (you can put up photos, poems, videos etc.) but the overall design cannot be changed and hence it looks a bit better than MySpace. It actually does not offer anything unique but I think it is easier to make new friends on the Tribe network because it is not focused on the individual as much as Orkut and Myspace.

Conclusion

Social networking sites are becoming increasingly more popular and there is plenty to choose from. The question is which network to join? The deciding factor will probably be your existing friends and their choice of networks. A lot of my friends were Orkut users before me and that is why I joined Orkut. There are also more Estonian users in Orkut than in MySpace and Tribe.

I like Orkut because it is simple and does not try to be anything other than a social networking site. In my opinion MySpace already has too many services/options and seems rather chaotic. Tribe is a lot more focused and bears a closer resemblance to Orkut. If my main goal was to find new friends online (regardless of geographic location) I would probably prefer Tribe.net. Another advantage of Orkut is the lack of advertising. MySpace and especially Tribes display advertisements on most of their pages.

Orkut is a good way of getting more information about my existing friends and new one’s that I meet personally. Because I don’t like making new contacts online and I like to focus mainly on my existing network of friends Orkut is probably the best choice for me.

First Post

This blog has mainly been created to serve as an output channel for thoughts & ideas associated with all kinds of new & interactive media during my IMKE master studies at the Tallinn University. Comments of all kind are welcome...