Task 14: Final reflections

During the course I have had different kind of emotions about the assignments and so did the results vary. Maybe my misunderstood of how the whole course would look like, not knowing when there will be tasks posts and what are the reply's that the course leaders are looking for had involvement in results!? At least I'm very glad that the hosts of the course understood our workload and queries about the assignment dates and after each week we had more days to post our replys and the requirements got bit clearer.

I liked the tasks like "creating a study plan" that needed to think about a schema and assignment about re-design of some activity. I wish I had chance to take part of the meeting where components of interactive systems with Piratpad where composed. Actually I think that all tasks should be something similar like this by using various online communication tools and experimenting with new interactive environments.

I have to be honest that from the topic and Subject descriptions (pdf) I was hoping to be introduced 20-30 new interactive environments. What are their pros and cons, which are the future trends etc. By experimenting on these new environments and discussing about future trends we could have proposed extra functions or our own new interactive environments. Subject description pointed out "Students will examine how users interact in more and more interrelated media such as: interactive television, mobile phones, wireless ambient technology, GPS (Satellite Navigation) and interactive advertising." Right now just Piratepad and Flashmeeting where not familiar to me…

Maybe for next years I would suggest to use forums for posting and getting replys of assignments. In that case everyone could get familiar with the others posts and argumentation of topics could lead to wider sharing of ideas.

A groupwork is always the best way to learn and put theory into practice. This should be more mandatory than just an option.

Best of luck for coming years!

Task 13: Redesigning and re-instrumentalising activities

I will propose two activities and small redesign of the ideas. One is rather entertaining and the other more practical but they both use Google translator as the platform of the activities.

Google translator for making music

Google translator is a tool to make translations from one language to another.

Some guys have found out that there is possible to make music with the google translator. You might want to try to translate from German to German. One example text could be like this: "tkk ck tkk bsk bssk bsk bsk bssk bsk bsk bsk bsk bssk bsk bsk bsk bssk bsk bsk bcccccccc". While you hit the play button it makes a music that is called "beatboxing". It's a kind of music where rhythms, drums and beats are being made by using human mouth, lips, tongue and voice.

Different languages could be tested for incompatibility if they are good enough to make beatbox music. Those languages could be put into one website specially custom for music lover. With adding new functions such as changing the speed of the translation or making repetitions of it there could be formed new level of beatboxing. If it has a special website produced this sort of musicians community could grow and there could be made singing battles.

Google translator for better learning language

For the second activity lets take again simple google translator. We all know that for some languages it is very useful and could give precise reply's but how to use the tool better for learning languages. At the moment you could view either the original page or translated page by clicking radio button. It's rather hard to know the meaning of some exact word when there is long texts.

Instead with a rollover of right click one could instantly see options for word translation and by clicking the option there could be made sound sample of pronunciation. Under settings one could make a selection if the sound of word translation could be played first or just the word translation could be show. The first option could be quite useful specially for the blind people where voice navigation make everyday surfing the web easier.

Reference:

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/11/google-translate-beatboxing/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatboxing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLN63bRcY5I

Task 11: our components versus components of activity theory

Are in Pirateapad all necessary components for analyzing and describing interactive systems? What components seem irrelevant?

The list seems to be more than complete. Maybe just few components may have the same purpose like actors and participants or isn’ Project manager a participant? So I would put project manager under participants or actors dependency and add facilitators, tutors etc. The relevance and highlight of the components seem to vary depending on the tasks.

Currently we have a long list of components, which can be definitely shorten. How would you do that? do what degree the list of components is concurrent with the components of the activity theory framework?

It depends on what is the purpose of shortening of the components? When we take the example of the activity theory framework purposed in a research where we find common ground with the components in piratepad assignment. Rules are mentioned in piratepad but maybe should have been defined more specifically which aspects are considered as rules. Definitions related to time(timeframe, star, end etc.), limitations, restrictions should go under rules. So have been mentioned community consisting actors and participants, division of labour consisting project managers and tools consisting of methodology, software and modeling. Also are pointed out subject as actor and object as result with aims/goals.

Are there components which are not covered by the activity theory framework, but the activity theory framework could benefit from?

Activity theory seems to cover all the mentioned components just in a bit smaller contexts. Good points to be pointed out from piratepad are learnability of how the participants should learn from the interactive system and workmanship as a way of using creativity while doing the tasks/activities, which could be benefited in the activity theory framework.

Task 10: Applying activity theory into practice

Components of “PLENK2010” course

Set up

Like mentioned in their website the course idea is to learn not from theory but from the activities one will complete, which different among individuals. The tasks involve activities around all web by creating one’s own web pages or going through some others.

There is used a daily newsletter “The Daily” which give an overview of activities needed to be done and highlight most important topics other course members have pointed out. This load of information eases participants to make choices among the topics of their interest and focus on exploring these ideas.

The course has facilitators who work as coordinators of the project by sharing content posted by the participants and adding something extra.

Interactions

Weekly activities involve:

- Daily newsletter, which will have reflections of students blogs, twitter tweeds and discussions in moodle.

- Course wiki can be edited by the participants

- Moodle discussion forum with other participants of the course and response by course faciliators

- On Sunday readings and resources will be posted to the wiki

- Wednesdays Elluminate session, usually with a guess speaker

- Fridays Elluminate session, as a week review with course faciliators

“This whole course will be about how to read or watch, understand, and work with the content other people create, and how to create your own new understanding and knowledge out of them.”

The subjects of the course post have been related to different topics:

- Online participation

- Personal learning environments

- Learning theories

- Evaluating learning

- Personal knowledge management

Subjects

Every person is free to join the courses.

Rules

Each of the content has to have source. But the ideas is taking the existing content any trying to add your own “flavours” and thought to it. The content is not important but the idea is to use online tools and learn from practicing with them. The facilitators of the course will give examples of how to use the tools and participants will learn from these posts to make their own.

The participants are suggested to keep documentation about the content they have gone trough. Most probably the best way is to share it online that the other participants could see and learn from it but one could also work without sharing.

Participants can join in or dismiss themselves from the course when every they feel like.

Instruments

There are given few ways to the participants to share their content:

- Make a blog in either blogger, wordpress platform or any other blogging service.

- Create account in del.icio.us for making bookmarks on the things you have read.

- Participate in Moodle discussions and make posts about the accessed content.

- Tweet with Twitter

- Also one can share the content within any other envoronment: Flickr, Second Life, Yahoo Groups, Facebook, YouTube

For sharing there should be used a webtag called: “#PLENK2010”

Components of NIE course

As we all are very familiar with the NIE course I will just make a short review about it according to activity theory.

Instruments

During the course one could have used only the course Flashmeeting tool, course blog to get the assignments and pdf readers to read articles. A blog account is also needed to post the assignments and get feedback.

The other tools depend on the participants. Some they may have used Skype to communicate with course mates, Pirate pad for one not mandatory assignment, RSS to get the assignments to e-mails and UML software to create diagrams.

Rules

Tasks will be published in NIE course blog and participants should check the site in regular basics.

Mostly tasks are carried out each week with a deadline. Each will have 10 points wich means there will be 10 tasks all together. Every 24hours that the task is posted after the deadline will give 2 points less. Early tasks would give the participants a chance to get a personal feedback. The course is a pass or fail. 70% of the points should be collected to pass the course.

Subject

Students of TLU make the most of the course participants.

Interactions

Depends on the assignments but mostly there needs to be written blog posts about the read articles.

Comparison of NIE and PLENK2010 courses

In PLENK2010 there are used more tools to get the participants involved to the course and share each other’s work. Especially the Moodle that has option to have discussions with each other helps to get to know topics more in dept. In NIE we mostly use our blogs to post the assignments and that is it.

With PLENK 2010 the schedule and the assignments are clearly pointed out. NIE program and assignments are not know much in advance which makes it hard to organize our time and get most out of topics.

It seems to me that almost no possibility of the physical contact of lecturer and student makes learning of course much harder. Both of the parties my understand the tasks differently so the outcome may vary a lot.

Task 9: exploring activity theory as a framework for describing activity systems

According to Kari Kuuti article about Activity Theory the historical roots go back to 18^th and 19^th century scientific thoughts of German Philosophy from Kant to Hegel that emphasized on humans evolution ideas and its active and constructive role. Marx and Engels elaborated on the aspect of activity being the transforming of material objects. Vygotsky’is cultural-historical psychology was the base for further research of activity theory by Leont’ev and Rubinstein. The psychological meta-theory theorizes that when individuals interacting with environment, production of tools results. These tools are forms of mental processes and mental processes reveal in tools becoming more accessible and communicable to social interaction.

Three main principles of the Activity theory from Kuuti article state:

- Human actions are the basic of analysis but they are impossible to understand without the context. Individuals take part of many activities at the same time.

- Activities elements are under continuous change and discontinuous development. Activities stay often embedded and have history in themselves, which help to understand the recent situations.

- Activity always contains artifacts which feature is having mediating role. When there is mediation between an actor and the related object, the object is manipulated by the limitations of artifact. Artifacts have created and transformed during the development of the activity itself with addition in culture.

Activities consist of tools to enable communicate between subject and object. This mediates relationship at individual level. For a larger environment there needs to be added community. Activities have motives and they consist of several steps: actions that have goals and operations that have conditions.

Task 8: From mass media to personal media

M. Lüders article "Conceptionalising personal media" describes distinction between mass media and personal media in the matter of digital media technologies and social networks. He tries to answer the questions: “What happens to mass and interpersonal communications when private individuals turn into mass communicators.”

Different Scholars articles say that for personal and mass communication the same technologies are being used. But they are partly because of digitalization and change of network structure. For example emails can be sent for private use or as newsletters in a mass communication way.

John Thompson(1994) divides products and technologies in his concept of media. While interned is the media technology, Instant Messanger, emails, blogs are the products or actually media forms as he later proposes. Yet again the same technology is being used for both mass and personal media. By adding the theory of Andrew Feenberg the concept of media or technology slits into four stages with addition of genre which comes from media form. For example a website could be devided to personal site, corporate promotion etc.

Lüdens article outlines that difference in personal and mass media comes from the involvement made by the users. In personal communication media the users are more or less the producers and receivers of message.

Task 7: In search for my own understanding of interactivity

The articles “Interactivity” by Jensen and “Interactivity: a concept explication by ”Kiousis have argument a lot about the different definitions of interactivity. Even thought there are some similar characteristics the experience and playability each individual get from human-computer communication has change a lot in the last decade.

When we look at Jensen’s paper about communication patterns, we see that the fundamental of information communications have definitely remained as they where, just there has been fluctuation among the stakeholders. The traditional media channel like TV and radio have lost significant amount of their stake to new media. With the growth of online communication tools provided via Internet or widespread of mobile devices, new media has become the source to provide, own and share communication. Also we can see that the environments presented within each communication patterns have move to other patterns. Over ten years ago it was mentioned that WWW belonged to consultation pattern when central provider produced information and consumer controlled the distribution. Nowadays I should say that the within WWW the consumers are the largest group to produce and consume the information. Furthermore they are also interacting with the information by making replies or sharing it in another online environments.

The last decade has introduced and embraced many new media platforms, which have been the base for humans interacting with media in a multi-way communication. Mobile as common everyday gadgets, have become the source for information. Last previous years have introduced thousands of diverse mobile application. It’s has become as a “credit card in the wallet”, “voucher for purchase”, “personal trainer on shoulders”, “pet to feed” or “entertainment center”. On the other hand these application and other digital transaction have made each personal more tractable. A “leaving home” note on twitter tweed or gps map positioning reveal can lead to a crime or “hate my job” note on social network wall can lead to being fired. Hopefully the positive sides like gps surveillance devices of car or image recognition algorithms in street cameras can cover it up. For sure the interactivity and the outcomes to queries have increased.

With the years to come its rather hard to predict how the interactivity would have altered meaning. Definitely the humans are the source to communication. Maybe some material objects will start to communicate and reflect according to human’s desires or mood. Hopefully the humans can interact in such way that depending on their hand movements, eyes blinking or emotional stage the environment around, changes.

Task 6: Operationalising interactivity

Spiros Kiousis argument in his article "Interactivity: a concept explication" about different scholars definitions of "interactivity" and proposes a new concept of interactivity by operationalising interactivity.

Generally interactivity is human thoughts more related to communication technologies, online environment, mobile devises, virtual reality but to judge which medium is more interactive than the other is quite blurry.

Newhangen et al(1995) states that interactivity fluctuates across individuals and media (e.g computers are more interactive than newspapers). In media technologies interactivity can be quite stable in time reactions but varies a lot depending on individuals. Steuer(1992) points out that the interactivity should be dependent on the level where mediated environments are more important than the physical environments. Feedback should be rather multiway that two-way communication.

Based on the intellectual perspective articles the fundamental keywords for interactivity should be:

- Two-way or multi-way communication (usually with a channel between)

- The roles of the message sender and received should be changeable

- Communicators can be humans or computers either senders or receivers of information

- Individuals should be able to modify the content and form of the information with mediated environment between

- Users should be able to perceive differences in levels of interactive media

When these conditions are filled, it can refer to interactive communication.

The author proposes a new definition of interactivity with combination of fundamental components and essential components of different views.

By linking the operational definitions with the three main conceptual defintions the depenence will look like this:

- Structure of technology consist of speed, range, timing flexibility and sensor complexity.

- Communcation context has the components third-order dependecy and social presence.

- User perception depends on proximity, preceived speed, sensory activation and telepresence

References:

Newhagen, J.E., J.W. Cordes, and M.R. Levy (1995) ‘Nightly@nbc.com: Audience

Scope and the Perception of Interactivity in Viewer Mail on the Internet’, Journal of

Communication 45(3): 164–75.

Steuer, J.S. (1992) ‘Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence’,

Journal of Communication 42(4): 73–93.

Task 5: "Concept of Interactivity"

In the article "Interactivity", Jens Jensen presents loads of different definitions by previous academical studies about "interaction" and "interactivity" together with synthesizing a conceptual construction of "interactivity".

Communication patterns are presented to see who owns and provides the information and who controls the distribution:

• Transmission type exists when information is produced and distributed by a central provide. This is how classical media (Tv, radio) works.
• Conversation communication pattern - information production and distribution is controlled by the consumer. E.g. telephone, e-mail, IRC etc.
• Consultation occurs when central provider produces information and consumer controls the distribution. E.g. FTP, WWW
• Registration pattern - information is produced by the consumer but processed and controlled by information providing center. Surveillance systems, registration systems, logging to networks work with this patterns.

In communication and media studies there isn't a clear concept of "interaction" but appears several different:

• Interactivity is presented as a prototype when a list of technologies are said to be used to exchange information in the form of images, drawings and data.
• Interactivity as criteria, that is a certain trait or feature that must be fulfilled(Rockley Miller's writing)
• Interactivity as continuum is where interactivity can be present in different dimensions:

1. 1-dimensional model by Rogers says "the capability of new communication systems to 'talk back' to the user, almost like an individual participating in a conversations. Communication technologies like press, radio, Tv have low interactivity and others like interactive cable Tv has high interactivity.
2. 2-dimensional model by Szuprowicz claims interactivity defined best by the type of multimedia in information flows. Its also divided to 3 categories: user-to-document, user-to-computer and user-to-user.
3. 3-dimensional model by Brenda Laurel characterizes 3 variables: "frequency" or "how often you could interact", "range" or "how many choices were available" and "significance" or "how much the choices really affected matters"
4. 4-dimensional model by Lutz Goertz defines "degree on choices available", "degree of modifiability", "the quantitative number of the selection and modifications available" and "degree of linearity/non-linearity" to be meaningful to interactions.
5. N- dimensional concept of interactivity is illustrated with and example of Carrie Heeter with 6 dimensions are defined.

Still these concepts are too complex and very difficult to deal with on a practical basis for the author. Jensen proposes a more "suitable" concept of interactivity with mutually independent 4 dimensional concept of interactivity. These 4 dimensions transmissional interactivity, consultational interactivity, conversational interactivity and registrational interactivity can be understood by using the communication patterns. As transmissional and consultational interactivity both concerns the availability of choice it can be represented in 3-dimensional graphic model.

Task 3: comparison of descriptions of creating a study plan

Maarjas blog

Her main factor for choosing the courses have to do with travel itinerary. She wants to take the maximum out of her studies on the first period of courses. 6 out of 9 courses are doable online. She has a nice activity chart which show the process of choosing courses. Edraw Soft seems a good tool to be used, just if it could have a mac version.

Maibritt's blog

Comparing to some other NIE's who have made a cycle about the process of choosing course, she has made a tree of factors that have been considered while making seleciton of course. She has gone really in dept. of the time planning and has considered every aspect. Probably the huge workload during last year has made her much freedom of which courses to take or not.

Norberts blog

What pop's out from his assignment that there is no visual used. Visuals are always good diving already some sort idea what the article is about and like we all know "they say more than 1000 words". He doesn't go in dept. to selection of the course as we all are mostly familiar with it in Tallinn University. The course selection is depending on the time available in Google Calendar.

Jakobs blog

He's study plan is like a piece of art:) You just want to have a closer look at it.

The ones that are afraid of blood might just get wrong impression about the red drops.

Anyway he has gone in detail to describe whole study plan development process and mentioned many aspects that have change the selection of courses on the timeline.

He has used very colorful terms which rise interest and make you want to read the blog post about it. I wish he had shared the name of the tool used.

Ottavio's blog

You always want to here what he has to say because he has always a lot of things to say. I would have expect to have a lot of "whistles" and "colors" on this schema but contrary it has a clear define of activity and most probably that's the way to be when it concerns a study plan.

Conclusion

There where mostly used two kind of visuals to present the study plan. Either keep "it simple" or "dress to impress". It's just questionable where each way of presenting is necessary. I believe in the matter of making study plan once mostly consider if the course is interesting or if it's mandatory. In the process of this it doesn't need much visualization but to keep in plain and simple. Sometimes the value of information or visual is in its simplicity.

Task 2: self-observation and analysis of creating a study plan

This semester I'm studying in Södertörn University in Stockholm. This means that the selection of the courses was rather different then during the previous years.

As I'm a third year IMKE student I have more or less completed my curriculum. There are just two courses and thesis to be made to receive masters diploma. It means that Tallinn University courses had to be taken without considering anything.

For Södertörn University courses I had free will to make selection. Still during the selection process interest, availability and weather it is in English or Swedish had to be considered. These criteria foam and list of elective course which had to be approved by international office in both host and home university.

Task1 - Web experience for New Interactive Environments course

On my workboard of tools one could find

So far I have published few weblogs both in wordpress and blogger that are either music or team sports related. What concerns webfeeds, few friends blogs along with some websites content com straight to my mailbox. This eases to get interesting content out of the overwhelming information society. I just noticed that RSS feed is actually a great way to follow courses like "New Interactive Media".

I have used and edited Wikis during previous courses. Social networks like Facebook and Orkut have been great environments where to make promotion for sharing leisure activities or for business purpose. In business the stress is more and more on social networks than updating companies websites. For few past websites I have used content management system to edith product information, add new and multimedia.

Google translator is irreplaceable everyday tool. Obviously the main reason has to do with my studies in Sweden, less than a month relationship with the language and the tiny fact that one of the courses is in Swedish. Google maps with street view is again another well used tools. Google scholar is also mostly used to find book, articles and get reviews to searches.

One of the last tools that I have used is kissyoutube.com which makes it easy to upload videos presented in youtube. Some of last advertisements Shoot a bear and Zombie movie in youtube have been quite entertaining which need interaction by users. They have been just a sort of inspiration and how the web advertisements are heading.

In consider the mentioned web tools so common for everyday so there is hard to point out something special.

OSM project teamwork

Read teams OSM project was a great challenge for all of us.

Just few of our team members had played strategy games before so this made the whole picture little bit frightening. Lot of out time went to just play different campaigns of the game to analyze their concept and code.

As the team was quite large we had issues on finding the right time for everybody to make the development. Some part of the project we had members online from 4 countries.

Anyway my main task was to write documentation of the project which was not updated for a long time since most of the development took place the late stage of the project. Further I helped to develop the storyline and made edits in the design files. Also tested the game and gave feedback to team about any drawbacks.

Just a suggestion for next courses the supervisor could suggest few other alternative open source games for teams to develop further and the whole project length should be longer in order to get teams more excited and get more elaborated work.

Blue team Wesnoth campaign review

With a Syncro SVN client I downloaded the source of the campaign and added under the ...\data\campaigns respiratory.

While loading the campaign it gave error on maps and game closed. Later end the problem seemed to be that I tried it on The Battle of Wesnoth 1.6.5 of Mac but they had made it for the non stable version 1.7.15.

After installing the latest development version I could load the Blue teams "Icky ja Scrappy biznis" campaign.

In the first scenario Icky and Scrappy had to move to the North to kill Krusty(or actually one of his clones) and his solders. I did not find the real path to the end of the scenario and where killed in the end plenty of times and that where my gave experience ended.

What I noticed that even though in the Blue team story description they have mentioned to use strip mines, rivers and islands with oil-rigs on it they didn't had it.

Overall the Blue team has come up with a nice and gripping story which has been written in detailed. The overall idea has very good point and the reward make you eager to victory.

This whole course made kind of a flashback to childhood when playing games and having heroes against the bad guys. I wish I where just more into strategy games.

The case of Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow has build his business model on online media. He has found his niche among the online users which is a market for 1,7 billion users. That way his novels and short stories can be read by more readers. Free online version of the book makes it easy to review it. If a book is good lot of fuzz will be made around it and if it attracts the reader on could buy the paper version for more convenient reading. Seeing the list of his gained awards makes no hesitations that he has done great job on writing and distributing his work.

Doctorow has explained in the summery of Litter brother that he give away free ebooks because he prefers to have more audience in the tent than to know that everyone bought a ticket for it. Doctorow added: "By making my books available free pass-along, I make it easy for people who love them to help other people to love them."

This kind of promotion as shown that screens are not good for paper books. They make good enticement for the book.

Doctorow earns lot of credit from his readers wanting to make donations so he has set ways to allow this.

He has made most of his work available online for free usage as long as it's not being used for commercial purposes. Cory Doctorow's most novels have been released under Creative Commons license which allows free sharing and derivative works.

Strong, weak or no Copyleft

Copyleft comes from copyright which different types describe the distribution and modification of works like computer software, document, music, art.

According to GNU official webpage Copyleft is a general method for making a program(or other work) free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free.

Simplest way to make program free is to name it uncopyrighted. It allows users of the program to share it, make improvements and by making changes distribute as proprietary software. People who receive the program have the freedom what the last developer has made. E.g Ogg Vorbis open source audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression. Other non-copyleft license users are Apache, BSD licenses.

Weak copyleft refers to license where not all derived work inherit the copyleft license. Its inherit depends on how it was derived.Weak copyleft licenses are mostly used for software libraries by allowing links to other libraries. For example Mozilla Public License uses weak software license.

Strong copyleft provisions can be imposed to all derived works which means that the first creator of the works has the most rights. One of the free software licenses that use strong copyleft is the GNU General Public License. Other strong license is Design Science License that can apply to art, music, sports photography and video.

Open source as part of business strategy

For some companies open source platforms have become the key to their business success.

Pipforg is an Estonian brand for company whose business models is made on using the Magento platform. Magento is a open-source ecommerce web application launched under the Open Software License. version 3.0.

On Pipfrog webpage the e-commerce solutions is described as a tool for small and middle size entrepreneurship companies to easily and cost-effectively create and maintain e-shops. To use the e-commerce advantages Pipfrog has different payment options ,built in connections with logistic companies and integration ability with accounting software.

From their list of clients can be found biggest computer store chain in Estonia Klick, Team75plus, Fazer, Massuno.

Their bate for the new users is the option to try the e-commerce tool for free and with some limitations have the possibility create own e-shop. If one would like advanced e-shop then further expenses need to be made. Pipfrog incomes come from hosting the websites or selling extra modules like multiple language stores, power marketing, Import/Export, multi currency, uncial design etc.

For creating a dynamic websites there is available platform called Joomla! It's an open source content management system for developing dynamic websites that stores data in MySQL database and includes feature like page caching, RSS feed, printable pages, news flashers, polls, blogs, search, language options. It's published under GNU General Public License. Joomla has emerged from Mambo CMS whose first developers where actually pay. Large amount of their income from donations and advertisements on their web.

Company called Confirmo uses Joomla platform for its business. On most of the websites they have made design on Joomla content management system.

One open source template engine is called Smarty. It uses LGPL license which places restrictions only to program itself but does not apply to software that link with the program. Smarty generates web content by the placement of special Smarty tags within a document. It provides a separate application logic for content development and design presentations. Smarty basically separates PHP from HTML being between application programmer and template designer. It allows to make manageable changes without interrupting the system logic.

Wesnoth game review

It's a bit difficult to review the game when u have no option for comparison.

On one other course we where suggested to try out Second Life build. We built our own citizen with character who started to live their life in virtual world. Even though Second Life does not look like real globe it has real interactivity, improved design, live communication. Besides the entertainment it is also a great way to make publicity like Estonian foreign affairs embassy did with its building to present our country.

Shouldn't the game make you feel more alive or even below the reality? One has said that the difference between a man and boy is the cost of their toys. Shouldn't I be then excited of the toys that are surrounding me? With Wesnoth it felt that the creators could have done better job with the design. Still there seemed to be a nice story behind curtains. It just needed to be explored. Maybe it was the lack of skills on make the play more attractive.

In computer games I prefere the ones that cause short adrenaline impulses like rally games and football or something with external remote that would make the real life feeling when playing e.g tennis.

A true review of the Wesnoth game will be made after we have built a new campaign on Wesnoth open-source strategy game. Most probably we will go wild on creating the character and scenarios in our wonderland.

Comparison between FSF and OSI

This summary is going to compare differences between FSF and OSI wrote in articles "Free software for freedom" and Goodbye, "free software"; hello, "open source".

According to "Free software" supporters "open source" software does not solve any problems but creates ones. In open source glorification article Eric Raymond explains that after the Netscape there where big arguments about confusing "free" software. Does free mean "no money charged?" or does it mean "free to be modified by everyone?" So did the other article explained the ambiguity problem. It also points out that "open source software" provides chance to "look at the source code" which is much weaker than the "free software." Term "free" has given certain advantage over open source. By leaving aside ethics and freedom it is much easier to "sell" the software to certain users, especially businesses.

Like mentioned in our first OSM lectures: "Free and open-source software is actually about development and distribution mechanisms."

To sum up these two movements have just his own rights on their corners. They are not an enemy to each other than proprietary software is.