contextual studies, wireless conections

WIRELESS CONNECTIONS, OPEN, FREE


Wireless connections are everywhere, travelling through the microwave´s frequency, they get anywhere where theres a wireless router, and from ther to PC´s laptops and PDA´s. This service is something most of the people pay for, but there are other ways of getting it with out paying, and this way is connecting a laptop with a Wi – Fi card to a wireless signal originated from a nearby router. These days, it´s starting to become something big, and there are nets formed with people that go Wardriving; these people are Warchalkers, and they go around the city with their cars and laptops equipped with Wi – Fi technology that try to detect where are any wireless signals, and put them in a map in internet and also put symbols around the city indicating which places are available for connection. They may also use GPS devices for the exact locations of the signals, and thay also may install antennas to send this unused amount of broadband. These movements are not legal but there aren´t illegal neither. Its legal to look for networks, but not to use them with out authorization. Apart from this, governments may think that Warchalking and Wardriving can help hackers and terrorists in their proposes.
This is a small piece of what future is going to be with any kind of networks. Why pay for something when you can get it for free and doing it the same way as millions of people, what makes it very difficult to get caught. Soon all networks will be one massive signal that will provide everything from tv sign to internet, and it´ll be for free, considering that sharing and trying to get things for free are two practices that are gaining adepters everyday and that all ready exist in a lighter version in citys like San Francisco.



notes from todays lesson
The claude, (nodes), wwireless acces in stations and very crawded places.

The signal of a wireless conection gets weaker with any thing that is in its way, like rain, leaves people, metal... Best places for putting routers are high buildings all though its hard to permission for installation

Peer agreedment (agreedment between two major peers like states or countries, that negotiate about broadband exchange between them.


UK--------US I.E. WHEN YOU TYPE .COM INSTEAD OF .CO.UK
/ \ / NTL BT
/ ME STARBUCKS
ME

SYNCHRONUS: when you can send and recivve the same amount
a " : when you recive and send in differen levels, you recive about 8 times more than what you can send. Thi is the difference between DSL and ADSL

Pico - peering: organized networks between a comunity of people like neighburs, and works with mesh ap tecchnology

Brief two, the 1000 wrod easay

Motorola L6

Description following Norman´s Principals

Visibility: what to do and what to be done.
Mainly, what you can do is make and recive phone calls. The way doing it is simple if you know of mobile phones. Having a look at it you can see two main parts, the screen and the buttons, and you can also see how they interact. You´ve got functions writen in the bottom parto f the screen that corresponde to the top buttons, which is a way of getting started if you don´t know what to do. More specifily talking about the screen, at first sight you´ve got a few icons or words put on a background Picture. You´ve got the signal icono n the top left and the battery icon in the top right. It´s got the companies name in the midle “Orange” and the current date just benith it. In the bottom left there is the “Contact” Word and in the right side the “mesage” one. In the botom center there are a few horizontal lines that make the Main menú icon. The buttons set is composed by 22 buttons that are the main keys to control the telephone. Starting from the top, we see 3 buttons that have been explained before since they are the ones that do the functions that appear written in the screen. Just bellow them, you can see two other buttons, one on each side, and with a green and a red light that indicate the pick up or the hanging. Between these two buttons, there is a central panel with the form of a circle and 4 buttons that allow the main menu search and execution. The las 12 buttons are those that correspond to the numbers and the “*” and “#” symbols. The numbers are used for dialling and writing with the phone.

Feedback
The feedback is high because the screen reacts just by pressing a but, although it may not be easy to know what to do if you are not familiarized with phones, the information displayed makes the essential functions easy in a logical way. If some one picked up my phone and didn´t know how to use it, after looking at it, would probably press one of the numbered buttons since they are more in the centre and also bigger. After pressing the number, this one would appear on the screen, and the person would try to delete it so he would look at the screen and would see the word delete on it, so trying to touch it, he would accidentally press the button under the screen and then would understand how the buttons and the screen correspond. After doing that, the screen would go to the original page and then he would see the contacts buttons exactly in the same place where the delete was, he would press it and would see all the telephone numbers. If he wanted to select one all he would have to do is go up or down with one of the two arrows that are in the central panel and lighten up, choose the desired number and press the green button after that, which means “free to go”.

Constraints
There are many things that appear to be pretty obvious about the phone, like the size, that indicates its something meant to be caught and held in a hand. Buttons also gives you and idea so you press them, things happened, and then you can understand that you can use them with a specific purpose, and since that with an exception of very rare occasions, people know that it’s a phone, and probably find out how to use it fairly quick. So things like phoning or texting can be considered obvious because its what all phones do, but i.e. Bluetooth is something not so obvious. You wont get to know about it until you active the menu and you see the Bluetooth logo, and even so, you may still not know what it means. The word its self isn’t any clarifying neither, and even if you try to see what it is, you will have no chance of getting to know what it is for.

Mapping
The only mapping I see in the phone are the two buttons that correspond to the options writhen in the screen that change in function to the task you´re going to do. I suppose that when you activate the menu, the little panel you use to move around is quite mapping too, since its´ got the arrows that symbolise the directions you can move.

Consistency
If someone had to compare the phone to another one he had previously used, for example a Nokia, I think that he would find many similarities in the way in works and in how you can move your self around it. This is a great advantage when you just buy the phone because you don’t have to work out how it will work. That is something that use to happen before, and each mobile company did it their own way trying to gain people´s fidelity by making them not know how mobiles of different companies work, and making them seem very difficult to use. Fortunately, now days mobiles are all more or less the same, with a central panel to work the menu.

DFIM

Research...
Debbie's leeson fot today was completly about research and more precisely of the research we're going to do for our final term proyect. first she showed us some doc's on the proyector and then a pdf. It was mostly of how we're supposed to do it, following some points. Ther is also somthing we've got tto do and it is doing a research for our stuff by Dec 16th, which will be the first part of our final proyect.

DFIM

TODAY'S LESSON WITH DEBBIE I THOUGHT IT WAS MUCH MORE INTERESTING THAN THE ONE LAST TWUESDAY, SHE SPOKE TO US ABOUT THE HUMAN SIDE IN DESIGN, AND HOW IT AFFECTS THE DESIGNING.

WE HAVE CHANGED THE DATE OF THE 1000 WORD ESSAY AND TO NEXT MONDAY AND WE HAVE TO GET THE NHS DIRECT WEB SIGHT AND SEE HOW WE CAN IMPROVE IT

technoquest

TECHNIQUEST


SOUND DISH

1. WHAT IS THE AIM OF THE DEVICE?

The aim of the device is to send sound to a long distance with out having to use any electricity. Its a very simple design, consisting in a pair of enormous dishes similar to a parabolic antenna that are situated one in front of the other with a little loop in the middle separated from the centre of the dish in about a foot. The way it works is concentrating the wave sounds emitted by someone and redirecting it to the opposite side. The direction of the sound is very precise and the two sound dishes have to be exactly in front of each other for a correct reception of the waves. In the case of Techniquest, the dishes were aproximatly 15 meters of from each other, and one and a half meters wide.

2. WHO IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE?

I would think that the target audience is to people from 9 years old up to 15 or 16 although I find it suitable for people over that age. But if a make a certain specification its because I think that a 9 year old kid now days is capable of understanding how the device works and not just see that it sends the sound from one dish and receives it in the other but actually knowing that the waves concentrate in the middle of the dish and spreads them away the a certain direction. For someone over 15 or 16 I think that its just simple and that it may be a curious thing to see but not much of a challenge.

HOW HAS THIS INFLUENCED THE DESING?

The design is quit childish painted in orange colours with little coloured circles and instruction panels just next to it. The aspect of the divice gives an idea of something ment for young teenagers and kids.

3. HOW ARE THE DEMANDS FOR ENTEREAINMENT OR EDUCATION EXPRESSED?

I really think that its really an educational artefact because it explains in a very simple way what are the waves comportment and how if you compared with a mirror you get to understand that sound isn't something you can see or touch but that exists as a wave form. About entertainment, I don’t think that its something that enthusiasm everyone, but more probably to a certain part of people that enjoy the scientific part of the life.

4. OBSEVATIONS, INTERPRETATIONS AND INTERACION.

During the time I spent looking at how the people tried to use the sound dish, there where many that didn’t understand right away what it really was, because with just a small look at it isn’t enough to understand what it is for, so in that case people usually gave a look to the instructions´ panel and from here, something like a 50 % of the people still didn’t realise what it was for. The other half just look backwards and saw the other dish. Out of the first 50 % half of them left disappointed, and the other would try to look for something that gave the device any sense. Once that people understood the meaning of an enormous dish in middle of no where, if they were by them selves, they would usually go a search for someone to try the artefact, the same in the case of the people that saw it in pair of two or three. The average age of the kids was about 12 years old, there was a group of them in the centre.

DFIM

DFMI
Blog for 2006-10-09

My project

Closed circuit television are cameras that connected to a screen with a receiver, makes you able to see images where the camera is. The main purpose of CCTV is security and nearly 100% of stores, companies ore even some houses are equipped with many cameras that send a signal to a receiver where you have one or many other screens. Its called close circuit television because the signal isn’t broadcasted away and it isn’t intended to see by others. New technologies have made wireless connections something both good and bad for security, since it makes it easier to install the cameras and the other stuff but it also makes it possible for others to see what its being taped by the cameras just with a receiver connected to the same frequency of the wireless camera.
Wireless connections open possibilities for very interesting broadcasting features and new ways information’s transmission, things that are now related to new media underground movements and that makes possible for someone to produce a little broadcasting emission. All they would need are a few devices such as wireless cameras, receivers and senders, that depend on the quality and power, could broadcast images in colour and with sound to receivers (TVs) in a small area over frequencies of other TV signals.

Things we spoke about in the second part of the class.

Open Free Wireless Connections, for next Monday!!


See: war chalking, consume.net, arwain.net, blackbeltjones.com, I stumber (for mac) or net stumber for pc

Wi Fi works in microwaves frequency

Open network, WI fi networks installed with “default settings” which won’t have any codes.

DFIM

Today's lesson I gound it quite difficult and boring to undersatnd since it's not my background, all though I realise that I'm in desing for interactivve media, this is important subject to learn, so after having to see a presentation about difernt steps to look at and desing products, seeing diferences between Norman's principles and Neilson's, we have been asked to aply those priciples to the workshop we have to give in about the interactive product we chose the other day, the cell phone n my case, to give in by next tuesday I think, anyway I dont know if I\ll doit well but I'll try my best until I finaly get the hang on it and start doing the things the way I'm suppossed to!!!!!!

DFIM monday oct 2

for today's class with Simon pope, which I enjoyed a lot by the way, we did first a preseenntation of peer-to-peer technology, these were the main points of mine:
p2p is a network between peers that make us able of getting any kind of electronic data, there arre two tipes, puer p2p and hybrid. Pure: peers act as equals, there is no cental server or router. Hybrid: has a central serrver that keeps info on peers and respond to request of info, and peers are responsible for hosting avalable resources, for letting the central servver know what resources they wanto to shar.... Also route terminal are uused adreses which are deferended by a set of indices to obtain an absolute address.
Unstructured and Structureed p2p: all participating networks consists of all the partipating peers as networks nodes. There ae links between any two nodes that know each otther
Unstuctured: is formed when ovverlayed links are stablished arbitrary. A peer copies existing links and formes it's own network wuth time. his makes easy finging popular and common data, but makes it also very dificult to find rare data
Structured: networks maintain a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) and makes peers responsible for a certain part of data so that when somebody searches for some data, rare or not, they will know where to look and get it strait. Some structures p2p are: chord, pastry, tapestry, can (content addressable network), an tuplip.

During the second part of the lesson we spoke about cctv and how someone can get a copy of themselves if htey ask the place where they have been taped, or you can get a reciver like one of does that people use to see satelite tv ina a different room than where the satelite system is, and with this reciver if the cctv ccamera you have been taped is wireless you can get the signal and store it if you like. You can also do it the other way round and send a tv o radio wave with a "sender" and make people and recivers near you able to recive what yuo're sending even in there home tv's. These kind of applicarions gave an idea for my final proyect.

We have also been asked to do an easay for next monday about these matters.