Task 6 of NIE: Kiousis, S.: Interactivity: a concept explication

The article written by Kiousis focuses on the issue that has troubled me many times, when trying to academically define what an interactive “something” is. While in the previous post I stated out interactivity as a meaning, it still is pretty un-academic for my research to implement on.


For example one example that always rises in my mind when talking about interactivity, is the existence of one. For example while teletext for television has been thought to be an interactive solution, a RDS capable-radio station is still a linear channel.

In that sense I greet Kiousis notion where “major limitation with some experimental inquiries is that a condition is often called ‘interactive’ without considering multiple levels of the variable, let alone defining its meaning.“ Over the years more and more troubling will it be for academics to define the existence of interactivity. It simply will be implemented to everything. In that sense the study of interactivity might one day be like the study of matter – our subject exist everywhere but has just different peculiarities.

As a firm believer of this tendency (the borderless widespread of interactive everything) I greet the focus put forward by Kiousis to further investigate the levels or dimensions of interactivity, leaving the questions, whether interactivity occurs or not, out of the way. A television set is interactive as it cannot be totally linear or one-way (there’s an option to change the channel for example). The same might be in the case of printed books – whether it is choice-based story-telling or a fairy-tale with movable pictures. These examples do have a minor level interactivity, which exist for example in a medium deemed to be highly interactive – internet. In the case of the before-mentioned book, a web-based e-card offers the same functionality.

For the time being the capable method of defining interactivity surely can be the one formulated by Kiousis: “… definition of interactivity that includes the following as major dimensions: (1) the structure of a medium (Steuer, 1992); (2) the context of communication settings (Rafaeli, 1988); and (3) the perceptions of users (Wu, 1999). “
 


Source:
http://rcirib.ir/articles/pdfs/cd1%5CIngenta_Sage_Articles_on_194_225_11_89/Ingenta866.pdf

Task 5 of NIE: Jensen, J.F.: Interactivity: tracking a new concept in media and communication studies

Interactivity is definitely a subject that is most vital for me, as my studies greatly based on it. Over the years, academic years, I have repeatedly been introduced to different concepts of how to understand the definition of interactive media. I focus on the media because it has been one of the core-subjects of my curriculum.


For years I have studied the principles of communication – whether it is the message, the medium, the communicator, the noise or the receivers. Interactivity in these patterns of relationships can occur in various places; therefore a descriptive notion of the one has always been in my mind.

To me interactive media or interactive “something” means the communication with that something is an input-output symbiosis. This means that one (output) cannot live or survive without the other (input) and vice versa. This means that in the case of media the message or content cannot survive or be whole without the input of the receiver.

Of course this definition lacks the originality, or rather the ability to implement it to a variety of interactive solutions available in the market. But as Jensen conclusively reports, this try of universality is quite problematic, as what might be thought as a feature of interactivity has no common ground – the ability to see a TV-guide through my television is not interactivity to me, but rather an intra-channel of the main channel. To others it very well might be.

But I’m willing to rethink my concept of interactivity, as the one offered by Jensen is quite rational – “interactivity can … be reduced to four dimensions which can be understood using the communication patterns: transmission, consultation, conversation and registration”.

As a traditionally un-interactive channel newspaper can be thought as a transmission channel and registration based communication has a fixed amount of input and output; then truly interactive channels can be consultation and conversation, as there exists the before-mentioned input-output symbiosis. By Jensen this symbiosis can be described as follows: “Interaction occurs as soon as the actions of two or more individuals are observed to be mutually interdependent”.


Source:
http:// www.nordicom.gu.se/ reviewcontents/ ncomreview/
ncomreview198/ jensen.pdf

Analysis of a location based application

For my analysis, I looked into one of the most popular LB-service in Estonia: ZEN Pling. It is a location based social network, meaning its main functions are similar to typical social network functionalities (interest-realted inner-communities, communication, sharing of the self-avatar etc), but a new sphere of information has been introduced to the users - the location.

This means, that the the users interaction will also have locational information (where the message was produced). Additionally one can monitor where specific persons are and also be informed in real time of the feeds interested of.

Although the service itself is quite familiar for now in the internet, Pling was one of the first if not The first LB-service in Estonia. The more important fact is that its user-base has been the largest LBS-using social network´s in Estonia.

The application (rather service) itself is quite simplistic - it uses mobile (GSM) positioning and is usable with many mobile-based web browsers and desktop browsers. The dataflow uses 3G communication channels (or 2G where the former is not applicalble).

Because of the simplisity I believe the service went on to be such a widely used service. One only needs to create the user account (registration processes are rather easy) to start using the service. This simplisity ofcourse makes however impossible to create embed or attached services based on Pling, which is why the service has been solely dying (iOS and Android apps based on GMaps are overtaking). Also the discussions of privacy have gotten more "louder" in Estonia, often making young people rethink the use of such services.

For the service to survive in the hardening competition the platform should be more open - for example the ability to create company page; or applications custom made by the users etc.

At the same time I understand that since the portal is owned by Elisa AS who is a mayor telecommunications operator, it would be too optimistic to expect it to develop this platform according to the open source community understandings.

Description of iRadio

The original idea for iRadio was outputted by our group already in the first lecture. We will now elaborate on the different chapters the defining frames on which the now-ready application was programmed.

Initial idea
Imagine a city/boy travelling by his car to a party located near Kapa-Kohila. The moment he reaches the outer limits of his favorite radio-station Uuno Raadio, he starts receiving annoying static from his radio. He now wishes to continue to listen to Uuno Raadio, but is unable to do it easily, as he doesn't know the frequency.

Our application is easily usable application, which will tell at that particular moment to the user, what is the new frequency for his favorite station.

Also - if the radio station doesn't reach to his new location, the application will offer a list all the stations available nearby. Also the user has an option to only see alike-stations (a Uuno Raadio fan would then see a Sky Plus frequency for example).

The development of the Idea
Our idea was then put to work, programmed mainly for the main-stream smartphone iPhone. We wanted to write the script very universally, meaning a large scale use of standard-base innovative scripting languages. To us it meant HTML5 and CSS3. As it later was revealed, these languages offer superb simplicity and usability regarding our goals.

Although the project was written keeping in mind the needs of the user of iPhone, our wish is to in the future to offer this platform as a browser-based solution (working as intended in Opera Mini for example).

The current state of the Idea
At this moment our project is quite ready, especially when thinking that it is still a prototype. The main functionality has been catered by our app and future developments of our project can be easily done. To point out specific subjects that need to be developed, we will list them now:

• the creation of a automated database of available station frequencies - currently we have to add and update the database of available radio stations manually, but it should be automated. In our view, when the program reaches a wider spectre of masses, a community-updated database could be used. This will also make the application more supra-national, meaning it can be easily used outside Estonia
• the programming of a alternative browsing possibility - currently a novice user may find our app somewhat difficult to use. One way to make it even more easier is to create an alternative map view, where the user only sees his or her location on the map. When she or he clicks on the icon (symbolizing himself), a diagram will be showed to him. Then he can easily select a colored sector from the diagram (circle-diagram), with each sector being a shortcut to a specific type of music-station (eg. Russian, dance, folk, Christian and alternative music-playing radio stations).

Task 3 of NIE: comparison of study plans

What elements, components, etc. have been used by others to describe their activity?
It surprised me as all of the reviewed authors had used mind-mapping to describe their activities. Maarja and Maibritt were very informative about the processes but all/in-all the mind-maps showed with detail of how th students prepare for their upcoming semester.

What level of detail?
I had a feeling that all of the reviewed mind-maps were descriptive enough to put them to use instantly. I guess for a graduate student this sort of task is a retelling task - we all have "mindmapped" our study processes for years now. I personally liked Maibritt's map, as it was familiar to my actions each start of semester.

What structural aspects are showing up in their descriptions/visualizations?
It is clear that our students fall in to two groups - one's with a career/work and family and the ones with time (better one's for the university I guess :)). All of the working students first dealt with coping the study plan to their work and family related happenings, while the other group just looked for fun, interesting subjects that were interesting enough.

What is missing?
Maybe some descriptive outcomes could have been published also - for example the student's desired study plan at start and where did he or she end up after these processes.

What are pros and cons of the different approaches?
I will take the liberty to name these approaches workman-approach and a student-approach. While the first one is good with its clear structure ("my free time is on x,y,z dates for xx to xx time), it is of-course bad because physiologically it is questionable how productive can one be after 9 hours of work, plus family time. It would be ten times better, if a workman can come to school at 8 am and simply deal with his or her curriculum. Sadly there aren't so many rich students in Estonia who can afford this sort of life.

The second approach (the rich students :)) is of-course best for reasons mentioned before, but I do think there are some cons / for example a workman student knows for sure what she or he needs and therefore acts to receive it - whether it is submitting to classes important to him, asking the right questions in the auditorium or doing home/works with real/life issues related.


Samples:
I http://reimoverse.wordpress.com/2010/10/11/task-2-activity-plan-fall-2010/
II http://www.tlu.ee/~jkangur/task2_j_kangur.pdf
III http://maibrittk.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-interactive-environments-task-two.html
IV http://maarjapajusalu.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/task-2-process-of-creating-my-study-plan/
V http://kerstin-and-imke.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-interactive-environments-task-2.html

NIE Task 2: Creating a study plan

When planning my weekly activities, theres four fields of activities that are needed to be unified / my hobbies, my work, my studies and my family.

I usually plan these related events to my Google Calendar. Sadly during the last years all of my time-planning has gone over to that application, meaning I cannot promise no school-, hobbies- or family-related tasks before checking availabilities.

This principle of course requires me to regularly check my upcoming events which has made me check my calendar at least 3 times a day. Although this sounds pretty sad, I wouldn't imagine my life without these kind of calendar applications.

But onto to the main question - what are the processes I go through when planning my study semester? First of all I register myself to all available IMKE (my major) subjects as there are always a lack of them. Later on I import the IMKE calendar to my Google Calendar and then start re/organizing all of the events that were scheduled to the dates when IMKE courses take exist, in favor for IMKE subjects.

For the next step I browse through the university`s subjects catalog found in the study info system and I filter out all of the subject related to my interests - mostly media, management etc. related subjects. Then I look into the ASIO calendar base where I seek the dates of each of these interesting courses to me. If the date of a particular course suits me - meaning my calendar has open spaces at that time, I register myself to that course. I continue this route of actions until I have reached a 34-38 ECTS quantity in my semester study plan.

For the final step I share my calendar with my family so they can be in touch with my whereabouts on different days.

Task 1: experiences with Webpublishing

My experience with web-publishing is rather long as I have kept a personal blog from the year 2003. I am also a eager user of different new innovative communication channels - for example, Skype was installed in my Windows ME edition, long before its global-wide success-story. Sadly at that time there weren't many people to talk to.

When talking about social media, I do participate in Facebook, but I'm trying to cut down this kind of web-activity as it is too intrusive to my privacy.

Using web-publishing tools has definitely been a boost to my work/related aspirations as my study/centered blogs have been interesting to persons other than me.

All in all when taking to account that I am currently writing a project about a website with a variety of web-publishing features, I consider myself quite a novice in this field.