Collaborative Writing and some tools

Shortly, the term collaborative writing means that is some project or work where written works are created by multiple people together (collaboratively) rather than individually. General activities in writing project is brainstorming, researching, planning, writing, editing and reviewing (1).

Why collaborative writing is good thing? This is few reasons why collaborative writing is good thing (2):

• Allow people to learn from each other

• Expose people to point of view besides their own

• Foster discussion and debate

• Teach people to negotiate the issues inherent in any collaborative venture.

• Points of view besides their own

• Encourage people to consider their audience, learning to write effectively

• Open people eyes to how their work compares to that other people giving them a better sense of their own strengths and weaknesses as writers and thinkers.

People usually have both positive and negative expectations towards the writing projects and they have various attitudes towards the process. (1) Therefore is very challenging to created collaborative writing tools.

Collaborative writing tools are those technologies that facilitate the editing and reviewing of a text document by multiple individuals either in real-time or asynchronously. Collaborative writing tools can vary a great deal and can range from the simplicity of wiki system to more advanced systems. Basic features include the typical formatting and editing facilities of a standard word processor with the addition of live chat, live markup and annotation, co-editing, version tracking and more.(3)

The key features that characterize collaborative writing tools and technologies include (3):

• File types supported: which are the supported file formats for the files that can be edited collaboratively

• Text chat: the presence of a text chats that users can utilize to communicate while editing

• Revisions: the capability to track all changes made to the original document and go back to older versions

• RSS: support for RSS feeds, allowing users to get real-time notifications when changes are made.

• Email updates: the capability to receive email updating users when there are changes to the documents that are being edited.

• Public/Private: the possibility to set up private or public collaborative editing sessions.

• Max Editors: the max number of editors allowed

• Real-Time - Co-editing: the possibility to collaboratively edit in real-time

• Software/Web-based: the type of collaborative system

• Comments: the possibility to add comments to the document

• Spell check: the availability of a spell checking tool

Some examples web-based collaborative writing tools are Zoho Writer that lets you create your documents and share them publicity or privately. Zoho Writer is free to use and it offers 20 different fonts which you can use. You can also change your text in several formats. Second good example is Writeboard, its enables you to write online documents and collaborate with colleagues. It is also free use and it requires IE 6.x, Safari or Firefox. You can subscribe to documents via RSS to be notified of changes and keep your writings organized with Backpack integration. (3)

And two good examples collaborative writing software are Gobby and Groove networks. Gobby is a free collaborative text editor supporting multiple documents in one sessions and a multi-user chat. It runs Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix-like platforms. Groove features folder synchronization and integration with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office. You can share files, discussions, calendar, sketch, web links, pictures and a notepad. Collaborating users can edit their documents while they are offline and sync up changes once they go online. Groove Virtual Office is free for personal use. (3)

1. Lecture slides: https://learning.uta.fi/file.php/5956/slides/6-working_together.pdf

2. http://writingcenter.tamu.edu/teaching-writing/instruction/collaborative-writing/

3. http://www.kolabora.com/news/2007/03/01/collaborative_writing_tools_and_technology.htm

What makes online games successful?

Last week I blogged about the gratification of online games. I was wondering why people spend a lot of time with playing online games and I wanted to find out the general motivation. Eventually I learned that different gratification dimensions play an important role: Competition, Challenge, Social Interaction, Diversion, Fantasy and Arousal. However, when trying to find reasons for gaming I really had difficulties with that and I realized that there aren’t many surveys that deal with this phenomenon yet. This is why I decided to dig a little bit deeper in today’s blog entry. I decided to focus on the mechanism that can be responsible for the bonds, the engagement with an online game.

When I personally think of things that make a game worth playing I come to the following conclusion: The graphics must bee good and realistic. There should be something like a story line behind it, for example somebody was hijacked and you need to save him. Furthermore I need the characters to be interesting, characters I can either identify myself with; or characters that have characteristics I would like to have in real life.

There have been researches about those questions. Here is what they found out:

There should be a rewarding system, which means that there must be something you can achieve when playing the game. In “World of Warcraft” for example, you can earn special artefacts or objects and the more time you invest the better you are. In conjunction to that the utilization history also plays an important role: How much time and efforts did the player invest in the game. What are his achievements?

At the same time the game should maintain the balance between challenge and success. When it comes to the abilities of the player the game should neither be stressful nor boring – but exactly in between. This status is also known as “the flow”. (1)

Other important mechanisms are immersion and presence. According to scientists Witmer and Singer immersion is “a psychological state characterized by perceiving oneself to be enveloped by, included in, and interacting with an environment that provides a continuous stream of stimuli and experiences.”

Presence on the other hand is “the subjective experience of being in one place or environment, even when one is physically situated in another.” (Witmer/Singer 1998, 227) (2)

I think everyone who has played a computer game has already experienced Immersion and presence so far. You are fully caught in the game and the living room around you seems to vanish and to merge with the virtual world presented in the computer game.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

(2) http://books.google.com/books?id=8qg4G2d7FKMC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=Immersion+is+a+psychological+state+characterized+by+perceiving+oneself+to+be+enveloped+by,+included+in,+and+interacting+with+an+environment+that+provides+a+continuous+stream+of+stimuli+and+experiences.&source=bl&ots=nFAN2vkuRG&sig=OBaAy3YHrdI2H7uY1Nil7Ngn458&hl=de&ei=nBZoTfehIMTOswbYhJ3eDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Immersion%20is%20a%20psychological%20state%20characterized%20by%20perceiving%20oneself%20to%20be%20enveloped%20by%2C%20included%20in%2C%20and%20interacting%20with%20an%20environment%20that%20provides%20a%20continuous%20stream%20of%20stimuli%20and%20experiences.&f=false

Demo of indoor location

Simone wrote about indoor location systems earlier in this blog. It reminded me about one fancy indoor location demo by Nokia NRC at Nokia World 2010:
Nokia World 2010 - What if you could navigate also indoors?

As we can see from the video, indoor location system in this demo provides accurate location, map of the indoor area and real-time location sharing between users. These features were utilized to show two potential use cases for this technology. The First one was to show how different user’s location could be displayed in the map and the second was to show usefulness of indoor navigation.

These two demoed use cases are not tied just for events like Nokia World. Personally I would love to use indoor navigation in big super markets (like big Prisma) where it is some times pretty painful to find some specific item or some staff member, who could help you to find it. It would be so useful for me just to download store’s “map” when I enter and after that I could just ask some items location from my device and after that my device could guide me to the right spot. At the work I have similar problem with meeting rooms especially form different building and that's why I have meeting room map pictures in my phone and I use those, if I have troubles to remember meeting rooms location.

Indoor location sharing could be also useful. Personally I would find it useful to share my location at work so that somebody, who is looking for me, could see if I am sitting in my cubicle or lab. This would remove need for phone call to find my location. Of course this indoor location sharing could be a problem for somebody, but for me it is not a problem since my presence at the work can be tracked from many other sources.

About using active badges

On Monday lecture we talk about active badges. Personally, I´m not really a big fan of sharing personal information online, so for me it sounds kind of crazy the idea of wanting to share all my activities and locations inside a network. This is why, I decided to read the Richard H.R Harper paper “Why do People Wear Active Badges?” to find out if I’m the only paranoid that do not want to be tracked down.

Harper interviewed 44 members within the “corporate research institution” that developed the active badges to find out the sociological phenomenon related to their use, investigating the social act and symbolic meaning of the badges between users and non-users of the device.

It turns out that the active badges were full of meaning for the researchers. They were a kind of social act. This is, by using the badges, the researchers tried to say something, to show an identity, a membership that reflected the situation that was lived inside the institution; they were proud of their new technology and wanted to advertise it. The badges were their own project, the symbol of who they were and what they wanted.

On the other side, the non-badge users were also trying to say something: they did not agree with the badge users, not only because the badges were not their “love child”, but to show that they did not agreed with their research philosophies. Their social act was "not being a part", reflecting a disapproval to what was associated with the badge-wearing. Not wearing a badge announces disapproval of researching things “just because they are technologically interesting”, they stand for investigating the social consequences of technology “before researching the technical aspects” of technology.

The active badges did not divided the labs. The opinions and reviews (positive or negative) about the active badge technology was not about the technology itself. The badges just served as a method of identification - a totem - to reflected the issues deep inside this research institute, a disputed territory, so at the end, the badges were almost entirely connected to the organizational settings in which those persons find themselves.

At the end, I do not find out if I’m the only privacy-concern-freak, but I did understand that just as with active badges, the opinions of users behind many technology devices can be just a reflection of a sociological phenomenon.

- Harper R., Why do People Wear Active Badges?

http://www.xrce.xerox.com/content/download/16277/117522/file/EPC-1993-120.pdf

Indoor location systems

In the last lecture on Monday we heard about a the active badge system. I started to look for more systems in the web and found a work about a indoor location systems [1]. This work contains a list of indoor location systems for all kinds of need. Before buying an indoor location system a series of decisions have to be made.

First of all which kind of main characteristics the system should have:

• high precision
• good scalability
• low costs in acquisition and operation

Second which kind of technology should be used:

• Infrared: short range but cheap
• Ultrasound: longer range but expensive
• active RFID Tags: longer range
• WLAN: long range and existing infrastructure
• Bluetooth: longer range and existing infrastructure

Third a question of strategy

• client-based: objects are carrying a sender and the data will be stored centrally
• infrastructure-based: objects are carrying a receiver which stores the localization data

After answering these questions one can choose from the following systems:

• Active Badge: infrared, infrastructure-base
• Wips: infrared, client-based
• SpotON: active RFID Tags, infrastructure-based
• Active Bat: ultrasound, infrastructure-based
• Chricket: ultrasound, client-based
• LEASE: WLAN, infrastructure-based

[1] http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/lehre/ws0607/mmi1/essays/Philip-Lorenzi.xhtml.en

Recommendations for companies in Social Media

For companies, Social Media has proven to be a huge source of revenues as it has the power to spread information within a minimal amount of time across the world, which is translated into millions of eyes looking their products and services.

For this post, I decided to use the paper from Andreas M. Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media" to extract their ten practical points for companies (of any size) that want to utilize Social Media; being 5 recommendations about using media and 5 recommendations about being social.

Five recommendations about using media

1. Choose carefully.

When developing an application for social media, is important to be clear on what you want to share and with whom. Creating a shared virtual world with dragons and castles seem interesting, but if your target audience are housewives, it may not be the best idea.

2. Pick the application, or make it your own

You are clear about who your audience is and what they want, now is important to make a wise choose in developing a new application or using an existing one. Please consider that the focus in your application should be the participation, sharing and collaboration among users, and not a “straightforward advertising and selling” (1) and take advantage on what is already available.

3. Ensure activity alignment

Companies might choose to use different Social Media applications to convey their products and services information. However, this strategy should be consistent among the different channels or applications to avoid contradiction on the message. This means, do not use one marketing strategy in Facebook, other in Twitter, other in Youtube.

4. Media plan integration

If consistency should be found inside Social Media content, it should also be consistent with traditional media content (such as TV, radio and billboards). Your customers should will able to see through your advertisements and get a unifying corporative image. Remember: “Integration is the key” (1)

5. Access for all

If you are trying, for instance, to build a company blog, you should be aware that your employees will be the most important source of information. Therefore, giving them access and permissions to see and contribute to the blog is a must. Do not limit their participation during working hours, but regulate it through a Social Media Manager.

Five recommendations about being social.

6. Be active

To develop a relation with your audience, you have to be active. Speak of current topics, be innovative and fresh about sharing and interacting. Engage into discussions in a positive way.

7. Be interesting

If you want your customers to engage with you and your product, you should offer a reason for doing it. You should be open in listening their needs, what they find attractive and enjoyable. Open channels for them to express their ideas and suggestions and follow them.

8. Be humble

Take the time to learn and discover what is going on inside a Social Media application. When you get a complete insight of what is all about and its rules, then you can start participating. Remember that social media is not about advertisement and selling things, but engaging users.

9. Be unprofessional

You do not need to hire experienced web designers or writers to open your company blog, instead, keep real, keep it simple, and do not be overly-produced. Real people likes to share and collaborate with real people.

10. Be honest

“Be honest and respect the rules of the game” (1) do not act up to be accepted in an online community, do not hide behind anonymous accounts and users. Your audience will notice immediately when you are trying too hard, and the most probably, they wont like it. So be yourself and speak up straight.

(1) Kaplan, A.M., & Haenlein, M. (2010) Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53, 59—68

Online identity

An online identity, internet identity or internet persona is a social identity that an Internet user establishes in online communities and websites. Some people prefer to use their real names online whereas some internet users prefer to be anonymous. Person´s online identity can differ significantly from his or her true identity. In some online contexts, including Internet forums, MUDs, instant messaging, and massively multiplayer online games, users can represent themselves visually by choosing an avatar, an icon-sized graphic image (1, 2).

The social web, i.e. the usage of the web to support the social process, represents a space in which people have the possibility to express and expose their identity in a social context (1). Facebook is good example where most of people appear true identities. There people define explicitly their identity by creating user profiles and they increase in their profile pages pictures spontaneously or their life. The online dating services are also place where most of people appear their true identities. On the other hand by using blogs and expressing opinions, people define more tacit identities.

Why people want to fake their identity online? Maybe they want to be or imagine being someone else what they really are. Positive aspect of virtual communities is that people can present themselves without fear of persecution, whether it is personality traits, behaviors that they are curious about or the announcement of a real world identity component that has never been announced. Some people are so shy in true life that they don’t dare to build relationships or communicate with other people. They have easier created new online identity in the web and uphold their social life this way. When communication is bolder than face- to- face communication, people have a lower threshold to tell each other lies. A result of anonymity and audience gratification cause uninhibited behavior on the internet. I found the list of indications how to fake you identity successfully online (http://www.wikihow.com/Fake-Your-Identity-Online). The list includes eleven steps.

References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_identity
2. https://learning.uta.fi/file.php/5956/slides/5-communities.pdf
3. http://www.wikihow.com/Fake-Your-Identity-Online