Review – Advertising in video games

I was reading about Advertising in video games. Nicely presented and informative material. Since I’m not very familiar with the topic I was a bit concerned wheter I get the point and necessary info. Must say that I did. A lot of interesting real-life samples made reading quite a fun. And numbers speak for themselves – in-game advertising industry is expected to be worth about $971m by 2011. Keeping the history of in-game advertising short yet informative gave a nice and clear overview of past, present and future trends. Knowing that an average video game player is 18-35 years old single male, who is overweight, aggressive, introverted and often depressed, it’s easier to target those advertisements. I think that’s why we see Marlboro, Pepsi and Mountain Dew ads rather than Homo and Ariel in video games. It all started with simple billboards with brand promotions which are now used also for variety of products, services and even by US president Obama who took the political battle into video-games. Nice overview of different eras – from simple billboards to constantly updating on-line ads. The success of iPhone and its applications is obvious and well-known, but seeing the numbers and interesting facts behind that was pleasant. Even though the competitors like Nokia have tried to bring out their own multitouch solutions, they haven’t even got close. As more and more applications, games and platforms are developed daily, ads-business is moving into variety of fields, enabling developers to earn more money and to come up with new approaches. We can see that there’s a bigger science behind that as might think. You need to think and rethink everything. Depending of the genre of the game, the average age of the players etc. you need to carefully select the ads and their placement. Ads cannot be distracting but still they must fit into content and give the right feeling and at the same time they must act as advertisements and bring up the interest. Definitions and meanings for different types of ads are nicely explained and visually presented, so understanding the content wasn’t the problem. The reasons for doing in-game advertisement is because it’s effective and you can choose from that many mediums. Targeting the audience is essential.

To Sum up I’d like to say that it was an interesting reading. Even though, some of the chapters went into too much details, but in general it was a nice reading with great examples. The thing that concerned me the most was that the content was divided into separate articles. I would have liked to see it as a one whole with nice alignments but that wasn’t too big problem. Also, referring to the sources missed the consistency. I would recommend to fix the small problems described above and share it with public as an interesting set of thoughts and examples on the named topic.

Free Software vs Open Source

There have been many discussions about meaning of the term “free software”. What does “free” actually mean?  Free software should be understood as a software which gives the user certain freedoms. It gives its users a freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. As can be seen in this article for the free software movement, non-free software is a social problem and at the same time open source movement is seeing it as a suboptimal solution.  It means that if software gives a user those freedoms it must be a free software. You can make changes, copies and whatever you want without narrowing your freedom and without asking any permissions. There are very few cases of software that is free software but is not open source software, and vice versa. Open source software and free software share an almost identical set of licenses. For open source the license must allow not only free but also paid-for redistribution and derived works must be redistributable under the same terms. In general, if we are comparing the rules set by those models, we can see that there isn’t much difference. I personally prefer open-source approach because it gives a better understanding of what we are dealing with and I like the thinking that open-source is more flexible than free-software, allowing you to make commercial redistribution. So, I see open-source software more promising than free-software and even if free software is open-source I rather see freedom in open-source point of view.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software#Open_source_software_vs._free_software
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Crowdsourcing

1. Overview

As Wikipedia says: „Crowdsourcing is a neologism for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a group (crowd) of people or community in the form of an open call“.[1] Crowdsourcing is used to gather volunteers for making a better product, translation or design. It’s is based on collective thinking and carried out by good will using Web 2.0 tools and technologies.  The term itself was brought up by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 and because of its young age and controversial meaning, crowdsourcing has faced a lot of criticisms. Crowdsourcing relies on a group intelligence which projects are mostly held and managed in internet which makes collaboration to be more open and attention to focused on the project. By listening to the crowd, organizations receive a lot of valuable information from outside which helps to understand customer needs. In crowdsourcing the first step is initiated by a client.

2. Crowdsourcing vs. Outsourcing

In crowdsourcing the task is outsourced to undefined masses rather than a specific people or group as in general outsourcing. Sometimes the crowd is rewarded either monetarily, with prizes or with recognition and in most of the cases the only reward is intellectual satisfaction.

3. Process

1. Company has a problem.

2. Company broadcasts problem online.

3. Online “crowd” is asked to give solutions.

4. Crowd submits solutions.

5. Crowd vets solutions.

6. Company rewards winning solvers.

7. Company owns winning solutions.

8. Company profits.

4. Crowdsourcing translations

Many website owners face the problem of translations. If your website is attractive enough then a crowdsourcing for translations might be a good idea. If talking about worldwide websites like Facebook for example by inviting users into translations process it also helps to increase the quality. There must be a good reason why people should voluntarily start to translate. In fact, such business model cannot be used for any type of companies but rather for social media sites like Facebook, WordPress and Flickr. People are carrying out these translations voluntarily and for free because they are using those services every day and they want to be a part of making a better product for others and themselves also.

As can be found from Michael Arrington article to TechCrunch MySpace continues to roll out local versions of its social network and they tend to put a team on the ground locally and then build the site not only in the local language, but promote local artists and other popular culture as well. MySpace now has offices in London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, Sydney, Mexico City, Sao Palo, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Tokyo, and Beijing. Offices will be opening up soon in Mumbai, Moscow, and Istanbul. Facebook is taking a radically different approach – tapping users to do all the hard work for them. They are picking and choosing and asking just a few users to test out their collaborative translation tool. Once the tool is perfected and enough content has been translated, Facebook will offer users the ability to quickly switch the language on the site, per their preference.[2]

5. Examples of usage

• reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows. Over 200 million people have helped digitize at least one word using this system.[3]
• Wikipedia is a free web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedias’s 14 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. And almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone. [4]
• Pepsi launched marketing campaign in early 2007 which allowed consumers to design the look of a Pepsi can. The winners would receive a $10,000 prize, and their artwork would be featured on 500 million Pepsi cans around the United States.[5]

6. Controversy

Some critics think that it’s not acceptable that some individuals gain big profit out of crowdsourcing activity. There are also ethical and social aspects around which are subject to wide debates. Some of the best known critics are Douglas Rushkoff, Jimmy Wales.

Some possible pitfalls of crowdsourcing as provided by Wikipedia:

• Added costs to bring a project to an acceptable conclusion.
• Increased likelihood that a crowdsourced project will fail due to lack of monetary motivation, too few participants, lower quality of work, lack of personal interest in the project, global language barriers, or difficulty managing a large-scale, crowdsourced project.
• Below-market wages or no wages at all. Barter agreements are often associated with crowdsourcing.
• No written contracts, nondisclosure agreements, or employee agreements or agreeable terms with crowdsourced employees.
• Difficulties maintaining a working relationship with crowdsourced workers throughout the duration of a project.
• Susceptibility to faulty results caused by targeted, malicious work efforts.

7. Conclusion

Crowdsourcing has emerged as a popular trend for companies to involve people from outside to get things done and there are plenty of success stories out there. The aspect which affects the outcome of crowdsourcing business model the most is a large and active community. What is also crucial is transparency, so that people would understand why they should participate and what they are working for. Crowdsourcing is fun way of sharing ideas, finding amazing people and getting things done.

8. References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing
2. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/21/facebook-taps-users-to-create-translated-versions-of-site/
3. http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
5. http://www.designourpepsican.com/

The Digital Enforcement

I think copying restrictions for commercial software are applicable in most of the cases but they shouldn’t be that strickt. There are free and commercial software, if a software company comes up with an innovative software product and people are willing to buy it then there has to be some regulations and licences to support that companies will to offer that product in a longer run. Time has shown that it is nearly impossible to keep crackers away from good commercial software and if something good is available then it’s going to end up in the internet sooner or later. If we are talking about how many copies should be allowed for single user then I think that as long as the software usage is not violated the number of copies is irrelevant. So yes, I think that licences that are regulating the number of copies issue should be widen and not to be that strict and you should be allowed to bakcup copy of your software even in the internet if you like, as long as it’s not accessible to others. In fact, I think it would be a good idea if software companies itself are holding a backup of your product available in the internet and you can download it any time you like.

The World of Proprietary Software

In times like these when world is in financial crises, more and more companies and home-users are starting to turn their heads towards free and open-source software. If 10 years ago companies were forced to use expensive commercial software then now it’s more like matter of habits and time – people are used to pay for everything. But on nowadays more and more companies are starting to use free software because there are many options available and often they are not worse than commercial ones. There will be always room for commercial software especially for professional users with certain needs (architecture, design etc.) but most of the common IT-needs can be covered with free or nearly free software. It may lead us to the situation where proprietary software will not only be launched under more cruel licences but we will see real life samples of strict punishments and court-cases. As Cory Doctorow has written in the InformationWeek about clickwrap and shrinkwrap agreements then by the year 2015 we have probably seen some of the real-life cases where proprietary software vendors are starting to act more aggressively and world of licencing will have some serious battles.  By now, most of the users doesn’t bother to read the terms of services or other licencing agreements while adapting some software. I will see big change in people minds and behaviour as society has became more and more aware of threats and possibilities. It’s a slow ongoing process but by the year 2015 people will be more aware of software licences and can make decisions based on that knowledge rather than making it based on the color of box or prize label. I also think that big software vendors like Microsoft will start giving more for free – there are already some agreements on academic fields where Microsoft is giving some of its software free of charge. I think such behaviour will extend and more and more commercial software will become available free to some big groups. For universities it’s a good way to teach future professionals with best software and for software vendors it s like a partnership where they at first give things away for free but later get this investment back as former students will adapt the same software for their own businesses.

The Millennium Bug in the WIPO Model

One of the most successful businesses in modern society has been the medical science. Pharmacies have a create power in regulation of world health – and money. The adoption of electronic health record (information systems that gather and store data about patients) is growing. However, larger hospitals have higher adoption percentages than smaller hospitals and medical groups. An EHR digital divide exists-and is widening. In some cases, this divide could threaten the ability of smaller providers to survive in the years ahead. Moreover, the gap will mean that the value of EHRs will not accrue to large numbers of patients. Closing this gap will require the collective action of providers, payers, and government. Must say that adaption of EHR in Estonia is really divided and unclear – you have to fill number of papers in most of the medical visits. That is what I don’t get. In my oppinion we have had enough time to centralize our existing systems or develope totally new ones but in most of the cases we still need to make a call, fill the papers, sit in lines and refill the papers again and again. Digital health-card should be avilable for a long time and not only for selected groups but for everyone. We should be the e-country.

The Hacker Approach: Development of Free Licenses

The idea of GNU GPL license is that everybody is free to use and modify the software released under GNU GPL license. You can use it anyways you want but doing so you also agree that the result of your modification is also free to use for others. It mean that the new or modified product inherits its license from the previous one. This kind of a license inheritance is called “copyleft” and was invented by Richard Stallman. The strength of such software is the support, meaning that, you are not alone  Sharing  your ideas and using collective thinking will give good results. I would point out the lack of originality as weakness, because you need to share your developments. License as such gives a good opportunity to make a use of something really good which may support your business activity and basically getting lot of things done without buying expensive software for that. The main threat as I see it, is the easy possibility to violate the general requirements setted by the license – information should be free but propably not everybody thinks like that.

Anglo-American and Continental European school of IP

While studing about moral rights between 2 different schools, Hanna Lundström explained the situation quite clearly to me. There are two different approaches of copyright, Anglo-American and Continental European. With the same political strength it is not strange that moral rights have not been regulated more since the two approaches have very different opinions in relation to that topic. International agreements focus more on economic rights while letting moral rights to a greater part being handled by national countries. Therefore, the level of protection for moral rights differs among countries. The prime inspiration for both systems is the cultural importance of authors, but the focus of the Continental European is even more the author while the Anglo-American is more focused on the commercial part of the copyright.

Against intellectual property

People in IT society are stressed out because of rules and obligations attached to information. We can commit a crime without even noticing it, piracy is everywhere and rules for controlling it are just too complex to follow or hard to find. Brian Martin is pointing out that information should be free as much as possible. Instead of building walls and hiding the information we should share and use it wisely. This way everybody wins. I must agree that collective thinking creates positive results and by using information to create information is the source of great deeds. We win not by keeping everything to ourselves but by sharing, collecting and reusing the information. By doing so, you may not receive the financial credit immediately, but if everything succeeds, it will help to build up something bigger and credible in near or longer future.  Brian Martin is saying that it needs to be recognized that intellectual work is inevitably a collective process. No one has totally original ideas: ideas are always built on the earlier contributions of others. I rather agree in differ. If you loosen the meaning of copyright and give everybody free hands, we will end up in complex situation where instead of coming up with brilliant ideas and products we keep fighting about original inheritance and ownership. I agree that in general we should be more open-minded and willing to share and receive ideas to build better solutions for all of us, but it’s not the rules and obligations we have to change but the general thinking in it-society.

Social Engineering in Social Networks

As a real life example I can briefly explain a situation what happend to me last year – I was involed into phishing a credit-card data. I was trying to make a long distance call from Central Station in New York City to Estonia. I added some coins and dialed a number but right after that a “operator” joined my call by telling that if I want to make a long distance call I need to specify my credit card number and my personal inforamtion. As I was in desperate need to make that call and in general the situtation looked pretty credible I gave the “operator” that info – after that, the whole situtation started to make sence to me and scare me off a little. I never made that call, because after giving all the information, the “operator” vanished and phone went deaf. The situation was more than suspicious to me. I made a request to my bank account and saw that somebody (not me) had booked some goods using my credit card info. I made a urgent request to bank to stop this transaction and luckily they manged to do so. As a result, I was lucky to get away with just a minor heart attack, but since that I started to take a better care of my personal info. As they say – there is no patch for stupidity 🙂

I think the easiest way to reduce the effectiveness of social engineering attempts is by informing your friends – people are not interested in digging into materials and reading about different scams and security issues. If you have some good story from real life then share that information among your friends and warn them, this is the easisest way – by spreading the word. And word can be spread not only by sitting around a beer table but also using social networks – social networks can and will be used for both – for sharing a social information and commiting a social engineering act.