The History of the iPad

The purpose of this paper is to review the history of the iPad and its influence over contemporary computing. Although the iPad is relatively new, the tablet computer is having a long and lasting affect on how we communicate. With this essay, I attempt to review the technologies that emerged and converged to create the tablet computer. Of course, Apple and its iPad are at the center of this new computing movement

Pandemic, Participatory Culture and Reinvention of Everyday Life

How do we define participation during a pandemic? Are we in an era that requires reinventing our physical space and our modes of participation to build a new society? The novel coronavirus has deconstructed social space as we know it, and significantly disrupted our participation in its spheres. Today we are witnessing new forms of space, in the light of the ongoing pandemic and its impact on our participation, physical space and digital culture. This article demonstrates changes that occur in the physical and connected spaces that form our “new virtual urbanism” (Doueihi, 2011). It describes participation practices in natural parks in a Geneva-Switzerland and the Pays de Gex-France, distinguishing three types of spaces: the pre-pandemic space, the confinement space and the deconfinement space. It shows how socio-cultural practices changed in relation to the configuration of the space and the use of digital technology. Will we need to reinvent our space to encourage participation? The answer lies perhaps in considering the development of our digital traces and harvesting them in organized projects with rules, purpose, administration, management and governance. In this sense, digital participation becomes full and efficient when it relies on the process of building a memory and includes those who find themselves excluded from this new world

Gaming The Comic Book: Turning The Page on How Comics and Videogames Intersect as Interactive, Digital Experiences

Little attention has been given to how digital technologies have impacted the comic medium. Despite the astronomical impact this shift has had on all sorts of traditional media, it is common to believe that digital comics are simply electronic versions of print comics, but the implementation of audio, animation, three-dimensional effects, and interactivity with other kinds of digital comics reveal that they are hardly so simple. Analyzing and classifying them is essential for English studies, comics studies, and even game studies. Digital comics are a hybridized medium that challenge the essence and existing definitions of comics with disparate instances and inclusions of multimedia and interactivity. Digital comics also complicate how the comic medium is remediated with three remediation types (retro remediation, stylistic remediation, and adaptation) that favor or balance out desires for immediacy and hypermediacy between old and new media. Digital comics can also converge with the logic and design of videogames in the digital space, presenting opportunities to question the nature of interactivity between comics and videogames and how these two mediums can be combined with “interactive, digital comics.” This paper creates a refined genre list for digital comics by separating them in terms of how much multimedia and/or interactivity they contain with an extensive analysis of nine digital comics. Their individual incorporations (or lack thereof) of multimedia and/or interactivity unveil innovative possibilities that the digital space affords for the comic medium with new methods of spatial, sequential, and temporal storytelling. In addition, this paper explores how digital comics are socially constructed and viewed as a genre by audiences with nine interviewees that glean further insight into the current perception and future potential of not only digital comics, but also the promising genre of interactive, digital comics

Puzzle game using Android MVVM Architecture

The development of Android mobile applications in application industry is growing rapidly. Application requirements change frequently and demand for code structure adjustment with addition of new features. Thus, flexibility and maintainability in a software architecture is a determining factor for an application’s success. The objective of this thesis is to implement Model View ViewModel (MVVM) in a simple 8-puzzle game. The development of this application is carried out in Android Studio IDE. This application uses API level 15 or above to give access for more android devices. The main programming language used in this application is Java. This thesis also explains different architecture concepts used in Android such as Model View Controller, Model View Presenter and finally Model View ViewModel. This study also specifies the uses of best practices in software development. Also, downsides of an architecture such as Model View Controller are also pointed out and the alternatives presented. This thesis uses a Slider puzzle application written in Java to implement MVVM architecture pattern. This was previously written in MVC architecture pattern. In conclusion, the thesis illustrates how the use of a well-designed architecture could affect the overall quality of an application in terms of flexibility and maintainability. It also encourages a best-practice minded approach in software development and further studies toward the implementation of the Model View ViewModel architecture in Android

Social shaping of mobile geomedia services: An analysis of Yelp and Foursquare

In their book, Location-Based Social Media: Space, Time and Identity, Leighton Evans and Michael Saker remark on the apparent ‘death’ of location-based social networks, suggesting that location-based social networks can now be understood as ‘a form of “zombie-media” that animates and haunts other media platforms’. In this article, we use this perspective as a point of departure for a social shaping of technology-informed analysis of two key geomedia platforms: Yelp and Foursquare. With Yelp approaching its 15th year of service and Foursquare approaching its 10th anniversary, this article provides a timely opportunity to (re-)examine the significance of Yelp and Foursquare and the many reconfigurations both firms have made to their services since their launch. These include, most recently, Yelp’s integration of artificial intelligence/machine learning techniques to parse, sift and order users’ posts and Foursquare’s development of its Pilgrim SDK (software design kit) to power the location services of other platforms, like Tinder and Snap. A social shaping-inflected approach is productive in this context in that it stresses how many of these developments and strategic reorientations are not just in response to shareholder and investor pressures, they are also fundamentally shaped by and made in response to the fluctuating demands of end-users within a complicated, competitive and continuously evolving geomedia ecosystem. Consequently, we draw from the work of Leah A Lievrouw to examine how dual tensions of contingency/determination shape how these applications are designed and used, and how both design and use continue to evolve in response to various external pressures

Electric vehicle drive-by-wire solution for distributed steering, braking and throttle control

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references.In this paper, we propose CityCarControl, a system to manage the steering, braking, and throttle of a new class of intra-city electric vehicles. These vehicles have a focus on extreme light-weight and a small parking footprint. In order to maximize maneuverability within a city environment, we show the feasibility of omnidirectional steering, and the integration of a folding chassis. Furthermore, we apply traditionally programming best-practice techniques to simplify the design of the control system. Specifically, we present the concept of a modular, fail-silent wheel-robot with a standardized API responsible for controlling steering, braking and throttle within the vehicle.by Thomas B. Brown.M.Eng

A short history off-line

Emerging technologies for learning report - Article exploring the history of ICT in education and the lessons we can learn from the pas

Malmö and places of modernity - Shopping malls and visions of Utopia

In this essay the concept of modernity is explored in relation to the city of Malmö. Modernity is defined and investigated. Then it is put in relationship with the new comprehensive plan from the urban planning office in Malmö and three of the bigger shopping malls in Malmö