CCS (VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol))

VOIP is the basis of routing a voice conversation over a LAN network or WAN (Internet). VOIP protocols are used to carry analogue audio signals over the IP network, and allow both participants to engage in a normal conversation. Thw analogue waves is converted into digital and then mack to analogue when it is reecieved by the participant at the other end of the phone line. Users that already have an broadband Internet connection can normally use VOIP at no additional cost if talking to each other via a PC.



There are three ways in which to use the voip service. These are:
ATA: (Analogue telephone adaptor) This is an analogue-to-digital converter that allows you to connect a standard phone for use of transferrring voice signals over a broadband Internet connection.
IP Phones: These are specialized phones that have all the hardware/software necessary to make phonecalls via VOIP. An example of a phone that uses this technolog is a Skype phone.
Computer-to-Computer: Using a PC, software, speakers, a microphone, a sound card, and an Internet connection, you can make long distance phone calls for free. The Skype software is free and allows you to add people and chat to othe people with skype accounts.


The majority of consumer VoIP solutions do not support encryption yet. As a result, it is relatively easy to eavesdrop on VoIP calls and even change their content. There are several open source solutions that facilitate sniffing of VoIP conversations.

User-Centred Design (Re-design of Mobile Phone)

The Samsung SGH-D500 phone is typical of most phones found on the market today. It boasts a colourful display with many options and features. This can distract from the main reason that the majority of people use the phone for which is to make phone calls and send text messages. Although both these things are easily achievable with this phone for the vast majority of people, it doesn't cater for those few that have disabilities where their eyesight is affected. For them, the icons and text would appear too small to make out, and maybe even if they were colourblind the colours wouldn't be as apparent as they would be for people with 'normal' vision. Therefore, for this re-design project, I have decided to accomodate for those exact people and produce a prototype that incorporates these options and hopefully they would find more acceptable and easy to use.

I have added two extra buttons on the side of the phone that are easiy accessible and do two new features that the old phone lacked. They are a 'black/white' button that changes it from a colour display into black and white so the text is contrasted and easily decipherable against the black background. The second button is a zoom feature that allows th icons on the screen to appear much larger. I thought this was a better option than changing the size of the screen as it is quite large already.

I followed Jakob Neilson’s principle of only testing it on 5 people as any more would have not brought back much more useful comments. The prototype was tested on 5 different people. 4 men and one woman. I got them to use the phone and look at the prototype I had done so see if my improvements were worthwhile. They all had good vision but all agreed that the changes that I made would benefit visually-impaired people.

If I were to do the project again and had more time I would make a fully functional prototype with all the menus with the added features incorporated into the design as I only showed a brief mock-up. There was not much wrong with the phone but I managed to pick a few bad points and believe I suggested some good ideas.

CCS (Englebart & Nelson)

These two people are very influential within the 'information age' we currently live in. Douglas Engelbart has always been ahead of his time, having ideas that seemed far-fetched at the time but later were taken for granted. For instance, as far back as the 1960s he was touting the use of computers for online conferencing and collaboration. Engelbart's most famous invention is the computer mouse, also developed in the 1960s, but not used commercially until the 1980s. It is now widely used within the computing industry and makes navigating easier. Like Vannevar Bush and J.C.R. Licklider, Engelbart wanted to use technology to augment human intellect. He saw technology, especially computers, as the answers to the problem of dealing with the ever more complex modern world and has dedicated his life to the pursuit of developing technology to augment human intellect.

Nelson founded Project Xanadu in 1960 with the goal of creating a computer network with a simple user interface. The effort is documented in his 1974 book Computer Lib/Dream Machines and the 1981 Literary Machines. Much of his adult life has been devoted to working on Xanadu and advocating it.
The Xanadu project itself failed to flourish, for a variety of reasons which are disputed. Journalist Gary Wolf published an unflattering history, The Curse of Xanadu[1], on Nelson and his project in the June, 1995 issue of Wired magazine. Nelson expressed his disgust on his website[2], referring to Wolf as a "Gory Jackal", and threatened to sue him.
Nelson claims some aspects of his vision are in the process of being fulfilled by Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the World Wide Web. However, Nelson says he dislikes the World Wide Web, XML and all embedded markup, and regards Berners-Lee's work as a gross over-simplification of his own work