Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

488 user groupsGarofoli, Joe. “User News Sites Offer Diverse Stories, SomeQuestionable Sources.” San Francisco Chronicle. Availableonline. URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/12/MNPDS3RE6.DTL&hw=user+content&sn=001&sc=100. Accessed November 30, 2007.Gillmor, Dan. We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, forthe People. Cambridge, Mass.: O’Reilly, 2004.Hietannen, Herkko, Ville Oksanen, and Vikko Valimaki. CommunityCreated Content: Law, Business, and Policy. Helsinki,Finland: Turre Publishing, 2007.King, Brad. “User-Created Content Comes to TV.” TechnologyReview blogs, December 5, 2006. Available online. URL:http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/17485/.Accessed November 30, 2007.Tapscott, Don, and Anthony D. Williams. Wikinomics: How MassCollaboration Changes Everything. New York: Portfolio, 2006.Vickery, Graham, and Sacha Wunsch-Vincent. Participative Weband User-Created Content: Web 2.0 Wikis and Social Networking.Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,2007.user groupsComputer users have always had an interest in finding andsharing information about the systems they are trying touse. As early as 1955, users of the IBM 701 mainframebanded together, in this case to try to influence IBM’s decisionsabout new software. Later, users of minicomputersmade by Digital Equipment Corporation formed DECUS.By the mid-1970s, microcomputer experimenters hadorganized several groups, of which the most influential wasprobably the Homebrew Computer Club, meeting first in agarage in Menlo Park, California, 1975. The group soon wasfilling an auditorium at Stanford University. Members demonstratedand explained their hand-built computer systems,argued the merits of kits such as the Altair, and later, witnessedSteve Wozniak’s prototype Apple I computer.At the other end of the scale, users of UNIX on universitycomputer systems had formed USENIX, the UNIX user’sgroup. A growing system of newsgroups called USENET(see netnews and newsgroups) would soon extendbeyond UNIX concerns to hundreds of other topics.Early PC users had great need for user groups. Technicalsupport was primitive and the variety of computerbooks limited, so the best way to get quirky hardware orbalky software to work was often to ask fellow users, readuser group newsletters, or skim through the great varietyof small publications that catered to users of particular systems.Users could also meet to swap public domain softwaredisks. User groups could be formed around software as wellas hardware. Thus, users could swap spreadsheet templatesor discuss Photoshop techniques.User groups have gradually become less important, orperhaps it is better to say that they have changed theirmode of existence. Starting in the mid-1980s, the modemand bulletin board, on-line services such as CompuServeand later, Web sites offered more convenient access to informationand software without the need to attend meetings.At the same time, the quality and reliability of hardwareand software has steadily improved, even though there isalways a new crop of problems.User groups played a key role in the adoption of newtechnology, much as they had in earlier movements suchas amateur radio. Today it might be said that every userhas the opportunity to join numerous virtual user groups,although the sense of fellowship and mutual explorationmay be somewhat lacking.Further ReadingAssociation of Personal Computer User Groups. Available online.URL: http://www.apcug.org/. Accessed August 23, 2007.Moen, Rick. “Linux User Group HOWTO.” Available online. URL:http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/User-Group-HOWTO.html. Accessed August 23, 2007.MUG Center: The Mac User Group Resource Site. Available online.URL: http://www.mugcenter.com/. Accessed August 23, 2007.USENIX. Available online. URL: http://www.usenix.org/. AccessedAugust 23, 2007.User Group Network. Available online. URL: http://www.usergroups.net/.Accessed August 23, 2007.WUGNET (Windows Users Group Network). Available online.URL: http://www.wugnet.com/. Accessed August 23, 2007.user interfaceAll computer designers are faced with the question of howusers are going to communicate with the machine in orderto get it to do what they want it to do. User interfaces haveevolved considerably in 60 years of computing.The user interface for ENIAC and other early computersconsisted of switches or plugs for configuring the machinefor a particular problem, followed by loading instructionsfrom punch cards. The mainframes of the 1950s and 1960shad control consoles from which text commands could beentered (see job control language).The time-sharing computers that became popular startingin the 1960s still used only text commands, but theywere more interactive. Users could type commands toexamine directories and files, and run utilities and otherprograms. Starting in the 1970s, UNIX provided a powerfuland flexible way to combine commands to carry out a varietyof tasks interactively or through batch processing (seeunix and shell).The first graphical user interfaces (GUIs) resulted fromexperimental work at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center(PARC) during the 1970s. Instead of typing commands ata prompt, GUI users can use a mouse to open menus andselect commands, and click on icons to open programs andfiles. For operations that require detailed specifications, astandard dialog box can be presented, using controls suchas check boxes, buttons, text boxes, and sliders.GUIs entered the mainstream thanks to Apple’s Macintoshand Microsoft Windows for IBM-compatible PCs. Bythe mid-1990s, the GUI had supplanted text-based operatingsystems such as MS-DOS for most PC users. Thestrength of the GUI is that it can visually model the wayusers work with objects in the real world. For example, afile can be deleted by dragging it to a trash can icon anddropping it in. Dragging a slider control to adjust the volumefor a sound card is directly analogous to moving aslider on a home stereo system.