Inside View from Ireland: Learning from the Irish Times

JAIKU CROSS-TALK told me that my blog earned a "Blogspot" mention in today's Irish Times. John Collins reviewed Inside View through both his newsreader and by visiting the main pages here to draw some observations that have helped me affirm why I've actually lost readers since winning the 2007 "Best Technology Blog" at the Irish blog awards. The reasons are simple.

1. Writing style is clipped and difficult to penetrate. Agreed. But I've learned from Brian Greene and old habits die hard.

2. Embedded widgets in the sidebar. Some of those widgets do not load in local authorities and that means their browsing sessions can crash after visiting my blog. I don't want to shed the widgets so instead I have shed some readers who use bandwidth provided by the Local Government Computer Services Board.

3. Intimidating. I'm working on my fluffy side to compensate for my intimidating demeanor but I suspect the cuddliest part of me comes through earbuds in my podcasts.

Damian Bannon shoveled the Times piece onto a Jaiku thread and I've pasted it below.

Bernie Goldbach could conceivably claim to have Ireland's longest running blog. Started in 2001 as Irish Eyes, Goldbach, who is a lecturer in digital media at Tipperary Institute, has recently rebranded his blog as Inside View, the place where he muses on internet technology, education and entrepreneurship.

His commitment to being connected to the latest technologies while travelling the highways and byways of Ireland means that Goldbach probably also has some of the highest mobile phone bills in the country - a fact that he likes to analyse and discuss on his blog. He is also a vocal supporter of the need for broadband access in rural areas.

His writing style, sometimes clipped and difficult to penetrate, reflects the fact that many of his posts are published from the road.

Subscribing to Inside View through a feed reader will deprive you of a view of Inside View's sidebar, where the embedded widgets showcase some of the latest Web 2.0 applications.

For example, while the rest of the world is still coming to terms with Twitter, Goldbach has moved on to Jaiku, a more robust micro-blogging platform, which also allows you to share your digital life with your friends.

Goldbach's left-field take on the Irish Sunday papers could give any of the talking heads on national radio a run for their money.

For the rest of the week, he's guaranteed to provoke some interesting thoughts on technology, although the less tech savvy readers may find his depth of knowledge slightly intimidating."

Truth be told, I was not the first person in Ireland to start blogging. I intersected blogging through LiveJournal and then by listening to Tom Cosgrave and Helena Kim years ago. I supplemented my tech diet back then by reading Sean McGrath's blog and stayed honest with my political beliefs by commenting on Gavin Sheridan's blog.

Reading John Collin's accurate review made me realise that the landscape in Irish blogging has shifted once again, something that seems to occur every two years. I plan to ride out this wave because I'm keen to watch Irish teens move from Bebo to their own creative web pages.

John Collins -- "Blogspot" in the Irish Times, 9 November 2007.