Inside View from Ireland

Parrot Hands-Free Mobile

WITH THE BMW IDLE for a week, we're looking at pimping our ride with a useful traveling companion, perhaps a Parrot. That would be the Parrot MK6100 (at left) to extend the usefulness of our Bluetooth phones. The Parrot MK6100 hooks into a car's speakers and that means you can hear a phone conversation in the car or toggle MP3 tracks for playback through the car's stereo system as well. I've toyed with the Parrot MK6100 at The Communication People, my local phone store in Thurles, County Tipperary. The service staff there are some of the best car kit installers and that's what attracts me to the shop for advice. They advised me to look at the Parrot MK6100 because of its Digital Signal Processing noise reduction. I have read about this effective circuitry during CEBIT 2007 when Parrot launched in Europe. The cute little device has two built-in microphones that act like human ears. They can eliminate all the noises in the car other than the voice range. It's like having an Izotope filter inside the passenger compartment.

Multimedia Backpack 08

IN THE COMPANY OF SEVEN third level multimedia students (boom and camera at left) during a day-long media trip to Dublin yesterday, we thought nothing of upstreaming video from my Nokia E90 on the grounds of Trinity College and it was simple to snap our DV camera onto a tripod and offer a two-hour live session for people to watch at Online Meeting Rooms. Getting email on your mobile phone, once reserved for people with expensive phones, is now a common occurrence for students who have the fundamentals of personal entertainment systems in their multimedia backpacks. Twenty years ago, when I first taught adult education in education centres near Heidelberg, students looked at German holiday snapshots by passing around the photos. Now, everyone sees their work on the Web, often as Flickr photostreams.

Most Essential Thing about Twitter

WHEN ASKED TO CITE the most essential thing about Twitter, I have to say it's the "sign out" link because my time on Twitter is inversely proportional to my productivity in creative multimedia. But when I see the crest-fallen faces of media virgins, I point out some other essential things you might garner from Twitter.

Buzzards Over Batmobile

BUZZARDS ARE CIRCLING over the batmobile.

HSDPA Ireland

ON THE HEELS of a successful public meeting with the Irish Internet Association's social media working group, I returned to base very grateful for the 3G dongle I use from O2-Ireland. We needed to use the dongle in the Digital Depot during a Tipperary Institute media trip when the house wifi dipped below five megabits per second over the air, connected onto a house pipe serving no more than five megabits per second. More than six people were trying to use that meager bandwidth and it was insufficient when trying to power an online meeting room session out to four other people. It took a few minutes to slot the O2 3G dongle onto our laptop and to restart Firefox. We got it running at HSDPA speeds and reconnected to the flow of things. We have developed a special sort of hands-on expertise with our DV webcam kit, using battery power to upstream live reports from rural locations, pub music sessions and art gallery visits. Once we locate a more powerful portable battery storage pack, we will be able to stream for nearly two hours, using no wires for bandwidth or power. Stay tuned and you'll find us tweeting from places where we produce 640x480 digital video while deployed.

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Flickr has several of our online meeting rooms photos from locations throughout Ireland, including the one with Neville Hobson shown above.
Previously -- "Tech support for social media"

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Hide Your Keys

IF YOU ARE LIKE ME, you might rest your keys on an umbrella table. Do that within the range of a long lens and you could have your keys duplicated by software. That's because a photograph of your house key is enough to enable someone to unlock your door, thanks to a new technology developed by computer scientists at the University of California at San Diego. Led by computer science professor Stefan Savage, a group of students devised a way for a computer program to create a duplicate of a key by simply analyzing a photograph of it. This is made easier when using a megapixel camera and zooming-enhancement of Photosynth. Each bump and valley on a key represents a numeric code, which completely describes how to open any lock, according to UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering publication.

Tech Support for Social Media

ALONG WITH SIX third level creative multimedia students, I spent the day in Dublin providing a technological support base for elements of social media. Seven other students stayed behind in Clonmel, watching our media trip on Flickr, Qik, Twitter and also in a live stream via Online Meeting Rooms (screenshot at left). We spent 41 man-hours traveling today and 45 man-hours in ab initio training so the day was productive by a four hour increment. These 45 man-hours of hands-on training cost the Irish Department of Education EUR 126, less than an average Irish politician gets for a single trip to Dublin. We win big in the value-for-money stakes, and we will continue pushing this value proposition harder. Moreover, we will continue learning when we cross-pollinate the junior classes with trip reports and a travelogue that is sure to entertain. Stay subscribed for more details.

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Sent from my Nokia E90 phone as my battery died on the trip home.

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Time for Healing

I SERVED IN WASHINGTON, the capital of the United States, at a time for healing. A decade before, lies and corruption nearly wrecked the institution of the Presidency. And when I rode in aboard my aluminum overcast (the now retired Lockheed C-141), the mood in the States was more upbeat. From what I hear through early Christmas greetings of retired Pentagon staffers, change will affect the American military establishment in ways far more incisive than anyone expected during the long-fought Presidential campaign. That change will be good because it will come from the top, articulated in doctrinal frameworks that will commit the United States to a much minor role as a world policeman. Those who study the way policy is formulated will have to wait another five decades to see the tissue-paper co-ordination copies from President Obama--the ones bearing his distinct "BO" initials, before any historian can say who directed the shift in direction of American foreign policy. Few will question the role of the President in the way the American military will project itself. But it will take the work of archivists, long after I've been buried from the internet, to clearly link "change" to the President himself. One thing for certain--change is coming and you don't need to see who signed off on it to know it's going to happen.

Qik Start

WHILE BROKEN DOWN on the N8 in County Laois, I fired up Qik on my Nokia E90 and made a short video for the BMW mechanics located 74 miles away. They talked to me in our SonyEricsson C905 phone while I made a Qik video with my Nokia E90. I needed some help determining the cables I should unhook to make the car think it was a simple analogue batmobile. You can do that with most BMW E46 models and in my case, we tried disconnecting air flow controls from the top of the engine. But unfortunately, it was to no avail and that meant missing the IIA Net Visionary Awards, failing to hit Dublin for early Christmas shopping and spending the night in Abbeyleix instead of in The Clarence Hotel. It also means setting aside money we would have used to visit Berlin in December because since the car doesn't start, it means an earlier 125-point repair check was correct in assessing the weak health of the car's fuel pump.

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Qik video for BMW that won't start.

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Ultraportable Offfice

I DON'T REALLY LIKE taking computers into bedrooms because I think there should be a line of separation between spaces. However, I have sat many hours with a young daughter as she drifted off to sleep (like in a big bed at left) and brought part of my ultraportable office into her room. She likes the feel of my Nokia E90 mobile phone keyboard and because its keys are much smaller than a normal laptop's, she's not yet figured out how to remove. So I sit with the ultraportable E90 computer on a small lap-friendly briefcase and an always-on Moleskine and occasionally do catch-up while watching her drift off to sleep. I'm still trying to figure out how to read and update content in every one of my online workspaces, preferring to use e-mail screens as the conduit for my information flows. I can post to this blog, to my Flickr photostream, and to my Friendfeed rooms via e-mail. And mobile-friendly screens help with things like Jaiku, Twitter, and newsfeeds. Within a few years, I suspect the little girl will have her own way of using a tight space to use a computer screen. I wonder if we'll decide to set up a small computer linked to an interactive whiteboard for her. I like that idea, mainly because I believe you can never have enough whiteboard space.

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Sent mail-to-blog using O2-HSDPA Typepad service.

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