Inside View from Ireland

FOWA Dublin 090306

WE HAVE STARTED LOOKING at ways to fund four college students to attend the Future of Web Apps in Dublin on 6 March 2009 because we believe all creative multimedia degree students need to attend major industry events. We call these outings "media trips" and assign continuous attendance credit to them. FOWA generates a lively amount of cross-talk whenever one of the conferences occurs and a Dublin running will certainly be one of the liveliest on the 2009 conference calendar. In the value-for-money stakes, FOWA delivers a nice return for the entry fee (less than 100 Irish punts) and if there was a better gender balance among the proposed speakers, this would be a top-rated event. Setting that shortcoming aside, FOWA always entertains with a fresh blend of speakers, quality pitches by start-ups, approachable journos like Mike Butcher, and an energetic amount of catching up with extremely knowledgeable developers. With four students live blogging the event, we plan to bring a Tipperary slant to the Big Smoke for FOWA 2009 in Dublin.

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FOWA Blog -- "FOWA comes to Dublin"
Sabrina Dent -- "FOWA: The future looks mighty male"
FOWA Dublin 2009 opens in Liberty Hall, Eden Quay, Dublin, Ireland on Friday 6 March 2009.

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Hands-on Driving

NOTHING BEATS THE FEEDBACK you can get from hands-on driving and that holds true for a car, a plane, or our Moodle. While waiting for car repairs in a BMW garage, a friendly salesman invited Ruth to drive a few models (see left). Following less than 10 minutes in a four-year-old car used car from the lot outside, we were on our way to buying it. The test drive was part of the sales pitch and as anyone in the business knows, those tests often get prospects to qualify themselves as customers. The same kind of consumer psychology holds true in my work with our Moodle virtual learning system. I have set a considerable number of writing assignments on Moodle, in the belief that the only way you learn to write well is to write often. The frequency of the assignments also induces a bit of stress in students, causing most of them to hunker down and actually do the work in an organised way. However, the bottom third show a tendency that recurs year after year. They are slow to take up on the VLE, claiming they don't know where to start or they don't understand what to do. We normally work around these twin hesitations in an open setting like the campus canteen or even outside in a field of grass sprayed by the free and open campus wifi network. It takes less than five minutes to test drive Moodle and for new students to think they can proceed on their own. It's a student behavior I saw while an instructor pilot as well in flight simulators. You needed to just get the show on the road, share a few demonstrations, and everything would rock on from there.

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Have a poke around Media Writing if you like, and see how it's possible to earn more than 100% of the continuous assessment marks available.

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From mail to blog

ONE OF THE MOST useful pieces of functionality in my life is my ability to post to my weblog in the dark without a computer. For example, this short post is coming to you from the glow of a Nokia E90 screen illuminating a small keyboard while I sit on the edge of a bed with a sick little toddler. She sleeps quickly on big beds but tends to roll off them so I bring my ultraportable office to her and life goes on. Downstairs in the sitting room, my wife occasionally brings her Shockwave work home and she carries a 17" laptop onto the sofa to move vectors on scenelines. After a month of that kind of work, she wants to ban laptops from sitting rooms because you cannot converse while editing key frames. Back to my ultraportable window to the blogosphere. From experience, seen since 2003 when I started services with Six Apart, I have emailed hundreds of blog items to InsideView.ie. Whenever someone comments on my blog, my phone vibrates and shows me what they've said. If I want to kill the comment or block a spammer, the email gives me the deep link to pare back as I wish. The ultraportable E90 computer (it's too big for most people to consider it a phone) also aggregates  a minimum of 1300 blog posts on my phone for offline viewing on aircraft, in rural areas or on the side of a bed with a sick kid. I think it's important to mention these capabilities because so many people assume a browser is the first screen to the internet. We know the text-based two-colour screens are the way the connected universe can always be sure of communications. The sooner I get ultraportable computers (i.e., smartphones) into the hands of my Media Virgins, the better our connected world will be.

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Sent mal2blog using O2_EDGE Typepad services in Cashel, Ireland before sunrise.

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Frugal MP3 Player

WE HAVE A TIGHT CHRISTMAS fast approaching and this year that means ignoring lust-worthy Apple components and looking a viable alternatives like the Creative Zen MP3 player at left. I've been admiring the credit-card sized Zen in several Dublin electronics shops and the only reason I haven't bought one is because my brother-in-law swears by his. I don't want to look like a follower so I'm holding off for a 32 GB Flash version of the Creative Zen. It's handy to have a SD/SDHC card slot because that helps me leverage my SD collection. The Creative Zen supports MP3 and AAC which means I can rip and play--with one additional step required to rip iTunes music. I also have to convert my 3GP and MP4 files to video in WMV or DivX/XviD at 320x240 resolution but Creative's software could help with those tasks. Let's see whether I get one of these little numbers for Christmas.

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Creative sells the Zen online in Ireland for €229.

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Sleeping with E90

[UPDATED 13 Nov 08: This was a mail-to-blog post sent to Typepad from Nokia Mail in Ireland on 6 Nov. I don't know why it spent a week circling the Six Apart servers.]

I FEEL SHEEPISH admitting that I often take my brick to bed because I don't believe one should bring things like Twitter to bed. But here I sit, on the side of our guest bed, with my Nokia E90 spewing tweets from Dabr while I nurse a toddler into her second nap of the day. Young Mia is feeling the effects of a major immunization and the best way to give her deep sleep is in a big bed with deep duvets. Since she can roll off the bed, I took my portable office (water bottle, Nokia E90, reading lap case and Moleskine) to her. Years from now, when she may face the same domestic challenge, I wonder whether she will ensure all the big beds have home office IT in the walls. I have already figured out how to build pull-down writing tables on the walls and it's just a matter of time before ] the price points of interactive white boards dip below 42" television screens. You can never have enough white boards. Nor can a 13-month-old ever get too much sleep.

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Mia in deep sleep happens rarely in my Flickr photostream.
Sent from my Nokia E90 phone using O2-Ireland HSDPA from the top east-facing window of my home.

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Cannot Delete Direct Messages from Twitter

UP UNTIL ELECTION DAY, I could delete direct messages from Twitter, even when viewing those messages through my mobile phone's browser. I hadn't tried deleting any for the past week but now I notice that I cannot delete the direct messages that I've received . On the Twitter status blog, it seems the problem stems from a "database replication service fail last night" which means "missing direct messages, direct message counts off, and missing replies." It's always difficult to maintain dynamic data in a robust database, so I can feel for the Twitter admins. Yet the ability to maintain a data hygiene is an important enterprise communications strength for me so I hope my ability to delete direct Twitter messages returns soon. In the meantime, I'm off to look at Twitter backgrounds.

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But Dean Whitbread says there's hope!

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D+16 in Scoble's Viewfinder

ONE OF THE THOUGHTS meandering from Robert Scoble's current trip to China is the growing effects of disintermediation that appear front-and-centre to Scoble. He calls it "disruption" but the online architects I have heard from Amazon and Yahoo! consider it disintermediation (or D+16 on some briefing slides). Our Tipperary delegation returned from China with a respect for disintermediation because it removed intermediaries in the supply chain by cutting out the middleman. In our case, if we can advocate our education brand prominently, we don't have to tow the line behind the Minister for Education because we can go directly to potential exchange students from China. That's a real challenge, and the internet isn't going to make things a simple process.  Although we do attract creative multimedia students and they occasionally offer photos like the one at left, shot by one of our second year students in 2006. When it comes to travel, I blogged about D+16 in air travel, musing that most of my friends rarely talk to a travel agent because they can book without any problem online by themselves. This might prove helpful for those considering the direct flight from Dublin to Beijing.

Audio Therapy

WE ARE TOTALLY in harmony with people selling methods that induce deep sleep quickly because we h ave an active 14-month old who gives us more sleep when she collapses into deep sleep. And that's why we're looking at Stereo H2O, an invisible audio system that delivers full-bodied sound through the bathtub. Harnessing the healing power of music, Stereo H2O uses audio therapy to provide the ultimate escape, enhancing your customized bathing experience. If you believe the testimonials, this audio transducer "promotes wellness, relieves stress, alleviates pain and promotes physical and spiritual healing, improving the quality of life for those who are healthy as well as those suffering from disabilities or illness." The "speakers" are actually high-performance acoustic transducers precisely engineered with the most advanced level of technology and materials. The acoustic transducer system is applied to the bath shell's exterior surface near the waterline. This transforms the bath shell into a magnificent sounding board that evenly distributes the sound within the entire tub environment, enveloping the bather in invigorating or relaxing sounds of choice, from rousing rock 'n roll to a calming concerto.

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MTI Whirlpools -- Stereo H₂O™ Audiotherapy

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Telling the Tech Story

WE NEED TO TELL better stories about home-grown Irish technology and target those stories at teens attending events like Science Week Ireland. Some really interesting stories remain buried behind the walls of incubation centres or stuffed inside cubicles where sweaty coders make products. I've worked in places where I would bump into interesting creatives over coffee (essential set-up at left) or hook up in pubs for exciting discussions. Those memories, so clear from 10 years ago, should become part of a storyline that appeals to 14-year-old students who haven't taken a jaundiced view of the technology sector. I've discovered men and women involved in start-ups who want to share some of their experiences, if only to have a legacy for their grandchildren.

Youthtech

WE OPEN THE WEEK with teens interested in technology, including a few lads from the Youthtech group in Clonmel, County Tipperary. The guys took my Nokia E90 and made few Qik clips, one about technology on their wishlists and another about chips in Tipp. Since it's difficult to search and find specific Qik clips, we're putting a marker down here, linking a single blog post about Youthtech deep inside the Qik community. Science Week Ireland also features in the first emergence of the Tipperary News Network, a series of video clips powered by Online Meeting Rooms. To see the SWI activities this week, log into the room SWI.

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More: Qik.com/topgold.

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