Inside View

Journaling Now

CLONMEL -- Those who complain about being relegated to unstimulating environs often fail to see the joys of the moment around them. Simple journaling skills help combat this problem. You can convert jail time into a novel, turn a boring queue into a news item or time-filling rough sketches into a valuable diary. Keeping a written journal helps nurture the disciplines of observation, recording, distillation, writing, editing, publication, and syndication. We approach all of these tasks in the Writing Skills course taught in the multimedia degree programme in Tipperary Institute.¹ Items recorded in these "wireless notebooks" form part of classroom assignment materials. The notebooks also serve as raw sample of work in progress by providing a freeze frame of eureka moments, significant emtional events and extensible threads of discussion.

Hutton Report Adwords

GUARDIAN -- The BBC is buying up search terms for "Hutton Inquiry" and "Hutton Report" through Google's Adwords service. They would achieve better placement of their Hutton pages by embedding Adsense code on them.

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Guardian -- "BBC buying Google Adwords"
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Time-aware page

SEATTLE PI -- I always wanted to do this and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is now customising its home page by time of day.

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Creative Commons Ireland

CREATIVE COMMONS -- As spotted by Justin Mason, Creative Commons is working with University College Cork on porting the Creative Commons licenses to Ireland. The iCommons Ireland List is lead by Dr. Darius Whelan, College Lecturer, UCC Law Faculty and Louise Crowley, College Lecturer, UCC Law Faculty. Larry Lessig would be proud.

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Creative Commons Ireland -- Join the mailing list
Justin Mason -- Software Prole. Probably better than Jameson Disilled Content.
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Social software and the governed

CLONMEL -- Disaffected Irish citizens use social software such as electronic discussion lists, mailing lists, and blogs to express opinions. Sometimes it is difficult to know whether these electronic instruments affect the national agenda. There is a lot of talk in America about social software failing to sway the vote in the favour of Howard Dean during the Democratic Presidential primary.

Howard Dean, whose campaign made the earliest and best use of social sofware, did remarkably poorly in the opening round, coming in a distant third to two people he was expected to beat.

Kilkenny Pub Grub

KILKENNY -- Sometimes you need a burger and a pint to finish off the day in Kilkenny. Taking this tasking to heart, I can recommend two venues.

• McCourts just off John's Bridge costs me €14 for two pints of Smithwick's alongside a generous plate of sausages, potato wedges, and chicken wings.
• Rosehill Bar in Hotel Kilkenny serves up an oversized burger and a pint for €11 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. The Hotel is at the end of a casual stroll past St Kieran's College, bordered by the Ring Road. It's a good meeting place if headed through Kilkenny towards Clonmel or Waterford.

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Trustworthy e-voting

EVOTING -- There is serious content on the e-voting mailing list and several working groups stirring up interest in the topic. Michael says: "The software is still being debugged, the source code which will be run on election day is not going to be available to the department of environment until a few weeks after the election is run, and there is *no* audit trail whatsoever of any worth which makes recounts etc. completely pointless and unless a ballot machine fails spectacularly errors cannot be spotted."

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Margaret McGaley -- "Irish Citizens for Trustworthy e-voting" with mailing list
Patrick O'Beirne -- "Irish citizens for trustworthy e-voting"
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1GB SD card

Everyone needs at least one gig of removeable storage in their pocket. The 1GB SD card is ready to order and costs less than EUR350.

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San Disk -- 1GB SD
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Still upset with Eircom

KILKENNY -- Even though the Minister for Communications received font page coverage on Sunday for planned actions he may take against Ireland's monopolistic telco (Eircom), I am still upset with Eircom. Yahoo has noted my displeasure, placing me #13 in the world for search strings starting with "upset with." How about this: Number One on Google among 153,000 other results when searching for "upset with." Eircom, sit on that and rotate.

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Previously: "Why Eircom's Price Hike Must be Blocked"
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Attagirl Robyn

TAMPA TANTRUM -- Robyn O'Rourke Pollman deserves a public pat on the back for the work her old blog did when raising more than $7000 for breast cancer awareness in October 2003. SELF Magazine recognised robyn's fund-raising efforts in its "2004 Body Confidence Awards". Tampatantrum's rendition of the Boobiethon Blog was the only non-celebrity or athlete chosen--this is great news for the community of bloggers.

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robyn o'rourke pollman -- "Another 15 Minutes"
SELF -- scanned article for the awards.
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