Inside View

Retreat

SOMETIMES TIME NEEDS to stand still and give you an opportunity to reflect on things too close to see. That happened for me when my brother visited Ireland with his family. Through his comments and interactions I could hear myself better. I realised I have definitely down-shifted from an over-packed American work week and now enjoy a much less stressful Irish existence. Dave and I worked together in the same space more than 20 years ago, taking on 50-hour work weeks as normal. Those were the hours worked by two generations in our family. I left the States, adhered to German and then Irish expectations, occasionally ploughing through 40 hours from Monday to Friday but never working weekends as a matter of course. The guys I know who work at middle level with Fortune 500 tech companies in the States cannot stay abreast their outsourced departments unless they work at least a half day on weekends. It's not that their overseas colleagues are in the office on Saturdays or Sundays. The problem is the time differences. If you think you can start at 8AM in California (like I used to do in an environment similar to the photo) and stay on the same sheet of music as an ambitious co-worker in China or India, you have not worked in that environment before. It takes hours of preparation and review to keep the wheels turning and sometimes that means looking at company indicators as they emerge. When you're still asleep and your Indian factory needs approval to get more infrastructure in place, you cannot afford to check over Twitter or flick through your newsfeeds before working your email or shared documents. You have to connect and make things happen just as the morning caffeine kicks in.

Another Cautionary Tale About Facebook

DO NOT PUT all your eggs in one basket. My grandmother could say that because she dropped her shopping on the way home from the market twice when I was knee-high. I carried the eggs as a five-year-old on many occasions. Today, we have some eggs on their own shelf at Podcamp Ireland and a few others on Facebook. We would be ill-advised to populate the world with podcamp wisdom with the main source flowing from inside Facebook. Because if we did that, we would face the sneering glare of Seer ConorO and then we would inadvertently violate some sort of term or condition of Facebook service. We know that because our friends have stepped on Facebook land mines. If your address book or your Facebook group stretches beyond 50 names, you will encounter the trip wires on Facebook and without warning, you could be labeled as a spammer or worse--you could be shut down. This is happening several times a week to bloggers, marketers and authors who I know. Harry Joiner is the latest--read on and learn that Facebook is hardly a trustworthy Filofax. (Polite point for Paul Walsh, encamped inside the fenced meadow.)

Justifying a Baby Monitor

LOCALS KNOW US as the owners of a Twin Tower in Cashel--two twinned homes constructed as the World Trade Center fell in 9/11. Besides living inside a monumental structure, we have to adjust to dead spots far above the main living area two floors down. I have some listening devices that we will use to monitor a nursery several flights up but I'm looking for a solution (read that as "looking for an excuse") that involves technology unlikely to become obsolete. So when I figured out I could jack my audio gear into a Sonos set-up, I started counting my pennies. This would be an excellent long-term solution for home audio but it means I get a single combination present for Christmas and my birthday.

Flying in my food

LIKE MANY PEOPLE living in Ireland, I get my food from afar. Most of it comes by boat to England and then by lorry although some comes by air in the cargo holds of African and South American flag carriers. I feel no shame buying some products from overseas, especially when I cannot source the same item locally. Moreover, I feel no shame buying items with a unique taste or function instead of settling for a lower class Irish product. And because I am a creature of habit, some of the things I buy cost me more and deliver less value than the nearly identical item crafted or grown down the road but I buy my stuff where I've developed a relationship with the producer and that's it. Many of my Green friends despise my attitude as they ramp up planning barriers to large supermarkets in small communities in southeast Ireland. Their argument sounds logical--produce it locally, maintain the skills base of farmers, craftsmen and factory laborers and we will have a self-sustaining economy. That argument does not carry even in cloisters of Amish farmers or for communities bound by religious ties. Unless you are monastic, you deserve to enjoy the spices from abroad and today's the spice routes include stops at electronics and clothing factories.

Three Reasons to Love Statcounter

TECH ENTREPRENEUR Aodhan Cullen (24) started work with web analytics at age 16, kept learning during a computer applications degree programme in Dublin City University, and won BusinessWeek's Young Entrepreneur of the Year last month. Along the way, his Statcounter won me (and several others) over with three compelling reasons.

Feeding the Churn

WHILE READING the Enterprise Ireland e-business mailing list, I remembered an unfortunate side effect of the Creative Multimedia degree we run at Tipperary Institute. We teach third level students the skills they need to pass themselves off as commercial web developers. Some leave at the end of three years, cobble together a SOHO, get boot sale rates on hardware and software and begin taking in the business. Some of their business deals involve hosting web sites for clients and that's where things can go badly. Because as John McCormac points out, these "small hosters (who are really web developers with a handful of domains and sites hosted) are more likely to use Non-Irish servers" that comprise "the transient element of the market--the one hit wonders. These are typically students who start up hosting and web development services during the Summer break and then, sometimes, go bang as the school work takes priority leaving clients high and dry."

Forrester Disses Microcontent

IN A REVIEW of the iPhone as a browser, three analysts from Forrester Research conclude there's no imperative in producing microblogs such as those powered by Twitter or Jaiku--better to focus on full-featured browsing experiences. Forrester evaluated the iPhone's capabilities, concluding that "the iPhone signals the beginning of the end for the mobile Web as we know it today: Stripped-down sites crammed onto the small screens of devices meant for phoning, not browsing, will become a thing of the past." If that conclusion is true, then Twitter, Jaiku, and mobile-friendly sites with such useful purposes as getting location information or event details have no compelling usage for those who use mobile browsers that deliver news shorts, traffic alerts, or business intelligence as headlines. No wait--Forrester also recommends "firms should continue to experiment with the mobile Web sites they own today in order to learn how to create content that is timely, location-aware, and actionable for users on the go." Sounds contradictory to me. Or it sounds like Forrester knows you need to recognise the fast-rising trend to browse the internet on mobile phones.