Inside View

Valentine's Suggestions

ACCORDING TO EXPERTS, "a properly fitted bra can make you look a stone lighter and a decade perkier. Bras that are too small make you look bigger and droopier." So says nearly every make-over show I have seen in the past decade. Now Dublin, a certifiable "knowledge city" in the eyes of accrediting authorities around the world, offers meticulous measurement, made-to-order knickers and underwear styling that deserves to be considered by anyone looking for a proper Valentine's Day gift. You can get the top-to-bottom treatment just outside of the Tara Street DART station in Dublin or ring Intimate Lingerie for an appointment. You need an appointment to see Pauline, an expert who has been in the business for 20 years.

Engaging the Conversation

I WRITE FOR HIRE. Many of those who read my words know I am paid to write for Irish newspapers, that my employer links to my online writing, and that companies located in a five county region of Ireland often get their services profiled or their product lines explained as a function of what I write. On many occasions since 1984, I have been paid to speak in front of audiences who paid to sit in front of me. Some people might be horrified to know that I not only engage in the practise of monetising my keystrokes as a ghost writer but that I train third level students to follow my lead under their own bylines as part of an accredited third level curriculum. I don't mind the occasional sniping remarks because I'm into accredited freelance journalism, personal blogging, community podcasting and personal video productions for the long haul. I need people to follow me, pay tax on their earnings and fund my retirement pension with their contributions to the Irish Exchequer. Most of these creative graduates will not work for a PR firm but they will have their own communications skills to promote their message to a wide public. With those facts as my baseline, I have some opinions about how the Irish PR community should embrace blogging. The short answer: I believe PR professionals in Ireland should read weblogs and should offer newsfeeds to sections of their websites that contain press releases. Damien Mulley raises five follow-on questions that deserve consideration as well.

iPod Touch Guitar

If you have an iPhone (or iPod Touch), try the Pocket Guitar. You can finger chords, and pluck the string by touching them. According to John Walkenbach, it was created by a Google employee. It has been tested on iPod touch 1.1.1 and is included in ModMyiFone Community Sources. Make sure you have the latest "Community Sources" packages, and you can find it under "Toys" category.

How It's Spelled

IF I STILL handled Lotus Admin duties, I'd be at this opening party with Paul Mooney, probably wearing a Twitter t-shirt. And Paul could snap me too.

Top of the Sunday News in Ireland

UPDATED WITH A LOOK BACK. One year ago, I ran a blog item about the importance of providing wifi service at a high enough level to permit users a high-quality VoIP option when connecting to the wifi node. A year later, organisations still throw up reasons why they cannot endorse open wifi services to their employees and authorised guests. I think the fight for ubiquitous wireless internet access is supported by a mandate for accessibility. If you believe in open access for essential services, you believe in open internet access over wifi.

TODAY'S NEWS: THERE IS NO common story above the fold of the three Irish Sunday newspapers I buy so that means I'm off to meander inside the pages that hold the bylines justifying my Sunday purchases. A quick flick across the front pages shows all sorts of different faces today. When considering what I see on the front pages of today's Sunday newspapers, I don't think I see a representative cross-section of Ireland today. There's a cystic fibrosis mother [1], an unemployed French soccer coach [2], the proudest lady of New York City [3], the Irish Taoiseach who has the strongest claim on Wikipedia to the phrases "whip around" and "dig out" [4], one of the whip-around friends of the Taoiseach [5], a 29-year-old politician who spammed colleagues with a birthday party announcement [6], Captain Pugwash [7], a lap dancer [8], a surrogate mother off to bear her eighth child for giveaway [9], the Mona Lisa [10], a red-haired columnist [11] and a less attractive male journalist (surprising choice for a front page mug shot when the editor had a more engaging strawberry blonde alternative) [12], a happy Irish couple thinking about property development [13], a killer released from prison thinking about settling into the woodwork [14], Gabriel Byrne thinking about a killer landmark facility in NYC [15], and big front page advertisements from financial institutions. Things must be downshifting in Ireland if banks are taking out  colour advertisements that cover one-fourth of the front page of Irish Sunday broadsheets. There are interesting things inside those Sunday papers as readers of my blog discover every week. This week, there is the obligatory follow-up to teenager Amy Fitzpatrick, budding model with a "mature lifestyle" [0], and multiple pictures of Damien Mulley in at least two of Ireland's leading Sunday papers, but none of him on page three.

Make It Count

JUST A FEW MONTHS to go, and Tipperary Institute will host 200 second level educators for a day-long series of workshops concerning the Internet in Education. As one of the brainstormers, I encouraged the Head Shed to listen to a main finding on 368 feedback forms used by conference administrators. The main comment concerned teachers who would rather participate in workshops than listen to keynote speakers. And so we're going to throttle back to one luminary who will also conduct two workshops targeted at leveraging broadband and collegial collaboration. (I'm saying this in public without having consulted Ewan McIntosh about his opinion on the topics.) Having run events for professional continuing education in the States, I hope we are able to get certification of "in-service training" for our day-long event on Thursday 22 May 2008 in Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland.

Making an impact online

YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS about your online presence without looking for ways to improve your brand. Industry mailing lists help, so do occasional visits to unconferences like CreativeCamp in Kilkenny. I have six hours of business-related podcasts that help me stay alert to new trends. And I also have a reading habit that includes getting Antoin O Lachtnain's new book Making an Impact Online. I have watched Antoin guide large companies onto the worldwide web from a time when the fastest connections speeds in Ireland across ISDN lines. Today, relatively affordable always-on broadband connects Irish businesses to a world where people can generate revenue when kitted out with a credible online presence. You can learn a lot between the pages of O Lachtnain's little purple book, including many timeless tips that would enhance a business across its own intranet.

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Antoin O Lachtnain -- Making an Impact Online: Creating a Website that Really Works ISBN 978071365450

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Vigilance Entry

I ONCE GOT WAVED into the United Kingdom on the heels of knowing about the operations detailed in a Sunday Times Magazine article today. Northwest of Glasgow sits Faslane, a naval base with some of the highest security in place anywhere in the world. Some of that security locks down Trident missiles that are leased from a pool shared with the US at Kings Bay, Georgia. Britain has 58 of these. In a previous life (sample at left), I used to arrange to move those missiles to and from Britain. There is something very Strangelove about having nuclear missiles, with or without their loaded tips, directly behind your head during a trans-Atlantic flight.

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Micheal Bilton -- "Dive Bombers" in The Sunday Times Magazine, 20 January 2008.

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Two Thoughts About Short Landings

UPDATED 10 FEB 08: "Investigators believe the crash-landing ... may have been caused by ice clogging its fuel supply, according to a leaked memo to US regulators." [1]

LOOKING AT THE WRECKAGE of a Boeing 777 at Heathrow, I see the photos through the eyes of an flight safety officer. I held that job title several times in the 1980s and along with cleaning up several fatalities, I also saw some things happen to my €20m four-engined jet aircraft that made me flush with momentary panic. First, fuel levels are never what they seem. This should not happen in a glass cockpit but I have experienced issues with indicators and with the inner workings of computers that exist to optimise fuel usage. Our indicators would not show accurate results when within 10% of the gauge's rated capacity. On top of that, if we encountered minor electrical problems, we could end up with fuel that we could not remove from the largest tanks. At one island destination, I quickly shut down the inboard engines because I knew we were running on fumes from the main tanks. One of the extended range tanks had not pumped around 5,000 gallons of fuel into the main tanks. We fixed the problem after landing but it was eye-opening to know we did not have enough fuel to go-around and reattempt our landing approach. When training highly experienced aircrews on a new Fuel Savings Advisory System, I watched when two of the systems simply failed and then started reducing the fuel flow to zero. This is not a good thing when airborne. When I heard about BA 38's sudden and uncommanded drop in power, I vividly recalled what I saw aboard a highly complex aircraft more than 20 years ago. Certainly, the systems have evolved but most certainly, digital gremlins can run around inside any kind of on-board avionics technology.

Regular Calls from Credit Card Team

POST-CHRISTMAS means my credit card use drops dramatically. It's easy for my bank to see this purchasing pattern and that's why they stop online credit card activities that my card tries to make. Without disclosing my specific pattern of use, I always make a counter purchase between a specific number of online purchases. If I disturb this pattern--something that occasionally happens when Amazon charges an item before shipping from pre-order--all of my credit card transactions are declined when the bank is asked for authorisation. I like this practise because if I really need a purchase to go through, I call a number in Ballsbridge and a friendly voice turns my card back on. This practise has also been good for instant overdrafts as well, something that surprised me the first time I tried to exceed my credit card limit. I asked and I got an additional one-time €300 extension to my credit limit. In today's increasingly connected world, I appreciate an occasional real-time conversation that saves me money and keeps me afloat.

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Picture of SonyEricsson P1i ready for speakerphone recording.

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