Inside View

Third World School Computers

IRELAND'S MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, Mary Hanafin, presides over a third world educational technology infrastructure and is determined to hold the line for the duration of her term in government. "The government is unwilling to invest in computers in schools beyond the €252 million promised in the National Development Plan," reports the education editor of The Irish Times. [1] The money allocated means €46 for each primary and second-level student every year. "It won't do the job," says Ciaran Flynn, the general secretary of the Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools.

Snake Bones

WE ARE OVERDUE for a walk in the desert where we would find flowers in the spring and snake bones on the floor during every other month.

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Image from The Contaminated.

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Photorealistic Heads

WE LIKE PHOTOREALISTIC HEADS, especially the Bert Simons 3-D Photorealistic Paper Portraits. These are papercraft sculptures made in the same way as the familiar papercraft houses and animals. Simons makes these hollow paper sculptures by following a tedious process. Each piece takes around six hours of cutting, folding and coloring the edges before he applies the glue. This is similar to the technique used to create a 3D game, and also similar to what you might see on a CSI television show.

Wifi Amish

DANIEL AND EMMA STOLZFUS are Old Order Amish which means they have a web-savvy way about them. And when I last visited their homstead abutting the busy US30 highway in the rolling countryside of Lancaster County, they even knew I was carrying the internet in my pocket. Some of their awareness might be down to the new-found cell phone privilege enjoyed by Emma, the quiltmaker. To remain competitive and avoid being a drain on her community, Emma needs to take mobile phone calls from her English customers. A lot of my English friends are returning customers and keeping them happy means a pathway to easy business. Emma is allowed to carry the cell phone in her apron and even answer its call. To placate others around her, Emma uses a quiet ring tone and she normally scampers off into the phone box to talk to the English callers. It's all part of the 21st Century Old Amish that we count as friends.

Qik Walk-About Hore Abbey

IT'S A FROSTY morning in Cashel, County Tipperary, Ireland and I'm out with my Nokia E90, O2's 3G service and frosty pastures underfoot. So I thought it would be interesting to check out the trash littering Hore Abbey across the street from my house. Morning frost made my fingers brittle so I didn't shut off my phone's video recording when I thought. I was able to wrap and enclose the Flash file to this blog post, so you might be seeing the E90's video playing inside Google Reader or on your desktop. It's a larger screen than what you'd see if you clicked into Qik to see the original. Going straight into my Qikstream also has the added advantage of seeing the second short video I made while inside Hore Abbey. And you would simple see that video because my frozen fingers failed to unmute my phone while recording the clip. We're going to adopt these important historical sites as part of our third level creative multimedia degree in Tipperary Institute. I'm hoping we can get the college wifi network sorted to permit live streaming of revision material for my creative multimedia students this year. It would be an acid test of connectivity in the classroom.

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Direct link to the desktop video (39 MB Shockwave file).
Photos I have shot of Hore Abbey.
[NTS: Use the Nokia E90 earbud for better audio recording.]

I am Qik.com/topgold.

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St Patrick's Day in Ireland

THIS IS MY 13th St Patrick's Day in Ireland and I think it's one of the most special because we were able to enjoy country living while seeing a fantastic fireworks display without leaving our pints of Guinness behind. We could watch the show from our sitting room--that's a handheld shot shown above with a long lens from our corner window. Tomorrow, it's over to the RTE television coverage of the St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin, perhaps the largest-ever parade to meander past the photogenic Dublin spire.

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See photos of Skyfest 2008 in Ireland.

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Qik Look at Sunday Magazines in Ireland

TIME-CONSTRAINED BUT surrounded by lifestreaming technologies, I made a few Qik comments while reading my favourite Sunday magazines in Ireland this morning. The nude screen capture of Gregory Crewdson attracted a lot of late-night voyeurs who happened onto Qik around the time that I streamed the image up to the hosting service. I used a Nokia E90 and a wifi hotspot in my home for the 09:35 video today. I got a text comment from an Australian while recording the segment but was too caught up in making the video that I didn't notice the comment when it arrived. I have snapped some show notes about the magazines below the fold.

Need to Resync FreeNews

I RUN TWO INSTANCES of FreeNews, a super-efficient aggregator from FreeRange Communications. I'm having a little problem with them now that I'm checking the aggregate from two devices because I'm getting irregular updates to the content. Here's how I solved the problem--I'm refreshing all my newsfeeds on my E90:

• Select the "Settings" menu within the application.
• Select "Reset all data."
• Answer "Yes" to the prompt.
• Select the "Update" menu to start the article download.

Now I have to check back with FreeRange Communications and ensure I'm compliant with their software license. I pay around $25 annually for the service and I'm unsure about the terms and conditions with respect to multiple handsets. In three years of use, FreeRange has given me a personalised newspaper, weather station, trip suggests, F1 results, and business intelligence. FreeRange lets me discover new content while standing in supermarket queues and at a refresh rate faster than my overburdened Google Reader. With Nokia E90, I can make the FreeNews flow into my handheld homepage too. It's all part of trying to get more out of each business minute.

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FreeRange Communicatons -- "Restart fresh"
To see if you can get FreeNews in your pocket, browse to http://mwap.at with your mobile phone.
Previously -- "FreeNews Updates".

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Robin Blandford Gets Another Star

AWARD-WINNING BLOGGER and web-savvy developer Robin Blandford arrived in my flow of daily news again, this time the subject of a Blogspot review by John Collins. "Being located in Singapore didn't prevent Robin Blandford picking up the Best Technology Blog category at the recent Irish Blog Awards," writes Collins in today's Irish Times. Robin was named as "one to watch" by uber-blogger Damien Mulley at the end of 2007 and the flow of innovation from his direction certainly justifies that spotlight of attention.

Facebook Turned Brown

WHEN ZUCK SAT ON STAGE at SXSW, Facebook wilted to brown in my book. His soft and fluffy interview (really no fault of his own) just made Facebook's limitations more evident to me. I know I'm not in the Facebook target profile because I'm a certified silver surfer but I've drawn some conclusions from college student essays I've assessed recently. The results are damning for Facebook's prospects. My college students grew up with text messaging in their pockets. They also feel more comfortable with email, especially since most of them have carried email along with them while backpacking through some European countries on holidays. Most of these students aren't going to stop and flick through their Facebook messages while traveling but they will text back or follow things on their phones. You can pull group text conversations straight onto your mobile phones by setting up an account on Jaiku.