Inside View

Recommend Dropbox

Dropbox Rocks

FOR AN ENTIRE ACADEMIC semester, I have used Dropbox with several creative multimedia students who swapped collaborative files by using a copy and paste routine on their laptops. We're lucky at Tipperary Institute because we have fee and open wifi and we also have some forward-thinking students who discovered economical ways to buy their own laptops. When they added Dropbox to their Windows and Mac laptops, collaboration rocketed. In my specific case, we were able to produce several hour-long podcasts (here's one) within the space of a tutorial session because students could go anywhere--sometimes working off-campus--and drop their tracks, artwork or text files straight into the production process. Next year, I'm dedicated a lecture session to file sharing during the first semester because I intend to get the next crop of first year students stuck into Dropbox sooner.

---

x_ref153

When The Cluetrain Came to Dublin

FIVE YEARS AGO, Doc Searls (at right) rolled into Dublin to address Linux World Ireland during the 2004 ICT Expo. Doc's arrival was a big event for me. Like many who read my blog, I have a copy of The Cluetrain Manifesto. Sitting down with Doc Searls, after following his blog for three years was like getting a personal copy of the Cluetrain Manifesto. Searls always has insightful perspectives--on topics as wide-ranging as ecosystems, marketing, computers and visual art. Searls can spin anectdotes better than most Irish bloggers. It was Searls who looked at the New Yorker cartoon's caption that said, "On the Internet, no one knows if you're a dog." In Searls' mind, it's also true that on the Internet no one likes it if you don't come across as a human being. I think the Irish blogging community was in its ascendency when Searls walked the floor of the RDS. Ten years since the publication of TCM, I don't think that's true anymore about blogging in Ireland. The deep thoughts have wilted away, replaced with short tweets, lists of links and fewer people really engaging in meaningful conversations across disparate social groups. Blogging has become less collegial and more college-like banter. Some would question whether that's a meaningful evolution.

---

Doc Searls -- "The entire text of the Cluetrain Manifesto"
Doc Searls now blogs at Harvard. He doesn't say the web is about conversation.
Micah Sifry -- "Cluetrain while standing on one foot"
Keith McArthur -- "Cluetrain Plus 10"

x_ref125mc

Making Twitter Work the News

I HATE TWITTER MOST because it's a time sink. I have seen creative people succumb to mind-numbing sessions of day-long tweeting. They cede their cognitive awareness to the cloud and just hang out and tweet their friends all day. Some people don't know they've been infected and so they ramble on and on in search of nirvana that others suggest lies north of 20,000 tweets and a half million followers. It's all a waste of time and energy, unless you make Twitter work for you. I make Twitter work the news and I watch the reaction while logged onto Seesmic Desktop under one of three different Twitter nicknames. This work practise annoys several of the chirpiest tweeple in the Irish twitterspace, especially those who think people can only be one persona. Those social media theorists would not approve of an online personality that's different from their meet-up personality and they certainly wouldn't feel comfortable acting a part on a stage. No matter--I rarely follow community values simply because someone wants to impose them. I validate my actions by drawing my own conclusions and although most of the time the result makes me a conformist, it's conformity by personal resolution, not by tribal mores.

But I digress. I wanted to talk about using Twitter to work the news.

Missing Facts about Roaming Costs

TO MUCH FANFARE, the Irish national broadcaster is covering an EU initiative to force mobile phone operators to reduce roaming costs. However, these newsy updates omit some important facts about reducing costs while using your mobile phone away from home.

Roaming Still Extortionate Outside EU. It costs a bundle if you want to roam with your European phone in the States and in Africa, two places where I've lost thousands of euro in roaming fees to O2-Ireland. The network obliged me with excellent roaming service while taking from my bank account three to five times the cost of normal network connectivity.

The Smartest Phones Find Free Wifi. Many people who use their phones while away from home can do their business with data connections served over free wifi. If a business traveler cannot see an open wifi node with a phone, the phone needs to stay at home. Anyone serious about ensuring their mobile phone costs remain below the cost of overnight accommodation while roaming needs to have a phone that can sniff out open wifi nodes. I pay for Boingo and get inexpensive data services while roaming. I also use Truphone over wifi for inexpensive voice calls, using the Nokia E90 at left. With Skype on my N97, I will have plenty of inexpensive alternatives to roaming costs.

Maxroam Cuts Costs Dramatically. I have used Maxroam on several trips, diverting my main phone onto my Maxroam number. I carry two mobile phones while overseas too because I work with some clients who use my incoming caller ID as a validation before they answer a call or respond to a text.

Reducing roaming charges is good news for consumers. Using smart technologies while away from home is just as important when trying to control your business travel costs.

---

Sent mail2blog using Nokia E90 O2-Typepad services in Ballyclerihan, County Tipperary, Ireland.

x_ref125mc

Going Broke in Ireland

LIKE MANY IN IRELAND, I read "Erin Go Broke" [1] with deep interest. When Krugman is asked to cite "the worst-case outlook for the world economy”, he answers, "America could turn Irish." Krugman isn't impressed with how growth will atrophy, Irish GDP will fall more than 10 percent from its peak, taxes will rise dramatically and government spending will throttle back in a manner that will further deepen the slump. Sitting here in Ireland, it looks as though well-paid mandarins in the Ministry of Finance simply did not appreciate the ill effects of the government's light touch in mortgage and lending practises. In response to Krugman's well-publicized perspective comes Mary Coughlan, the former social worker and now Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. "There has been comment that has been neither helpful nor, in my view appropriate, and I would like to move on from that and give the view that we have collectively as a government have, yes, difficult times, but we have the capacity to deal with these issues and we would like to revert back to the international reputation we had and continue to have."

Politicians like Mary Coughlan are costing me more than $650 every month in lost earnings. That's because my wages attract a new set of levies and at the end of the year, I'm down more than EUR 4000 when compared to 2008. I wouldn't mind donating that money to the Irish government but I don't believe the current leadership can take us out of the mess that they created with consumption-fueled growth. And when politicians like Mary Coughlan take the international stage, they do not project an image of being in charge. Without credibility, integrity and transparency, Ireland has no hope of raising the international finance required to sustain current accounts. We're going for broke in Ireland. I'm reading Krugman's Depression Economics [2] so I'm ready. 

---

1. Paul Krugman -- "Erin Go Broke" in the New York Times, 19 April 2009.
2. Paul Krugman -- The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, ISBN 9780393071016

x_ref125mw

Last.fm Blip.fm Hypem.com Flow

WHILE REVIEWING SOME revision tips for our Social Media module, I let my computer pull some music from the internet. The students who successfully complete our third level social media module will be able to do much of the same after creating libraries at Last.fm, Blip.fm and Hype Machine. These streaming services have replaced mix tapes that I used as a college student decades ago. While the music I tag may not be everyone's cup of tea, I think the tracks I've embedded here [33 MB 44kbps MP3 file] are representative of the late night backing tracks that I use while connecting the dots in study material. In another day or two, these backing tracks will feature in Educast 117, "Essential Revision for Social Media."

---

Sent mail2blog from my Nokia E90 using O2-Typepad services in County Tipperary, Ireland.
Direct link to mp3 tracks: http://podcasting.ie/tracks/e117_tracks.mp3

music

Protect Personal Privacy Online

THE ONLY WAY to protect your privacy online is to conceal your true self to intrusive actions around you. When you walk down a street, you're likely to encounter a surveillance camera and some of those clips end up in the cloud. With face detection software, it's possible to find you even though you never knew you were in a field of vision. Walk close to an airport security checkpoint and you'll see the cameras move to track people. The only way you can hide from all these devices is to cloak your face. And that works only to a point because American pre-flight security will get your face on camera or you won't fly to the States.

Several of my friends have become very nervous when they realised how much of their personal lives were locked up on servers owned by commercial companies like Facebook, Bebo and Flickr. These companies enhance their value by holding files that can be sold as advertising space. It's an exchange of your privacy for advertising money that goes to the web host.

End of Term

ALTHOUGH THIS WEEK marks end-of-term class meetings for the current semester, the week also marks the start of several important initiatives that we need to take to fruition in order to hold the current level of our online and business community engagement through the end of 2009. On the positive side in the near future, we have some very meaningful engagements alongside young programmers with the world's largest online search service, a summer with an OpenCoffee Ireland membership holding above 500 members and a very engaging education conference set for Saturday 16 May 2009 on the Thurles campus of Tipperary Institute. At left is a shot of the Education Conference snapped a few years ago. If we can archive the best of our digital creativity during this end-of-term period, we will start the next semester from a much more promising level.

---

Sent mail2blog using Nokia E90 O2-Typepad service while transiting the townlands of Fethard, County Tipperary, Ireland.

x_ref153

Six Terms from Sunday Papers

MY SUNDAY PAPER ROUTINE is starting to conflict with beautiful weekend weather in Ireland so I'm trimming back to a few terms of reference while also trying to keep my Qik video clips below 10 minutes. This week, there's sex, eco, Facebook, Google, digital life, and sharing tucked between the pages of the Sunday papers. My opening shot features boytoy Jesus Luz, the 22-year-old boyfriend of Madonna. On a photo shoot and beyond, Madonna showed the world she's still got it. [1] But since I'm mostly interested in tech stuff, I spotted the Wattson Energy Meter. [2] It has a sensor chip that can be attached to either of the two cables running from the electricity meter to the fuse box. It then connects to a transmitter, which sends the data wirelessly to the portable Wattson display, which can be put anywhere in your home. Wattson changes to blue with low power usage, then purple with medium usage and red when in a high consumption mode.

We Need to Telework

RESEARCH COMMISSIONED BY O2 reveals that roughly 45% of senior executives in small to medium-sized businesses are teleworking from home at least one day a month. This is a big jump from the 25% figure first published by O2 in 2004. According to the study, carried out by TNS MRBI, 28% of executives now telework at least four days a month. This number misses a big percentage of people who work while untethered from their office networks. A variety of reasons contribute to people working from home. Some (15%) need to catch up on work or meet deadlines while 12% of respondents say that working at home allows them to concentrate without distraction on major projects.

---

x_ref125mc