Inside View

Nice G+ Tablet Update

Bernie Goldbach at #smdCork | Photo of the Xoom 

WHILE AT SOCIAL MEDIA DAY in Cork, a new G+ update dropped onto the Xoom 2 Media Tablet and it has features that should interest even the most jaded Google Plus detractors.

James Corbett (and a dozen friends) noticed the Events function with its party mode. Next week, we'll see how #LOCC works as a G+ event with images pushed via Instant Upload. I think we'll have an instantly updating photoset on Picasa for things upstreamed during the OpenCoffee session.

The Xoom tablet's display of G+ content feels a lot like Flipboard (but just with content from the flow on Googleplus that I'm following).

The most amazing thing I like about the improved G+ on the Xoom is the way I can now connect via a video Hangout with up to nine people simultaneously. We did this during #smdCork and it works extremely well via wifi and 3G.

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Bernie Goldbach curates things about Google.

Hanging Out for Creativity, Innovation and Change

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Creative Hands at work 

I WILL SHARE several Hangouts on Air during Social Media Day in Cork tomorrow. I hope to learn more about creativity, innovation and change during those Hangouts.

Fact is, I really don't have to go to the Rubicon to see creativity at work. All I need do is point a camera at four-year-old hands across the room and watch little Mia create something from clay, paper or sand. Her method is a pure studio process, unblemished by strictures of education. She can make something that represents part of a story and she always has a narrative to explain where in the story her interesting creation sits.

Social Media Day in Cork

I don't know if Mia wants to go to Social Media Day. I've showed her the promo video and she's intrigued. I'd like her to attend but might need to simply record and share something she makes a day ahead of time. However, there promises to be more than 100 people in the Rubicon of the Cork Institute of Technology during #SMDcork. If you're there, I'll be near a tripod and a laptop. If you want to see the by-product of our work tomorrow, look at clips that will automagically upload to YouTube.com/topgold. And if you want the Hangouts to address something of interest to you, please leave a comment on my blog or on the Google Plus post. Those commenting will receive direct invitations to attend the Hangouts.

Reading Habits and Curated Lists

I HAVE BEEN COMPLICIT in the decline of long form reading at this level and this year I want to correct the process. I will start with a collaborative essential reading list.

Like many of my friends, I have become lazy by reading the Twit Notes of topics. Like the Cliff Notes of my university days, Twit Notes can give readers artificial comfort. You think you know the idea because Jason tweeted it. You know you have the source of the meme because Sean saved the link. But you've read nothing from top to bottom. That's like saying you comprehend the euro crisis because you've glanced at a Daily Mail headline.

I want to reward long form reading beyond offering academic credit for essays. I want to moderate e-crits where students engage with friends and guests. As the summer evolves into another rainy season, I am spending extended periods looking at where talented creative multimedia students go to teach themselves. By November, I will have an annotated link list of Places Where We Learn. By December, we will have an eBook with testimonials from creatives who have learned to learn.

If you've thoughts about essential watering holes on the Internet, I'd like to read about them in the comments where this blog post appears on Typepad and on Google Plus.

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Bernie Goldbach curates links on learning.

Reading the Ledger of Occupations

Bernie Goldbach in Limerick | Photo from Model School 

I WANT TO DISCOVER more about my gene pool so I occasionally dive into ledgers, such as this one shown from the Model School in Limerick, Ireland.

In the 1800s, aspiring school teachers learned their craft in the Model School. Part of the admissions process involved documenting the occupations of the students' parents. It's fascinating to consider the kinds of jobs held by my forebears and their friends two centuries ago. I've made a short audio clip to read through a few pages of occupations and marked on the map the location of the ledger I'll visit once again during the summer of 2012. Its pages open part of my family history.

Reading Occupations

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I'm curating links about ancestry. And I'd like to bring the Model School ledger to Limerick OpenCoffee in July 2012.

One Year and 6000 Later

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | That's my typical FB screenshot  

AFTER A YEAR on Google Plus, I can see that it's not really a Facebook or Twitter killer. Instead, it's enterprise-strength threaded mobile communications.

In June 2011, I started out at  http://gplus.to/topgold by circling a handful of Irish people who were curious about Google's slow start with social networking. That initial look led to working with a student from India and then to a cluster of third level students across the country from my home campus in County Tipperary. Today, I have a robust video conferencing system in my pocket, thanks to Google Hangouts. It's a system that works and one that has connected me to more people in a year on G+ than I've met in the past five years on Twitter.

Flipboard Nice Textflow Nicer

Bernie Goldbach in Cahir | Flipboard on Xoom 

I LIKE FLIPBOARD but because I live in a data-constrained world I like flows of info via text better.

This is as much a result of years of curating link lists as it is a by-product of the way I find stuff. I have spent more than 15 years cross-checking content and putting it in nested lists online. When I first started, my behavior emulated Yahoo's portal management. Over time, delicious links evolved and today I have pinboard links I follow by subscription. Because I know what I'm looking at, I can breeze into longer reads faster.

With Flipboard, I lose speed of information but I gain a breezy serendipity. That's lovely but not the way I have learned to seek knowledge and curate information.

I will be interested in how some of our creative multimedia students view the question of acquiring trustworthy information. Would they rather see elegant Flipboard at work or a listing of headlines, annotated links and pull quotes. What about you?

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Bernie Goldbach is topgold on Delicious and Pinboard where he curates links about links. Only a few make the grade.

Auditing Trends for Growth

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Screenshot from Typepad 

IT'S TIME TO REALIGN some of the properties I have online to give them a more sustainable foundation.

David Armano proposes a starting point.

Fried SIM in a Dongle

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Photo of my Hotshot 

AFTER GIVING TOP MARKS to my O2 Hotshot, the thing died on me today. Actually, the helpful O2 people suggested me its SIM failed.

But after calling around, I discovered that since I signed a new contract with O2-Ireland, I relinquished legacy data services that were permitting me to use up to 50 GB a month over-the-air without being capped. Now I'm capped at 15 GB a month--meaning I can sneak 25 GB monthly across the O2 network every month without being throttled.

The Hotshot looks like the midnight shot I snapped in this blog post. I need a PAYG data SIM or a data plan on another network to meet my monthly needs. I really don't want to pay more than EUR 30 for 50 GB of over-the-air data connectivity.

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Bernie Goldbach curates links about mobile.

News from my Compost Bin

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Shot of the FT and Kindle 

I AM STUDYING places around the home where I can read and this weekend, I'm trying out an ebook reading position near our compost bin. That's mainly because I downloaded Tommy Collison's collection of essays [1] as an iBook from the Apple Store.

I'm spending a lot more time reading under the sun nowadays (It's Summer!) and that enriching experience endorses my decision to buy my Kindle months ago. Jane Boyd suggested Steven Pressfield's Turning Pro [2] so I bought that short e-book for my Kindle and read it instead of the normal selection of  Sunday papers.

As I note in the short video below the break, the FT Weekend has an excellent magazine centred on food, inspiring me from its cover to its recipes. And several items in the pink pages caught my eye, one long read about Microsoft entering the tablet market and another about the entitlement culture that I'm going to make part of a blog post on its own.

News from the Compost Bin

Sharing Lists

Bernie Goldbach in LIT.ie | Shot of eprdctn 

THIS SUMMER WILL BE my most productive in recent memory if I can get my #eprdctn ducks lined up.

I'm being helped by James Kennedy (in the shot), motivated by Eoin Purcell (in my twitterstream), and watched by Eugene O'Loughlin (who has been there, done that).

If you're wading into e-publishing too, I wonder if you'd take a moment and review the List.ly content that I've embedded to this blog post. If you can't see it inline below the fold, try http://list.ly/list/1M4-eprdctn.