Inside View

Paying Your Horse a Daily Wage

Bernie Goldbach in Dublin | Dray Horse in Wolverampton  

SIXTY YEARS AGO, a man's working horse could earn a living wage as a dray horse. Your horse might pull a milk dray on a well-worn route through town.

Dray horses were common sights every morning through South County Dublin through the 1950s. Milkmen got paid enough to feed and care for their horsepower.

I grew up with Irish-American roots a continent away with milk men but not with working horses. In Ireland, the roundsmen raced from house to house, arms laden with milk bottles, while the horses ambled steadily forwards. The horses knew where to stop. We had a milk man with the most under-powered truck I ever heard.

Those dray horses were quieter than the delivery vans that race past our front door every weekday. I can't help but think that the horses could keep the pace of deliveries happening faster than driving, stopping and walking products to the front door. 

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Bernie Goldbach saves links about heritage.

Planning to get a new cup holder

Bernie Goldbach in Morrison Mini | Image from BMW-i

WE NEED A CUP HOLDER in our car so I stopped in a local showroom for ideas. I came away with a video of BMW's i3.

Electric cars accelerate faster than anything I've driven without an afterburner. Super-strong carbon fibre construction take BMW's electric concept cars into new spaces of shape and functionality. Plus, they come with cup holders (see photo).

The i3 is looks spacious for an urban car. The bottom half of the car is made mostly of lightweight aluminum while the passenger compartment is built from carbon-fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP). The car weighs in at 2750 pounds (compared to a Nissan Leaf's 3366 pounds).

The Born Electric Story

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Bernie Goldbach has started collecting links about driving.

My Third Summer of Boos

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Photo shot while recording  

IT'S MY THIRD SUMMER of using Audioboo and I'm thinking about setting aside time to create a daily audio blog because several avid Boosters have fostered a very nice community solely through audio.

And therein lies the rub--it takes time to write an extended description on an Audioboo. You need the text (with links) if there's to be any hope of being found by people who don't know you're blogging. That's a major discovery I've made while recording Sunday newsrounds like in the photo at left.

Most of the people who have found me on Audioboo have listening to mainstream things I've recorded like Solomon Burke on my most-listened Audioboo in the clip below. More than 15,000 have heard Solomon's big hit on my Audioboo stream. Truth be told, I also like listening to tracks shared by other on Audioboo, especially seasonal ones.

Everbody Needs Somebody

Dropping into the Olympics and Other News

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Spectrum Image from Sunday Times

MOST OF THE IRISH news centres around the London Olympics and loyal supporters of busted billionaire Sean Quinn.

I made a short video below the fold to recap leading Sunday news items, mainly for friends on holidays who want a distilled version of what happened when they found the sun outside the country.

Jumping into Olympics

Learning Alphabet with Handwrite

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Screenshot from iTouch  

WE CAN REPORT complete mastery of our four-year-old alphabet skills, thanks in a small way to the arrival of Google Handwrite on the iTouch.

While most of my Twitter friends consider Handwrite to be a mere gimmick, I've seen it deliver practical results when watching our preschool daughter write in cursive on the iPod Touch screen.

She needs to know how to spell "Google" because Handwrite works only on Google search screens, not inside the search bar on Safari.

Future of News Isn't Content

Bernie Goldbach in LIT-Clonmel | My Shot of the Examiner  

IN MY LIFETIME, future-proofed media companies have realised their destinies lie not in the the content that they produce and not in the way they distribute their content. 

Media companies that survive beyond this decade will change the way they view traditional metrics and begin analysing the depth and reach they have with those consuming their information. I listened to Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis and Gina Trapani discussing this idea in This Week in Google, episode 156.

This kind of discussion unfolds in the Emerging Trends module taught at the Limerick Institute of Technology. Next semester, we'll ask, "Is Yahoo a media company?" We'll look at how Leo Laporte has beat broadcasters at their own game.  And we'll suggest ways Ireland's national broadcaster might get an easy win with fewer resources.

News Companies Won't Succeed Just With Media

Learning from the Elbow View of Creative Journaling

by Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Photo from the corner of the kitchen  

I SIT ACROSS the room and watch our resident artist at work. And I learn about journaling from my vantage point at her elbow.

Nearly five years old, Mia has commandeered the scrapbook she's meant to bring to "big school" for summertime projects. Since she can't write, she creates with coloured pencils, glue sticks and scissors. It's the same creative process I've seen in BMW, Motorola, and animation studios. Just rough out a sketch and flesh out the words later. Do the sketch right and you can demand that your project manager writes the words.

There's a great need to ensure this kind of creative process gets enshrined in third level practical experiences. I've written about the need to set aside studio time with our creative multimedia students when academic credit arises for those who can truly observe and take notes. These are important skills because few creative multimedia students begin their studies with the ability to check out their immediate environments.

Too Senior for Social Media

I MIGHT BE too senior for social media, especially if you believe every social media manager should be under 25.

I'm the inverse of 25, making me well outside of the cohort Cathryn Sloane would trust to manage online conversations.  I encounter urban slang, Cork-speak and German contractions that confuse me in my Twitterstream. I totally miss some of the innuendos shared on my daughters' Facebook timelines. Like Sloane the newly-minted graduate would suggest, it might be time to recognise who is best-suited to put their oars into managing social media for business.

I like the cross-talk Cathryn Sloane has generated on Forbes, Twitter, and Google Plus. Her premise that companies looking to hire Social Media Managers should look to her generation since "they’re naturally better at it because they grew up with it" resonates with me because I'm a generation removed. I'm prone to senior moments on social media. I need a crossing guard before walking into revered spaces in the shadows of those who have marked out social networks as their special allotments. Unfortunately for me (and for those in the Sloane camp), I don't restrict my advice by the age (nationality or gender) of the sage.

Peripherals in my pocket

Bernie Goldbach in Clonmel | Photo of the windowsill  

I AM SPENDING TIME inside a concrete bunker, often outside the range of cell phone coverage. To maintain sanity, I pull some peripherals (at left) out of my pocket.

The bunker is actually a hospital room with no line of sight to a telephone mast. The experience provides me a cautionary tale about the years ahead when I'm confined to a bed with no connection to the cloud. I wonder how many of my virtual friends would manage in such an environment.

Years ago, I made a decision to buy electronic gear with ample on-board storage because I've rented places in Ireland that had no internet access. The strategy has paid off several times and now I've always a terabyte in my bag.

Looking back on my blog, I read strategies that involved "using a scanner to digitise three banker's boxes of stuff ... (and) an external hard drive to catalogue my images, videos and sound clips." I scan most of my stuff nowadays with a steady hand holding a Sony Xperia phone and I record audio snippets of stuff that I need to recycle. Then I find a high speed data connection and save the results onto a Crashplan server.

Ireland on Pause

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Photo shot on Main Street  

I'M AN AMERICAN in Ireland but too long in the country to really have an unblemished perspective about the country. But my personal opinion is that Ireland is on "pause" at the moment.

Some of my perspective perspective comes from looking at the pace of life around me while standing in my corner shop or going on walkabouts in County Tipperary. I get put on "pause" when driving through the centre of town a lot. I see "pause" in the air while watching retail shops just ticking over. The town councils and national government seem to be on "pause" because they just want to keep the lights on. Contractors providing services to the retail sector and to the government feel "pause" in the form of slow payments. To me, it feels like Ireland is on "pause."