Inside View

Self-Publishing Is More Than Vanity Publishing

Bernie Goldbach in South Tipp General | Photo from Observer  

I BOUGHT THREE SUNDAY PAPERS because I thought we'd be waiting a while. Waiting stretched through the night while I read e-books.

Several of the e-books I have on my Kindle are self-published works. Unless you know the distinction between self-published and vanity publishing, you could tar both with the same brush. To hunker down by yourself and meet the Apple or Amazon standard for a title means you're doing a lot of work. However, in most of Irish mainstream media, having an electronic title won't get you on chat shows. And the detractors are quick off the mark with snide comments about authors who did not follow the normal slog of using an agent, publishing house and publicist. But things are changing in e-publishing and I'd expect public perceptions to change as well.

Hunting for New EL James

Observer Times Post Newsround

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Photo from Spectrum  

YEARS FROM NOW, I'll remember the last Sunday in July 2012 for the start of the Olympics in London and for the fall of the Quinn family in Ireland. Both feature in the three Sunday newspapers I skimmed today.

I enjoy the photo coverage of the Olympics and bought the current Newsweek magazine for its cover shot of Hope Solo, the American goalie. Spectrum Magazine in the Sunday Times covers a collection of images representing the 204 countries participating in the Olympics. They're snapping people from each of the countries, including the shot in my post by Veronique Rolland of Russian-born Szezana Lukka-Biesek on her houseboat near Putney Bridge.

The Quinn family's demise is a work of high drama. Sean Quinn was once the richest man in Ireland and probably the one man made richest during the Celtic Tiger. Today, he's a step away from prison for his contempt of court. [1] His son was imprisoned on Friday and his nephew is evading a warrant for arrest by hiding out in the United Kingdom. [2] The story has enough twists and turns for a television series.

Simple Sunday Newsround

Your Apps Have Local Shared Knowledge

Bernie Goldbach walking Cashel | Shot at the Kilkenny Shop  

I ASK MY PHONE for information because it is connected to a very sharp Lazy Web. I watched a tourist strolling through Cashel (Ireland) do the same thing.

Most people I know just tap questions into Twitter and go with the current flow. If you're asking when the right kind of people are listening, that may work. I have two other apps that consistently deliver good results when searching for restaurants, activities for children or open wifi.

If I want very incisive restaurant and hotel information, I ask TripAdvisor. I've occasionally increased the distance I will drive based on an answer there.

Lately, I have asked things like "kids" or "children" or "Italian" or "wifi" by using the Explore feature of Foursquare. Normally the results come back for things up to20km away. Explore also lets me set the city of reference and delivers results from a circle of connected contacts. I have discovered playgrounds, free muffins and open wifi that way. And the results have phone numbers, maps and photos like the one in the accompanying shot. Foursquare does crowd-sourced information well.

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Shared via Typepad's iOS app using Three.ie Mifi coverage. Bernie Goldbach curates local links.

A Personal Tributary Feeding Twitter

GOOGLE'S iREADER is a personal tributary that I use to feed Twitter. I've been using it since its beta in July 2008.

I snapped a shot of its fast-flowing river of news (at left) to compare it to the slower-rendering version I used with a joystick years ago.

I've discovered most tweeple don't have personal news sources anymore. They depend on their peeps to link to interesting things or they use The Journal, Mashable, The Verge, Techcrunch, or Giga Om to get their news. I'm old skool and have kept Google Reader ticking along for a lot of reasons. The iReader runs on old mobile phones. It's a small screen version of the full-fledged Goodle Reader and nothing like more elegant news presentations found inside apps today. It's basic, functional and fast.

For those reading articles in list view, this simple (and light on the data) view of fast-flowing news will be very familiar to you. I walk around town using open wifi with O2-Ireland and Three.ie, simply swiping and tapping through dozens of pieces of information. This is not Flipboard. It's not as visually pleasing as Pocket. But for my Kindle eyes, these lists of headlines, tweets and deep links works a charm. A simple tap opens the entire article. A twisty lets me send the item to Instapaper, Evernote, or Pocket where I can add the item to a slide deck for an upcoming creative multimedia lecture in the Limerick Institute of Technology.

All the standard starring, sharing, and keeping unread functions are where you expect them to be.

I wonder if I'll still be a regular iReader in another four years' time or whether I'll be taking news only through apps.

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Bernie Goldbach curates links about newsfeeds.

Growing up Pinch-and-Zoom

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Photo from my lap  

MOST EVENINGS END with a four-year-old artists on my lap. She's growing up digital, multi-touch to the core.

I'm keeping a series of screenshots like the one in the photo along with video work that she's doing on her own. At the moment, Artist Studio on the iPad is pissing her off. That's not unusual because the app assumes some awareness of Photoshop.

I wonder how young Mia's transition to her first year of primary school will go. She's quite happy with crayons, pencils, paper and scissors. She's enthralled with BluTak and cello tape. But several times this week, she's revealed how she would like to draw on the "big white screen" (interactive whiteboard) that's in her junior infants classroom.

Her first day is six weeks away. I'm making Audioboos of her creative process (see below) because her style is so original--but that's what you'd expect a dad to say.

Mia's Perfect House

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Bernie Goldbach keeps creative links.

Huawei E585 Three Mifi Speed

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Speedtest in a bunker  

I HAVE JUMPED over to Three.ie for my main Over The Air data connectivity for two reasons: faster data and cheaper data.

I snapped the accompanying Speedtest while in a granite bunker near the Rock of Cashel. The location (in an old abbey surrounded by very thick granite walls) is one of the worst places I can find to test high speed over the air service. In this case, my two-year-old (very unrealiable) Hauwei E585 dongle delivered 3G service fast enough to run 10 browser tabs while downloading 35 MB of audio. When using my O2 SIM in the same location, I lost 3G service.

I've a lot of respect now for how Three.ie has used the service fee it received under the National Broadband Scheme. It appears a lot of the Exchequer's money went towards the erection of mobile data masts in farmland where people living in rurual areas can get broadband over the air. That's a good thing.

And even better, it's serving me 60 GB of data for EUR 30 a month.

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Bernie Goldbach curates links about wifi.

How Do Those Fake Tweeple Hurt

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Screenshot of my Fakes | Post updated to provide background info.  

ANYONE WHO USES electronic communications knows every channel is full of noise, spam, scams and fakes. The same goes for Twitter where 3% of my followers are fakes.

[NOTE: Ten hours after original publication, I updated this blog post to acknowledge information that has been discussed in Irish Twitter channels since 2009. This blog post is the first of three in a series related to nurturing a Twitter Community and forms the basis of a major lecture in the creative multimedia curriculum at LIT.ie.]

I follow several thousand voices across 12 time zones on Twitter because I want to have a Twitterstream that never sleeps. Occasionally, after I've tweeted something about a major brand or a big event, some electronic bot follows me and tweets something related to a product or service. The same thing happens when I walk main streets in Ireland--I'm asked for donations, a survey question or an outright plea for money.

The fact that Twitter is now filled with accounts that don't converse means it's become more like the mainstream world where more people are making noise or filling space. It's part of the fabric of the communications ecosystem that Twitter has nurtured. I don't think Twitter is a personal information channel--it's a media distribution and crowd-sourcing mechanism. People have connected their bathroom scales, runkeepers, and key fobs to Twitter. Elements of the "community" are sentient.

Writers and their Technology

Bernie Goldbach in LIT-Clonmel | My image from the kitchen table  

A WRITER'S CIRCLE I follow on Google Plus suggests an often antagonistic relationship between writers and technology. If so, it's remarkable to hear the thought expressed inside a Google service.

Over the years, I've written around 10,000 blog posts, 50,000 tweets, and enough Powerpoint presentations to publish a 300-page textbook. I can't say technology has interfered with the processes behind that writing but I have evolved a writing practise that changes every two years. Although I still use the Moleskine and digital dictaphone shown in the photo, I'm tapping on gorilla glass more than ever before.

Nowadays, I stash more thoughts into a synchronised pool of information and I try to tag the content and give the different bits some context in order to facilitate digital discovery. That is, I want to be found years from now by my grandchildren. So I'm putting different written by-products into various containers to preserve their standing. I'm also walking pathways into physical media that should preserve my thoughts well into the next century.

I have friends who get stumped by the technology involved because they cannot slot things into digital time capsules without coming to grips with technology. Some are very creative writers. They think primarily about expression, language, narrative and technique. They need to act swiftly when feeling the impulse to write something new. And unlike me, they wouldn't revert to technology to work with their eureka moments.

I have some things that have worked well during the past year and would like to share them with readers.

Not iCrazy

Bernie Goldbach in LIT-Clonmel | Cover from Newsweek  

I READ THE COVERS of magazines in my local newsagency and the iCrazy one from Newsweek [1] made me pause. Because its "scientific evidence" falls flat.

Like other views of our connected lifestyles, the Newsweek perspective (and full page coverage in yesterday's Sunday Times from London) follows the line that all these pervasive technologies go beyond Andrew Keen's premise of making us dumber because (if you believe Newsweek's pop psychologists) our connected lifestyles mean we're getting depressed, anxious, obsessive-compulsive, attention-deficit, and psychotic. I'd believe these findings if there was any real scientific evidence.

Like Vaughn Bell explains, it's a remarkable stretch to lay blame for psychosis on the screens of Facebook and Twitter. And to affix cause without scientific proof. The environmental risk factors for psychosis extend decades before the emergence of online social networks. And the incidence rate of that mental condition has not increased with the rise of broadband. That doesn't stop Newsweek from making its claim, however.

Why I Stand

Bernie Goldbach in LIT-Clonmel | My Photo. My Old Desk  

IF YOU SIT more than 23 hours per week (as a passenger, watching TV, at your desk), you have a statistically greater chance of heart disease than someone who stands. Even if you exercise.

I read these data in 2010, [1]  shortly before Gina Trapani talked about her standing desk. [2] Even though they were derived by studying men and rats (same species in some parts of the internet), they are statistically sound. Since mid-2011, the desk in the photo has gone vertical, enabling me to stand while I work on creative multimedia stuff. My colleagues don't seem to mind.

From the NY Times two years ago:

"Men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars (as passengers or as drivers) had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less. What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised. Quite a few of them said they did so regularly and led active lifestyles. The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting." [3]