Inside View

No Internet Access with Three Mifi

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel having problems with the Three Mifi at left.

I THINK MY WINDOWS laptop has a dodgy internet adapter inside because I'm having headaches with my Three Ireland Mifi internet connection lately.

I'm blogging this problem because I know several wifi experts read my musings. Here is my plan.

1. I have restarted the E586 router several times, waited for it to boot up and connect to my laptop. Unlike my O2 E586, it shows "connected" most of the time.

2. I have deleted the applicable network profile on my W7 laptop.

3. I have uninstalled the wireless adapter driver and discovered some remnants of a T-Link adapter tha might be causing issues.

While at #neconf

Photos snapped at the back of the National Enterprise Conference in Clonmel.

WHILE SITTING in the back of the 2013 National Enterprise Conference, I realised that Clonmel remains underdeveloped in the realm of online social networking. We need to remedy that deficiency.

Fiscal austerity has caused the Irish government to remove many of the resources normally available to not only Clonmel but many other towns that are discovering the erosion of government-funded community supports. Agencies like LEADER have discovered some of their funding pots have moved over to County Enterprise Boards. The South East Regional Authority is gone, meaning the locus of attention for many enterprise developments in Clonmel and South Tipperary sits in Waterford. The South Tipperary County Council is amalgamated north into a combined authority with its seat in Nenagh. The former Tipperary Institute now serves as an extension campus to the Limerick Institute of Technology. All these changes can mean getting in the car to meet people--hence the face-to-face value of annual events like the National Enterprise Conference in Clonmel.

After a Half Day Enterprise Conference

I want to cobble together a strategic relationship with the Clonmel Chamber that includes not only our online networking using SproutSocial and Google Adwords at LIT-Clonmel, but also the help of the Limerick OpenCoffee on Google Plus and the Hartnett Enterprise Centre in Limerick through LinkedIn. If we can do this, the traditional lines of regional competition will blur and everyone will see a net result.

Those Bloody Backpacks

CCTV image released by FBI on April 18, 2013 of man carrying bulky backpack.

I HAVE RUN in several marathons and then collected my changing gear from backpacks I placed near the finish line but now I realise that's going to be more difficult in the years ahead.

Boston Scanner

Counting Down to Pen & Pixel 2013

Pen & Pixel submission by Attila Farkas.

 

WE HAVE FEWER than 30 working days before the 23 May opening of our annual creative multimedia exhibition on the Clonmel campus of the Limerick School of Art and Design. This will be the largest event of its kind in nine years.

 Pen & Pixel showcases students' work in the fields of Art, Animation, Web Design, Audio, Video, Games Applications and Photography. There will also be a Kids' Art section where submissions from primary and secondary level students will feature under the categories of 2D Art and Graphic Design. Everything is free and open to the public.

With Austerity Comes Bartering

Bernie Goldbach in Tipperary | My photo of my only 100 euro note ever.

I RECKON WE face another five years of fiscal austerity in Ireland and as we cut our cloth to fit, time-honoured bartering is back on my plate.

Without offering easy audits from Irish Revenue authorities, I am just putting out feelers from readers about the essential nature of the Bartering Economy. In our local Lion's Club, members frequently offer venues they control at no cost to others who might reciprocate with a boot full of convenience store items. Chefs at other community events often discover their ingredients arrive in refrigerated vans with no invoices. And many of those local volunteer groups have shown me how they can source white box smartphones merely by sending a few text messages.

Irish commentators often label these kinds of things as "the volunteer spirit" and awards programmes herald some of the most creative volunteer leaders. From my seat, it looks like the barter economy at work.

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Bernie Goldbach teaches creative multimedia and he sent this post via mail2blog his Windows Phone near Poulamucka, County Tipperary, Ireland.

 

Why We Teach e-Publishing

Bernie Goldbach in LSAD-Clonmel | My photo of Kindle with coffee.

SALES OF EBOOKS comprise more than one-fifth of of the US industry’s net revenue last year, according to a new survey from the Association of American Publishers. That’s up from just 0.05 percent 10 years prior, when the AAP first began keeping track of ebook sales, and up from 16.98 percent in 2011.

The categories that saw the biggest increase in ebook revenues included adult fiction, adult nonfiction, and religious books. Even more encouraging, the overall net revenue for the US publishing industry was $7.1 billion, up 6.2 percent from 2011.

We train e-book developers who know how to convert Word documents, Acrobat files and briefing reports into ePub for iOS and mobi for Kindle.

On the horizon, the growth of ebook sales has slowed in the past three years and may be plateauing, as PaidContent points out. And sales of e-readers are declining as those devices are supplanted by tablets.

Nonetheless, more people are shifting to digital versions of books and newspapers.

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Bernie Goldbach teaches e-publishing at the Limerick Institute of Technology.

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A Good Job for a Blended Educator #jobfairy

Bernie Goldbach in Limerick | Photo of young teacher.

I SPENT SOME very productive years developing curriculum items for a blended education programme delivered to an international audience and noticed a job opening in the same space here in Limerick, Ireland.

The job is with SQT.ie and it involves developing, auditing and managing all aspects of the training company's Quality Management System. As a former member of three different accreditation teams, I examined the by-products of this kind of position. Clear quality control standards have been specified by Ireland's accreditation authorities and institutional frameworks need to be respected as well by training providers who aspire to maintain their accreditation and their professional relationships.

No more than a half dozen of the creative multimedia graduates from the Clonmel campus of the Limerick Institute of Technology have the skills for this interesting position. I have more details below the break.

Observing First Irish Death in American Civil War

Bernie Goldbach used to live in Charleston. The image comes from Harper's Weekly.

THE FIRST CASUALTY of the the American Civil War happened on April 14, 1861 when 36-year-old Tipperary native Daniel Hough, a private in the Union artillery brigade, died after Fort Sumter surrendered.

Hough emigrated to the US and enlisted in the US Army in October 1849. He was assigned to a sparesly manned battalion in Charleston, South Carolina, at the beginning of the American Civil War.

Our Worldly Vision Improves With Maths

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Screenshot from Wikipedia.

WATCHING OUR 5YO learn how to add and subtract renews my love of mathematics because I see her wishing for things as a function of numbers.

As a teenager, I enjoyed understanding fluid dynamics, double derivatives and coffin corners. I could explore all those things through maths without getting hurt.

Today, I teach social media analytics with a bit of math underneath. That underlying practise builds foundation skills when dealing with schematics such as the rate of adoption shown in the screenshot and with multiplier effects observed in SproutSocial.

Maths as Predictors

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Previously -- Tynker for young geek girls, April 2, 2013.

Social media analytics appear in the creative multimedia Honours Degree taught at the Limerick School of Art and Design.

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Birth Announcement via Life360

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Image from Life360.

I GET SOME OF THE MOST life-changing announcements about my family through the iOS app Life360--like today's short text giving details on the arrival of a new grandson.

Life360 is like Path on steroids. If you let it run in the background, it shows your location as well as an electronic tag on a person's leg. I've told Life360 where "home" and "work" are on the map and the app accurately puts me in those places at appropriate times of the day. It's remarkable to see two daughters in different States move around their day as pinpoints on a map.

Red and black icons on Life360 shows more information than many Irish viewers might want to see. The red dots correspond to items from police blotters (i.e., traffic violations or more serious criminal offenses) and the black icons represent the last known address of registered felons or sex offenders.

Another part of the app lets me send direct or mass text messages that appear in iOS notification screens. And best of all, I get the direct (and often updated) phone numbers for my extended family living eight time zones away.

Life360 is on a steep adoption curve. As a premium user, I can see a lot of value in the information the app shares to a private audience. And unlike the broadcast conversation style of Twitter or Facebook, I like the personal dimension guaranteed by the way Life360 is engineered.

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Bernie Goldbach teaches privacy issues in the creative multimedia programme at the Limerick Institute of Technology.

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