Inside View

2008 Fourth Most Valuable Tech Item

MY SCREEN GRABBERS (i.e., SnagIt and Camtasia, both from TechSmith) are the fourth most useful pieces of technology in my year 2008. SnagIt snapped the little strip that sits above this blog post. The still image came from a four-way full-duplex running of Online Meeting Rooms. I use SnagIt 9 at the moment, having graduated from two versions below. It does more than I need--or I fail to use all of its capabilities. It's fast, neat, consistent and less resource-hungry than Adobe Photoshop Elements. Camtasia Studio sits in a league of its own. It can produce screencasts faster than anything else I've seen--including the best-of-breed Mac screencasters--and it renders with CODECs that play on anything. Its timeline editing offers two efficient perspectives that ensure creative multimedia students in Tipperary Institute can get up and running with the least amount of additional training. If your game requires you to present a visual dimension for an audience, you really need to have dependable screen scrapers in your arsenal. I like the TechSmith ones that I use and cite them as the fourth most valuable pieces of technology in my current life.

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Previously: "Fifth Most Valuable Tech Item in 2008".

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Million Dollar Students

CHRISTMAS GREETINGS come from several web development students who finished programmes I helped run since 1996, including two graduates who personally control marketing budgets in excess of one million euro for 2009. This is a significant discovery, since word on the street puts marketing and advertising under pressure through the end of 2009. I think it's important to have budgetary authorisation for anything you do because that means you can actually decide on strategies that will deliver results. If you don't have a budget, you're just a cog of an idea and some of your best ideas often get nicked by supervisors with funding. In the near term, the essence of the Christmas greetings from creative multimedia graduates is that we have paid work placement opportunities for several students in 2009 and 2010. On top of that, we have an opening into a space of paid content production that will appeal to students creating short videos and writing copy for web pages.

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I teach at Tipperary Institute.

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Christmas 2008 Wrap-up

BLOGGING AFTER major events gives people who care an opportunity to share in the occasion without burning the carbon to attend in person. We made it even more real by recording video of kids at Christmas and those video minutes will be passed around more than Christmas cards in years to come. We made more video with our mini-DV 3CCD camera this year, instead of using our cameraphones. Although the SonyEricsson K800i that we gave to the grandparents also caught some precious moments.

2008 Fifth Most Valuable Tech Item

MY O2 3G DONGLE is the fifth most valuable item of technology in my current life. It is powering my internet connectivity during the current Christmas holiday season because of broadband failures with Gaelic Telecom. On the upper levels of my home, it gives me connectivity of up to seven megabits per second. On the ground floor, I won't get anything better than EDGE connectivity but outside my home, the O2 dongle normally sees 3G mobile broadband speeds. I first started using my black O2 3G dongle in a pub in Kilkenny and it worked well as a connection to Online Meeting Rooms. In the middle of Dublin, I've used the O2 3G dongle during academic classes, getting better speeds directly to internet assets than through a proxy and border manager. I prefer the USB cabled connection to my black 3G dongle over a USB stick because I can attach a three-meter cable to the dongle and elevate the little black antenna towards the nearest 3G mast. I pay no more than EUR 30 every month for my 3G data service with O2-Ireland and I normally use an average of two gigabytes of data every month. Service has been consistently good at home, on trains, and in mobile office locations. For these reasons, I cite my O2 3G dongle as one of the top five most useful items of technology this year.

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See screenshots of my mobile broadband speeds.

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Irish Small Business Tech Trends

IN A SURVEY of Irish IT infrastructure, Business Plus magazine finds "technologies that used to be out of the range of SMEs are now coming within their orbit." [1] After asking a wide range of solutions providers what they're recommending to improve their clients' business functions [2], no Irish business consultant interviewed recommended a blogging platform (unless you count Sharepoint), the establishment of a presence on a social network (i.e., Twitter, LinkedIn, IGOpeople), and obvious Irish cloud computing solutions (i.e., OnlineMeetingRooms, PutPlace) also go unnoticed. Those interviewed normally flog their expertise and their paid services. When viewed year-on-year, these kinds of stories show readers where the engine of Irish enterprise (the SME sector) is placed. Here is a cursory listing of "technology trends SMEs should be aware of:"

2008 Sixth Most Valuable Tech Item

THE INTERNET CLOUD deserves mention as the sixth most valuable item of technology in my life. I use the internet for processing power (e.g., a virtual learning environment powered by Moodle). I store all sort of data on the internet (audio files on podcasting.ie, important work information at PutPlace.com, photos at Flickr and complex phone information at ZYB.com). Without thinking about cloud computing functionality, I visit web sites whose widgets get their power from Web 2.0 capability. Things weren't always this way.

Christmas in Cashel

ON A MILD CHRISTMAS day at the foot of the Rock of Cashel, we're taking time out to prepare a major feast for family traveling just under 100 miles to join us today. For our Canadian readers, we're using a maple syrup treatment to baste our turkey. For our German, Polish, and Czech readers, we've included wine and beer from those countries, expanding our country beverage  list to 15 this year. We're happy with our Christmas decorations but know that my decorator grandfather would click his teeth at our paucity. We have three wreaths and only four metres of garland in the house. That would not suit the grandparents who showed their grandchildren the fine art of decoating manor homes, banks and private clubs. In this festive season, we're sipping off mobile broadband, waiting to get reconnected to an eircom landline. And who knows? We may discover that HSDPA wtih O2-Ireland can give us the traditional web video link that we've used for several years with family in the States. To you and yours, thanks for sharing the Christmas season by reading these words. And before you leave, why not look at some of our Christmas photos from Ireland?

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Christmas Eve Fuel and Shoes

DURING EVERY CHRISTMAS season, I remember my first views of Ireland. That's because I docked in County Wexford a week before Christmas 1994. It was a cold December then, and I felt frosty fingers and toes while inside my flat. Coming from eight years in Germany, where homes were sealed tight and insulated well, I lay down to sleep in a drafty place where I could see my own breath at night. Within a few weeks, I learned I didn't budget for fuel and I also learned that only my outdoor shoes had thick enough soles to prevent cold from seeping into the bottom of my feet. It would be months--years--before I figured out Flogas bottled gas containers, heating oil distributors, peat briquettes, the joy of natural gas boilers and the convenience of wall-mounted electric fires (like the one pictured that hangs with us now). The process started that cold Christmas eve in Greystones, County Wicklow. Sometime I think I should return to Greystones during the Christmas season to see (and feel) how much has changed.

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Innovation is Getting Harder

ONE OF THE MOST intriguing things I learned during Limerick OpenCoffee in 2008 came in conversation with Gabriela Avram. Part of the conversation revolved around distinguishing characteristics of the Information Age. We know this time period first-hand. It's our time when would-be inventors at the code face have to learn a lot more before they can create tomorrow's truly dazzling gadgets, widgets or intelligent machines. At the University of Limerick, post-graduate students working in the same cube space as Gabriela have to grapple with a burden of knowledge greater than I conquered before I pushed out into the real world. This burden of knowledge means aspiring innovators have to go to school longer than Edison, Gates or Jobs. They have to specialise more. They have to rely on collaboration at the periphery of their universities. As a third level educator, I believe the burden of knowledge that we place on top of some of our creative teenagers actually conspires to slow the pace of innovation. For that reason, I am working with colleagues to emphasize portfolio work and to ensure real deliverables emerge during the accomplishment of third level projects.

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Personal Health Care

A SPRAINED KNEE gave me an opportunity to hobble into a new doctor's office where I had time to think about the state of play in Irish health care. From Christmas correspondence, I know I have a better chance of getting health care in Ireland than many of my 50-something friends have in the States. Several of my college classmates, now into their third major round of employment since earning their degrees, are one illness away from financial ruin. They don't sign up for the company health care plan because it takes too much out of their paychecks. American businesses actually face competitive pressures from Irish, British, and German companies who don't have to pay for employee health cover. While flipping through some well-worn magazines in my newly-adopted GP's office, I watched two young moms register with the receptionist. Like me, they surprised the receptionist by saying they didn't have a medical card and just wanted to pay their own way. This kind of preventive medicine needs to be encouraged more in Ireland. People need to invest in their own wellness. For more than 30 years, I saw my GP (or flight surgeon) at least once every six months. The Little League coach, high school athletic director, and college intramural programme insisted on these check-ups. But in Ireland, it's easy to fob off a meaningful medical exam simply by declaring yourself fit. I don't think that's a healthy attitude so I've already booked in for my semi-annual check-up and I'll get my cholesterol results a few days before my next birthday. Prevention is this man's best cure.

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