Inside View

SonyEricsson Pocket Notes

WHILE HANGING OUT in Dublin's Residence Club, watching demonstrators show nice things phones can do, I tapped into Opera Mini to see what I was thinking about five years ago--before the iPhone was carried around in pockets of many friends. I can see my thoughts from 10 years past because I normally jot them down online. Mid-July 2005 was a week after horrific bomb attacks in London--an event captured by pocket-sized mobile phones. It was a week when my thoughts were with Bob Moog as he lay in hospital. It was a week filled with cross-talk about how Google was indexing blogs, something I read on a mailing list on my phone. It would have taken me an hour's worth of reading to read all of those thoughts in 2005 because they would have arrived in staggered intervals. But while standing next to SonyEricsson demonstrators, I could see a stream of tweets on my Xpera X10 that was coursing with ten times the information flow that I got in 2005. I slipped off to a quiet corner to scribble some thoughts from the day in an old-fashioned Moleskine that I carry, then I made a short video clip of those two pages (above), knowing that as soon as I posted the clip and this paragraph online, another 1000 people would glance at the headline. Around 50 will read these words within two hours of their posting.

I wonder how these simple pocket notes will resonate five years from now. I'm setting a date with myself to look back and compare pocket notes.

Direct link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3wfcwPYLDA

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I Learned to Abort

PHOTOS OF A CRUMPLED VW Passat [1] like the one above are making their rounds in Ireland today as a reminder of the worst road accident on record in the Republic of Ireland. [2] The moment I heard that eight young men were traveling in the same car, I wondered if the driver was the only one with a usable seat belt. The driver survived but his seven passengers didn't. No Irish mainstream reporting has asked Volkswagen to comment on acceptable vehicle carrying capacity, although that information is in the public interest.

Loving the Xperia X10 Mini

AS THE SHORT VIDEO shows, SonyEricsson's Xperia X10 Mini can shoot exceptional video (its photos are very sweet too) and after using the cute little (84g) phone, I've concluded that it's possible to hold it in one hand while recording video clips. After one weekend of continuous use, I can strongly recommend the X10 Mini to teens who want a lifestyle device. This Android phone will last a long time between charging cycles (I'm getting at least 11 hours of hard use with it between mains connections) and its build quality ensures that it will outlast an iPhone by years. I'm looking forward to continuing to share stories recorded with the Xperia X10 Mini.

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Direct link to my Mini Backgarden report.

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Observing the Sunday News

HERE'S A QIK LOOK at several Irish Sunday broadsheets under brilliant sunshine from Clonakilty. We're off to enjoy West Cork and you should too.

Qik News 11 Jul 10

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Direct link to http://www.insideview.ie/files/100711.mp3

Last Week: "Qik to note the arrival of the silly season", 4 July 2010.

Last Month: "Twitter making front page news in Ireland", 6 June 2010.

One Year Ago: "Qik Paper Round", 5 July 2009.

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Compressing and Backing Up

EVERY SUMMER, a quiet spot on the teaching schedule reminds me that I should clean out my stuff, compress things into neat folders, back up work, and make space on my removable drives. I'm down to my last 10 GB on my favourite Iomega USB drive so the month of July has to help me locate at least 300 GB of portable space in my pocket. My problem is that much of 2010 has been recorded in HD minutes. More than 500 GB of video has occupied much of my scratch space. I have to be ruthless about discarding a lot of that footage because I know I won't refer to the video clips for the year ahead. That's actually the issue--carve out what's needed in the two semesters ahead and put the discarded content on a top shelf somewhere. But that's not really a good strategy for me either because all my top shelves are overflowing with sheafs of paper and evidence of good intentions. It's time to get cracking with burning some DVD RW discs with content I intend to use before Christmas 2010.

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"Back up from CD" on Inside View, 20 February 2007.

"Multimedia River of News", 7 September 2006.

"Fragile Digital Archives", August 17, 2003.

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Best Conference Promo

THE DOTCONF MADE the best conference promo I've seen this year! I'm going to the day-long DotConf on Thursday 22 July 2010 in the National College of Ireland, Mayor Street, Dublin where I'm part of an afternoon session using social audio. I plan to show some of the mics I carry around with me during the session, along with fact sheets that show where I got the gear, the price points and online ordering points.

Dotconf

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Direct link to http://www.insideview.ie/files/dotconf.mp3

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Raining on the World's Smallest Android Phone

WHILE USING THE world's smallest Android phone (a SonyEricsson Xperia X10 Mini) in the rain, I discovered it's very challenging for a fat-fingered bloke like myself to hold the phone with two hands. I normally make video clips by stabilising my phone in a two-handed grip or by using the pistol grip on the Nokia E90. I have to pay more attention to what I'm doing while making Qik clips with the X10 mini. Have you ever tried taking a snapshot with a credit card? That's what it's like holding the X10 Mini but as my Qik clip shows, it's safe enough to record in the rain with the world's smallest Android phone.

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SonyEricsson explains the X10 Mini's specification.

Direct link to 30-second video: http://qikimg.com/vod-download/1bd39123135d4ffa82cb76c350e96426.mp4.

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A Superphone User

MOBILE BEAT produced a chart (above) to draw distinctions between superphones like the Xperia X10 and the smartphone like my Nokia E90. Superphones have more powerful processors and they are much more extensible than any previous mobile platform. But because of their power and because they're always connected to a network, they draw more power, need bigger batteries and have to be recharged more frequently.

How to Lose Time and Money

I LEARN A LOT from a dashboard view shared with others and I've especially enjoyed reading what's in the viewfinder of Tom Murphy. He shared some thoughts from Paul Graham that caused me pause.

And yet I've definitely had days when I might as well have sat in front of a TV all day—days at the end of which, if I asked myself what I got done that day, the answer would have been: basically, nothing. I feel bad after these days too, but nothing like as bad as I'd feel if I spent the whole day on the sofa watching TV. If I spent a whole day watching TV I'd feel like I was descending into perdition. But the same alarms don't go off on the days when I get nothing done, because I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work. Dealing with email, for example. You do it sitting at a desk. It's not fun. So it must be work.

via tmurphy.typepad.com

It took me 30 years to realise the Protestant Work Ethic was distorting the concept of productive work in my life.

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Planning to Share Memories

I HAVE A PALLET of memories that moved from a barn to a storage depot last August. I need to ship them across the Atlantic Ocean because inside several albums, I have memories like Tony and Kitty Woodhouse shared in the three-minute video above. I wish I had thought about whisking my mom and dad away to a mountain retreat where they shared their honeymoon thoughts with their five boys. Dad's gone now but Mom's memory is still sharp so I think we'll ask her to spend a weekend with her sons and grandchildren, letting me record what she wants to share.

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With thanks to Tony and Kitty Woodhouse in the Parknasilla Hotel, County Kerry, Ireland.

"Time capsule in the barn" on Inside View, March 21, 2009.

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