Inside View

Three Months Without Eircom Broadband

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | My photo of our home router 

SOME PEOPLE MIGHT KNOW that I handed over the @ireland account to World Irish this year. But few know that I lost eircom broadband during the week I last curated the account.

I mistimed my eircom payments in March and discovered that I couldn't go more than three months without lodging some money towards payment of my home telephone service. I've refined a habit of my Irish great-grandparents and learned to delay payments but sometimes I cut it too close to termination points. So I lost eircom connectivity at the time I handled the Twitter account for @ireland during the Patrick's Day festivities. 

I reverted the home to an O2 Hotshot, not expecting what happened next. It turned out that I didn't fall offline during the interval. At 20 euro per month, the O2 service is significantly less expensive than eircom's. We spent 80 euro every month with eircom, the amount I'm paying each month to reconcile an outstanding 300 euro balance.

Special Spaces As Drawn Places

Bernie Goldbach in Limerick | Artwork by Sophie

I WATCH OUR four-year-old draw special places so I've a special insight to the work of 160 primary school students as they do the same.

Their work is part of a photoset curated by James Kennedy in support of an end-of-year art contest sponsored by the Sarsfield Credit Union in Limerick, Ireland. Some of the work forms part of the grand narrative of My Home. My School. My Place, a meme started by the credit unions in Ireland. I like the challenge of defining the look of those places through the eyes and hands of pre-teens.

In Sophie's work at left, a little arrow defines her room at the top of the house. I don't know if that's a real location or an imaginary place far away from spiders and prying eyes. In our home, I've often wondered what it would be like to have an attic cubbyhole, sleeping right up against an insulated roof with an observation window to watch the International Space Station overhead. As a teenager, that's something that would catapult me into a world of my own, far away from the pressures of growing up with hormones ravaging my judgment.

We'll have a short list of best artwork at the end of June with six lucky winners announced in the first week of July 2012. And if the reaction is positive, we'll do a similar programme this summer with the help of other credit unions in County Tipperary and County Cork.

Bernie Goldbach curates creative work.

Sharing my #eprdctn workflow

Bernie Goldbach in DIT | Image from my Slideshare deck

I SHARED THE WAY I produce electronic publications with a rapt audience in the e-learning summer school run by the Dublin Institute of Technology. My slide deck is below the fold.

I teach an e-publishing module in the Limerick Institute of Technology and wanted to ensure it was 80 percent practical and 20 percent theory. I believe my presentation delivers that perspective. Knowing that several students have landed paid positions by leading with "e-publishing" on their CVs makes it all the more worthwhile.

For the time-pressured readers, I've reduced the short takeaway to a few points below and chatted about my thoughts in an Audioboo.

1. Have a production plan with shared assets. Mine involves setting up a Media Tray locally and putting media text (words, images, logos, audio clips, video clips) into a shared Dropbox folder.

2. Test your backup plan at least once a month. I trust Crashplan and am glad I do.

3. Learn to compile your stuff through Scrivener.

Learning ePublishing

Flipboard Plus

Bernie Goldbach on Irish Rail | Screenshot from my photostream

GOOGLEPLUS KINGPIN Bradley Horowitz announced Flipboard is partnering with Google+ and that means a higher quality infostream coming to my G+ app. Flipboard joins Buddy Media, Hootsuite, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, Involver and Vitrue as a Google+ “trusted” partner.

This means I will be able to leverage G+ as a truly dynamic element of social media (see helpful schematic at right). I will be able to comment via Flipboard to G+ and upvote Flipboard stuff with the Plus One system. I really like knowing I will be able to send  individualised pieces of content to my Google+ Circles. 

Google has been really tight about its G+ API. It is opening the service to Flipboard before allowing advertisements into Googleplus--a big deal in many ways. 

I've been using Googleplus for nearly a year, along with a cluster of Irish who have discovered ways to leverage the communities inside Google Circles. I reduced my use of Twitter by nearly 25% of my 2010 daily output, making time for Google Plus. I like what I've found in the G+ community, like the Queens of the Stone Age EP.

Go With the Flow

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I'm http://gplus.to/topgold on Googleplus. I find info there that becomes part of the links I curate about social media.

Truly Interactive Art in Farmleigh

Bernie Goldbach in Dublin | Image from Dnote

IF YOU THINK art galleries are too precocious, you should set aside time to see "Hall of Mirrors" in Dublin's Farmleigh House.

It's the artwork of Denis Connolly and Anne Cleary. The show's most playful piece is a "dot-film", filled with moving dot people. The work, called "Joining the Dots", uses a Microsoft Kinect camera that tracks and responds to actions that turn the viewer into a projected dot-person.

Critic Christian Leach Hughes writes, "These kinetic human constellations spark thoughts about the portrayal of the human form in art, from the paintings of cavemen to pointillism, Lichenstein's pop art to le Brockquy's human presences."

I'm looking forward to how our four-year-old responds to this exhibition because I think she will personify the metaphor of how art works.

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Christian Leach Hughes -- "Time to make an exhibition of yourself" in the Sunday Times Culture Magazine, June 17, 2012.

Bernie Goldbach curates links about art.

Hoping Adrian Weckler Isn't Right

Bernie Goldbach in LIT-Clonmel | Screenshot from my iTouch while in a Hangout

I LISTEN TO ADRIAN WECKLER, partly for opinion and partly for trend analysis. Yesterday, he dismissed two technologies we have used in our third level curriculum. [1]

We use QR Codes and Google Hangouts to improve access third level students have to supplemental material and guest lecturers. The QR codes are designed to offer students a simple click-to-view of deeper material. They also help people jump from one medium to another when the QR code pulls a mobile browser from a printed page or a screenshot into an audio clip or a video segment.

Sunday Newsround

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Papers snapped with Sony Xperia

AN EXCEPTIONALLY CRITICAL report on the State's complicity in the deaths of 200 children makes the front page of two Irish broadsheets. [1] [2]

I've a personal interest in how the Irish Sunday papers treat topics of technology, travel, and education. I made a 10-minute audio and video newsround to capture those main points. Readers can hear the result on Audioboo or see the coverage on YouTube. The video also appears below the break in the blog post.

Sunday Newsround

Facetime and Other Video Services

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Facetime Moment from my photostream

I WAS NOT a big fan of video calling until I started using Facetime and Hangouts. I'm now a routine user.

We use Facetime to hook up with family an ocean away. We use Hangouts to push along projects. But if you believe prominent voices in the tech press, both technologies have a low adoption rate and both add little value to the smartphone. That's an incorrect value statement but probably an accurate assessment of the adoption rate.

I get a lot out of face-to-face taskings. Something about seeing the person gives a greater imperative to getting things done. With one simple tap, I can kill the video signal and reduce the call to pure audio. That's the preferrered option for people caught in pajamas on a bad hair day.

I use Sony's cameraphone handsets because their dual microphones switch to the position of the camera so listeners get sounds from the rear camera when that's selected and they get the voice of the caller when the front-facing camera is active. It will be interesting to see if these dual microphones are tuned for Skype calls when that program starts shipping with Windows 8 tablets.

I'm going to continue testing Facetime, Google Hangouts and Skype during the fall semester in the Limerick Institute of Technology's Emerging Trends module, helping students to develop a comfortable personalcasting style.

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Protip: "Facing the Camera" on Inside View, October 1, 2010.

Bonus Link: "Handheld Reporting" on Inside View, April 2, 2011.

Bernie Goldbach curates links about video.

Our Essential Coffee Culture

Bernie Goldbach in Limerick | Image from my photostream

MEET FACE-TO-FACE for a coffee. That's a common action step in my life.

If I pass on staff coffee chats while on campus, it costs me an extra half hour of e-mail work. Stuff I hear and say with colleagues over coffee helps get things done faster.

In our local community, some corner coffee shops I used to enjoy using are closing due to empty wallets. That's a shame because I've seen and heard a lot of start-ups execute decisions in coffee shops. Historically, cofee shops have contributed to the rise of the Celtic Tiger, to the spread of the Enlightenment, to the start of Arab Spring. The coffee houses that evolved in Europe from 1650 onwards were the tweetspace of their day.

I go for coffee to get and exchange information. I learn what's going on in the Dublin and Cork scenes by stopping for a cuppa, chatting with friends who won't tweet what they really think--but they'll take thoughts to a deeper level right around their second sip from their cups. Great sca and scones, I say.

Serious Urban Cycling on DVD

Bernie Goldbach off his bike | Screenshot from Line of Sight

I GET THRILLED by watching illegal and dangerous messenger racing. The ultimate DVD, recorded by helmet cams, drops on the first of July.