Inside View from Ireland

Where CU Meets SM

A NEW DAWN for Ireland's credit unions could be coming into focus as the industry begins to embrace an overall assessment of its current social media capabilities. 

As a credit union member for nearly 30 years, I've seen the industry from diverse vantage points--from a small farming town to the bustling concourse of the Pentagon. I believe Irish credit unions could enhance their time-tested connections with key stakeholders and turn those connections into real clout with decision-makers. It's an essential process, driven by tumultous forces across the financial sector.

There are real goal and real metrics inside this process. In several creative multimedia modules I teach, we create separate metrics plans and consider them alongside helicopter views of the goals we need to achieve. 

Liking Klipsch S4i Reference Sound

I KNOW IN-EAR SOUND isn't really delivering the same range of audio as over-the-ear headsets but for walk-about work, it's hard to beat the Klipsch S4i in-ear headphones. Unless you want deep bass.

The S4i has an inline mic that works well with Audioboo and the cables don't seem to generate the same kind of rustling noise as I get with other earbuds. You might expect the 3.5mm plug on the unit to work with everything but it won't work for my Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc and only the earbuds work when the S4i jacks into my Nokia Lumia 800 or my laptop. You can't expect all pieces of technology to be interchangeable and there are some clever mic technology circuits embedded to the voice part of the S4i that don't work the same in other configurations. When used with iOS devices, the in-line microphone seems to reduce mechanical background noises and wind buffet. At least that's what I've noticed when making Audioboos with the Klipsch S4i. And Johnny Cash sounds just fine through the earbuds.

Johnny Cash I'm On Fire

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Amazon -- Klipsch S4i reference earbuds

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Quick News With Long Read

 

ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING legal maneuvers is playing out in the highest courts of Ireland as the State's largest property developer takes on the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA).

From my perspective, I think the issues are personal. Some of the State-appointed receivers do not like the style or largesse of the Celtic Tiger generation. So there's some jostling for position that might have crossed the lines of acceptable commercial practise. If Treasury Holdings case holds water, it will constrain the way NAMA can do its business when those business dealings depend upon the careful guardianship of deposed developers. The High Court case should also expose some of the intricacies of NAMA's dealings and rekindle the question of why that State agency is not subject to the rigour of Freedom of Information requests.

The image connected to this blog post does not relate to NAMA, however. It's from the film In Darkness, a gripping account of living in the sewers of Lvov during World War II.

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Sony Pictures -- In Darkness Trailer

Watch the Quick News clip.

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Long Days in the Cemeteries

I HAVE DISCOVERED the stickiest form of online social media and it's full of headstones.

While a lot of people will drop hours into Facebook, Twitter, food spotting, Pinterest, Soundcloud, YouTube, or photo-sharing, I've discovered time spent online while researching roots is the best way of connecting people across generations and over thousands of miles. When I click into my account at Ancestry.com, I'm normally lost for an hour. And when I finish my time inside the ancestral records, I feel I've located a special part of myself. I get this feeling while working online, not while burrowing solo with my GEDCOM file.

I've tried several family tree software programs, all allowing GEDCOM exports. The GEDCOM file format facilitates communications between programs. The result looks compelling online with Ancestry.com record sets.

Fighting Illiteracy Starts with Teaching New Literacy Skills

IRELAND'S HOPE TO CULTIVATE A Knowledge Society actually starts with ensuring teachers can play an active role in it. That's a big hurdle because it means empowering digitally literate teachers.

I would cite three sizes of screens in a working definition of digital literacy. I'd measure the ability of a teacher to interact with a digital touchpoint one foot away in their hand. If you cannot work a smartphone via a data connection, you lack digital literacy. Then I'd measure the ability of a teacher to interact with a digital screen three feet away on a laptop, desktop or tablet. If a teacher cannot effortlessly show collaborative resources used to prepare or improve classroom presentations, there's evidence of digital illiteracy at work. Finally, I'd look at ten feet away and see if a teacher knew the relationship of our digital culture to television broadcasts, streamed content and DVDs. I've been with teachers who dismissed the efficacy of hashtags on television screens. Ignoring the role of Twitter as a news source often means a total disrespect of our digital culture.

I Listen Most Intently through Earbuds

ONE SIDE EFFECT of owning a Kindle is having to upgrade earbuds because the Kindle is really good at storing MP3 and buying Audible books.

I spread my audio experience across several platforms, mainly to avoid a flat battery on any one device. Although my preferred listening experience is through Pocket Casts on the iPod Touch, Zune's Music Player on my Nokia Lumia is also a brilliant option. However, the production values achieved on the Kindle through Audible.com books is superb.  So it's Pocket Casts (iOS ans Android), Zune subscriptions (Windows Phone) and Audible on Kindle. After less than a year with the Kindle, I've run out of space on the device. That's mainly because I'm carrying too many PDFs in the Kindle. I've decided to sort out that issue, keeping PDFs in Evernote on both the Lumia and the iPod Touch.

Sony eReader for Note Taking

AS A LOYAL KINDLE owner, I've discovered I want access to my notes on screen. That's something Sony's eReader does nicely so I've marked my eBay Wishlist accordingly.

The Kindle's wifi access works well where I live and work so I expect the Sony's on-board wifi to be the same. That means it will probably encounter wifi problems when trying to connect to the internet in many Irish wifi hotspots (places requiring a browser log-in) and it probably won't work well with the wifi on public transportation. But when it connect, it will give me access to more than two million titles in Sony's Reader Store.

We need more than one flavour of eReader because I think our children will see the day when they can borrow books from the local public library and that's easier done with the Sony eReader. It's also easy as a link to download Google public domain books with the Sony eReader.

I am planning to convert a lot of Mia's primary school books onto e-ink. When they go to the Sony PRS-T1, they will be in the lightest eReader on the market. The PRS-T1 weighs less than six ounces. That's lighter than a paperback. Plus its slim curved profile makes it easy to hold.

One Step Up in Collaboration

AFTER AN INTENSE FIVE DAYS, a time span that included a weekend, I'm parking a major collaborative document back on a shared network drive and sharing a few thoughts about the process.

In my case, big lesson learned was how trustworthy and effortless Evernote made the process for me. As I finished every major input, I copied and pasted several pages of work into a shared Evernote notebook for a subject matter expert to review off site. This subtle little process took only a few minutes--the time required to select-all, copy, click new note button, and paste. I let Evernote synch itself. Within 15 minutes, a simple text from the subject matter expert let me know everything looked good from another editor's window.

I believe in Evernote and hope that my entire office adopts a practise of keeping an active synchronised notebook on their handsets. If they do, I believe we will have reached a new level in collaboration. It helps that Evernote is free for Android, iOS, Symbian and Windows Phone. We use all of those handsets where I work.

Avoiding Tethering Surprises with OTA Wifi

AFTER 17 MONTHS of using my Huawei 585 on two continents, I can wholeheartedly endorse the use of portable wifi service.

Using a device like the Huawei 585 (at left) or the O2 Hotshot eliminates the need to tether from your mobile phone and that means you won't face any sort of bill shock after tethering for 10 minutes. I bought the little black Hauwei 585 from eBay for EUR 60 but if I'd renewed my data contract with O2 I could have received it for free. 

I can feed my over the air data habit with a Pay As You Go SIM for less than 20 EUR a month. That's the price point of the contract I'd have to maintain with O2-Ireland for the same peace of mind. Both the PAYG and the standard contract for O2 data worked elegantly in Ireland, England and the States for me. I've powered creative multimedia classrooms with this Hauwei hotspot, lit up entire carriages on Irish Rail with it and its the high speed connection for the iPad while we're underway in Ireland.

If you haven't worked out a plan to tether before you need to tether, you might be in for a surprise about the cost of running your phone in tethering mode.

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mobile: Lessons from a Road Warrior: How I fell off a horse, earned 15 million air miles, got sand in my shoes and learned how to invest

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