Inside View from Ireland

Networking

SOME MOBILE PHONES (like my Nokia E90 at left) let you associate special ring tones with specific contacts. That way you know if your other half is ringing because your ears pick up on the distinct ringer. I like that functionality because I need to stay close to those who are part of my special network. Some industry colleagues and members of my working groups in college also get special ring tones associated with them too. When they ring or text, it normally means co-ordination is required so it pays to pick up and talk with people in that node of my professional network. Outside these two degrees of separation comes the realm of popular social networking. Even though I chat to "friends" inside these social networks, few of them are in my pocket as mobile phone numbers. None of them merit a special ring tone. So in my books and in my pocket, the true measure of connected networking is all down to getting close, connecting in real ways. You cannot beat the emotive channel of voice when it comes to meaningful networking. Now it's off to sync a new phone with those special ringtones.

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Sent mail2blog using my Nokia E90 and O2-Ireland Typepad service on the back roads of South Riding.

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Screams Overhead

FOR A LITTLE OVER a decade, I lived for the high-pitched whine of turbine engines and the smell of JP-4 in the morning. That life style was to change dramatically 20 years ago as I walked the line and set up a refrigerated van under the screams of jet aircraft in the overhead traffic pattern at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. I had a new release from Tracy Chapman in my BMW 320is because her mellow take on "Fast Car" seemed just the ticket for my unbridled runs down the A6 between the Saarland and Heilbronn. I lived my work in a strategic command centre, trudging 156 feet underground in a blast-proof stairwell before pressing the keys on a two-foot-thick concrete door and taking my position behind two 30" colour monitors, astide a phone bank comprised of 38 hardened lines (six hotlines to people with potent buttons on their pagers), directly in front of a teletype machine. You didn't get the smell of JP-4 down there, just like you didn't get any sunshine during your 12-hour shift. And you didn't go topside for your time at work because you were the go-to guy when things happened. You were the traffic cop. So it was a special break in my work life that let me walk the line up top exactly 20 years ago, looking the part (see left). I took the time off to attend an Apple Users' Group meeting in Kaiserslautern and to help some friends set up a refrigerated van so we could sell ice cream to bystanders in a crowd estimated to reach more than 100,000 people for a nice day forecast at Flugtag 88. As it turned out, I was setting up just east of Ground Zero for the worst airshow disaster ever recorded in Europe. And as things later unfolded, the screams of the jets overhead would translate into a burning horror on the ground that still cause me sweaty nights when they weave their way into my dreams. My personal therapist during those moments is Tracy Chapman. Her "Fast Car" looped in my blue Air Force truck as I bounced around the tarmac setting up for the show. And "Fast Car" represented serenity among the carnage during the massive clean-up operation that unfolded after 28 August 1988.

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NOTE: The photo is from walking the line at an earlier Air Show that I helped organise.
Previously -- "Summertime Ice Cream Memory" on Irish Typepad 23 August 2003 and "No Chocolate. It's Flugtag." on 28 August 2005.
Roland Fuchs -- "Ramsteim 1988: Diese Homepage ist den Opfern der Flugschaukatastrophe vom 28.8.1988  in Ramstein gewidmet bei der mehr als 70 Menschen starben. Hier möchte ich beschreiben wie ich den Tag erlebte und was diese Katastrophe heute noch für mich bedeutet."
Wikipedia -- "Ramstein Air Show Disaster"

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Coworking Imperatives

I HAD TO LEAVE DUBLIN before checking into Team Contrast and their centre city premises. James Corbett points to the Dublin-based web development as "a direct product of the modern Irish web scene." Corbett followed the genesis of the idea from its roots in the coworking scene.

I spent a year on a career break inside a makeshift incubation centre that's nothing like the digs Eoghan McCabe and the crew have in Merrion Square. And fair play to them--they knew what they needed and just did it. That's what they're telling others--just set up your coworking space and it you've got the right mix, you'll attract a cluster of like-minded entrepreneurs.

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James Corbett -- "Contrast-ulations (on a co-working success story)"
Evert Bopp -- "Coworking center in Tipperary"

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Direct Line Around Chinese Censors

SAY YOU'RE SETTING UP SHOP in a country known for its censoring of information. If that's your remit, you might consider buying a trunk-sized bundle of ISDN lines. Dutch commercial broadcaster Radio 538 has done that, enabling it to broadcasting live from the Beijing Olympic games, defying both the Chinese censors and the IOC. The only Dutch broadcaster registered to provide coverage from Beijing during the Olympics is public broadcaster NOS, which is the Olympic rights holder. But Radio 538 decided to broadcast its breakfast show live from the Chinese capital. You have to be registered to broadcast, and your output must port through the  Olympic Broadcast Centre, where censors can impose a transmission delay. That sucks when you're trying to hold a conversation with a live presenter back home. Radio 538 still has a delay of around one second, but its team has avoided the Broadcast Centre by hiring blocks of expensive ISDN phone lines.  They rotate between numbers--using at least ten new numbers every day--confounding Chinese censors. They use smart switches that can connect over an open ISDN line once an operating line appears to be cut. After the first two days, the connection with Beijing has been down for only 20 minutes on one day.

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Transmission 1 -- "Dutch Radio Station Avoiding Chinese Censors"

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My Life Got Simpler with Blacknight

I NEED TO SQUEEZE MORE into each day without feel stressed out by the additional activity so it means a lot to me when my web hosting becomes simpler with Blacknight Solutions. I'm looking at new hosting plans from Blacknight because they offer many more features than all three of the other places where I host web sites. One major difference with the Blacknight easy log-in access. I only need to login once to gain access to everything. I've got credit in my current account, so I'm thinking about buying four different dot.IE domains because Blacknight sells them for €21. A short article explains what's currently on offer. I've looked at several Irish hosting options since 1999 and believe the ease of use and value for money make Blacknight Solutions the leading player for web hosting in Ireland. Recommended.

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See also: Blacknight's Technical Status Blog for maintenance or service updates.
Blacknight's Company Blog also spills over to Twitter and CEO Michele Neylon is also a card-carrying member of Jaiku.

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Creative Journaling

I PLAN TO SET STUDIO TIME inside several Irish pubs next academic term where I award academic credit to those who prove they observe and take note. These are important skills because few creative multimedia students begin their studies with the ability to check out their immediate environments. I think it's important to stop and try the analog journaling thing, and I try to sketch a note, not just write down a though. It's also important to sit down at regular intervals to annotate ideas.

Ideas have short shelf lives because we can forget them even before starting in on our second pint. I take audio notes and also spend time doodling with ideas. "Book them," advised Mick Wilson the art cynic. So I take notes and I take inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci, arguably history's most famous note-taker. I have a copy of sketches from one of his notebooks, sketches on nature, art, engineering, and architecture. Back home on the east coast of the US as a high school student, I thumbed through a few of Thomas Edison's scruffy notebooks. I learned by looking at these samples of work.

GPS Made Him Crash

FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE with the Nokia E90 reading me its maps and after more than 1000 miles using the Garmin Nuvi 360 to take me around places unmarked by signs or road stripes, I know how you need to balance the advice of a GPS. I have used GPS devices while driving, walking and cycling. You cannot depend on them unless you know how they think. And as several red top British newspapers report, you shouldn't think you'll get away with stupid driving just because you followed your GPS.

"In the UK, a ridiculous 300,000 car crashes have been caused by GPS. According to a survey commissioned by The Mirror, 1.5 million drivers have swerved through traffic when following their sat-nav's instructions a little too closely". Charlie Sorrel says, "The list of errors caused by slavishly obeying absurd commands would be hilarious if they weren't so dangerous: Driving onto a railway line, heading the wrong way down one-way streets, hurtling headlong into ditches, getting stuck under bridges and ignoring road signs."

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Charlie Sorrel -- "GPS Causes 300,000 Brits to Crash" in Wired's blog, 22 July 2008.

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About to Reconnect to Wired Broadband

WITHIN ANOTHER  24 HOURS, I will be back on normal broadband service because I will have finished a deep drill into pure over-the-air broadband service. The experiment proved that we will be able to deliver mobile-friendly interactive content for our creative multimedia degree programme in Tipperary Institute. Third level students will be able to get text messages, news forum summaries, access to rooms and channels that display elegantly on small screens--all at price points (read "free") that ensure we have the substructure to engage productively in a newly semesterised higher education programme. Over the next few days, I will point to the lessons I have learned with my deeply immersive over-the-air experience. But first, I'm headed over to Louder Voice where I want to give top marks to the Nokia E90 (at left), the primary phone I used to connect me over-the-air for great effect during the past three work weeks.

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Sent mail2blog using O2-Ireland 3G service while sipping on a lovely coffee in Henry's of Cashel.

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Recommended iPhone App

UPDATED 28 July 2008 after prodding by the first comment.

ONE OF THE BEST iPhone applications available for immediate download comes from Truphone. This is the first low-cost VoIP calling service for the iPhone. I have used it with Nokia mobile phones for nearly four months and the service has saved me at least €100 a month because when I'm roaming, I use Truphone instead of roaming voice services. And when I'm in a wifi hotspot, I toggle Truphone "on" so I can make free phone calls and send free text messages. Call quality is superb and is normally better than Skype. The only issue I have with the service is that I have been dumped off Truphone after 10-15 minutes several times, both while using it via 3G and wifi points. However, since my average call lasts no longer than five minutes, I don't encounter the problem frequently.

When Classroom Contact Fits in Your Pocket

WE HAVE SPENT THREE arduous weeks using over-the-air connectivity as our exclusive means of updating our blog, interacting with our virtual classroom, making video and listening to audio. We chose this test pattern in order to validate some significant features related to serving students in our third level creative multimedia degree programme. We want to build and test academic touchpoints that fit into your pocket, like the small book and phone at left. Along the way, we have discovered viable strategies.

Sticky, Simple and Over the Air

WE HAVE A MONTH-LONG EXPERIMENT running where we will use only over-the-air data services to stay connected to an online classroom environment. We intend to find the best ways to ensure students with poor internet connectivity can remain attached to their virtual learning environment. We use Moodle as our virtual learning environment and several phones from Nokia and SonyEricsson, including the SE P1i at left, to test e-mail, audio, video and still photography capability. We already know some of the methods that work and our immersive experience has validated some important conclusions.

OTA Sweet Spots

EVEN AFTER TWO YEARS, we still don't know our house very well. Take this week, for example. I endured excruciating pain while using my USB dongle from O2-Ireland until a little bird suggested that I check over-the-air data speeds outside my house. So I pushed little Mia to the west and saw EDGE. Then I reversed track and saw 3G on my Nokia E90 until I got in front of my home and started seeing the little 3.5G icon flicker on my phone. The lightbulb flickered inside my head at that very moment because if I could see 3G on the path, I certainly should be able to see 3G from one of my windows overlooking the same position. And so I started a serious site survey of the eastern side of my home. In just a few moments, I found solid 3G over-the-air signal on the top floor of my three storey home. I snagged it as a screenshot to the right. This is sweet! I'm going to flex my mobile data connectivity and attempt to break it. I'll try Skype conferences and also several session of Online Meeting Rooms. I doubt that I'll disrupt my connectivity, mainly because no one else living within a half mile radius uses O2-Ireland for high-speed data access. I know that could change. For now, I am living in an over-the-air sweet spot and I thank the wireless gods for that.

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More speed tests in search of faster data pipes.

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Two-Way Internet

IT HURTS TO BE THROTTLED on the internet, especially when you've had high-speed connectivity at your beck and call. I've gone from desktop connectivity above 100 megabits per second at work to mobile phone dribbles at less than 56k from home. My download monitor tells me I'm pulling down more than 10 times the amount I upstream and that's just reflecting the podcasts that I draw into my Nokia E90 (at left) several times a day. I kept little journals several years ago that remind me of the tactics that served so well back in dial-up land. One sage piece of advice I followed was from a smart ex-Iona employee who told me that I had to keep things coming down as aggregated content while upstreaming things that were produced in something other than a web browser. Translated, that means I produce most of my blog posts and Flickr photos as emails and I read most of my content through a mobile phone aggregator. I need to snap the screens of these things because the 2008 revision of my 2004 dial-up experience would be good to share with students who may have the same connectivity problems next semester.

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Sent mail2blog using O2-GPRS Typepad service while seated in a locked-down McDonald's wifi zone.

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Learned from the Data Fraudsters

DIGITAL INVESTIGATIONS WILL PAY big bucks to the computer forensics specialists and that's one reason why we're pointing our academic curriculum down a pathway that encourages students to uncover the data underneath the bytes in the silicon chips. You can learn from that academic process and you can also learn from Serious Fraud investigators who have shared some tips about hiding things. You can bet that the tips shared won't help any potential fraudsters because good investigators don't tell people how to accomplish undetectable deeds.

Nonetheless, there are some interesting things I've learned or recalled after listening to Keith Foggon, head of the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO), when he talked about the running of his digital investigative unit.

Never Enough Power

I BELIEVE YOU CAN never have enough power, a conclusion I formed while flying big jets and small aircraft. I don't fly much anymore but the axiom still holds when considering battery power for consumer electronics, battery banks for solar power or on-board power for personal transportation. So when I buy a new piece of personal luggage (i.e., laptop or mobile phone), I always buy a spare battery as well as a spare charger. Then because I no longer have "Departing Home" checklists, I always ensure one charger is always in my carry-around luggage. That has saved my skin on several business journeys. But how would I fare if my personal transportation was battery-powered?

OTA Only for a Fortnight

O2 Speedcheck
Originally uploaded by Irish Typepad

FOR THE NEXT FORTNIGHT, I will interact with the internet only via an over-the-air connection. We have to force ourselves to test drive the internet at mobile data speeds because that's the service level many of our creative multimedia degree students have when using our Moodle virtual education environment. I learn several valuable things when constraining myself to a bedsit data plan like those attached to mobile phone providers. In my case, I'm using O2-Ireland's service. As the chart shows, I don't get anything like broadband speeds in my bedsit because I'm sheltered from the O2 wireless radiation by a centuries-old granite castle. So my data service is measured, yet consistent. Careful observers will notice that the O2 3G SIM I use is delivering nothing close to broadband speed in my home. To get data over the air that rips quickly, I have to open my laptop or mobile phone another 400 metres to the northeast.

I intend to post a summary of my findings for my fellow educators to consider because everyone needs to adjust their online learning materials to reduce latency and to improve student interactivity. There's no better way to demonstrate this test than by actually immersing in slowband over-the-air yourself.

My Online Photo Editor

PIXENATE IS MY online photo editor for photo printing and sharing businesses. I visited Cork OpenCoffee today to look at Pixenate running inside of both Wordpress and Movable Type and I have set aside some time this month to see if I can weave Pixenate into Typepad, the service behind Inside View, my weblog. In the next semester, for the running of Ireland's first semesterised college degree programme in creative multimedia, I will have a series of tutorial deliverables that leverage Pixenate features to the hilt. In brief, we plan to have students use their cameraphones while in the field, building digital tourism promotions and upstreaming reports on cultural events. The student work is meant to be the first of its kind, focusing on things found in Ireland but not found in Google. With Pixenate, students can upload crappy photos and then use the Pixenate plug-in to remove blemishes to the original uploads. We plan to upload to Flickr groups via Zonetag on Series 60 Nokia phones and we plan to send some images directly to Movable Type's asset manager via email. As the streams of information unfold, we plan to showcase some of the best work on the Tipperary Institute website and as cover art at the podcasting site. In the meantime, we are gracious to the Pixenate functionality because it allows us to look much more compelling on account of its editing power.

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I heard about the Pixenate plug-in by reading Walter Higgins on Jaiku. Then I decided to travel to Cork to get a hands-on demo.
Testimonials about Pixenate. Photos from OpenCoffee, some that could benefit from Pixenate.

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Doing the Business

I HAVE A THEORY that one reason people meet up in five-star places is to seal deals faster. That's one conclusion suggested by a BBC Report that claims biscuits clinch business deals. The business news item says "about four out of five UK businesses believe the type of biscuit they serve to potential clients could clinch the deal or make it crumble. The outcome of a meeting could be influenced by the range and quality of biscuits on offer, Holiday Inn said." Here is some inside information: "Of the 1,000 business professionals quizzed, the chocolate digestive was deemed to make the best impression followed by shortbread and Hob Nobs."

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BBC News -- "Biscuits key to clinching business deals" in a 2 June report.

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Learning More About Restoring Audio

IZOTOPE RX has a new Audio Restoration Guide available for download. The free 75-page PDF guide and audio examples are helping me to master audio restoration by learning how to clean up audio clips by using iZotope RX. The guide includes real world audio examples and step-by-step walkthroughs.

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I learned this from the mail dropping onto my Nokia E90 phone.

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Value for New Media

A REPORT FROM the Comptroller and Auditor General John Purcell has criticised the Irish employment authority Fás for failing to achieve value for money in its dealings with its web design agency. The website project, a new Jobs Ireland portal, provides functions that were already being supplied by existing systems.

In monthly sessions at Irish Open Coffee, we exchange views and offer sanity checks to small businesses thinking about building a sophisticated online presence. Last week, I recommended a new start-up reduce its web development outgoings by €3000 and divert that grant-aided line into Google Adwords. Last year, I attended a regional meeting where the Jobs Ireland site was profiled but at that meeting, peer reviews were untolerated.

At the very least, I think State agencies should seek professional reviews of their commissioned work and not wait for the Auditor General to review the results. In the case of Jobs Ireland, "the website cost €1.7m and an audit suggested it may have cost €1m more than it should have." [1]

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1. Colm Keena -- "Comptroller's Report Slates Fás for failing to get value for money" in The Irish Times, 10 May 2008.
2. Sent mail-to-blog by Nokia E90 using O2-Ireland 3G service on the M7.

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Handling Change

FROM PODCASTS TO industry press releases with The Economist Intelligence Unit and Harvard Business Review thrown in between, it is very obvious that today’s globally integrated economy demands more from CEOs than they have been trained to handle. According to IBM’s 2008 Global CEO Study of 1,130 CEOs, one involving face-to-face interviews in 40 countries and available through Text100, CEOs are battling to keep up with the pace of change. The helpful study reveals that the number of organisations who have limited or no success at managing change is increasing faster than those organisations that are successful at it. This is surprising since more CEOs--83 percent of them--expect substantial change in the future, and are optimistic they can successfully manage change.

Six Weeks without laptop underarm

I CARRIED MY LAPTOP into Limerick OpenCoffee last Thursday and that was the first time in six weeks that I unparked the Dell Latitude from its perch point in my sitting room. I needed the laptop for a webcam connection to five Online Meeting Rooms where I connected to Waterford, Dublin, Galway, Cork and Clonmel. After Ina left her seat from Galway, Chuck connected from New York and he streamed the session out via Mogulus.

After 15 minutes inside this virtual meeting space, I was thankful that we were recording the session for editing into a shorter version. I also learned that we need to be more structured when inside a shared space because it is really difficult to talk through noise when courtesy prevents you from muting a seat.

Within a fortnight, we will share some lessons learned directly onto the Opencoffee.ie website. In the meantime, I am dedicating the summer months to developing a process whereby I keep my laptop hibernating in my sitting room for even longer.

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Running my Electricity Meter Backwards

ONE OF OUR hopes is to watch our electricity meter run backwards some day. We gain our inspiration from the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, located in a small eco-city in Abu Dhabi that held a competition to select one of the 24 entrants to a solar panel display. The winner will use its solar arrays to power the city. As The Economist notes, "Masdar is bold, perhaps quixotic. It is an attempt not so much to diversify the economy as to invert it."

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The Ecnomist -- "How to spend it" in the 26 April 2008 edition.

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Week Five Lighter Load More Mesh

IT'S BEEN FIVE WEEKS since I last carried my laptop. I shed the laptop because I need legroom on my bus trips and because I am a little concerned about its fragile operating state. Regular readers of my Twitterstream will know it's just a matter of time before the beast fails. You cannot count on a reliable XP Pro laptop when you have to take out its battery to power it down. That said, I've been on this kind of thin ice before and I have plenty of back-ups. I also know that with an easily-reachable cloud of information and a robust smartphone, I can do the business. Now Microsoft is rolling out a strategy that will make things even easier for road warriors like me. Microsoft plans to take its most ambitious step yet in transforming its personal computer business into one tied more closely to software running in remote data centers. It is called Live Mesh and if it enhances Symbian devices with a web desktop, it will evolve into a game-changing technology.

Help Rehome My Pomeranian

WE DON'T BELIEVE IN putting dogs down (besides, we know it's not time) and that's one reason we've rehomed three of them since getting our own home. But now, a little girl in her high-speed walker is threatening the sanity and safety of Doggie, our 14-year-old adopted Pomeranian. I'm a little hesitant to mention on my blog our need to rehome the little guy since I'm trying to keep the noise I make on Inside View relate only to technology but there's also a point about social networking that could be made. If my blogging about the life of a dog results in a better life for the little animal, then all the yabbering I've done while blogging, commenting, tweeting and microblogging would be for good. Certain detractors would be silenced if I leverage, for best effect, the readers here, in my newsfeeds and in my microcontent. So if you know someone who might like to adopt an elderly, somewhat senile, very cuddly Pomeranian, please let me know. And if you just want to see more of the little guy, Google for pomeranian Ireland Flickr and you'll catch up on the past stories and photos. Thanks a million.

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Pets Ireland -- "Elderly Pom Needs Rehoming"
Previously -- "How Do You Know It's Time?"
Bonus Link: Pomeranians in our household.

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Small Room Big Waste

We have a little white bathroom at home (in work at left) and it is a constant stream of wastage. We occassionally forget to turn off its six lights.  We always hear its toilet continue to run minutes after its cistern is filled. Cutting down on toilet usage saves more than water. The treatment, storage and supply of water is an energy sink in itself. Then there's the energy burned trying to process human waste--not to mention the chemicals.  We are looking at ways to make our white room friendlier to the environment. This week it means figuring out a way to automatically kill the lights when no one is on the throne. Suggestions invited.

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Prepped and sent using McDonalds Wifi on a Nokia E90 during a Big Mac Meal Event while watching the BSG Last Supper on another screen on the phone.

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My Bowser Days

FOR SEVERAL YEARS, I used to fly fuel bowsers from main bases to remote locations on planes like the one at left. In fact, I supported one of the airfields featured in the film "Rendition." Those bowsers were legendary for holding sediment and residual fuel. And when connected to fuel pits or fuel trucks, the bowsers often spawned a whole new set of problems (e.g., exposure to sludge or contamination). When BA038 landed short at Heathrow after returning from China, its pilots spoke of having no engine thrust when on short final. That's the same kind of engine reaction I could program into flight simulators back in the day when I was an instructor pilot on the L-300, a four-engine cargo jet. I took a lot of flak for those programmatic decisions because "the odds of (multiple) engines shutting down at once were supposed to be one in a billion." [2]

Why My Taoiseach Speaks That Way

GRANT BARRETT EXPLAINS one reason why Bertie Ahern and Jett Loe speak the way they does. He says the leader of Ireland says words wrong on purpose because he enjoys wordplay. "It adds variety, colour, and whimsy to our speech. It's a common characteristic of slang, which is partly built upon fooling around."

Wifi Amish

DANIEL AND EMMA STOLZFUS are Old Order Amish which means they have a web-savvy way about them. And when I last visited their homstead abutting the busy US30 highway in the rolling countryside of Lancaster County, they even knew I was carrying the internet in my pocket. Some of their awareness might be down to the new-found cell phone privilege enjoyed by Emma, the quiltmaker. To remain competitive and avoid being a drain on her community, Emma needs to take mobile phone calls from her English customers. A lot of my English friends are returning customers and keeping them happy means a pathway to easy business. Emma is allowed to carry the cell phone in her apron and even answer its call. To placate others around her, Emma uses a quiet ring tone and she normally scampers off into the phone box to talk to the English callers. It's all part of the 21st Century Old Amish that we count as friends.

Essential CreativeCamp Learnings

WHILE DRIVING BACK from Kilkenny after a day-long CreativeCamp, I mulled over a few things that I think ought to feature the next time the campers meet up in Kilkenny. I don't think the team of Ken, Tom, and Keith can take on any more workload to facilitate these ideas so I'm offering myself as a go-to guy to explore and then deliver on at least one of these learnings.

The first concerns the use of video. I've scraped some screens from a few videos that I did today and I put them here to lead off with the idea that some parts of the day--and not the sessions themselves--should be recorded to video. I think it's tedious to watch a small head on a screen at the front of a room babble on about really important things. If the video cannot be TED-quality, it should be killed when suggested. That said, it's much easier to produce high-quality four-minute conversations that will attract meaningful attention on the day and long after the event is finished. I tried two short hallway clips while in Creative Camp. I chose an area that was too lively so if video shorts are to feature in a Kilkenny camp, I think they should be made in a quiet space that includes some sound dampeners and a background that tells a story.

I have a few other thoughts after the jump.

Avoiding Data Shock at Conferences

EN ROUTE TO CREATIVE CAMP in Kilkenny today, I discovered my preferred means of connecting to the internet (i.e., using my 3G SIM from O2-Ireland) wasn't working as I planned. It wouldn't deliver anything near broadband speeds when attached to a dongle and it wouldn't give me any connectivity when inside my Nokia E90. I rang O2 tech support and discovered I couldn't expect the 3G SIM to work with the E90's antenna array. Fair enough. But since I planned to record Qik minutes en route to CreativeCamp in Kilkenny, I was looking at the prospects of a very expensive day trip in the charming medieval city. It would mean minimising the number of Zonetag photos shot while walking laneways like the one at left.

Chair Flipping Qik

WE ARE LOOKING for interesting snippets for our new-found Qik videostream. First up: chair flipping.

Setting Standards for Conference Wifi

I HOPE THAT I WILL SEE an Irish conference that can provide rock-solid wifi connectivity some day. The connectivity standard has to start before the conference kicks off by ensuring the organisers agree to setting up a backhaul that can handle the needs of 100 internet-connected devices. And why not start by adopting the conference connectivity required by the IETF at one of their conferences?

So Sue Me

OVER THE COURSE of the past 10 years where I've had an active presence online with mailing lists, discussion boards, and blogs, I've received several threatening emails ordering me to recant comments, change blog posts or to delete all reference to a specific item. In all the memorable cases, the initial correspondence contained action words that indicated the writer would follow a process that resulted in slamming me with a lawsuit if I did not promptly comply. I ignore all those threats but deal with the requests as they arise because as I have figured out in Ireland, anyone can claim to be a solicitor, produce headed paper that substantiates their claim, and even produce court documents with stamps to indicate a place on the docket. I have received all of these fabricated documents before. These tactics are meant to achieve action and when they land on most desks, people jump. I don't even open the letters, I do not acknowledge my name when asked at my doorstep and I don't call down to the Post Office to get the Registered Post. And life goes on because society recognises polite extortion when it appears. Polite extortion now appears in the Irish media as big players are starting to rally around U2 in its call to monitor browsing histories in attempts to find people who shift music illegally. It's a shakedown racket, and there's no redeemable value to the proposal.

Delivering government e-projects

IRELAND HAS NO "enforcer" like the General Accounting Office to ensure that expensive e-government projects are delivered on time and on budget, says Maeve Kneafsey, chair of the Irish Internet Association. Last month, John Collins pointed to a Comptroller and Auditor General report which found that "only half of the Government's ambitious e-government projects were fully operational six months after the deadline had  been reached." The Irish taxpayer would be better served with an "enforcer" who would help deliver better value for money.

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John Collins -- "Call for 'enforcer' to monitor Government e-projects" in The Irish Times, 22 February 2008.

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Planning Permission Personal Data

FOR SEVERAL YEARS, while an application for planning permission is under consideration, "sensitive personal and financial information, such as bank statements, social welfare information and pay slips submitted by individuals seeking planning permission, have been put online by local authorities." Anyone could see that information, including merchants who later used the data for direct marketing of their services. I have seen scans of credit card bills and pay slips when looking at planning applications submitted by neighbours. The scans are normally made into PDFs. It is relatively easy to lock those PDFs behind passwords but I don't think there's a specific requirement to safeguard the information in that way.

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Olivia Kelly -- "Personal data put online by councils" in Thhe Irish Times, 22 February 2008.

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When You Decrypt

I HAVE A SET OF SIX password-protected final examination papers that I work on my desktop after I boot up to my college working enivronment. I do not log onto the college network while editing these exam papers because data encryption secures information only when the data remains encrypted. When you unlock the data on your personal computer and decrypt your data, then anyone with physical access to your computer will also be able to access your data. There's another concern I have in my specific case. When I sign onto my local area network, my temporary cached files are stored 35 miles away and part of their transit is wirelessly over an unsecured link. If my local area network collapses, there is a potential for unencrypted data to be left exposed in several places along the route between my desktop and the temporary cache files. Back in the early 90s, I was suspended from a sensitive planning cell (under the tall pine trees behind me at left) after elements of my workspace ended up in a file storage system without data encryption. The security violation was not my fault. It occurred because of a power failure compounded by a data disk failure. Nonetheless, the three weeks I sat idle left seared in my mind an indelible operating principle. I don't open encrypted files when networked and when I have an encrypted file open on my laptop, I ensure I am not running a wireless data connection (wifi or 3G) either.

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John Markoff in the New York Times -- "A Method for Critical Data Theft", 22 Feb 08.
John Naughton -- "So you thought encrypting data on government laptops would make them safe?"
Ed Felton -- "Cold boot attacks on encryption"

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Dial a mobile phone in Ireland

VISITORS OCCASIONALLY ASK "how do I dial a mobile phone in Ireland?" When calling from outside Ireland, you need to add the country code 353 to the mobile phone number and drop the zero in front of the mobile phone number. From some countries, you dial 003538 and the rest of the mobile phone number. From the States, most people dial 0113538 and the rest of the mobile phone number. But clever people often have mobile phones in their pockets that ring when you dial a number based in another country. You can do that if you have a MAXroam account. Sometimes that means getting a MAXroam phone and other times it means just putting a MAXroam SIM into your phone that tells your phone it's actually a landline in another country. MAXroam converts your mobile phone into VoIP service.

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More about MAXroam.

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Thinking of Meaty Coffee

WE HAD A productive Limerick OpenCoffee today but one of the reasons I draw that conclusion is that we heard several well-founded criticisms of the Irish OpenCoffee architecture. I am sketching a wire diagram to show what I mean as we add meat to Irish OpenCoffee.

Making Money with O2 Active Life

ALTHOUGH I CAN save lots of money when buying products and services from O2-Ireland online, I have learned that my local O2 channel sales partner looks after me better over the counter than I get from online support. Just before Christmas, Brendan Coleman pulled up my most recent bill. He was surprised that I was spending more than himself. He recommended that I change to Active Life 150 so I did. Today, the bill arrived for a month's hard use and I owe O2 less than €50 for the same voice, text and data that cost me €139 a few months before. At this rate of savings, I will have more than €800 in my pocket for Christmas presents--money saved through more efficient billing. But the cool thing is that I get 100 free minutes of calls to a national land line, And since more than an hour of my national land line calls ring a VoIP switch, this means I am getting 100 free minutes of calls from my mobile phone to phones in the States. Active Life 150 gives me 10 MB of data free every month but something about my phone number means I have no data cap. For that magic treatment, I thank my channel service expert. Now I wish I could roll back billables on my petrol purchases. I'm off to analyse my other three mobile phone bills too.

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Bonus Track: Sarah Silverman -- "I'm fucking Matt Damon" [2.7 MB MP3] Downloaded onto my Nokia 9500 as part of my 10 MB package. Must ensure I get a bigger bite of data next month.

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Focus on Office Work

DESIGNED TO HELP you focus on your work in a busy office environment: Office Collar.

Office Collar has been designed in response to the open plan working environment. The collars act as spatial isolators, narrowing the field of vision, therefore enabling their wearer to focus on the tasks in front of them.

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Simone Brewster -- "The Office Collar"

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Special Inspector

WITH KILKENNY SOON to open its first lap dancing club, I decided to dust off my badges to see if I have one that will work to observe the occasion. All new premises need inspection to ensure they meet quality standards and then, hopefully, achieve a five-star status on LouderVoice. You can help by contributing your first-hand opinions.

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Flip-out Badges like the ones you see on CSI.

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Engaging the Conversation

I WRITE FOR HIRE. Many of those who read my words know I am paid to write for Irish newspapers, that my employer links to my online writing, and that companies located in a five county region of Ireland often get their services profiled or their product lines explained as a function of what I write. On many occasions since 1984, I have been paid to speak in front of audiences who paid to sit in front of me. Some people might be horrified to know that I not only engage in the practise of monetising my keystrokes as a ghost writer but that I train third level students to follow my lead under their own bylines as part of an accredited third level curriculum. I don't mind the occasional sniping remarks because I'm into accredited freelance journalism, personal blogging, community podcasting and personal video productions for the long haul. I need people to follow me, pay tax on their earnings and fund my retirement pension with their contributions to the Irish Exchequer. Most of these creative graduates will not work for a PR firm but they will have their own communications skills to promote their message to a wide public. With those facts as my baseline, I have some opinions about how the Irish PR community should embrace blogging. The short answer: I believe PR professionals in Ireland should read weblogs and should offer newsfeeds to sections of their websites that contain press releases. Damien Mulley raises five follow-on questions that deserve consideration as well.

Regular Calls from Credit Card Team

POST-CHRISTMAS means my credit card use drops dramatically. It's easy for my bank to see this purchasing pattern and that's why they stop online credit card activities that my card tries to make. Without disclosing my specific pattern of use, I always make a counter purchase between a specific number of online purchases. If I disturb this pattern--something that occasionally happens when Amazon charges an item before shipping from pre-order--all of my credit card transactions are declined when the bank is asked for authorisation. I like this practise because if I really need a purchase to go through, I call a number in Ballsbridge and a friendly voice turns my card back on. This practise has also been good for instant overdrafts as well, something that surprised me the first time I tried to exceed my credit card limit. I asked and I got an additional one-time €300 extension to my credit limit. In today's increasingly connected world, I appreciate an occasional real-time conversation that saves me money and keeps me afloat.

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Picture of SonyEricsson P1i ready for speakerphone recording.

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SMS Rarely Overloads

SOMETHING PEOPLE IN Europe have learned is that SMS text messaging--between individual people and group texting through a gateway--rarely falls over. It's one of those wonderful things about using GSM service. Today, as Steve Jobs parted the crowds and delivered his annual keynote address to the Apple faithful, the digirati's favourite short text system died. Twitter, the simple little text messaging system that gives hundreds of thousands of people strings of information, rolled over and took a break when the action started around 9AM with Steve Jobs describing four important things. The information slowdown did not affect Jaiku's text messaging system, however. So all during the Jobs Show, I continued receiving text comments from Jyri Engestrom in the venue and from interested viewers who commented on new devices  ("Time Capsule--I want one!") and services ("Pay $20 to upgrade the iPod Touch?" and "Rent movies in 5.1 through Apple TV."). The up-and-down nature of internet connections, microblogging services, and online web properties points to the fragile nature of our browser-based ecosystem. As major media events like Macworld and major disasters like Hurricane Katrina show, it's often prudent to be able to fall back on old reliables like SMS text messaging.

It was through my Jaiku textstream that I learned how I might get more out of the Dolby 5.1 surround sound system we have upstairs because now Apple TV will let you view audio and video podcasts directly on our widescreen television. And I can graduate from my Flickr screensaver to a full-blown live Flickr photo feed that lets me browse friends and see private images shared by family. That, along with getting 5-m YouTube videos through Apple TV. These things will be nice to have in the years ahead.

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Ryan Block -- "Live from Macworld"
Duncan Riley on a weak battery -- "Steve Jobs Keynote Live from Macworld"
Veronica Belmont -- "Steve Jobs Macworld 2008 i 60 seconds" [1.3 MB MP3 file]

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Please Steal My Wifi

I HAVE A LONG-RUNNING disagreement with those who safeguard our public internet assets from official visitors. Whenever I request that our State-funded wifi node be opened to ease access for visiting delegations where I work, I hear all the reasons why it's not a good idea. And then the eyes start rolling when I talk about my own security setup at home (SSID mellifont_friary at left) and enthusiastically acknowledge that I have operated an open wireless network since 2003. I do not require passwords. I run no encryption protocols. Anyone with wireless capability who can see my network can use it to access the internet. That includes two neighbours and the occasional car that parks across the road from my bay window to suck on my service. I think it's a good thing--essential when messing around with mobile phones containing wifi antennas--and like Bruce Schneier, "it's basic politeness. Providing internet access to guests is kind of like providing heat and electricity, or a hot cup of tea." In my case, it sometimes means creating a welcome pinch point on the road in front of the house as people stop to check mail or tweet for free.