Inside View from Ireland

Tumbling from Tipp When The News Broke

2013-05-20T02:08:00+01:00

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel with Mia Art in the photo.

I WAS GRADING a handful of third level social media exams when Yahoo! sealed the deal to buy Tumblr. My dashboard lit up with dozens of people screaming.

What's more significant than Yahoo spending real cash in the acquisition is the logic behind the purchase. Tumblr is a big social network with 108 million blogs and 50.7 billion posts. Some of our best students tumble more than they Facebook. Tumblr has a diehard user base. Its blogging platform is the easiest one I've ever used. And its image-laden posts are a honeypot for Yahoo's photo recognition software. When one of our female student makes a Tumblr post with a picture of her new purse, dozens of her friends want the details. All Yahoo! has to do is to offer up a "see more" link to a shopping zone and the clicks will follow.

Online shopping is an internet success story. People buy from well-styled photos. If Yahoo! can match photos to sales channels, the Tumblr acquisition will be worth a lot more than one Instagram purchase.

Bernie Goldbach teaches creative multimedia for the Limerick School of Art and Design. He's topgold on many good social networks.

Business Post News Clips

2013-04-28T07:47:00+01:00

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Snap from Business Post magazine.

I READ PAPER copies of newspapers during the weekends because it helps me see things from the perspective of a layout editor. It's an exercise with information architecture.

Kathryn Thomas (pictured at her Audi gig) took a page in the Sunday Business Post Magazine and mused about how she might document her trip to Chernobyl with Adi Roche. [1] I'd look no farther than how Christian Payne documents those kinds of trips. Actually, I'd get an Audi Estate with 100,000 miles on the clock to push off from Budapest to Kiev and then towards Chernobyl. I'd document the journey with Audioboo, Bambuser, Flickr and Instagram. I'd set up a Flattr campaign to encourage viewers to drop micropayments into a tip jar and I'd eat only what my Flattr money compensated.

On a totally unrelated note, I'm experimenting with the format of my blog posts to see how media elements and horizontal rules affect Sound Gecko's text-to-speech processing. I don't expect anything beyond this sentence to be processed by Sound Gecko and that means a new Zemanta extension probably does not get harvested by Sound Gecko.

Irish Sunday Business Newsround

There's more to the Business Post news below the fold. I made a short video about things that piqued my interest.

-- Brother Hubbard gets big props from Ross Golden-Bannon. [2]

-- Bankers, politicians and official are to be summoned to appear before a high-powered banking inquiry. [3] Where you might expect the Public Accounts Committee to take this tasking, my bets are with the Finance Committee since it's chaired by a government politician.

-- I expect another pay cut because there's no deal on the table between unions and the government. [4]

-- The Irish government could cut planned adjustments in the next two budgets by close to €1 bn and still hit its 2015 borrowing target. [5]

-- The European Investment Bank, the EU's lender for economic development, has a new funding scheme for smaller SMEs in partnership with AIB. THis is a €200m arrangement. [6]

-- The US State Department has warned American tourists visiting Ireland to be on the lookout for fraud and to be aware of a police force negatively affected by austerity policies. [7]

-- Pension advisers are warning that trustees of insolvent retirement schemes may be better off forcing companies into bankruptcy. This would guarantee full state compensation instead of giving up benefits to cover deficits. [8]

-- Most activist organisations have not registered with the Standards in Public Office Commission. [9]

-- Irish farmhouse yogurts and cheesecake producer Glenilen Farm is to invest €300,000 in a new yogurt range for children. [10]

-- Pirates will always find a way to counteract any anti-copying measure. [11]

-- The Six Sigma diploma offered by the University of Limerick is one of the postgraduate modules delivered as distance learning modules. [12]

-- Dorothy Keane, a marketing lecturer at IT Carlow, watches students work on live projects with companies in the region to develop appropriate social media strategies. [13]

-- The Institute of Art and Design in Dun Laoghaire continue raking in the awards for animation. [14]

1. Fiona Ness -- "Kathryn Thomas, 34, TV Presenter, Dublin" in the Sunday Business Post Magazine, April 28, 2013.

2. Ross Golden-Bannon -- "Brotherly Love in Dublin," in the Sunday Business Post Magazine, April 28, 2013.

3. Cliff Taylor -- "New law clears way for major banking inquiry" on the front page of the Sunday Business Post, April 28, 2013.

4. Nicola Cooke -- "Pay cuts in June if no deal is struck with unions" on the front page of the Sunday Business Post, April 28, 2013.

5. Cliff Taylor -- "New figures show that state has room to ease austerity" in the News section of the Sunday Business Post, April 28, 2013.

6. Jon Ihle -- "EIB in new funding scheme for Irish SMEs" in the News section of the Sunday Business Post, April 28, 2013.

7. John Burke -- "American tourists warned of rising fraud and weakened garda presence" in the News section of the Sunday Business Post, April 28, 2013.

8. Jon Ihle -- "Waterford Crystal ruling may lead to more bankruptcies" in the News section of the Sunday Business Post, April 28, 2013.

9. John Burke -- "Abortion debate groups do not disclose funding" in the Abortion Debate section of the Sunday Business Post, April 28, 2013.

10. Samantha McCaughren -- "Glenilen Farm is building its business on a culture of success" in the Media and Marketing section of the Sunday Business Post, April 28, 2013.

11. Margaret O'Brien -- "Taking the fight against piracy to the next level" in the Intellectual Property section of the Sunday Business Post, April 28, 2013.

12. This was a commercial profile written for a Technology in Higher Education section of the Sunday Business Post, April 28, 2013.

13. Commercial profile -- "Emphasis on social media key for IT Carlow" in in the All Eyes on Carlow section of the Sunday Business Post, April 28, 2013.

14. Dave Boland -- "IADT Flies the Flag for animation education" in Animation section of the Sunday Business Post, April 28, 2013.

Listen to this clip on Audioboo or watch it on YouTube. Bernie Goldbach teaches college students creative multimedia.

Personal Insolvency in Ireland

2013-03-31T08:25:00+01:00

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | My photo of a happier note.

THE IRISH CABINET has approved guidelines to be used by banks and other creditors when meeting citizens with claims of insolvency. Although some of the guidelines suggest penal servitude to opposition politicians, I know they also reflect reality around our kitchen table.

Even before government guidelines have been published, the Free Legal Advice Centre reports, "banks have refused to allow people who have made debt settlements to spend money on dental work, car reparis, or after-school activities for their children." [1]

Another leaked guideline involves childcare expenses. If the job taken doesn't offset the cost of child care incurred, the current draft guidelines allow for banks to decide "a resonable standard of living" for people entering debt-settlement arrangements. [2] When you're sitting in front of a bank manager with your spreadsheet and grocery shopping receipts, you'll probably cave in to the demand to cutting child care if that's suggested. [3] And you might have to cut your Sky TV subscription and give up a family pet for adoption.

Sunday Newsround with Personal Insolvency Inside

While I can empathsize with the wailing public about the ruthless reduction in standards of living that will suffocate hundredss of families who choose the personal insolvency route, we've been cutting and slashing for more than a year. And after taking some drastic steps, we can finally plan our first family holiday away from Ireland in more than three years.

1. Sarah McInerney -- "Banks stop dental work and repairs" on p2 of the Sunday Times in Ireland, March 31, 2013.

2. Sarah McInerney -- "Sky's the limit" in the Focus section of the Sunday Times, March 31, 2013.

3. Martha Kearns -- "Child care is a vital need, not an extra" in the Sunday Business Post, March 31, 2013.

Bernie Goldbach works for the Limerick Institute of Technology where his wages and buying power are back to 2003 levels.

Presentation Primary School Clonmel Easter Newsletter 2013

2013-03-21T17:41:21+00:00

Words by Patricia Mulcahy | Colouring by Mia Goldbach.

HERE'S OUR EASTER Newsletter for 2013 (Thank you Noelle :). It details recent events at Clonmel Presentation Primary School.

A hard copy was sent home with each child this afternoon and I'm posting it to Bernie's Blog TODAY!!. I've just learned how. Very simple. Attach to an email and off I go! This is one very happy IT coordinator. Please enjoy our news :)

Production Notes follow.

Milestone number one: Email an image / file to a site: Tick!

Advantages: We've also made the website more current, less cumbersome, more user friendly :) Thanks Bernie!

Technical Note: Sometimes content in Word documents shift around when opened in different versions of Word. That's one reason Adobe Acrobat is often used to distribute newsletters and formal proposals.

Download Presentation Primary School Clonmel Easter Newsletter 2013.doc

Editor's Note: I walked away from Tricia as she independently sent her post from Outlook to Typepad. While in the car, I saw the blog post publish. A few hours later, our junior infant asked that I illustrate this blog post with Mia's colouring of the newsletter she brought home. Kids like to have their stuff published online. ^BG

How Many Irish Business Suicides

2013-03-04T09:13:42+00:00

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Photo of Independent Mattie McGrath.

I READ PQ PAGES (pages containing answers to Parliamentary Questions) on politicians' websites. One of local TD Mattie McGrath's PQs about suicide from debts was rebuffed by the Irish government and I believe it needs answering.

Mattie McGrath raised the question through parliamentary channels, asking the Irish Minister for Justice "to provide in tabular form, for the last five years, the number of cases listed before the Commercial Courts where the death of a party to a case is recorded as either being caused due to death by misadventure or suspected suicide." According to Jerome Reilly in the Sunday Independent, "Ceann Comhairle Sean Barrett wrote to Mr McGrath on February 3 saying that "with regret" he had to disallow the question. I think it's a valid one because I'm aware of local suicides arising from bankruptcy, NAMA proceedings and financial stress directly related to government austerity policies. Not putting these matters into the public eye reduces the moral imperative needed in Ireland to adequately deal with depressed assets.

Jerome Reilly -- "Incendiary Dial Query is blocked" in the Sunday Independent, March 3, 2013.

Bernie Goldbach teaches creative multimedia in the constituency of Mattie McGrath.

Sunday Tech News

2013-03-03T14:25:51+00:00

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Photo of Sunday Business Post.

THE BUSINESS POST in Ireland offers several leading thoughts about technology on the near horizon that I am bringing into our creative multimedia programme. You can click on the image to see a video that explains more details.

I'm posting these trends forward by five years to see how accurate Dick O'Brien's prognostications are.

Tech I Can Use

-- When everyone pays for views.

The Irish Minister for Communications plans to have everyone pay an annual charge to fund public service broadcasting, not just TV owners. Research shows people don't watch replays on their TVs. Instead, most (69%) use laptops to catch up on TV shows. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler to tag on a public service data fee to everybody who pays for data on their mobile phones or landlines.

-- Microsoft Surface RT is a good fit for MS-Office users.

Adrian Weckler's review also points out "the Surface is one of the few tablets with a proper USB port" although it lacks the wide range of apps found on Android or iOS tablets.

-- Sony sets new camera phone standard.

Although nothing comes close to the Nokia 808 PureView for camera phone excellence, Sony's Xperia Z packs "an astonishingly good 13-megapixel camera with a 2MP front-facing camera, full HD video capture, 1.5 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM." Like Adrian Weckler, I also go for big screens so the Xperia Z's 5" screen is built for me.

-- Tech of the future as seen by Dick O'Brien.

I teach a third level module on emerging trends so I found his thoughts on what might lie ahead to be instructive.

--- Wearable devices like Google Glass.
--- Teleworking, even though Yahoo! is rowing back on it.
--- OLED displays, especially flexible ones.
--- Wireless power like the Nokia 920.
--- 3D printing for localized, on-demand manufacturing .
--- Big data. Make mine Open Big Data.
--- Nanotechnology like smart dust.
--- Cloud computing like the service peering this blog post.
--- HTML5 and the evolution of mobile platforms.
--- 4G and 100 megabits per second over the air.

Watch on YouTube or listen on Audioboo.

Irish Horse Burgers

2013-01-27T13:51:00+00:00

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Click image to get video.

WHEN I LIVED in Germany, horse burgers sold briskly in Kaiserslautern's Saturday market. Horse burgers are in the Irish news for another week but largely because you shouldn't find horse meat in Irish burgers.

I looked through a single Irish Sunday paper alongside the digital version of the Wall Street Journal as I created both an audio and video newsround. The Irish horse burger story has made the front pages of most Irish Sunday papers during the past two weeks but hasn't trickled over to the WSJ (as far as I have noticed). The issue is one of traceability with a hint of fabricated veterinary inspection stamps.

My Sunday Newsround

Bernie Goldbach has a collection of newsrounds from Ireland.

Irish Tablet Sales Soar

2013-01-06T15:46:45+00:00

SALES OF TABLET computers are soaring in Ireland, according to research figures studied by Adrian Weckler. [1] we have two tablets in our home.

Laptop sales in 2012 fell by 12% in Ireland, according to figures from GfK. People are buying tablets instead with one in five Irish adults now owning something like our Motorola Xoom or Apple iPad. If our experience is typical, those buying a tablet won't get more than three years of use from a tablet before its operating system fails to update. When that happens, you are stuck with versions of apps that will look older and operate with less capability than their updated versions. This end-of-life limitation happens more comprehensively than with a computer of the same age.

We bucked national trends by giving the grandparents a film camera and traditional photo box. They were delighted to get something that will eliminate motion blur from their snapshots. And they appreciate the ease of getting prints from their local chemist.

Meanwhile, overall sales of digital cameras in the Irish market have fallen 18% in value and by 21% in the number of units sold. People tend to use their smartphones to take photos today. Recent figures from Amarach Consulting show almost two thirds of Irish adults now own smartphones. I don't think Amarach tracked the number of working handsets their respondents have. In my case, I carry four working and unlocked smartphones in my bag representing four different operating systems. I work with several people who use two or three screens throughout the business day to monitor conversations, trends and streams of information.

If you need to work quickly when trends emerge, you shouldn't hide the Analytics behind a browser tab or inside an email marked as "important". The truly important stuff needs to grab your attention by landing front and centre on a screen where you can quickly act on it.

(Props to @adrianweckler for his continued excellence in business journalism. Photo of our Xoom and Moleskine work table.)

1. Adrian Weckler -- "Tablet sales soar as laptops slump" in The Sunday Business Post, January 6, 2013.

Dublin One of Top Five Places for New Year's Eve

2012-12-30T22:52:00+00:00

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Photo of Temple Bar.

SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE, Dublin deserves to be named as one of the top five places to spend New Year's Eve. Temple Bar is well-lighted for the occasion.

It's old news by this time because several months ago The Lonely Planet travel guide listed Dublin as one of the best places to ring in the new year and every street in Temple Bar (see photo) is in a welcoming mood. [1] Others include Prague, New South Wales coast, Chiang Mai in Thailand and the French Alps.

Another High Culture event for the new year in Ireland is Castlecomer's annual Wellie Race. We've seen that several times, once observing a horse-drawn cart catch fire in the middle of the opening parade. Recommended.

I make a short newsround on most Sundays, a practise I may have to modify if the Irish newspapers start charging me for my links. However, since I buy my news in paper copies, I should be safe enough to point out a few interesting items from the last Sunday of 2012.

-- We will lose more money in 2013 because Child Benefit will be taxed. If you work and pay child care expenses in Ireland, the amount of money offered by the State to offset the cost of child care will decrease. However, if you're unemployed and don't have creche fees, your child benefit should survive intact. [2]

-- Ronald Reagan played down his paternal Irish roots because of his father's drunkeness, reveals a confidential report filed by Ireland's ambassador to Washington after the American president's election in 1980. [3]

-- Two branding stories appeared on the same page of the Sunday Times. One dealt with Ireland failing to secure protection for either the harp or the shamrock. [4] The harp is protected as a registered mark of the Republic of Ireland but the shamrock is not a registered mark. The second story concerned a ruling by the World Intellectural Property Organisation for the term "driving licence". [5] It's a generic term, meaning the Road Safety Authority cannot claim rights to the URL DrivingLicence.ie.

Last Newsround of 2012

1. Justine McCarthy -- "No party invites for the big guns" in The Sunday Times, January 30, 2012.

2. Stephen O'Brien -- "Child benefit tax to hit rich" on the front page of the Sunday Times, December 30, 2012.

3. Eithne Shortall -- "Reagan's reason for Irish denial" on the front page of the Sunday Times, December 30, 2012.

4. Eithne Shotall -- "Ireland and Germans fought over the harp and shamrock" in the News section of the Sunday Times, December 30, 2012.

5. Mark Tighe -- "RSA loses licence website case" in the News section of the Sunday Times, December 30, 2012.

Bernie Goldbach records newsrounds nearly every Sunday in Ireland. Today's available on Audioboo.

Losing Our Joie de Vivre

2012-12-23T23:43:56+00:00

Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | FT on the kitchen table.

AUSTERITY MEANS fewer champagne corks and lower cost Christmas toys in many parts of the European Union this December. It's front page news on the Financial Times this weekend and part of my Audioboo.

There is a moroseness, "a sadness among the French population at the moment," says Paul-Francois Vranken, chief executive of Vranken Pommery Monopole. [1] The gloom has deepened during the past two weeks with Irish newspapers watching the open spat between the French socialist government and prominent French citizens. Faced with paying 75% of their earnings over to the State as taxes, a number of well-known Frenchmen are handing in their passports and setting up residency in lower tax regimes such as Belgium and England. And although socialists in Ireland are watching this happen, they continue leading a crusade to squeeze upper income earners through a wealth tax or a higher margin on earnings above EUR 100,000. This would damage wealth creation if implemented as a government policy.

Reading FT for News

I explain this in a short audio (above) and in a YouTube clip below the break. I'm thinking about techies like Loic Le Meur and wondering how all this socialism might affect their entrepeneurial spirit. And for the record, I've been a regular FT reader for a decade.

The opening keyframe of the video is for a Triflow Quadro, an upmarket cold and hot filtered water system that would help me make a cup of tea faster than boiling water in a kettle. The largest photo on the front page of the paper is the 78 foot Venus, the yacht Steve Jobs commissioned. It's currently delayed in Amsterdam due to a dispute in payment to one of the designers. [2]

Back in the day when I had a champagne budget, I also had engraved invitations to gentlemen's clubs in London. I miss those old buildings with their war trophies, club ties, smoking rooms and quiet corners. [3]

Right before I started writing this blog post, I scrolled through all sorts of ideas suggested by Amazon to make my Christmas shopping easier. I can get apps like Amazon Mobile, Amazon Price Check, Amazon Windowshop and Amazon Student--all designed to help reduce the number of steps I take on the Irish High Street. Retailers are fighting back. "Increasingly, savvy bricks and mortar retailers talk about shopping in terms of 'theatre'--an entertainment that coaxes people to abandon online shopping, or thrift, and venture out to the high street to spend." [4]

On my iTouch, I see ticker tape of stock prices. Everything is pointed south. That's probably because there's no agreement on how the United States can avoid its fiscal cliff. [5]

There's probably going to be no major change in US gun laws either, if soundings by the FT are correct. [6] [7]

And finally, it's good to see finishing schools emerging in China. Cutlery is complex. I wish more of my friends knew how to wipe their mouths wihout snorting in their napkins. I wish cousins knew how to peel oranges without spraying me and without touching it with their fingers. And I really wish my new-found Irish friends wouldn't turn the sharp edges of their knives towards me while eating. I learned all those things in a series of evening sessions arranged in Washington by the State Department.

1. Scheherazade Daneshkhu -- "Champagne stops flowing and toy sales suffer as French lose their joie de vivre" on the front page of the Financial Times, December 23, 2012.

2. Reuters -- "Jobs estate in the dock over yacht" on the front page of the Financial Times, December 23, 2012.

3. James Pickford -- "Gentlemen's clubs raise a glass to quiet success" in the Financial Times, December 23, 2012.

4. Chris Tighe -- "Retailers fight online trend with fairy lights" in the Financial Times, December 23, 2012.

5. Richard McGregor -- "Boehner puts onus back on Obama as tax plan founders" in the Financial Times, December 23, 2012.

6. Anna Fifield -- "School shield programme set up by pro-gun lobby group" in the Financial Times, December 23, 2012.

7. Christopher Caldwell -- "It's US voters, not just the gun lobby, who love weapons" in the Financial Times, December 23, 2012.

8. Patti Waldmeir -- "School of etiquette plots new cultural revolution" in the Financial Times, December 23, 2012.

Bernie Goldbach saves news items.