sinéad's lifestream

Possibly the coolest free iPhone app since, well, forever. Logitech seem to have taken a leaf out of Joby’s book (I discussed this a while back in the post called “Novelty vs. Practicality: iPhone Apps for Effective Brand Awareness“) and released a free app that will have some longevity in your app collection.

The Logitech Touch Mouse app links your iPhone or iPod Touch and your Mac or PC using your wireless network, allowing you to use the touchscreen as a mouse pointer and keyboard. All you need to do is download the app itself as well Logitech Touch Mouse Server (it sounds more complicated then it actually is) the associated piece of software for your computer. Then you simply link the two by inputting your computer’s IP address into the app on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You don’t even have to worry about figuring out your IP address as the Logitech Touch Mouse Server software will find it for you.

I’ll definitely get some use out of this. I always have my iPhone in my pocket, and being able to control my PC using it is a nice feature that I was never bothered to try out because I would have had to pay for it. Granted I already have a remote and wireless mouse/keyboard, but the iPhone, like I said, is already always in my pocket, giving it another function certainly appeals to me.

It works perfectly for me running 64bit Windows 7 Pro and an iPhone 3G.

Non-digital brands offering free iPhone apps isn’t something new. Back in November I posted a short “homage” to the Denny iFry (2.5 stars), and I’ve tried out quite a few of these, like the Magic Coke Bottle (2.5 stars) or Lightsaber Unleashed (2.5 stars). All of these free apps are novelty at best, as you can see by their user ratings. Personally I don’t like to clutter my iPhone with apps I don’t regularly use, so these novelty apps are usually downloaded and played with for a week, maybe less.

I would argue that the key to using free iPhone apps as an effective brand awareness exercise, or as a way to drive physical sales, is not novelty usage.

Take for example the new app from the photography accessories company Joby, who primarily sell Gorillapods – flexible tripods for cameras. They now offer these tripods for mobile devices and with the launch of their new range they’ve made a free app to accompany these accessories. The Gorillacam app has an array of features you’d expect to pay for. It’s certainly not a one trick pony. It has a shot timer, time lapse, rapid-shot mode and a bubble level. There’s this great “press anywhere” mode too, that lets you press the touchscreen anywhere in order to take a photo. This app makes self portraits and photos with your friends really easy, something that’s virtually impossible with the standard iPhone camera app.

I can see myself using the Gorillacam app over and over again. I’ve already placed it beside my other camera apps – apps which I willingly paid for. I would have paid for the GorillaCam app too. I didn’t have to pay for it and in exchange I’ll be seeing the brandname Joby over and over again. I’ll also be constantly reminded of how if I bought a Gorillapod for my iPhone, I could fully utilize the brilliant features of this free app.

I may have initially been triggered with a desire for a sausage sandwich or a can of Coke, but with no motivation to use either app over and over again, the trigger was never reinforced again. With Gorillacam, I’ll be reminded of my interest in their products every time I happily use that free app.

Now that is an effective free, branded, iPhone app.

There’s simply not enough “practice grilling your sausages” apps out there. (#sarcasmfilter) I’m addicted to downloading and playing with free apps, hence
how I come across so many. The Denny iFry sauasages app lasted a whole 5minutes on my iPhone before I deleted it, but yet it managed to elicit quite the girlish giggle. Just look at those sausages! Hehe.

Pat Phelan has been giving away some amazing prizes this week, has raised €1222.00 for the Cancer ward at Crumlins Childrens Hospital and has been busy encouraging the donation of old mobile phones to the Jack & Jill Foundation.

He also made Christmas come early for me yesterday with the delivery of the mystery “nice prize” I won. I had joked on his blog that “This could make the FIRST interesting unboxing video” but I was far too excited to do so. Considering that the mystery turned out to be a lovely little Flip video camera I decided I’d film a quick little video to say thank you. It really *IS* an easy little thing to use, and within 5 minutes of opening it I had the 1 minute .avi file on my computer and ready to upload to youtube (that was the part that took the longest!). You can find my cringe worthy video here (as always with youtube, best viewed in high quality mode).

Following on from Pat’s give-away, Damien Mulley has another competition, in association with a supporter of the foundation. Anyone that donates one or more phones will be entered into a draw to win some more gadgey goodness. Everyone has old mobile phones, so why not put them to some real use? There is even a freepost address you can send them to:

The Jack and Jill Mobile Appeal, Freepost, Ratoath Road, Finglas, Dublin 11.

Just put the phone and charger (if you have it) into a jiffy bag and pop in the post. It couldn’t be simplier. I asked everyone in the house to fish out their old phones (pictured above, along side the Flip camera on it’s tripod) and I’ll be posting them after Christmas.

Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology (IADT) are in the process of recruiting for the fifth year of the Create Digital Media business training and mentoring programme. Create seeks to train and mentor 10 entrepreneurs/employees of small companies on a part-time basis, for one day every month. It’s a 12-month government-financed programme that will train participants in further developing their digital media companies and they are particularly interested in individuals involved in e-commerce, online advertising, mobile media and social media.

Create also offers incubation desk space at the Media Cube on the IADT campus or at the Digital Hub in Dublin City Centre and each selected individual will be assigned an average of €10,000 for customised training and mentoring in business skills related to digital media development of companies, services and products. For more information, visit www.createireland.ie.

Having studied at IADT for 5 years I can’t recommend it enough to prospective students. I’ve always found the college overflowing with highly skilled, extremely engaging and approachable lecturers, who make the learning process effortless. IADT also offer a part-time post graduate programme in Digital Media, the MA/MSc in Digital Media which is currently taking applications.

I’m heading down to Limerick tomorrow, once again, for a conference. Though, I’ve been told that this particular one should be referred to as an “un-conference”. 3Dcamp is a variation on the BarCamp idea of holding user generated conferences – where the attendees provide the content of talks, workshops and demonstrations, unusually focusing on upcoming technologies and developments. The focus of 3Dcamp is “essentially the internet beyond the 2D browser”.

Talks of interest to a Cyberpsychologist?

A talk related to culture and sociability within the virtual world of World of Warcraft .

A demonstration of physical controls for virtual environments, highlighting the use of inexpensive hardware and open source software.

A ubiquitous computing talk outlining interaction design approaches to technologically-enhanced physical environments – e.g. interactive media in public spaces.

A talk focusing on augmented reality – using technology to insert objects into real environments. Brings to mind holograms and a (15ft tall Bill Gates!, but the applications of these future technologies are endless.

Also…

Design guru Sabrina Dent will be discussing how to make money from Second Life. I assume this will be through designing and selling 3D objects.

The M.Sc in Cyberpsychology course coordinator (Dr. Grainne Kirwan) will be discussing some of the current research in Cyberpsychology at 3Dcamp. If anyone is interested in a student perspective of the IADT masters course, there will be 3 of us from the class attending 3Dcamp.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the famous Pedestrian Living Bridge at University Limerick. Fingers crossed the current Iarnród Éireann dispute doesn’t de-rail my plans!

The Irish Times reports today that €252 million euro will be available to schools in Ireland over the next 5 years for computer equipment (link). The National Centre for Technology in Education claims that this is an inadequate fund and it will not be enough to bring schools towards the EU average level. A draft copy of a report questioning this €252 million euro ICT fund makes a number of recommendations that in my opinion are completely disingenuous. Peter Mac Menamin the general secretary of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland points out that thousands of teachers had gone to the trouble of getting ICT training but that the lack of commitment to ICT means that…

“It is like learning to drive – and then sitting into a car with no wheels.”

Essentially the argument is that the lack of high-speed internet connections and modern computer equipment has stopped these thousands of teachers being capable of correctly teaching this subject.

However, even if half the computers in Irish schools are over 4 years old (the Irish Times article points out), this could not possibly stop someone from teaching basic practical computer skills. You also do not need a high-speed Internet connection to teach ICT, yes it would be preferable, but there are plenty of music teachers and language teachers in Irish schools that would greatly benefit from having modern audio equipment, but are more than capable of continuing to teach their classes with the equipment provided to them (i.e. a piano or a tape recorder).

“The Republic has one of the lowest rates of ICT usage in education in the developed world”

Does the report point out the fact that the ICT training provided to teachers is possibly inadequate? That ICT is still not a Junior or Leaving Certificate subject? (Interestingly enough, Greek, Hebrew and Classical Studies continue to be). As ICT is not a subject at either Junior or Leaving Cert. examination level, there is no need to be qualified in the field. If you want to teach English, Irish, French, Maths etc., you must first have your primary degree in these topics and this is not the case with ICT. Yet, it is a topic that is difficult to teach and requires plenty of experience. Otherwise you end up teaching a class of students irrelevant information, rather than the practical ICT skills needed in a modern workplace. Yes, there is the Junior Certificate cycle subject “Technology” but this seems to be a mixed bag of technical drawing and some kind of model making and electronics.

Why can’t part of this €252 million euro be used to provide schools with 1 full-time ICT teacher? Why not allow I.T graduates to get their Higher Diploma in Education and then employee them full-time. They would also be able to provide much needed technical support and ICT consultation, ultimately saving schools money as they would no longer have to pay unnecessary fees to outside firms when a computer crashes or a piece of software needed updating. I.T graduates could also save schools money by implementing the open source software initiative.

I would argue that it is not like sitting in a car with no wheels. It is more like taking a short course in French, and then being asked to teach it to a mixed class of students who already speak it fluently, and those who only know how to say…

“Il est sur ma page de Bebo.”

Take, for example, my own experience with ICT in secondary school. Yes, we were lucky enough to be provided with two computer rooms with rows upon rows of computers, an adequate Internet connection (that sometimes worked) and a couple of the math and science teachers were sent on ICT skills training. The actual ICT classes we received taught some basic typing skills, using Microsoft Word to create an assortment of projects, the ins and outs of computer hardware and how to use “skoool.ie”. Not exactly the most practical set of skills.

However, as lucky as we were, the teachers that had been sent on these ICT courses were usually too busy with their main classes to actually teach us and we’d be left in a room full of computers with nothing but mischief to get up to. Even when a teacher was present, they were completely unaware of the fact that I had taught the class not only how to write and reply to the boys from the local boy’s secondary school, but also how to make sure the teachers didn’t find out about it.

According to my younger brother, still in secondary school, not much has changed since I’ve left school. Just like me before him, he gains nothing from these ICT classes and has instead channeled his boredom into finding plenty of non-Bebo methods of sending “innocent” messages across the Internet to other secondary school classes, albeit classes full of teenage girls.

A relatively inexpensive wireless technology that has been developed by Intel, with underdeveloped countries in mind, could work for rural Ireland.

The new technology can extend a wi-fi signal between two antennas up to a maximum of 96 miles. Considering Ireland is only about 190 miles wide, why not implement this kind of system? Rather than forcing Irish rural and island internet users to connect via ridiculously expensive satellite systems or leaving them lagging behind on dial-up.

Will someone please let the Department of “Communications” know about this, because according to Silicon Republic (and everyone else in the country) Ireland is below the EU Broadband average, and it’s all down to the rural “deficit”.

New Zealand company Simtrix have developed a novel alternative to the trackpad. It has the overall usability of a mouse but doesn’t restrict you to the tiny surface of a trackpad, by using the surface of your laptop (keyboard) as a mousepad. The tiny Swiftpoint “Slider” mouse can be tucked under your thumb, which allows you to very quickly switch between typing and navigating.

See it in action here (link: BBC news video).

For someone that does as much typing (some of this may or may not be chatting) whilst browsing the internet (all in the name of research of course), this would be a godsend. Not only would this replace my completely worn down trackpad and mini usb travel mouse, I can see this completely replacing any mouse I would ever think of using. Being able to switch between typing and navigating at such ease would be bliss.

I must have one of these. Immediately.

I keep on coming across the same Pat Phelan reaction to the iPhone pricing and wondering…

Am I the only one who has ever noticed how expensive ALL of the mobile phone tariffs are (especially the data charges), on ALL of the networks in Ireland, in comparison to the U.K? The phone prices are also very different, and the range of phones.

It’s nothing to do with the iPhone itself, it’s the same old adage in this country it’s “what the market can bare” rather than “best value for money”. O2 keeps its prices high because they can, and people are still going to buy the iPhone despite the download cap and excessive pricing.

As far back as September 2007 I suggested that those desperate for an iPhone would be better off with an iPod Touch instead. The iPod Touch has everything the iPhone has except it’s not a phone (though the iPhone isn’t exactly brilliant at being an actual phone – no MMS messaging, difficult SMS input etc.,) oh and let’s not forget that the iPod Touch doesn’t have that god awful 2 megapixel camera, what a loss.

Buying the iPod Touch is even better advice today because of the Joikuspot Software. Or, you could take Pat Phelan’s advice and go to the North, buy the iPhone and get it unlocked to use on any network. But that means being stuck in an 18-month contract and paying a monthly fee for minutes you will never get (though I doubt this is possible as you need to be a resident of the U.K to sign up to a mobile contract IN the U.K).

Even if you DO have an unlocked iPhone and use it on another network – you will still have to pay the high prices for Edge mobile data, so what’s the point?