I was quite literally speechless on Saturday night when I heard I was a joint winner for Best Technology Blog at the Irish Blog Awards. I grabbed the fantastic Made In Hollywood “winner” tombstone (celebrating the death of blogging of course) as I was happier to prance away with that and let 3 time nominee, first time winner, Pat Phelan take the trophy home – a really well deserved winner. Though admittedly I’m looking forward to my own trophy making its way home.

In the past year my blog has transitioned from being considered a personal blog to a technology blog, but honestly I don’t think I could ever really separate the two. Since a really young age technology has been an integral part of my daily life and this blog has been my outlet for my passion for all things technology related, especially in the last year what with the publication of my blogging research,  subsequent end of my college course on Cyberpsychology and search for related employment.

I’m completely unable to express my passion for technology during my current full time job and if it wasn’t for blogging I imagine that passion might have wavered. I’m extremely thankful for blogging because of this and also because it has brought me to incredible events like the Irish Blog Awards and allowed me meet so many wonderful people, like the gorgeous ladies in the photo below.

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Back when I was studying for my degree and my masters I always got really excited about any project or essay that allowed me to read and reference the work of Dr. Jennifer Preece. If you have studied interaction design you will no doubt have come across her book “Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction” but the work of Dr. Preece that always completely absorbed me was her perspectives on the relationship between usability and sociability, particularly the impact of usability on the design and management of online communities.

If I could choose any person to be my research mentor it would be Dr. Preece. This woman has a 35 page CV online describing her incredible academic career. As early as 1975 she was working on e-learning initiatives in the UK and after completing her PhD studies in 1985 she pursued research focused on ground-breaking topics such as information systems, computer mediated communication, human?computer interaction, and online communities. She eventually moved to the USA in 1996 to lecture in the University of Maryland Baltimore County, in the Information Systems Department. Today she is the Dean of this department, supporting a long list of PhD students. Her work has taken her all around the globe, she has published hundreds of papers and authored numerous HCI books. She has achieved so much, in what had been a traditionally male dominated field. Her career is certainly something to aspire to.

The Only Real Social Media Expert

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There was a story online today that pointed out a rise in simultaneous television viewing and internet usage in the US. I must admit this didn’t surprise me as I often witness both of my younger siblings stretched out on the couches at home with their netbooks and the remote control. They’re passively consuming two forms of media at once – clearly neither is interesting enough to encompass their full interest, but TV has always been considered a passive form of media and multitasking on a computer isn’t a new phenomena. However, I do wonder if this increasing trend has anything to do with the lowering quality of TV shows, reality TV doesn’t really require concentration to follow a plot line, if there is one.

My own relationship with TV has dramatically changed these last few years. Thanks to technology I now have the ability to set aside one evening a week to sit down and watch a few hours of selected TV shows (mostly American imports). I would very rarely sit down in front of the TV and just flick through the channels searching for something to watch, invariably there isn’t anything on that interests me. Instead I choose to sit at my computer, engaging fully with online media, creating content and absorbing information.

The downside of this setup is that I miss out on those opportunistic TV nuggets – those wonderful documentaries on completely random topics that are incredibly interesting but contain sets of knowledge that I would never have actively sought out by myself.

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Whilst Microsoft are busy tweaking Office 2010, the beta versions of which can be downloaded from here, the rest of us are still coming to grips with the changes they made back in 2007 to that staple of home and office computers.

The bold interface changes made to Office 2007, once you get used to it, is actually much better than its predecessors especially because of its incredible attention to mouseless navigation. However, after a conversation I had with a friend during the week I realised that the changes are still frustrating for someone that only uses the software occasionally and has the old Office navigation drilled into their subconscious.

Luckily there’s a free and easy plugin for that.

UBitMenu is a free plugin that literally brings back the classic menu and toolbars to Word, Powerpoint and Excel. Once installed you’ll notice an addition to the Office ribbon, called “Menu”, which you will find nestled between “Home” and “Insert”. Clicking “Menu” will bring you most of the old 2003 menu options arranged just the way you remember them. It’s free for home use and only €10 for commercial use. The plugin will even work in Office 2010, which hasn’t deviated much from the Office 2007 interface design.

If you want to add even more options to Microsoft Office, why not try the OfficeTab plugin – which enables you to navigate multiple open documents the same way you would webpages in Firefox or IE7. Very nifty.

The Irish Blog Awards finalists list was published last night and I’m delighted to see so many familiar and deserving blogs and bloggers having made it to the final judging round. Next weekend in Galway is going to a lot of fun. I’m pleased to report that my own blog made it to the finals, in the “Best Technology Blog/Blogger” category. The full list of finalists in this category are below, as you’ll see the competition is incredibly tough and I’m proud to be put along side these amazing blogs/bloggers. Thanks to Bitbuzz who are sponsoring the category and thanks to Damien Mulley for organising another piss up awards.

Best Technology Blog/Blogger

– Sponsored by Bitbuzz

• The Gaming Liberty
• Pat Phelan
• Matt Johnston
• Sinead Cochrane
• Web2Ireland

Thanks to Steph for the graphic/badge.

Psychology is all about understanding, explaining, and predicting human behavior. We are fascinated by our own behaviour and those of us around us. By understanding behaviour we hope to gain insights into how our minds work and perhaps how to change our undesirable behaviour. An understanding of human behaviour can also lead to the design of good software, hardware and even guide policy writing relating to technology.

These days technology like the iPhone helps us to track our own personal habits, Twitter gives us an insight into popular topics and analytics give us fascinating web usage statistics. Whilst technology has greatly enhanced our ability to collect interesting data about human behaviour, it’s important to realise that using such data to make conclusions about why we behave in such a way is unwise without investigating the differences between causality and correlation. Take for example the problematic question of whether the Internet is addictive or if addicts use the Internet.

The Relationship Between Psychology and Technology

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eBay has really evolved over the years and has quickly become my favourite place to shop online. It should no longer be considered a place for second hand junk or bidding wars, it’s now a place of true commerce with options to “buy it now” or to even haggle with a seller by “making an offer”.

Instead perhaps consider eBay as a gigantic 24hour outlet mall that’s filled with stores like Schuh, that are just desperate to get rid of last season’s Converse. It’s also populated with independent retailers, that can’t afford the online high street rents but compete with the larger stores like Amazon by offering you brilliant price reductions on new products. Then there are the niche stores/individuals that sell really rare or unique items like the HP battery I got for my 5 year old laptop (€36.99 with free P&P from Hong Kong) or my new Vans with the black soles and purple/black checkered pattern (€45 including P&P from Germany, the same price as the high street but very rare so totally worth it).

However, shopping online isn’t easy. It can be time consuming and frustrating. There are just too many choices, and far too many links to click to get to what you’re really looking for. There are just too many variables involved. So I thought I’d write up a few suggestions on how, as an Irish consumer, you can really utilise eBay.

How To Get The Best Out Of

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While everyone else online has been overreacting about how “annoying” or “pointless” Google Buzz is I’ve been busy trying it out, having some fun and discovering something I like.

I was replying to a Google Latitude friend request at lunchtime and realised something pretty interesting. I can update my Buzz status from within the mobile versions of many of the Google webapps, including Gmail, Gtalk, Docs, Calendar, Tasks, and of course Latitude. It’s just a real pity that it’s currently missing from the Google service I use most regularly on my iPhone – Google Reader. Except that I can of course share items I read on Google Reader to Buzz, along with or without a comment.

If Google roll out this little feature across all of the mobile versions of their products they’ll be bringing a tiny bit of multi-tasking to the iPhone. Being able to update your status from within the webpage you’re on (and not having to go through the process of either switching between Safari pages, or closing Safari and going into Tweetie and then back to Safari again – both relatively  slow processes on the iPhone) is something very interesting. This will bring a little bit more of the desktop browsing experience to your iPhone and will work great on the iPad. Also, the little colourful icon always on the top of your webpage is a great reminder of the service you’re forgetting to play with.

It will take time to see if Google Buzz pays off, but for now I hope someone takes this little iPhone webapp multitasking work-around and implements it for Twitter, or someone in Facebook realises how nice it would be to be able to update your status from any page within the site.