If you’re like me, passionate about everything web related but can’t justify spending €100′s on conferences like FOWA or Build then you probably love barcamps as much as I do.

You’ll also love the free web technology conference – the dot conf - being hosted by the National College of Ireland on July 22nd. It’s a fantastic opportunity to go and listen to some industry experts and a great way for NCI to promote their new MSc in Web Technologies course.

There is a diverse list of speakers, from journalists, educators, web professionals and technology advocates – all experts in their fields. As well as some “deep dive” sessions (hands-on workshops).

Personally I’m really looking forward to checking out the National E-learning Laboratory, who recently published some pretty interesting data on what Irish people pay attention to when using Facebook.

Conferences like these are a great networking opportunity (especially if you are self employed or “between projects” at the moment). Bring you business cards and wear your hottest geek tshirt, you just never know who you might bump into.

NCI is based in the IFSC – possibly one of the easiest places to get to in Dublin, so there’s no excuse not to attend.

Rather than breaking with tradition, having attended and very much enjoyed 3Dcamp in both 2008 and 2009, I will be attending again this year. Luckily the venue is a bit closer to home. The Institute of Technology, Tallaght to be exact. So I’ll be jumping on a relatively quick Luas (instead of the usual two hour train to Limerick) on Saturday (29th of May 2010) and attending some of the great talks on offer.

Though my direction may have changed recently I still have a personal interest in 3D, augmented reality and Location based Services. Also, it’s good business sense to keep up to date with these emerging technology trends.

Talks of Interest to me?

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… My extensive background in Psychology gives me an insight into human behaviour, in particular online, which will be of great use to me during my work at RedFly, which I am very much looking forward to starting.

I just published my first blog post on the Redfly Marketing Blog.

I’m over the moon to have moved into an industry I can be proud to be apart of and a company I know has a fantastic future ahead of it.

I had set myself a challenge to swap my iPhone for a HTC Legend for a whole week and I completely failed. After day 4 struggling with what had evolved into over-complexity I just gave up and happily retreated back to the “evil” non-open source iPhone and heavily policed iTunes.

During this experiment I also had to discontinue using the Meteor network due the 2G to 3G handover problem (there’s a neat little video demonstrating this here) which left with me with no signal far too many times, but the phone worked perfect on O2. Hoping Meteor can fix that issue promptly, as many other HTC users are reporting this issue in the customer forums.

Day 4 With my Android

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I went along to a Meteor blogger event yesterday where we chatted about their new pay as you go data charges (250mb free if you top up by €20 per month, as well as free  Meteor texts – not bad at all) and us bloggers got to try out all the iPhone alternatives you could shake a stick at. They also sent me home with a HTC Legend.

Only last week I had tweeted about how I really wanted to try out an Android handset to do a compare and contrast against the iPhone. I usually change my phone on a yearly basis, and my iPhone 3G is nearing its first birthday, so trying out an alternative is a great way for me to discover if I should stick with Apple or not.

Before I got my iPhone a year ago I had always been a huge Nokia fan, what changed my mind was trying out Jen’s iPhone (she’s an avid Apple fan, so of course she had one months before me) as I was simply blown away by the web browsing experience, something that previous Nokia smartphones (running the Symbian operating system) I had owned simply didn’t compare to.

First Impressions of Android

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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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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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I’m surprised the phrase “Couldn’t sleep last night.” has yet to trend on Twitter, it’s certainly a common tweet I see in the mornings during my commute to work. Not only that, flicking back through the wee hours of my stream it’s also pretty common to see “Still can’t get to sleep.” appearing at 3am.

I would argue that if you’re tweeting, you’re certainly not trying to sleep or doing what’s good for your body in preparation for shutting down for a few hours. I myself have suffered some restless nights and made a real effort to combat the problem, rather than accepting it and suffering through more zombie like days in the office.

Turn Off Your Computer 30 Minutes Before Sleep

If you’re suffering from occasional difficulty getting to sleep at night you should consider the effects of using a computer late at night. Studies have shown that the brain remains stimulated after using a computer (or watching television), which in turn makes your sleep restless. The simple act of shutting down the computer 30 minutes before you’re planning on going to sleep can help relax you.

Research has also shown that the bright light of your computer monitor (let’s also not forget that mobile phone screens also produce a bright light) suppresses the production of our sleep hormone melatonin. If you are suffering from an especially bad case of insomnia then try shutting down the computer at least two hours before planning on going to bed.

Though you may enjoy the calming effects of using the computer, your brain on the other hand is thinking “light = daytime”. Staring at your computer screen means keeping yourself alert and wide-awake and returning online to complain about your inability to sleep is simply aggravating the problem.

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A quick request from a final year MSc Cyberpsychology student, it would be great if you could fill out his quick survey for his post graduate thesis and also forward this on to any Irish Facebook users over the age of 24.

My name is Graham and I am doing a thesis on Facebook usage. The following is a link to a secure survey that I have made, asking basic Facebook usage questions and also incorporating a short personality questionnaire.

Open The Survey In A New Window

The whole survey will take no more than five minutes to do and is completely confidential; I can assure you that it is also anonymous. You need only type your initials. I would really appreciate it if you could find the time to do it, as I am struggling to get the required numbers. The only stipulation is that you are Irish, over 24, and have a facebbok profile. Thanking you in advance.

Graham Gilbert
Final Year MSc Cyberpsychology student at IADT

I’m rather interested in the results of this study and hopefully will be able to share the results of Graham’s study with you next year.