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Delighted to collaborate with Cushelle to focus on upcycling and engaging kids to make toys for pets. My sons LOVE their canine aunt and have such fun playing with her, but also know their toys need to be different. Buying...

The post Best pet toys you can make with kids at home easily appeared first on EvinOK.

DAUGHTER MIA (below with her bear) turns 13 in nine months time and Twitter tells me I've been tweeting for the past 13 years. This means there's a cluster of tweets announcing Mia's birth to accompany a set of photos I've snapped and saved on Flickr (possibly requiring password access for casual readers).

I was blogging for a decade before I started tweeting and I hope to consolidate all my 20th century blog items into the content management system of my Typepad service before the end of 2020 because I consider all these online musings to be like a hidden wing of a personal library. However, a simple site search returns a smattering of what was on my mind in December 2006 when I was using both the well-oiled Jaiku and the creaky Twitter at the same time on my Nokia handset. By drilling into my blog's archives, I've discovered that half of my links are rotten. I need to fix that or at least unlink the dead ones. More importantly, I need to get serious about archiving hundreds of gigabytes of images and audio that I have on removeable storage. Some of that content could restore the dead links on my blog. The material offers a snapshot of early Irish tweeting--something that the Internet Archive didn't capture since the Wayback Machine doesn't gather rich media objects.

Here are some interesting snippets the archive told me.

-- On the day I joined Twitter, I shared my current online reading list. In 2006, more than 100 people read my blog every day. The daily traffic count on my blog is only a third of that total now (you can see the stats). Today, a minimum of 200 people read every Instagram post I make and Twitter analytics tells me 200-400 people see every short video clip I post in 2019.

-- A search for "best podcasts" with the Microsoft Live search engine returned content I had created for podcasting.ie, a domain I relinquished when I failed to renew it.

-- I was slinging a Tom Bihn bag over my shoulder in 2006 so I could carry a DSLR with me for night shots like blue lights all around Cashel where we lived.

-- One of the reasons I had time to join and tweet was I had read all 2,000 of my feeds in Google Reader (RIP). I ported all those feeds into Inoreader where the feed flow is much less intense nowadays.

-- Most of the journalists I followed in December 2006 still wrote for print editions. Within four years, the first publishing imperative had changed to pixels from print and several prominent Irish titles had folded.

-- Everybody read Damien Mulley's blog in 2006.

-- Gartner said blogging was peaking in late 2006 and through 2007.

-- Yahoo Answers provided better info than Google, according to surveys.

-- Tipperary Tourism was creating its first website but maps didn't figure a major part in it.

-- We were laying down tiles in our Cashel home in 2006. We're doing the same thing in our home in Clonmel in 2019.

[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative media for business on the Clonmel Digital Campus. You can see the screencaps from Twitter that he has saved over the years.]

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

Still fewer than 100,000 tweets.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

And Moleskine.

Bernie Goldbach posted a video:

From the totally excellent NYT Interactive

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

Cutting and fitting

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

Think. Do. Say. Heard about it from @mitchjoel

WHILE LOOKING THROUGH listings of best apps and games of 2019, I discovered I'm running a few of the top-rated items worthy of editors' choices and winners of peoples' choice awards as well.

Best iPhone Game

Sky: The Children of the Light from thatgamecompany (screenshot above). Pro Tips: Sound is more than half of the experience. Kids using this app need to know how to read.

Best iPhone App

AI-powered Spectre camera (makes your camera app much smarter than you). Sprectre Camera enhances the useful life of our iPhone 8. I'll add images snapped by Spectre Camera to my iPhone album on Flickr (above).

Best iPad App

Flow by Moleskine incorporates all the 2019 design language you'd expect from the best app for iPad in 2019. It also introduced a First World Problem for us--we need the Apple Pencil to enjoy Flow's best effects. And long-time readers will know I'm a full-on hands-on Moleskine user.

Best Android apps

Ablo but we're not using Ablo. Instead, the family plans to continue with Marco Polo and limit global conversations to family living five to eight time zones away.

Glitch Video Effects

Best Android Game

Call of Duty: Mobile is one of the apps we will dive into during an upcoming module I teach to Game Art Designers. And why not? Call of Duty is the iconic first-person shooter all game art advocates need to explore.

[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative media for business on the Clonmel Digital Campus for the Limerick Institute of Technology. You can buy him a coffee and chat about apps and games and more--like checking out his secret Moleskine collection (sneak peek below).]

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

It's Sky, a very sweet iPhone Game.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

More about Call of Duty: Mobile.

Amy and Cara interviewed members of the panel discussion from today’s Leargus Forum. The panel was made up of Conor Galvin (UCD), Cristina Iancu and Dean Murray (NYCI Young Voices), Kieran Brosnan (Holy Family Senior School) and Tony Geudens (SALTO Inclusion).  In the panel discussion many themes were raised and we teased those out with the panel members in the interview. These themes were:

• The rise of hate speech and what we can do to counteract .
• The need to engage with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.
• The need to provide young people like ourselves with a voice.
• The impact that youth groups have had on some of you and the young people you work with .

Amy and Cara,

Youth Media Team.

Cara and Amy interviewed Councillor Hazel Chu from Dublin City Council. In the interview she spoke about her background as an Irish born child to immigrant parents. Hazel told us how she was the first in her family to get second and third level education. She explained how she became a Councillor and the work she undertakes in this role. She then shared her thoughts on today’s theme “An Inclusive Europe- Stronger Together”. Finally, she spoke of the importance of events like today.

Cara and Amy,
Youth Media Team.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

Observed while animators study films on the Clonmel Digital Campus.

Bernie Goldbach posted a photo:

Dylan Goldbach, Beaver Scout

As an American living in Ireland, I have had to adapt to Thanksgiving Thursday being just another day. I shared my thoughts on this several years ago in an article in The Irish Examiner. Today, I’m not reflecting on my...

The post Your Guide to American Thanksgiving History, Recipes, and Crafts appeared first on EvinOK.

WE VISITED SWEET CAROLINE'S in Clonmel and sampled delicious cupcakes chased by warm coffee. And you should too.

Listen to "Memory Mic and Cupcakes E477" on Spreaker.

We recorded our impressions using the Sennheiser Memory Mic and it did a fantastic job of capturing the impressions of visitors from Hungary, France, and the United States. You can hear more about lovely local places to visit around our Clonmel Digital Campus by following the suggestions in an Office Sway we're creating on the theme of Clonmel's Unique Selling Point.

[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative media for business on the Clonmel Digital Campus for the Limerick Institute of Technology.]

WE'RE APPROACHING THE END of another deep analysis of reading and listening patterns online. If you've figured out how to drive listeners while attracting readers, you've discovered a slice of business intelligence that I would love to see.

Besides correlating the incidence of high amounts of listeners to high numbers of readers, I'm also trying to optimise the workflow so the two output channels (text and audio) complement one another. These ideas are part of Topgold Audio Clip 476.

Listen to "Correlations In Workflow E476" on Spreaker.

Spoiler Alert: My strongest correlations directly connect trending topics on Twitter (possibly clickbait) and mentions from influencers to written and spoken content.

Previously: Integrating O365 Workflow Ideas", January 4, 2016.

Pro Tips:

1. Wavve is the best service I've found to quickly extract and share the spoken word. It works on my Android phone and on my Windows desktop. If you're running iOS and Mac OS, you have more options.

2. To quickly produce high quality visual content, it's difficult to surpass the always-iterating Canva, the app and web service recommended by several of the most successful creative media graduates I've met in the 21st century.

Topgold's Most Popular Image Today is snapped in New York City:

[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative media for business on the Clonmel Digital Campus of the Limerick Institute of Technology.]

Picture it, Brussels 2012. We took our then 10-month-old Optimus for a trip. I packed just the chest carrier and left the big jogging stroller (or buggy as it’s called in Ireland/UK) at home. As a tiny baby, it was...

The post How to Clean Your Stroller/Buggy appeared first on EvinOK.

Bernie Goldbach posted a video:

Hear it wherever fine podcasts drop.