Doug Belshaw

Researcher/Analyst, JISC infoNet & Director, Synechism Ltd.

1. Who are you, and what do you do?

I’m Doug Belshaw and I work at Northumbria University where JISC infoNet are hosted. I’ve also recently started an educational consultancy called Synechism Ltd and am co-kickstarter of Purpos/ed. At heart I’m an educator interested particularly in social justice issues, digital literacies, mobile learning and open educational resources. Prior to that I worked in schools and academies as Director of e-Learning and taught History for seven years.

2. What hardware are you using?

I’m pretty much attached to either my iPhone 4 or (work-provided) early-2010 MacBook Pro most of the time. Occasionally I break out my iPad (original wifi version) but I prefer my Kindle for reading. I write in Moleskine notebooks and then scan them in so that they’re available to me digitally anywhere, using the Tim Ferriss method of indexing. At work, although I try to use my MacBook Pro as much as possible, I’ve just had my work machine upgraded to a fairly decent spec (AMD Athlon II X2 3Ghz with 4GB RAM and Windows 7). Multiple desktops are a must – I run dual monitors on my work PC and six virtual desktops via Spaces on the MacBook Pro.

3. And what software?

I experiment with software regularly, but my staple apps and webapps are the following. I’m not a big fan of email, but GMail (I’ve got 5 accounts) makes life more bearable – as does the Sparrow app. I’ve found that Xobni makes Outlook bearable. My job would be a lot harder without Skype for interviewing and catching up with people and TweetDeck for keeping my finger on the pulse (I’m also a big fan of LinkedIn Signal, Google+ and Quora for this). I’m a lot less frustrated regarding passwords now that I’ve transferred wholesale to LastPass.

Dropbox keeps my files in sync between my machines, and I just love the fact that I can send a link to a large file in there from the iPhone app wherever I am. Google Apps is a wonderful service and I’m a massive fan of Google Calendar – I’m so much more organised due to its reminder functions. For keeping up with RSS feeds I use Feedly, which is a front end for Google Reader. I flirt with Evernote from time to time, using it sporadically but I’m still grappling with how to use it effectively. Licorize is my go-to place to store bits of digital things.

Shorter writing tends to be via WordPress or Google Docs, with longer stuff powered by Scrivener, with which I’ve been writing my doctoral thesis. Papers is a godsend for organising academic journal articles. I’ve recently downloaded iA Writer for the iPad which looks useful – I’m going to have to get myself the offical keyboard. If I’m presenting I’ll use Keynote, which I find to be a wonderfully useful tool. Despite having Adobe CS5 provided through work, I mainly use Keynote and Seashore for image creation and editing. If I’m brainstorming I’ll use XMind.

Spotify, Last.fm and SomaFM provide the tunes to which I listen for most of my waking hours. I also listen to a lot of podcasts whilst commuting and doing tasks that don’t require much in the way of creativity. I’ve recently come across the DownCast iPhone app which making this a more positive and hassle-free experience (it downloads podcasts in the background).

I’m not a paranoid person, but I do subscribe to iPREDator, a VPN provided by the people behind The Pirate Bay as well as using PeerGuardian. I notice that my download speeds – and not just by Bittorrent (for which I use Vuze) – are much increased when BT don’t know which sites I’m connecting to. There’s other tools that make my life easier like Cloud.app, Timey and Cinch as well as other webapps I haven’t mentioned like Posterous, Amplify, Delicious, Greplin, Flickr, ImageStamper, Huffduffer, Instapaper (love the auto-send-to-Kindle feature!)

Right now I’m alternating between Google Chrome and nightly builds of Webkit, but up until recently was using Rockmelt as my browser. I’m a bit of a browser tart.

4. What would be your dream setup?

I’d love a Mac Pro. A geeky aim in life for me is for any app to load on my Mac without it ‘bouncing’ in the dock. That would be awesome. I’d also love a 30″ Apple Cinema display, but that probably isn’t happening anytime soon. I’d also love not to have to go into the office every day and be able to work remotely from something like an OfficePOD at home. I’ve got a study, but it’s a garage conversion so can be loud and is too much part of the house to be productive. For now, I’ll have to make do with coffee shops (where I’m able, bizarrely, to get in the zone).

Usually new mobile phones are known about well in advance of their launch. Everything from specs to early reviews are made available in order to create a buzz around the product. For example, a couple of years ago I was sent an LG Shine and encouraged (although not instructed) to take photos of it and blog about it. With the Dell Streak, however, apart from a great video at jkkmobile I stumbled across on the night before it was released in the UK, I’d heard nothing about it!

Full specs of the device can be found here, but the highlights are that it’s an Android tablet/smartphone hybrid with a 5″ screen. Yes, five inch! :-p

Let’s just get past the two (related) questions I’ve been asked most frequently over the last couple of weeks:

1. Is it too big?
2. Don’t you feel a bit stupid putting it to your ear to, you know, make phone calls?

My responses:

1. It’s certainly on the upper limit of what counts as a phone size wise. Some, undoubtedly, will find it too big. But given that I tended to use my iPhone more for Twitter and other internet based activities than for phone calls, I don’t!
2. It’s not Dom Joly size and I don’t really suffer from self esteem issues anyway. As for people who think that phones should only be able to make phone calls, get back in your cave please…

Things I really like:

• The whole experience and speed of the device makes it über-slick
• Spotify, Dropbox and other official apps are better (to my mind) than their iPhone counterparts
• The size of the screen makes everything… just better
• It’s really quite thin
• Several virtual desktops means you can organize your stuff
• I don’t have to jail break it to set it up the way I want it
• Widgets provide real-time updates
• The camera is legendary and the in-phone editing functions are actually useful
• It’s got a ‘gorilla glass’ screen – check out this video showing it being torture-tested!

Things I’m not so keen on:

• The placement of headphone socket
• Volume buttons alter up or down depending on orientation (confusing!)
• You can’t delete things (e.g. emails) by swiping
• It’s not running the latest version of Android (v1.6)
• Proprietary power/ sync cable
• Current lack of third party support (eg cases, speakers, other add ons)
• The quality of sound recording when shooting video isn’t gerat

Stuff other reviews might not tell you:

• As with the iPhone, music stops playing when you remove the headphones
• Sometimes tasks don’t shut by themselves and drain your battery (a force close app is pretty much essential)
• It’s not really possible to use the Streak with one hand whilst walking for texting, etc.
• With Android apps you’ve got 24 hours to get a refund if you don’t like it or it didn’t perform as you expected
• The power cable is similar to the iPhone’s in that the USB end plugs into the power cable

10 apps that are awesome on the Streak:

I’m happy to answer any questions you’ve got – including making another video, so ask away!

(click to enlarge)

I created it using Keynote 09. Feel free to download the file and create your own! :-p

Before you ask, I used Keynote, part of iWork 09. It’s a wonderful drawing package!

It’s available as a free download as an e-book or to purchase (as cost price) as a physical book from Lulu.com:

And yes, it’s uncopyrighted as well.

Free copies

I’ve ordered 10 copies and am going to be giving them away for free to the following (UK-based) people who have helped and inspired me this year (in alphabetical order):

1. Dai Barnes (for his help with EdTechRoundUp)
2. Lisa Stevens (for being a cheerful, caring sort of person)
3. Nick Dennis (for being my partner-in-crime on various projects)
4. Stuart Ridout (for his help with the upcoming #movemeon book)
5. Tom Barrett (for being a truly inspirational educator and collaborator)

Over and above these I’ll be giving some to members of my family, so I’ll have 2 spare to give away. If you’d like one of these, please leave a comment below explaining why!  Thanks to those who requested a copy in the comments below – the two that were up for grabs are going to Daniel Dainty & Julian Wood! :-p

I was surprised that Laura Walker’s blog post of her (successful) expression of interest in the ‘Director of E-Learning position at her school was in first place. I was pleased for her, and for Dan Stucke – another Director of E-Learning – whose blog post also featured on the front page.

But… where am I? It sounds a bit egotistical, I know, but I was kind of expecting to be there too. Where’s the link to my Director of E-Learning interview blog post? Some may construe this blog post as a blatant attempt to point out to Google that I’m a Director of E-Learning too, thank you very much and to get my name on that front page.

You’d be right.

6. I have a rather dry sense of humour. More like Martini Extra Dry, in fact…

7. I’m not great at geography. Unlike my wife Hannah, who has top-down maps of places in her head, I can still get lost using a combination of my Sat-Nav and GPS feature of Google Maps on my iPhone. On the other hand, at any given time I could probably tell you pretty accurately which way is North, South, East or West. Bizarre.

dougbelshaw.com/blog/shp

If all goes well, we’re planning to broadcast the second session (10.30am BST, Sunday 6th July 2008) live over the Internet via UStream. The broadcast will appear in the box below and at this URL and will be recorded for later viewing.

Obviously I’m not going to link to a Google Map showing exactly where we live. I don’t want to give the SWAT teams too easy a time…

Home broadband will be installed in a few weeks’ time due to issues I won’t go into, but for the meantime I’m very happy with mobile broadband access on a pay-as-you-go basis via the 3 network. I’m sharing the connection obtained through HSDPA with Hannah courtesy of our Macbooks’ Airport feature.

Life Chez Belshaw is peachy. No non-human/animal/bird created noise. Rolling fields. A 19th century mill within our grounds. What more could I ask for?

Why did I do this? Well the reason I did it today is because I’ve been off work due to illness. I must have a bug or something as I feel rough. The reason I decided to make it look the way it does is for the following reasons:

• teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk had 3 columns and I found it helpful to be able to have two sidebars – more useful content near the top of the page!
• It now features the avatar I use in most places online (a South Park character I created here)
• My Twitter updates are now even more prominent. That’s significant as I spend a good deal of time interacting with people in my network. Now I just need a place to integrate the conversations, rather than just my side of them…

Please do feel free to give me some feedback on the redesign. I am aware, for instance, that it takes a while to load the page. Is that a big issue? :-s