This is another thing I had to do since a long time of which I underestimated the importance at least from a marketing point of view: I mean adding subtitles to my Netc@fé TV interview.
Technically they’re actually captions, since I added them using Windows Media Encoder 9 tools. For the occasion I even re-encoded the videos at a higher quality.
I impressed a lot of friends when I showed them my Netc@fé interview, especially on the Pocket PC, but the occasional visitor easily misses it because he has to browse the site a bit to find it and once he finds it he can’t understand the words if it doesn’t know Italian. So that explains the work on the English subtitles and that hint to the visitor in a hurry at the top of the page.
By transcribing the interview I liked in particular the questions at the end of the last part of the interview, when Gabriele asks me about the prices and the spreading of PDAs with a bit of skepticism. Well, we are the country of mobile phones after all, as he often says, and we still have much difficulty to understand the true potential of PDAs not only as personal organizers but also as mini computers, at least compared to other countries. That may change quickly as PDAs with phone capabilities and new Smartphones will start to spread out.
I think my last resolute statements will hold some true even for the next Christmases, who knows?
You may also notice on the left column of this page I just adopted the Creative Commons license model for the contents of the website and the link to Firefox, the only browser I’m now using on my workstation.
I even ordered a custom CC shirt from Ken Mickles at GiantRobotPrinting.com. I’ll take a picture of it once it’ll be here.
Enjoy the videos and stay tuned for more hot news about Ecpc.

Update: we’re almost there, Ecpc 1.4 will be released in a few days. In the meantime you can read my latest articles about the Loox 720 and the Microsoft Genuine Advantage anti-piracy program published here on the local daily newspaper.

It’s just a word joke, but now that a Fujitsu Siemens Pocket Loox 720 is in my hands I can give a serious answer to that question: the Look rocks, definitely!
It was a while I was examining the latest VGA Pocket PC models to prepare for the next purchase and when I read about the Loox 720 and its exceptional overall features in various reviews I decided that was the one I had to get although my wallet wouldn’t have agreed as much as my will.
“What a display!” has been the recurring first exclamation when I showed it to friends during the last week, but from the best VGA LCD on the market to the loudspeaker positioned on the front side there are a lot of killer features inside this limousine among current PDAs.
I got it from Clove Technology, who on my request were kind enough to check for any dead pixels on the LCD before shipping it. The Italian version should be available in February from Trilogy, although I really hope to see more stuff and accessories for the Loox from this new Italian shop soon enough.
In fact the first thing I’m going to add is a screen protector to guard such a punch in the eyes!
Then a nice case, then who knows, surely any useful software optimized for VGA. I’ll write more about it, but the first big impression I got is that VGA is the future. I purchased my first Pocket PC to be able to increase my productivity being able to read documents away from my workstation, so now with 4x times the resolution of a QVGA Pocket PC you can imagine my joy in reading docs on the Loox!
Of course I’ve already installed the useful GAPI speed up driver hack by Picard and SE_VGA which is invaluable when using PIE to browse the Internet.
I’ve already did some experiments with the VGA Emulator in the past months, but the impact of seeing such an amount of pixels on a real 3.6-inch LCD is a completely different thing.
Yeah, I’ve no more excuses to work on a VGA version of Ecpc. Actually Ecpc, as any other software designed for a QVGA display, does look too much blocky due to pixel doubling routines. Adding detail is a lot more fun, easier and in the end rewarding than removing it to adapt the interface of Ecpc to the smaller Smartphone display, ad esempio.

Just before Christmas I decided to make myself a special gift, obviously ignoring what would have happened a few days later in South East Asia.
I became a member of Il Sole, a local charity organization active with child distance adoption and abused women recovery programs in countries such as Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and India.
Thanks to my Uncles who are members since a long time I had the pleasure to get in touch with this organization a bit at a time and to appreciate the good work and the outstanding results of its staff and the genuine dedication of his president and founder Olivia Piro.
So in the end this appreciation naturally turned into my decision to support them as much as was in my possibilities. Then the deadly Tsunami stroke and brought his waves of destruction up to India including Pallepalem, a village in the Nellore district where Il Sole operates. It’s a village of poor fishers (Pallekars) and the 394 families living there lost all their mud-huts and their boats, so Il Sole immediately decided to act in two phases, a first emergency phase in which they provided rice, medicines, water and sheets, now concluded, and a more financially demanding second phase aiming at rebuilding the fishing activity to gradually overcome the damages caused by the Tsunami. You can visit their website and read this article published by the local daily newspaper La Provincia and decide to give your help in their project.
This is a concrete way to help the Tsunami victims in my opinion, not by SMS.
When I became a member I also purchased some of their merchandise I’m very proud to wear, but there was a really original thing I couldn’t miss: the Planiverso.
As you can read in the description it’s actually a big poster showing the world upside down with the meaning to give back dignity to the so called third world. I liked it because it was cool and with a serious meaning at the same time, but now that it’s hanging on the wall of my room I can’t but notice the area around the Indian Ocean every time I look at it.
It’s as if the Tsunami did really put upside down the world…

Update: Mrs. Piro wrote a touching letter to La Provincia about the Tsunami tragedy, which you can read in two parts, here and here. After some days of thinking I wrote my reply which you can read here. They cut it a bit, but they did it perfectly since you can read here in my blog what’s missing.

This is so amusing I couldn’t agree more, since it’s about a matter I’m involved in myself: Lurking.
I spotted it on manteblog, the blog of Massimo Mantellini, but the original idea comes from paper napkin.
Our stats tell the true, but are they just numbers? Oh, no, there are real people behind those “unique contacts” which make up for those nice graphs, don’t they?
So they proposed the De-Lurking Day by inviting their readers to leave a trace of their usually silent presence writing a comment on the author’s blog.
You won’t have the chance to comment on my blog, at least until the new website will be up and running (hint! hint!), but if you’re in the mood why don’t you just click here and write me “Hello, I’m the lurker which made your #### unique contact of the day!” or anything coming out of your tired neurons?
Ehm, no I’ll not start donating 1 Euro to aid the Tsunami victims for each e-mail I’ll receive. Sheryl of paper napkin did that and even if his currency was the weak dollar he had to close the comments due to their unexpected high number!
Do you know we Italians donated a total of 28 millions through the 1 Euro per SMS campaign for the South East Asia tragedy?
The whole total will go for the donation campaign, but our mobile operators will be as happy when we’ll understand our credit needs recharging sooner than expected. Even I fell into the “trap”… and I’ve already recharged the credit, doh!
There are better ways to donate out there by using your credit card or other usual payment methods.
Seneca once said “Who spends his life traveling very often will have many guests, but no friends”. Change traveling into browsing and guests into reading blogs and we’re talking about the same thing: Lurking.
I’m a lurker myself because I love silence and I work better in silence, although not so lately for some strange reason. Today you’ve got the chance to not be the usual lurker if you’ll e-mail me. Don’t take the bad example of some my friends who can click on anything, but aren’t able to write a few characters in a simple e-mail…

Here we go with another update planned since a long time.
Today has been a sort of D-day in Italy since it came into force the law prohibiting smoke in any public locals.
There have been a lot of talking about it lately, with different opinions on both sides, smokers and no smokers, often losing sight of the real meaning of this law just like only we Italians can do: it’s a law which express a strong civic sense since it represents a victory of the respect for the good health of no smokers.
Something that has no relation at all with the argumentations of smokers who (consciously) forget their affection is not a bad habit, but a deadly disease actually.
But what does this have to to with me?
Well, passive smoke did affect me negatively for the last 10 years or so, then there could ever have been a better date to announce my new educational software application I was planning to build in the last months?
Given its educational nature and my strong commitment to the subject matter this will be a totally No Profit work.
You can get more info about this project in the products page. All I can add for now is that this project, which I baptized “Light Up Only Your Dreams” will proceed as quickly as I’ll manage to organize my priorities during the next months, but a release for the 31st May, the World No Tobacco Day does look too good to be true!

This is actually the original title of the book by Alexander Key which inspired the favorite Japanese anime of my childhood, Future Boy Conan  (Mirai Shounen Konan) by Hayao Miyazaki.
Finding that book and purchasing the DVDs of the anime was on my to do list since a very long time. Then suddenly on 26th December a real incredible tide stroke South East Asia, a world tragedy I think will remain impressed in our memory like a few others of our times. Obviously the reference to the anime came immediately to my mind, since the tide which changed the world of Conan did impress me a lot when I was a child.
Well, now watching those terrible videos as well as the astonishing satellite images of the areas involved by the real tsunami made me feel breathless and almost as “without the earth under my feet”, although I watched it from the warm of my home…
It will take time to fully understand the real proportions of this tragedy, but by finally being able to read the book by Alexander Key I’d like to conclude with a quote by Hayao Miyazaki, which sums up the meaning of the book and gives a hint of hope to the human beings involved in the tragedy, both those who faced the tide in first person and those who watched it from a safe distance and are now willing to help:

“What did fascinate me about the book was its main meaning: at the fall of any ‘great civilization’ always take the lead some ‘primitives’ , not to be intended in negative terms, but as people with a great vital strength, full of health and willing to rebuild a new world. It’s their vital pulse which captured me.”

I think you’ll agree these are very wise and present words. I’ll write again about this event in one of the next updates.

Update: speaking about satellites, as a side note on 23rd December the local daily newspaper La Provincia published my full page article about GPS and TomTom Go, which has been very appreciated by many people and some friends, thanks!