Archive for June, 2005
Welcome to Miami, Bienvenido a Miami
This song by Will Smith did accompany me during the days I was getting ready for my first trip to the US, since the destination was Miami, that magical city in the south beaches of Florida. š
I spent the whole last week there since I was invited to attend the Handango Partner Summit 2005, which took place from june 22 to 24 in the beautiful Sheraton Bal Harbour Beach Resort located in the Bal Harbour zone of Miami Beach.
It was a three days long event of presentations and meeting sessions with software developers, sponsors and the Handango staff, who surprised me for his kindness and enthusiasm for their job. I was honored just to have been invited there since there were less than 200 developers selected from the 10.000 ones who chose Handango to sell their software all over the world, and also I got the confirmation that I was the only italian coming from Italy. š
So it has been an important event for my business, Handango staff appreciate what Iām doing as a developer and, as the theme of this year goes, theyāre inviting me to unleash my potential. It takes time, especially if youāre doing it in Italy, but they wonāt be disappointed.
To sum up it has been the perfect combination of business and pleasure, a sort of reward for who takes this job with passion, since after the Summit me and Christian, a friend who followed me in this adventure, had a great time on the sands of Miami Beach, in the wonderful pool of the Sheraton and in the locals of this huge city. š
BroadBandWeek Event in Milan and European Contests Submission
Last week the BroadBandWeek event took place in Milan, a series of seminars and presentations in week from the 6th to the 11th in different places of the city about the new opportunities offered not only by the availability of broadband Internet connections but also by mobile devices, the two hot topics of the italian ICT business.
On thursday Iāve been able to attend the BroadBand Match Day in which they talked about the business opportunities for young people willing to turn into reality their technology-related innovative ideas. The speakers were very good and experienced, and although the number of attendees was pretty low, it surprised me to see more wannabe female entrepreneurs than male. š
The Match Day took place near the Polytechnic of Milan, while on friday the event moved to the Mediateca Santa Teresa with the name Multimedia Creativity Day. They presented two european contests for young talents, the eContent Award Italy, which is selecting the best italian projects to candidate them to the World Summit Award, for which I already submitted an entry, and the Top Talent Award 2005.
It was a bit sad when Cesare Massarenti spoke about Italy and told that compared to other european countries there are only a few italians participating at these contests since āthe school system doesnāt form students at these levelsā. Although I donāt like generalizations at all, thatās a valid assertion in many cases, and I wonder if the so called Business Angels do really exist in Italy or itās just another cool word as long as start-ups, spin-offs and so on, to make a speech appear more international and hide the fact weāre always lagging behind the other european countries for what concern research and content production, especially high level entertainment software.
Enough ranting for now, the next week in the US is going to be an exciting oneā¦ š
Speaking English Using Skype and Skin Strip Feature Tutorial
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on June 12, 2005
VoIP (Voice Over IP) is a very hot topic nowadays and among all the different ways the Internet offers to be able to communicate with other people, voice combined with instant messaging is the best one in my opinion. Thatās why I appreciate Skype and Iām suggesting my collaborators to use it.
Easy, fast, free, cheap if you need to call a non-Skype user, and runs on PC and Pocket PC, version that I can enjoy on the Loox 720 thanks also to OzLooxSpeaker, an utility enabling the upper secondary speaker on the Loox made just for VoIP purposes.
I just added a Skype-Me button to the contacts page and to the signature in the forum to invite you to use it if you want to get in touch in the most direct way.
In this period Iām attending english conversation lessons since Iāll be on an business trip in the US in a couple of weeks, and Iām getting confident in speaking the language. š
Lastly Iāve posted a tutorial in the forum explaining how to use the Skin Strip feature introduced in the new version of Euro Coins Pocket Collector. You have to be a registered member in order to be able to read it as well as all the upcoming tutorials.
Update: Iāve discovered a stupid bug which prevents from correctly loading the external graphics file needed to use the Skin Strip feature. Sorry for the distraction, itāll be fixed in version 1.6.