Here is the video of the interview recorded for the Non Solo Soldi (Not only money) TG2’s feature which sees as protagonist The Virtual Taylor in Cernobbio, this almost mythological hero lost inside the fog of the Lake of Como…
Even I, who took care of the project, am used to name him as the press did until now, although at the taylor shop they would prefer the exact reference to Sartoria Orefice for a matter of marketing.
Maybe it’s better this way, people easily remember the fable of the virtual taylor taking measurements using a camera over the Internet.
The TV interview made everyone in the taylor shop really excited and in the video, other than the staff at work while Cleto Orefice is describing how the system works, even I am visible in the recording running on the left monitor. We recorded that while I was trying the suit they made (sculpted is the most elegant metaphor ) to measure for me.
Really a marketing hit for the taylor shop and the people involved in the project.
The video is available both in high resolution (12Mb, 640×480) and low resolution (6,4Mb, 320×240), the last one optimized for PDAs.
Enjoy!

Note: If you’re using Windows Media Player you can switch English subtitles on and off with the keyboard shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+C.

How true this sentence is! Certainly it’s deeply inside Guido Panini’s mind, the friend who’s accompanying me in the making of the project awarded at the StartCup 2006 (they just published the official pics), if he decided to take care of a photography course together with Stefania Pifferi at the Pifferi’photo studio in Como.
A course of five lessons mainly about portrait about which you can download the detailed program.
A post about photography gives me the idea to show you another selection of pics I took during my Vespatour.
The fist one shows Torino’s cathedral front and the bells tower under a sky which snatched a “what a nice sky!” from a friend photographer, ex-colleague when I was working for Trecision in Rapallo. A comment with double importance since comes from such a critic guy.
Talking again about Torino since I’ll attend the Telemobility Forum 2006 on Wednesday, the second one shows the famous Piercing, a curious example of urban art made in 1996 on a building in Piazza Corpus Domini. In the third you can see the Ancient Clock Shed located in Piazza della Repubblica with the inscription Loving differences in various languages.
If “taking pictures means giving importance” for you too, as Susan Sontag says, probably Guido’s photography course will be interesting for you.
It’ll begin tomorrow evening, so hurry up if you’re interested. Information to contact him are in the program course’s PDF.

     

Such a title chosen for the interview to Raffaello Vignali, president of the Compagnia delle Opere, published in the November issue of the magazine Business People is emblematic to say the least and it means only one thing: the innovation project related to the taylor shop Sartoria Orefice in Cernobbio I took care of from the beginning to the end with the coordination of the Centro Volta has become a success case!
An example to follow for Italian small businesses which are hearing a lot of talk about innovation, would like to start these kind of projects but they don’t know which way to turn.
I can’t spare hard criticism for the sentence: “Here couldn’t have existed neither Hewlett and Packard nor Bill Gates, since in Italy if someone starts a company inside a garage the Asl (the local sanitary inspection service) comes and forces them to close“… a pathetic cliché often used to hide the real problems of the new ICT startups.
Vignali’s interview is actually centered on the issues the Italian business class has to face to try following the difficult way of innovation in order to be able to maintain the competitivity of the Made in Italy product in a globalized market, and also on the benefits generated when an innovation project comes to a good conclusion, using as a clear example the “Taylor in Cernobbio“, although in the interview the project is described generically with some mistakes about the system’s working.
A working which has been well explained on Thursday morning by Cleto Orefice when a Rai troupe headed by journalist Sandra Cecchi went to the taylor shop to record an interview for the Non Solo Soldi (Not only money) TG2’s feature, a feature broadcast from Monday to Friday at 10:30 on Rai Due.
The TV interview will last only a few minutes but it will be the first time the system will be officially shown. Really a must see to understand how the hell a taylor working in the same manner for 5 generations learnt to use a PC and Internet not only to simplify his work but also to make his business grow with perspectives which are probably still beyond estimation.
Although I’m more at ease with textures rather than fabrics , by now I could almost say I’m a taylor too if you consider the analogy of the artigianal work I already wrote about on the blog, so it will be a real pleasure following at close the evolution of the project.

It’s the title of the new book by Roberto Re, founder of HRD Training Group, a company offering training and personal development services both to businessmen and individuals. As soon as I read in the HRD’s newsletter that the book presentation tour would start from Milan with a promotional One Night Seminar at the Teatro Nuovo on November 13, I didn’t waste time and I immediately booked for the event.
The show was exciting! Watching Roberto Re communicating and expressing himself live on the stage leaves a mark. It surprised me that a man like him pretty used at public speaking was visibly moved during the very first steps of the show, a clear sign of the total involvement in what he does.
The event went on with some properly selected cuts of famous movies presenting the 10 strategies to make a mess of yourself which we unconsciously adopt in our lives as described in the book. Renato Converso, an energetic comedian born in Calabria, then performed on the stage to show the audience to power of the smiling-therapy.
There was even the great Don Mazzi seated in the first line since he wrote the introduction of Roberto Re’s new book.
Actually this is the second book by Roberto Re. The first one, Leader di te stesso (Leader of yourself), which soon became a best seller published by Mondadori, represented for me a sort of milestone because it gave the start to a personal growth path that is generating unexpected positive results and is continuing even right now.
For this reason I brought the book with me and during the pause I managed to get it signed by Roberto while he was surrounded by a crowd of people willing to get a custom dedication on the new book fresh off the press.
“This is your first one, Roberto!” I told him while he was signing it, he nodded and replied: “Eh, this one rocks!”.
Maybe the second one is a bit lighter, but I’ll know that only after reading it.
What’s sure is that I’ve got a lot of friends to give a book with a title like Smettila di incasinarti (Stop making a mess of yourself) as a Christmas gift.
There’s no two without three, Roberto!

“Why do you do it?” asked me a friend sometime ago while talking about my blog.
It impressed me because he said that with a tone and with blown eyes meaning something more similar to “Why the hell are you wasting your time by writing a blog?“.
It surprised me also because this friend is getting a degree in robotics so he’s pretty at ease with modern informatics tools.
He asked me that question maybe because he didn’t understand why someone should feel the need to tell something about himself to whoever happens to read the blog or maybe it didn’t appear justified to him since no one does pay me for the time I spend working on the blog.
I asked the same question to myself and I think the answer is two sided: on one side it’s something useful for me to fix memories in time and to make a point on the progress on my projects, on the other side there’s a natural need to communicate, to offer a service o simply to entertain anyone stopping here to read these lines.
Gratification then comes when someone tells me he read the blog and appreciated its content. In that moment a satisfied smile from a friend o from someone I just did get to know goes way beyond any mere pecuniary remuneration.
Recently I studied the best software platform to the blog to and I chose WordPress after reading the book Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress. I installed WordPress onto my web space and I began populating the database with content starting from the first post I wrote on July 16, 2003 when I launched Ecpc.
After more than 220 posts added here’s the preview of the result: blog.albegor.com
It will take some more time to complete the migration and to customize the graphics, but I already got positive comments on the result and it seems the graphics theme I chose is appreciated.
It has been really strange reading all the old posts while I was copying them. I noticed a different way to write and to propose myself towards readers along the time. I was like a sort of verification of a personal growth. Something I believe to be more that a good motivation to have a blog.

My friends make a fool of me when I use the term Vespatour to describe the journey I did this summer around Italy riding a Vespa since that term reminds them an organized group tour, not certainly one made alone by a crazy guy.
After what happened a few days ago in Milan I really hope they won’t do the same when I’ll use the term Vespacrash to recall the fall in the middle of the road that did cost me a relevant damage to my Vespa 250 GTS…
Damn, I traveled for 4200 Km around Italy in a month without causing her even a little scratch and then I manage to destroy the left flank falling like a goof in the Milan traffic.
Do you recall the tram sidewalk separating the two carways and is elevated for a few centimeters from the roadbed? Right, I was quietly riding along a road of that kind. I was exactly parallel and very near to that low sidewalk, a perspective from which I couldn’t notice the elevation, also due to the late evening light conditions. To pass a car in front of me I decide to turn towards the central section of the road which appeared flat when I suddenly loose control and I find myself on the ground even before understanding why.
A really bad experience… they told me that it could have been worse, but that’s not too reassuring considered the damage caused to my Vespa.
I was using my PDA as a GPS navigator and fortunately it wasn’t damaged during the fall. It’s the fourth rescue thanks to the security cord tied to the left mirror, while the other three happened during the Vespatour.
Do you think the PDA could have nine lives as a cat?
I really hope the Vespatour will have a sequel the next summer, but the Vespacrash will remain an episode more unique than rare… sigh!

It almost seems like a tongue-twister and actually I rarely manage to correctly pronounce the name chosen for the local exhibition devoted to the contemporary textile art, now at the 16th edition. This year there are even 11 locations in the town of Como dedicated to the exhibition.
Certainly the richest installment is inside the ex-church of San Francesco where next to some pretty suggestive pieces such as the army of silk frogs coming down from a wall of the right aisle, there’s a section dedicated to the Net Art cured by Domenico Quaranta in which the threads composing the virtual fabrics are generated by software algorithms.
Not by chance the term in_rete (networked) is part of the title of the exhibition.
The apse hosts a suspended metal structure on which are placed 54 little works, minitessili, among which you can notice the Protocolli di Rete (network protocols), a globe made with bamboo by Ilaria Giussani, a friend working at the Museo della Seta recently awarded with the Premio Arte 2006.
At the museum Ilaria allowed me to take a picture of the nice installment Food for the Spirit by Anna Moro-Lin & Verdeaqua you can see below. The mise en place on the table is really creative and original in my opinion, while Ilaria prefers the works of Marie Rose Lortet, also exposed in the museum, since they’re technically superior.
Pretty imposing is the work of Akio Hamatani at la tessitura. It almost seems like a hull of a big ship suspended over the water… could it be some sort of ark ready to sail to take away all the beasts running around Como?
I don’t want to say anything more to leave you with enough curiosity to visit the exhibition.
Even too often the people of Como seem to ignore this kind of events in our city and due to the factor “I can go there whenever I want” they end up procrastinating the visit until they loose the opportunity to actually do it. There’s time until November 12.
After this brilliant link between textile art and digital graphics the next time I’ll get the chance to explain what a texture is I’ll certainly use the pixel weaving metaphor!

I didn’t expect it at all since I have to admit I did neglect a bit Euro Coins Pocket Collector over the last months, the educational software I made for Euro coins fans. I actually chose to honor the priorities of my work as consultant and custom software developer.
So I was really pleased to know that even this year the judges of the Best Software Awards 2006, the competition organized by the american Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine, confirmed the value of the software and it got among the finalists in the category Miscellaneous Utilities just as it happened last year.
I have to say that it isn’t easy at all categorizing a so specialized software such as this, but I think that instead of creating a new category like Collecting they could add one like Lifestyle for example to include all the Windows Mobile applications built to manage one’s own digital lifestyle, as they call the modern life with all the technological tools that should simplify our life. Managing one’s own collection of Euro coins with a PDA could be correctly included into this concept, couldn’t it?
Anyway it’s a pleasure that a so atypical software, made from the marriage of my work and passion, did reach the final selection of a contest which gathered only the 20% of the best software existing for the Windows Mobile platform.
The winner of the Miscellaneous Utilities this year was StyleTap, a sort of emulator useful to run applications written for the PalmOS on Windows Mobile devices.
In the meantime the work on the PC version of Ecpc is going on and I think the news will be revealed by the end of the year!

A nice sunny day granted a few thousand of bikers who met in Magreglio, near the Madonna del Ghisallo sanctuary, a special place for me since it’s tied to the summer camping days spent in that area during my adolescence. It was also my first meeting together with Vespa Club Como’s friends.
We left early in the morning from the rendezvous point in Como and we reached Magreglio parading with the hundreds of bikers already there. Then we moved to Civenna where they celebrated the commemoration of the motorcycling fallens.
The bike that impressed me the most was the beautiful 1929’s Moto Guzzi you can see in the last picture.
I wanted to visit the recently inaugurated Museum of Cycling near the sanctuary. A new and well done structure, but the price of the ticket was discouraging to say the least: a couple of Euros less than the ticket for the Vatican Museums o the Uffizi’s Gallery, booking included. With all the due respect for the history of cycling (I’m still using a speed bike that is older than me ) I doubt there was the Stendhal’s syndrome waiting for me at the museum’s exit…
On the journey back home I went a bit of the way in the middle of a group of bikers riding Harleys, almost a sort of provocation after the letter I wrote to the local daily newspaper about Clooney and his bike.
Who knows, maybe even he was there among the 4000-5000 bikers that day!