Making a sum of a whole year?
365 days lived more dangerously than I ever did?
Well, a lot of things happened: the turning point on the project now called i-muse™ thanks to the two guys I put on alert with a simple SMS on last New Year’s Day, the hard work on the Net-Taylor innovation project for the Sartoria Orefice, the Vespatour 2006, the summer solo-tour on my Vespa around Italy that opened my eyes on the beauties of our country, some books that made me change - not because they’re miraculous, but because I read them while I was ready to change -, the suffering for a deep love affair…
All of this while I was still working as a waiter in a local pub whose owner had the kindness to kick me out after an apocalyptic night, with no appeal and as I was the last one who got working there. A rudeness I did forgive but not forgot, since it has been a work which gave me much more than it may appear to whoever looks at it with the eyes of the right-minded.
All in all a lot of things which made me grow up. And the more I think about where I am now the more I’m sure that nothing could have happened if I hadn’t been involved in the project for the Sartoria Orefice and I hadn’t found there people so kind with whom to confront and work on an delicate innovation project which is now considered as a reference model, a project that made me grow up both professionally and humanly.
As always it’s a combination of positive factors producing excellence, while a negative one is enough to unleash the Murphy’s law!
Even the last year I wrote an End of the Year Thought 2005, but I didn’t published it, a sign of a not too happy period. I do it now on the new blog since I recovered it in my notes. I invite you to read it because it’s still present, unfortunately.
I wish you a happy 2007, the year of the pig!

Do you know what a purple cow is?
It’s a marketing concept invented by the clever Seth Godin to represent a remarkable product.
Remarkable in the sense that it’s so attractive in its market sector to become a commercial success. We think we have a purple cow and now that we registered the trademark we can reveal what it’s all about: i-muse™ is not only a PDA guide for museums and art exhibitions, an innovative tool for the visitor going much further than traditional audioguides, but most of all is the entrepreneurial project by three young guys from Como who believed to be able to create something remarkable starting from scratch!
The logo is self-explaining, born from a flash of genius by Luca generated by a Guido’s hint, the two friends to whom at the beginning of 2006 I proposed working on what was then an idea without a true form.
I got the idea while I was using an audioguide during my visit to the Joan Mirò’s exhibition in 2004 in Como. Back then I was developing software for PDAs, I did well know their potentialities, and then I asked myself: why don’t make a guide running on PDAs?
In 2005 thanks to the voucher for technology innovation issued by Regione Lombardia I committed a doability study about the guide to the Centro Volta, which is actually located in Villa Olmo where Mirò’s exhibition took place. From that point it took me some time to realize how should I had to go on: I had to find the right people, people with the skills I was missing.
I talked to Guido, a marketing expert, an old friend I didn’t see for a long time, and to Luca, a great graphics artist with an experience in the videogames industry.
Thanks to them since the beginning of 2006 things went on at the right pace. We explored different paths, analyzed all the components of the project and finalized the application design. Slow but well since we were doing something else for a living. After the award at the Startcup 2006 there was the acceleration: the cash prize (it’s better starting with a little but a minimum is absolutely necessary ) and most of all the office inside the incubator at the Politecnico.
We also reached the finals of the ObiettivoICT contest, whose benefits will come the next year.
2007 is the year of the pig as the Chinese friends of Ciren told me.
Does that mean it will bring abundance even for us, in every sense?
We hope so, in the meantime I assembled in the category i-muse™ all the posts related to the project, a category I’ll keep alive and well while the work on the project continues.

It’s incredible but even Google doesn’t know it!
If you search for the word cioccolardini, the result, at least until now, is that it suggests searching for cioccolatini (chocolates). However the Cioccolardini do exist!
I discovered them last summer during the Vespatour 2006, my solo-tour around Italy riding a Vespa GTS, while I was visiting the typical lard shops in Colonnata, a little tuscan town at the center of the zone of the quarry caves, renowned for its delicious lard maturated inside tubs made of a particular type of marble.
In one of the lard shops a kind tuscan sir let me taste their lard and while I was concerned about the fact that I couldn’t take away some of it since I couldn’t properly preserve it until I got home, I noticed those chocolates. They’re made with fondant chocolate, honey, hazel paste and that touch of lard making them a real treat.
A delicious brilliant idea which didn’t last for long since I eated a whole box just before leaving Colonnata while I was seating in the small square near my Vespa parked beside a monument to Mazzini, as you can seee in the picture.
I promised myself to order some of them for relatives and friends, so what could be the best chance than Christmas holidays to share a bit of genuine sweetness in a time which seems to have lost the magic of Christmas, that of the present given for the pleasure to give and not for convenience, habit or profit?
I ordered so many boxes to be able to make happy my dearest friends and using for some of them a Christmas card of Il Sole on which I wrote an aphorism accurately choosen for the person receiving the present. The result has been great!
I think the people at La Marmifera, the lard shop where I discovered the Cioccolardini, will be glad of the free promotion, they earned it.
Hurrà for the Cioccolardini even Google didn’t know!

Ok, it’s a bad expression which can give cause for never ending witty remarks, but for the three of us, me, Luca and Guido, recently awarded at the Startcup 2006, the regional contest for startup creation, the meaning is pretty clear: other than the cash prize by the Chamber of Commerce of Como our real target was the incubation!
We’re now hosted (incubated!) in the startup accelerator of the Polo Regionale di Como of the Politecnico di Milano.
We finally have an office, at the third floor of the building in Piazzale Gerbetto, where we can continue working on the project we worked on until now powered only by our enthusiasm and hard work aiming since the beginning to a result of excellence.
The office is fully operative by now from a technical point of view, while we still have a lot to do for what concerns the furnishings, especially after we’ve seen how the girls of Ciren and Urbano Creativo, neo-incubated at the second floor, did set up their office.
We really need the female touch for that!
Professor Negrini, who gave us the award at the Startcup, told us this was his office before he moved to the other Politecnico’s building in Via Anzani. Really a privilege considering how much I think highly of him.
During the introductory meeting of the new startups he used a very motivating expression: “Now you’re entrepreneurs!” he told us.
Personally I do rely a lot on the network of competences that can be established among the ten startups now incubated in Como and actually it’s a pleasure being able to discuss and relate with other realities operating in the same sector. From these relations new interesting opportunities can be generated.
After the pizza-dinner with Luca and Guido to celebrate our first meeting in the office, as you can see in the pic, and the usual tea break at 17 ò clock with the kind MetalC’s staff at the third floor we can say that being incubated is not a bad thing at all!

If you got here on my blog for the first time thanks to the flier I gave out during these days that means it worked!
It made so curious whoever noticed it to get him on the Internet to have a look at what it was really about.
The graphics of the flier is the result of the suggestions of some friends and it ties up the three elements composing my logo with the arguments the blog is about: the stylized hand inspired by the painting of the Creation by Michelangelo visible on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel represents my passion for creativity in all its forms, the arrow has the shape of the Lake of Como since I like writing about arguments relating to my town and the CD has a series of abbreviations the informatics technology is full of and which often make the users’ life a mess instead of simplifying it. For this reason the names of the Donald Duck’s nephews, Qui, Quo and Qua, help me out to put some irony about the technology paradox.
Finally I can leave the obsolete structure of the old blog and start using the new one thanks to the WordPress platform made in PHP, powerful and flexible at the same time.
Thanks to the Gengo plug-in for example I can write my posts both in Italian and in English and the the user automatically view them according his browser’s language setting. You can read the posts in the other language by clicking on the link on the right panel listing the recent posts.
Not to mention the organization of the numerous post in categories, six for now: Como, Euro coins, Mobile, Net-Taylor, Personal, Software and Vespatour 2006, or even the possibility to browse the whole archive containing 240 posts, month by month, up to the first one I wrote on July 16, 2003, or searching for a specific word inside the whole blog content.
Last but not least is the chance to leave your comment. Finally you can keep in check my bad tongue whenever I really go over the line!
Or simply you can have your say about an argument interesting for you. Discussion is the salt of communication for we human beings, even if we’re all a bit stunned by too much TV, mobile phones or even the Internet itself.
There’s still some work to be done to complete the graphics of the theme and new pages to add, but it’s a bit like moving into a new home after all: a thing at a time it’s even funnier.
Thanks for your visit! I hope you’ll get back here because you like the blog’s content and not only the container, WordPress, which is really useful and makes the blog user friendly.
To do that you could keep in mind the address - but it’s proven, it doesn’t work well with human beings -, or you can subscribe to the updates notification service. You can also use the RSS feed and I’ll wrote more about this soon.
I’ve already got about ten sparkling post drafts to publish in the next days… Brrr…let’s shudder together!*

*A quote from Marina Massironi, an italian comedian.