Do you remember Giacomo Leopardi’s poem The Infinity: “Ever dear to me was this lonely hill”?
Well, that in the picture is actually the famous hedge on top of the hill!
It’s the hedge, “that excludes the greater part of my view of the farthest horizon“, illuminated by the sun in August and with the brick wall partially covering the view towards the Sibillini’s mountains.
Last summer in Recanati, the last step of my Vespatour around Italy, I had the unexpected chance to climb upon the top of the hill which inspired Leopardi’s masterpiece, something made possible since 2003 thanks to the Centro Nazionale di Studi Leopardiani.
The picture is now on my office desk, it’s a suggestion to look beyond and to ask myself what that hedge is hiding, what surprises the future holds for me.
I even shot what you can see behind the hedge and I’ll put that picture online in the Vespatour’s gallery I’m setting up.
Every now and then I shift my eyes from the monitor, I get lost in my thoughts while gazing at the photo and I naturally recall the Leopardi’s writings: “and sweet is the shipwreck in such a sea“…
It really helps having a pleasant and comfortable working environment with little important things such as this!

A as Avventura (adventure), B as Bagaglio (luggage), C as Cibo (food), D as Donna (Woman).. and so on till the last letter of the alphabet.
This is the original layout of the book by Anna Maspero, a traveler living in Como who turned into words her numerous adventures around the world.
A book which captured me for the many hints of reflection about the essence of traveling, which is the metaphor of the life, as Anna says. I read it while I was still elaborating mentally the events of the intense journey I did last summer on my Vespa around Italy, so it has been very useful for me.
I met Anna at the presentation of the book at the local library in Como organized in collaboration with the staff of Il Sole since the earnings of the book were going to be employed for the project Reborning Flowers.
Anna writes we travel “to escape from the routine, but even as habit; for pleasure as to live new experiences and emotions; to follow a dream and to forget an broken love affair; to learn or simply for a wish of freedom; for the joy to leave and for getting back.”
Well, there actually has been all of this in my solo Vespatour.
“For Davide, have a good road!” she wrote as dedication on my copy of her book.
It has been so and it will be again, thanks Anna!

For each month in 2007 a Vespa and the smiling face of one of the Vespa Club Como members’ sons: it’s the result of the nice photomontage chosen as theme for the club’s 2007 calendar which I’m now showing both at home and in the office.
Really a good job made by Brunella, supervised by Marco and Dario.
My favorites are January and August since they chose child with a pretty peculiar look.
The calendar is still available at the newsstand Cesana in Via Anzani in Como. An original calendar, especially for Vespa fans.
The Vespa Club Como, of which I recently become a member, is very active and with a lots of initiatives for 2007 so such a calendar is certainly a good wish!

We’re all tagged!
This was the opening joke of the seminar devoted to RFID technology held on Tuesday inside the exposition Trackability in fieramilanocity.
Paolo Conti, always brilliant as moderator, asked the attendees to search for some kind of tags inside their own pockets. Someone had it inside the car keys (Vespa in my case) for the immobilizer function, someone inside his access badge and someone in his car for the telepass.
Without even knowing it RFID is a technology we’re already using since a long time. There’s a lot of talking about it lately because of its advantages in various fields, but the real problem for its large scale deployment, as has been discussed during the seminar, is its integration with the information system in order to exploit its full potential.
All the presentations were at very high level and the final roundtable sported the participation for the first time of the representatives of the italian RFID university labs, from the recently born RFID Solution Center of the Politecnico di Milano, to the one of La Sapienza in Roma and the universities in Messina, Parma, the Liuc in Castellanza and the Supsi in Lugano.
For i-muse™ RFID is very important. It’s a kind of implementation in a field much less complex compared to logistics or product trackability, but the benefits are relevant and most of all, for the sake of usability, it will be totally invisible to the user.

20 minutes on TV really flew away!
Me, Luca and Paolo attended ZeroTreUno, the daily feature of the local broadcaster EspansioneTV, to present the project we’re working on, i-muse™, the PDA guide for museums and art exhibitions.
Elda De Mattei, the presenter, made us feel at ease and allowed us to illustrate the project in its various aspects, from the technology to the graphics and the contents, an argument for each of the three of us.
Although we would have loved to tell more we’ve been very satisfied of the final result.
For me it wasn’t the first time on TV, I attended Netcafé on Telelombardia in 2003 after I won an award for Ecpc, my software for Euro coins collectors, but this time I wasn’t alone and Luca and Paolo did a great performance in front of the cameras!
So the message has been delivered: we have a winning product, ready for the market in a short time.
Here are the videos of the interview, split in two parts, in DivX format.
Enjoy!