First prize in the category Technology - Projects, first place in the Online Award, a 1000€ voucher spendable in products and services by Maggioli Spa, articles on the magazines by Maggioli Editore and some contacts with potential customers: this is the balance of the participation of i-muse™ in the IQU Award at the event EuroP.A. in Fiera di Rimini!
Prizes which motivate and stimulate the whole team for the simple reason we see a real appreciation for the work done up until now.
A deep thank you to those who voted for i-muse™ in the Online Award. Each vote was important since the difference from the second place was pretty tight.
In the photo you can see me holding up the prizes just received from Marcello Balzani, chief editor of the Paesaggio Urbano magazine.
Now we can’t but focus even more on i-muse™ to come up to everyone’s expectations!

I uploaded the second gallery of the solo tour around Italy on my Vespa GTS, 60 photos shot walking among the most beautiful places of Turin on August 4 2006.
In the meantime the exhibition of the 10 Vespas at the Iper of Grandate is doing pretty well, people stop reading the descriptions out of curiosity.
Here you have the photos, everyone with its caption, georeferenced on Google Maps and with the possibility to rate it or even to leave a comment!

I was surprised when Cleto Orefice, the Virtual Tailor in Cernobbio, told me that on the Corriere Economia dated Monday March 12 we were both included in the list of the 109 italian entrepreneurs under age 50 devoting themselves to innovation in all its aspects.
I asked myself: what the hell I’m doing among people such as Catia Bastioli, Stefano Quintarelli, Paolo Barberis and others?
In the article, which you can read here: page 1, page 2 and page 3, they published a profile of the first 30s of the chart, while for the others there was a brief description of their activity. I was mentioned as “Davide Orlando, founder of Albegor (that’s only my nickname actually!), who creates interactive guides for museums“.
I really like that creates and the mention makes me very proud. Please allow me a joke, however: surely I’m not the richest one at all among the people in the list!
Money is not necessarily the purpose for me but it’s certainly a tool, sometimes the only one, to actually make things.
I say this because the difficulties I faced to come to this point, almost ready to launch a highly innovative product such as i-muse™, have been even too much to tell.
A welcome to the mention on the Corriere Economia then. I’d really like to meet the other innovative entrepreneurs mentioned. I think I could learn a lot from them!

Innovation and Urban Quality, this is the theme of one of the awards for excellences which will be assigned during the event EuroP.A. taking place in Fiera di Rimini at the end of March.
An event having its target on innovation and valorization of the results of projects related to the public administration.
In this context there’s the IQU Award, composed of prizes which will be assigned according to the two main categories of works already made and projects to be made, then divided for thematic area: Technology, Mobility, City and Architecture.
We submitted i-muse™ in the Technology category of course, but also for the special prize “Designing for everyone“. We take this into a lot of consideration since the usability of i-muse™ is one of the strong points of our product.
There’s also the Online Award in which users visiting the dedicated area of the site can express their preference after reading the presentation documents of the projects submitted.
You can vote for i-muse™ if you like our project as a whole or even for a more specific motivation, such as the logo, how it is pronounced, if you like a member of the team in particular, etc…
Cast you vote then!

The chance has been really unexpected: the Vespa Club Como has been invited to exhibit 10 Vespas belonging to members of the club at the shopping mall Iper of Grandate in the province of Como.
Vespas going from 1957 to nowadays and… there’s even my Vespa under the big I!
For three weeks, up until Easter, my Vespa GTS 250 i.e. will be there with the graphics you can see here, made to explain the tour around Italy I did riding her on last summer.
The windshield is a bit scratched, but it’s the one I did the tour with, my sail actually, so I didn’t replace it.
The first part of the photo gallery related to the tour, 53 photos from Milan to Turin, is already online, while the rest will be up during the next days. It’ll be hard don’t be able to ride my Vespa for three weeks, but I think it will be worth the hassle.
I’d like to invite you to watch the photos of the tour, everyone has something to tell, and also they are georeferenced, this means you can see where I shot the photo thanks to Google Maps simply by clicking on the link Map This!
Along with the exhibition the Iper staff organized a nice Easter contest and the prizes are the new Vespas LX 50 and a huge chocolate egg.
You definitely should get there to have a look!

You should pronounce it like this, as Greta says it, a beautiful little blonde jewel!
She’s the two years old daughter of my cousin Alex, a cousin who’s like a brother since we know each other since I was born.
I heard pronouncing i-muse™ in many different ways since we announced the product together with its logo.
Someone at the Enterprise Accelerator of the Politecnico in Como, where we’re currently incubated, thought we played some king of music since i-muse™ recalled them the name of the famous pop band, the Muse, author of the song Starlight, one of my favorites.
i-muse™ is actually the short version of Interactive Museum, but there’s also the assonance with the verb “to amaze” and also it can recall the classic inspirer muse.
A small kiss to Greta then, our voice of the truth.
We’ll surely amaze you with i-muse™, we’re almost there by now!

I mean the Christmas holidays… yes, because the email we sent before Christmas with the team’s best wishes granted us the 4° prize of the XMas Email Awards 2006 contest organized by Wireless.
Now that the prize has been delivered to our office, a nice 5 Mega pixels FIAT digital camera with a sub case , I’d like to thank the organizers and the jury.
The case is really nice, we’re almost sorry of opening it and use the camera for the immersions into the Lake of Como some mad guy among us already proposed to test the underwater capabilities of the camera.
After all what could you expect from someone writing in the Christmas best wishes email:
“… the three mad guys of the i-muse™ team, the innovative PDA guide for museums and art exhibitions, so mad to believe their project will succeed simply because they believe it, wish you:…“?
You can see the graphics made by Luca and the other winners on the site of the contest.

After the mention on Business People, the brief article on L’Espresso and most of all the interview on RaiDue, even the local daily newspaper La Provincia wrote about this now famous mythological figure.
A nice article emphasizing the long tradition of the Sartoria Orefice through the words of Mr. Lino Orefice which belongs to the series of articles devoted to innovation projects completed with success since the Centro Volta’s IComo initiative was born less than one year ago.
When the articles was published, on November 30th 2006, I thought something was missing: at least the mention of my name as the author of the hardware and software system born from Cleto Orefice’s idea which now allows the tailor shop to work in a totally different way.
I would have loved to see that not only for a minimum of personal pride, but also because I’d like to repeat the experience with another local artigianal enterprise willing to start an innovation journey by using informatics tools.
Also it has been the result of a great team work and in my opinion this was a chance to highlight the Centro Volta’s role as an effective aggregator of local competences, the true mission of IComo.
Maybe it’s better getting back to work and don’t be too much concerned about that, focusing instead on the message this article gave to readers: the tailor in Cernobbio is really an example to follow!
Consider that Mr. Lino, who always had an active role in the project thanks to his experience, works since 60 years and shows his invaluable irony whenever he reads of people complaining about the increment of the retirement age.
Discussing about workers’ rights is legitimate, but this is to say that for me he really represents an example to follow!