Archive for November, 2007
The Legend of the Good Italian Food
Did you ever stop to carefully read the tag of a food package you purchased at a supermarket?
I rarely did it before reading Paolo Conti’s book.
It’s the synthesis of a three years long inquiry, containing a lot of information exposed in a clear and easy way.
The book deals with arguments ranging from the supermarkets power over the food chain, to the analysis of health emergencies caused by food adulteration, to the opposition between techno-food and eco-food.
All of this always taking into consideration the position of Italy compared to other countries: we have a good competitive advantage in the biologic food sector. 🙂
It’s an advantage mostly due to a slow industrialization process of the food production sector in our country, something which we can exploit now that the consumer attention towards good and genuine food is definitely increasing.
So there’s still hope in order to preserve the good italian food reputation over the next years, so that it won’t become a legend due to invasive production and conservation techniques, supermarkets economic interests and, last but not least, our buying decisions. 😉
LuBeC 2007: ICT and Cultural Heritage
Lucca is a town of magic: I already wrote this when I visited it last year for the first time during the Vespatour.
This year I had the chance to get back to Lucca thanks to Lu.Be.C 2007, the event dedicated to the combination of ICT and cultural heritage organized by Promo P.A. Foundation at the Real Collegio.
A combination which isn’t exactly a marriage in Italy yet: I had the feeling that Public Administration representatives managing cultural heritage and entrepreneurs offering the so called additional services, too often speak different languages.
It’s a natural defect of computer science engineers making things only they can use, and in my opinion this is the strongest barrier in the dialogue between the two sides.
We try to do our part with i-muse: technology, PDAs and Rfid in our case, it’s just a tool.
What really matters is that the service we provide boasts quality and visitors actually benefits from it.
Along this line I appreciated the brilliant speeches of Andrea Granelli, advisor of the Minister of Cultural Heritage, and Ilaria D’Uva from D’Uva Workshop.
Who knows if next year at Lu.Be.C we’ll be able to report some progress towards this marriage thanks to i-muse. 😉
i-muse Presentation in Villa Olmo
Yesterday evening the emotion was great: we presented i-muse in the place where the idea was born: in Villa Olmo, during the 12th innovation technology matching organized by Centro Volta.
In 2004 I visited an exhibition about Mirò, the first of the great exhibitions organized in Villa Olmo, and while I was using an audioguide I got the idea to make a guide running on Pdas.
Then, in 2005, I committed to Centro Volta’s engineers a due diligence study for the project, a study that led me to search for the people to build a team.
This is the first blog post in which I wrote about the project, on march 18, 2005.
Back then the IComo initiative was at the beginning and Centro Volta’s engineers became increasingly more active in supporting local companies along the difficult, although stimulating, path to technologic innovation.
Since then a lot of things happened, and chance wanted that we presented i-muse first at the Educational Silk Museum, then in Canada, and now in the place where the idea was born.
I hope this strange combination will be a good sign for the future. 😉
i-muse on Rfid Italia
Rfid Italia, the italian portal about Rfid technology, published a video interview on i-muse.
Paolo Conti, Rfid Italia’s director, came to Como and had the opportunity to try the video guide at the Educational Silk Museum.
He spent words of appreciation for the system, in particular since we implemented the Rfid technology in a transparent way for the visitor.
Actually a small antenna mounted on the Pda is used to locate the Rfid tags placed on the caption holders and the visitor just have to bring the Pda close to the icons hiding the tags in order to play the content related to the exhibit he’s looking at.
A pretty simple interaction method which proved to be critical for the people who doesn’t feel at ease with technology in general, especially the so called couch potatoes. 😉
The Rfid Italia portal is pretty active lately. For example they recently launched the Rfid Italia Network initiative, aimed to provide consulting, matching and marketing services to the companies operating in the sector.
Enjoy the video!