Euro Coin Collection Update 1.2
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coin Collection, Mobile, Software on November 21, 2011
The second update of Euro Coin Collection is on the AppStore.
In the new version I added an option to show the coins available only in mint sets, thus not issued for circulation. The data comes from reliable and up-to-date sources such as www.euro-auflagen.de by Henning Agt.
There are also pictures of the new common sides with the enlarged Europe design, issued since january 2008, so that you can compare them with the previous design.
Thanks to Hessel, Damien and Frank for the correction of dutch, french and german texts.
Motivated by the suggestions received, both via email and by reviews on the AppStore, the development of the app continues and in the next version I’ll add the 2 Euro commemorative coins issued from 2004 to 2011, as promised.
In this period there’s a lot of talk about the Euro and the debt crisis in european countries, Italy in particular. Well, what will really happen is difficult to predict, but I’d like to recall the European Union motto: “United in diversity“, the meaning of which you can appreciate even by collecting Euro coins, discovering and getting to know different cultures.
For what concerns Italy, now having a particularly hard time, I invite you to watch Benigni’s speech at the European Parliament (english subtitles). He said Italy is not the country of Renaissance and Resurgence, but the one of Resurrection! 
Euro Coin Collection Update 1.1
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coin Collection, Mobile, Software on July 13, 2011
The first update of the app for Euro coins fans is available on the AppStore.
I couldn’t wait for it to be published since it corrects a bug that could crash the app when many different coins were added to a collection.
Thanks to Andrei from Estonia and Uwe from Germany for helping me track down the bug.
The new version also includes the second series design of belgian Euro coins, issued in 2008 in order to comply with the European Commission’s guidelines, as well as minor improvements and bug fixes.
Comments are good so far. Most of all, users like to view all the coins together.
Also, from app usage statistics it’s interesting to notice that the average session length is pretty high, 3 minutes, three times the average of the Reference category, which is 1 minute.
Now I’m listening to opinions and suggestions for the next versions, both from collectors and non-collectors.
Adding 2 Euro commemorative coins is already on top of the list: I’ll need some more work to virtually collect them all, but it’ll be worth it and they’ll have a dedicated album.
See you to the next update of Euro Coin Collection!
Euro Coin Collection APP 1.0 Released!
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coin Collection, Mobile, Software on June 23, 2011
Apple published Euro Coin Collection 1.0, my app about Euro coins!
I think that, even if it isn’t the first one, for any developer is always a particular joy seeing their application available virtually worldwide, at last after weeks or months of incubation in their development workstation and available only to a few volunteer testers.
For me it isn’t the first one about Euro coins: in 2003 I made a similar app for the Pocket PC platform, then become Windows Mobile.
The app got good press coverage, won some awards and after receiving one of them I was even invited to present it to the Netcafé program, my first time on TV I recall with pleasure, since I was so excited about it.
Back then, however, for as much original as it was, the app was targeted to a “niche into a niche”, that is collectors with a Pocket PC PDA… too few to create a critical mass.
It’s not a matter of Microsoft vs Apple, since I’m going to develop also a version for Windows Phone, other than the Android one.
It’s to say that today things are very different: there are social networks, smartphone penetration reached 35%, and most of all there’s the AppStore ecosystem.
The new app has been designed and coded from scratch, but it retains the same objective of the first one: making easy and funny discovering Euro coins with your mobile device, be it an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.
An objective not so easy to reach when you have to manage about 200 different coin designs of the 20 Euro area countries.
Actually the main feature distinguishing it from similar apps is the interactive album that allows you to view all the coins at a glance, each of them 1 swipe and 1 touch away to see its details.
The rest of the features are in the page dedicated to the app.
Now it’s the turn of who’ll download the app to tell what he or she thinks about it and suggest improvements for the next versions.
Hope you’ll like the Smiling Coin app!
Dijkstra’s Humble Programmer
Why programming is generally considered a difficult task?
Many people think programming is difficult to learn if you don’t have a bent for it.
I’m among those who think that anything can be learned, given the necessary amount of will and time available. However I understand that some aptitude is needed, in particular for logic and mathematics, in order to become a good programmer.
Maybe an answer comes from an article by Edsger Dijkstra, a Dutch computer scientist winner of the Turing Award in 1972, titled The Humble Programmer.
In the article Dijkstra explains that programming is a task requiring a lot of intellectual effort, since our minds are limited, and the programmer often needs to keep in mind many abstraction levels at the same time: from the lowest, the code, to the higher, the interface presented to the user, passing through a number of levels set by the platform you’re working on and by the application architecture.
Actually, it’s a task requiring a lot of concentration for long periods of time.
If you’re good at using concepts such as encapsulation and independency among modules, you can reduce complexity and keep in mind a lower number of levels at the same time, but there’s no doubt it’s a brain intensive task. Because of this, according to Dijkstra, the programmer must approach it with as much humility as possible.
This explains, for example, why it isn’t easy at all replacing a programmer in a company: code is just an abstraction level, other levels stay in the brain of who’s writing it.
It’s a wise and still current article: as computing power increases (while our brains don’t!), we should stick to the best tools (modest and elegant programming languages) and find manageable solutions.
My bottom line is that being humble in front of brain intensive tasks can help not only in programming.
Meritocracy and Rules
Can a country or a company survive even if it doesn’t care about meritocracy?
Yes, probably, but just survive, since in the fast global market it’s destined to lose competitivity.
I read the two books, Meritocracy and Rules, with interest. They accurately analyze important subjects, often superficially mentioned in articles and debates on traditional media.
The first book by Roger Abravanel left me with a definitely optimistic impression: after an analysis of the value of recognizing and rewarding merit, as well as the best practices this social attitude can lead to in different environments, from small companies to public administration, Abravanel makes 4 realistic proposals to develop meritocracy culture in Italy.
The second one, written by Abravanel together with Luca d’Agnese, left me feeling a bit more pessimistic, since they unravel the causes that generated “vicious circles” of rules in our country, making it fall to the bottom of numerous international rankings about competitivity in various sectors.
We need to fire up “virtuous circles” of rules, because making rules is as much important as respecting them, to understand which of them needs to be canceled or changed.
However, if our country sits on the proverbial “rule made, cheat found”, we can forget to regain competitivity. 
I think everything starts from schools and good teachers. Abravanel’s proposals about this are realistic and perhaps something is happening, slowly, while dinosaurs egoistically defending their positions are extinguishing…
The books are a must read even for startuppers. By definition a startup has to act quickly to become competitive, and in my experience this isn’t possible if startup members don’t really understand how important meritocracy is.
Blog Lifting
Rather than a lifting, I had to do a plastic surgery operation to the blog!
It’s a metaphor to say that I had to work a lot to fix it: I rebuilt the whole database since I couldn’t access to the WordPress control panel any more, I suspect due to a non up-to-date installation or a buggy plugin.
So I checked and fixed all the 219 posts I wrote until now, both in italian and english, fixing broken links in the process.
Reading all the posts recalled me why I’m blogging: to collect memories and experiences I lived in first person and share them, hoping they can be useful to others.
Among the “dearest” posts, for example, there’s the one I wrote for the loss of my cat Willy.
Or the one with the videos of my first interview on TV… ehi, how long ago? I looked like a boy! 
Or event the one I wrote when I came back from the Vespatour… well, each post has a meaning, a little story to tell.
We’re living in times where looks are everything, even too much, so I tried to choose a simple but attractive theme, customizing Fusion by digitalnature.
Useful are the two accessibility functions on the top right of the page: clicking on Aa you can chance to font size, while <> changes the page width.
I couldn’t do without a plugin to manage sharing options on main social networks, and I choose the one made by LinksKu.
I hope you appreciate the new look, but that contents are the motivation for you to come back.
FashionTouch Finalist in the InventiON Contest
A touch of technology for everything fashionable, from fashion to design: it’s the idea behind the FashionTouch system, finalist of the InventiON contest!
It’s a software to make interactive catalogues downloadable on the latest generation smartphones, through which you can watch videos, photos and read the latest news about your favourite brand.
I got the idea when I developed this kind of application for the presentation of the new Samsung smartphone designed by Armani, which took place on last october.
In a few words I’d like to develop a software platform to create interactive catalogues able to reduce times and costs compared to the development of ad-hoc applications, thus making the system available not only to big brands, but also to small and medium Made in Italy companies.
They liked the idea and FashionTouch was included among the three finalists of the Art and Design category of the InventiON contest organized by Alintec.
The rules state that winners will be chosen according to the results of an evaluation by a panel of experts and online votes by the public.
I’d like to invite you to vote for your favourite inventions on the InventiON contest website, where you can watch a video presentation for each finalist. You can cast your vote until March 31.
May the best one win!
L’Aquila Will Fly Again!
I can say it out loud after a week spent at Campo Globo as volunteer of the civil protection and member of ANA of Como.
Campo Globo was one of the 170 tent camps built for the earthquake emergency in Abruzzo and took its name from the nearby store in the Coppito zone.
Once there, I worked at the camp office, the place where the Alpini managed the camp and thus where I was able to see different aspects of the situation.
Together with three volunteers of La Spezia’s ANA, Enrico, Attilio and camp-chief Alberto, we worked all day long from august 29th to september 5th, trying to respond to all the requests coming from the 930 residents, other than from Italian Navy and Army officers who excellently managed the two kitchens of the camp.
The human side of the experience has been the most important one: talking to people from L’Aquila and listening to their unfortunate stories and wishes to start over gave a precise meaning to the feeling of solidarity that made me leave for Abruzzo.
However, being able to see the ruins of the city center left a sense of sadness deep inside me. It wasn’t like watching them in photos or on TV at all: it will really take a lot of time for the reconstruction…
The photos I posted were mostly shot at the camp, since you can find those with the ruins pretty anywhere and they do not really deliver the actual dimension of the destruction of the buildings.
My best wishes to all the people I met during that week: the Scuola del Genio and San Marco officers, the great Alpini, and the camp residents with a soul stronger than any earthquake!
As San Marco officers wrote on the sail in the picture: The lion wants it, L’Aquila in his heart.
Salento On a Vespa!
On my Vespa, from Como to Santa Maria di Leuca, to discover a land unknown to me: the Salento!
After 3200km riding my Vespa I can say that such a long journey during the two central weeks of august was really worth it.
After a stop in Bologna and Bisceglie, hosted by relatives who took care of their favourite mad vespa fan , my Vespa flawlessly accompanied me on the visit to the most beautiful places in Puglia: from Ostuni to Gallipoli, Nardò, Santa Maria di Leuca, to the spectacular Ciolo Bridge, Castro, Otranto, Lecce, and to Melpignano, where I attended the final concert of the Notte della Taranta, an incredible example of territorial marketing!
150.000 people compressed in the small town danced the pizzica, an entertaining and sensual popular ballet, all night long.
They say Salento has peculiar curing properties, mainly due to three factors: colors as in chromotherapy, purifying substances spread through air by olive plants and the different iodine concentration of the two seas, Jonio and Adriatic, help to improve blood values just after a week of stay.
Body and soul restored, also thanks to old and new friends met, I posted a gallery with the best photos of the journey.
Enjoy it and… intra lu salentu tocca torni! (You have to come back to Salento!) 