It’s incredible how we can build as close a relationship as with a family member with a creature so different from us human beings!
It happened with my cat Willy, and now that an obscure incurable illness has taken him away, all that’s left is the memory of the best moments spent stroking him, playing hide and seek, and why not, replying accordingly to his mewings.
Found 9 years ago in the area where they were building the Dadone complex in Como, Willy - the reddish tiger, become the family’s pet, a catalyst of our relations in times of trouble and in the course of time showed us that “divine feline detachment with which he measured himself with the things of the world”.
The quote is by Federico Roncoroni and comes from his Amici Mici published by Edizioni Ulivo, as are these lines which Willy certainly knew:

The true owner
A cat you believe you own
and he just to please you
makes you believe
he loves to be owned.
Actually
the truth lies elsewhere.
You do not own a cat,
ever:
the cat owns you.
Now that you know it,
never forget it:
you are the cat
of the cat you own.

Thanks to all my dear friends who stood by me at such a difficult time.

After almost two years spent working in the spaces the Acceleratore d’Impresa of the Politecnico di Milano assigned us, since September we moved to a new office: always in Como, pretty close to the University, roomy and with costs compatible with our startup budget.
We share the new space with other two ICT companies, Oplà and EnnovaResearch, and we’re going to maintain the great relationship we built with the staff of the Acceleratore d’Impresa.
I’m happy because not only we enjoyed playing as house-painters (the picture is self-explanatory! ) and interior decorators, but mostly because in this way we can knock down a barrier that was limiting the internal communication of our team.
Being able to see each other almost everyday, certainly will speed up the decisional process and we’ll be able to make more things together.
This while we’re getting ready for an October really full of important events: Innovation Circus, SMAU and Lu.Be.C..
Togunà’s adventure continues from the new office!

Who could have ever said that I would had to install a remote station of the Net-tailor system no less than in Moscow?
And yet we did it, everything went ok fortunately. On last Saturday, together with Cleto Orefice, I flew to the Russian capital and in the following two days I installed and configured the IP camera that will allow Cleto to remotely take measurements and do the suits fitting for Styleguide.ru’s customers, a company taking care of the image and style of important people.
There were a lot of uncertainties before leaving, both from the technical and human point of view, mixed together with the appeal and mystery of a big city such as Moscow.
It wasn’t easy, but everything went well also thanks to Styleguide.ru staff, in particular their young manager and founder Ivan and his brilliant assistants Nadia and Viktoria.
Thanks to them we had the opportunity to appreciate some of the Moscow wonders, as you can see in the gallery of 69 photos I shot.
Really a great experience!
I’m very happy for Cleto, since his investment to make the Net-tailor system is beginning to generate profits.
Who knows where we’ll go to install the next station…

The guys who launched the portal Comoe20.it decided to interview us for their WebTV.
They came to the Educational Silk Museum of Como to see our videoguide at work and ask us if we made the system with our sole forces or someone did help us out.
Although the number of people involved in the project who supported us is relevant, from the Politecnico to the Chamber of Commerce of Como, to the Educational Silk Museum’s staff, the investment in terms of time and money has been almost entirely ours.
It’s something pretty surprising actually. Five youngers from Como who try to play as entrepreneurs starting with a product dedicated to a difficult market, especially in Italy: we’re actually inventing our work!
This is the message of the nice video edited by Comoe20.it’s staff and we hope the people will get it.
Enjoy the video!

In a few days all the five of us will leave for Canada to demonstrate i-muse™ at the ICHIM 07, the international conference about informatics applied to cultural heritage that will take place in Toronto from the 24th to the 26th of October.
For us it’s an incredible chance to show the results of our work to the 300 invited people coming from all over the world, including researchers, sector experts and professionals.
Even the local daily newspaper La Provincia wished us good luck with a great article by Sara della Torre.
It’s a big investment for us, although actually facilitated, since we are among the beneficiaries of the Bando Ingenio, a regional announcement of competition which guarantees us that the expenses sustained for the educational mobility will be refunded.
Meanwhile we got some interest thanks to the paper about i-muse™ we wrote for the conference.
We’ll try to leave a positive impression and to enjoy the adventure.
We’re getting ready with the last things and then let’s go!

After the interview on last February on ZeroTreUno during which me, Luca and Paolo explained what we would have done to make i-muse™, I went back to Espansione TV to tell what we actually did at the Educational Silk Museum.
Elda De Mattei, the presenter, was curious to know if we managed to keep our good promises to create a really innovative tool to visit museums and art events.
With the PDA in my hand, I showed her how much easy is using i-muse™ and I believe I got the attention of the public by showing some of the best pieces of our video guide.
Elda wished us good luck for the incoming travel to Toronto where we’ll present i-muse™ at the ICHIM 07 and I appreciated when she gave me the opportunity to tell about my passion for the Vespa and my wish to be able to see i-muse™ guiding visitors at the Museo Piaggio someday.
Elda called Alice our virtual guide Chiara, a little mistake, certainly lesser than the mention of the atomic bomb during the interview in February!
Here is the video of the 12 minutes interview in DivX format.

After the presentation on Saturday 29 September for the event A Night at the Museum 2007 which attracted important guests like Paolo De Santis, President of the Como’s Chamber of Commerce, and Pierluigi della Vigna, professor at the Politecnico di Milano, together with numerous friends and curious people, yesterday I went to Venice to get an award for our i-muse™ project: a special nomination in the e-culture category of the eContentAward 2007 contest.
The journey has been the opportunity for me to visit for the first time a fascinating town such as Venice.
Dario, a PhD student at Ca’ Foscari university who kindly guided me through the town’s Calle, told me with a bit of irony: “First time in Venice? It shouldn’t have been easy missing it!”.
Once filled the laguna gap, for i-muse™ there are other surprises coming by!

By reading the name of the event maybe someone will recall the recent movie with Ben Stiller.
Actually it’s an event involving 250 museums in Lombardia, each one of them offering different cultural initiatives: free guided tours, musical events, videos, exhibitions and degustations.
If I hadn’t had to be at the Educational Silk Museum of Como for the scheduled public presentation of i-muse™ at 18:30 I would be really pleased to attend some of these events!
I’m just joking, it’ll be a very important event for us.
The staff of “our” museum is very active lately to say the least. On Wednesday 20 they inaugurated a wonderful temporary exhibition dedicated to a collection of American bags from 1930 to 1970, while on Wednesday 27 it’ll be the turn of the second edition of the bobbin lace competition.
So three reasons, two exhibitions and the presentation of i-muse™, good enough to choose the Educational Silk Museum of Como among the numerous cultural offerings on Saturday 29 September.
I’ll be waiting for you together with the whole i-muse™ team for our first Night at the Museum!

PS: After the interview on Telereporter even the local broadcast Espansione TV dedicated us a brief but very effective two minutes long service during the evening news.

We took more than 70 people during July and August to the Educational Silk Museum of Como to complete the usability tests of i-muse™, a fundamental step of the project which absorbed me completely and allowed us to refine the software in its various components.
So thanks to all the people who come and enjoyed using i-muse™. Thanks also to the museum’s staff who has always been kind and welcomed our testers.
Some of the photos shot in front of the museum’s Gift Shop are now in the online gallery, a proof of our satisfaction in being able to see i-muse™ finally into the hands of the people.
The testers have been impressed by the overall quality of our video guide, almost as they didn’t expect a result of a such high level, a result obtained by a group of five young people who are “playing” as entrepreneurs.
Enthusiastic for the video guide, people at the end of the visit with i-muse™ often commented about the workers’ labour inside factories in the recent past.
Now that usability tests are completed the second step is waiting for us: promoting what we did so far and setting up a valid commercial offer.
The way is still a long one, as the experts are telling us…

It’s a real satisfaction watching the fruit of our work in the hands of people while they visit the Educational Silk museum of Como with i-muse™, watching them at ease and at the end satisfied while they recall the things which impressed them the most!
Most of them actually do not expect such a high quality of our guide in all its components: workings, graphics and contents.
Usability tests are going on, they’re allowing us to refine the software and recently I had the chance to explain how they are performed in a article published on the Italian online magazine Tafter.
Usability is common sense, as Donald A. Norman says, and from the tests we made so far it seems our wanted result is getting near: when the people at the end comment only the contents it means the rest is ok, the i-muse™ formula works!