Archive for category Como
IComo: The Factory of Ideas
Last thursday, I attended the IComo: La Fabbrica delle Idee (the factory of ideas) in Villa Olmo, an event organized by the Centro Volta and the Chamber of Commerce of Como and presented as a matching point for technology innovation aimed at local small and medium companies willing to innovate by exploiting new ideas to be able to remain competitive on the market.
The subjects of the presentations ranged from robotics and automation to new manufacturing techniques such as MIM (Metal Injection Moulding), but included also a presentation about RFID technology by a HP manager, as well as a brief overview of the future of information technology by Intel which included mobile devices.
My collaboration with the Centro Volta is already generating positive results. We’re starting a project committed by a small artigianal enterprise who was searching for a partner to take care of the development of their innovative idea from both the hardware and software sides.
It looks very stimulating, but at the same time we recently completed the due diligence study for the project I submitted some months ago and it appears we’ve found the right contacts to make it real, something that appeared difficult to me at first.
Looks like I’m building a busy schedule for the next months, but that’s what I wanted when I first got in touch with the staff of the Centro Volta, so I can’t complain at all! 😉
Articles on La Provincia and Newsletter Subscription Invitation
Posted by Albegor in Como, Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on May 29, 2005
It has been a busy week after the release of the new version of EcPc, and although I hadn’t much time to do marketing activities, it has been appreciated not only by owners of high-end VGA devices, but also by the users of the QVGA version, as you can read from the comment Jim Bruce posted on Handango.
On tuesday the local daily newspaper La Provincia published the letter I wrote to reply to a couple ones discussing about multimedia piracy. It’s a very delicate matter and I tried to describe my position both as a consumer and as a software developer. I’ll dedicate a separate space on the site about this soon, in the meantime you can read the reply to my letter written by one of the two original readers.
Then on thursday they published my full page article about the presentation of Windows Mobile 5.0, codename Magneto, and the smaller one about the big growth of the PDA market in the first quarter of the year.
Window Mobile 5.0 is really big news. I just got Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 and I’m having a good look at the new SDKs and to the stand-alone emulator in particular, then I’ll write more about this. The logo of the Beta Experience program is really curious: it’s a bug! 
I’m now using Dada Mail, a excellent free software for mailing list management, to send newsletters both in italian and in english, so I’d like to invite you to subscribe to the one of your interest if you’d like to be updated about the most important announcements such as the release of new software or even what I wrote here on the blog. 😉
The italian version of the newsletter has a generally richer content.
Bruno Bozzetto at the Closing Seminar of AnimatiComo
The presentation by Bruno Bozzetto, the father of the italian animated cartoons, concluded the first edition of AnimatiComo, a series of three seminars about computer animation organized by the researchers of the Polytechnic of Como.
All the attendees have been fascinated by the words of the “father”, although he actually preferred to be called grandfather. 🙂
What impressed me the most, apart from his extreme clarity of exposition, was the firm belief which lead all of his career, that is you can do great things even with poor resources. It all begins from creativity, then you use the tools at your disposal to express it, tools that don’t have to be necessarily the most technologically advanced and expensive. Just take a look at what he produced by using Flash and a lot of irony about the worst attitudes of italians in Europa&Italia, a short animation he made in 1999.
The seminar concluded with the projection of the cartoon Vip Mio Fratello Superuomo, one of his three full length movies, made in 1968.
Here you can read a brief interview with Bozzetto published by the local daily newspaper La Provincia.
All this contrasts al lot with the final results obtained by the spanish big budget, for European standards at least, animation team who produced the 3D animation El Guerrero Sin Nombre, presented for the first time after its completion by Nacho Martin last week during the second of the three seminars. The cartoon rendering technique granted a unique and impressive look to the movie, but the empathy generated by the characters was light years from that stirred up into spectators by Bozzetto’s Vip Brothers, in my opinion.
I had the chance to talk a bit with Nacho and he told me a phrase I only partially share: the important is getting to the end…
AnimatiComo has been a really pleasant experience, made even more interesting by the fact I’m reading the book Animazione 3D wrote by Nicolò Ceccarelli and Daniele Bigi, the two main brains behind the event.
Can’t wait for the next edition then! 🙂
Animazione 3D and AnimatiComo
Posted by Albegor in Como, Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on May 12, 2005
Today I attended the first of the three presentations of AnimatiComo, an event organized by the Polytechnic of Como and some people interested in computer animation. Among them Nicolò Ceccarelli and Daniele Bigi, authors of the book Animazione 3D which I’m now reading.
The guest of today was the japanese artist Fusako Yusaki, a brilliant mind expressing her creativity by using plastiline to produce stunning animations with the stop motion technique. She briefly talked about her long career and his love for Italy where she lives since many years.
His relation with computer graphics technology, the basic theme of the event, is limited, but the purpose of Ceccarelli was showing to students this peculiar side of animation and in my opinion he did it right since it has been a great pleasure hearing Mrs. Fusako talking about his art and his passion with the enthusiasm and the vitality of a girl. 🙂
Next week the main guest will be David Iglesias, while the following there will be the great Bruno Bozzetto.
A curious detail: the green ball in the logo of AnimatiComo is supposed to be made of plastiline as a homage to the kind Mrs. Fusako.
Back to my works, which doesn’t involve plastiline at all as a mean of expression, but rather bits and pieces of code, although I must say they can contain the same level of imperfections ;), everything is getting ready for the release of version 1.5 of EcPc, both in VGA and QVGA.
As I wrote in the forum I set the release date on may 16th. See you on monday then! 🙂
Defendemos La Alegria at Zelig Circus and EcPc Easter Discount
Posted by Albegor in Como, Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on March 26, 2005
Although spring isn’t in full swing yet, there’s a sort of feeling in the air, a feeling of change, I can tell it by looking at people and not just the weather.
With all the bad news from all around the world a laugh is what is needed to stay up with the mood and I definitely had lots of laughs on monday when I had the chance to attend to Zelig Circus, the most followed comic TV show in Italy, thanks to the staff of Il Sole. 🙂
We had a small booth inside the tent’s show and we took care of giving leaflets of the charity association to the 1800 people who were lucky enough to get a ticket for the show. It’s impressive when all the people clap their hands together while laughing at the jokes performed by Zelig’s characters, it’s very different from the small screen experience. 😉
I wasn’t allowed to take pictures during the recordings, but I took some before and after. The first two you see here are TV captures depicting the stage with the presenters Claudio Bisio and Vanessa Incontrada at the beginning of the show and the energetic Papy Ultras (Pino Campagna), one of my favorites!
I hope to be able to repeat the experience, in the meantime I spotted some interesting discounts in the PocketLand special offers, so I think I’ll make some software shopping for my Pocket PC in the next days before they expire. I just asked the activation of a discount code for EcPc to give the chance to anyone interested to add even my software to their Easter shopping cart. The code is 19570032670125A, it expires after 1st april and is automatically applied if you go to the special offers page.
No Cebit 2005 But A Lot Of Work Behind The Scenes
Posted by Albegor in Como, Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on March 18, 2005
I was uncertain until the end if going to the Cebit 2005, then I decided to not leave since that wasn’t the kind of journey I could just wake up and go as I did with the 3GSM in Cannes. The long travel to Hannover required some careful planning, especially for the accommodation, something I didn’t in due time. No problems, it will be for the next year and fortunately I’ve been able to read many reports from the event, although that can’t substitute the feeling of being right there.
The VGA version of EcPc is at a good point, I completed all the new high resolution graphics and I’m putting together a Beta right now. I’ll post a preview in the forum once ready. 😉
Do you know the Handango Champion Awards? They’re the annual awards by Handango honoring the best in the mobile software catalogue. The deadline is Thursday, March 24th, so I’d like to invite you to vote EcPc by clicking here and following these instructions: select Windows Mobile Pocket PC in the first question about the operating system, then on the second page select the Best Application for Life category, write Euro Coins Pocket Collector in the application name field, Albegor as developer, 81123 as Product ID, leave your e-mail address and your brief motivation if you want. 🙂
You can read more about the awards and the winners of the last year by clicking here.
This week I presented a project to the Alessandro Volta Center for Scientific Culture and during the discussion I had with an engineer, Matteo Baracani, I was pleased of the compliments for the work I did until now and the awards EcPc earned, something which probably exceeds the value of the degree I did not get (yet), the infamous italian “piece of paper” for friends. 😉
Well, I ended the discussion with a joke and told him that if I’d had 1 Euro for each compliment I got now I would be like… and he told “Bill Gates”!
We laughed, but the true is that it was a bitter laugh for me. It’s curious how people always think about Mr. Gates when it comes to talking about software and money. I don’t need the money Gates has to make up for a decent life, although I do recognize a minimum is necessary to bring to completion good ideas, so I hope they’ll evaluate positively the project so that I can start working seriously on it. It could turn into the most important project for this year. 8)
In the meantime if you want you can vote for EcPc in the Handango Champion Awards, thanks!
Il Sole and his Planiverso
Just before Christmas I decided to make myself a special gift, obviously ignoring what would have happened a few days later in South East Asia.
I became a member of Il Sole, a charity organization active with distance adoption and abused women recovery programs in countries such as Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and India.
Thanks to my Uncles who are members since a long time I had the pleasure to get in touch with this organization a bit at a time and to appreciate the work and the outstanding results of its staff and the genuine dedication of his president and founder Olivia Piro.
So in the end this appreciation naturally turned into my decision to support them once I was able to do it. Then the deadly Tsunami stroke and brought his waves of destruction up to India including Pallepalem, a village in the Nellore district where Il Sole operates. It’s a village of fishers (Pallekars) and the 394 families living there lost all their mud-huts and their boats, so Il Sole immediately decided to act in two phases, a first emergency one in which they provided rice, medicines, water and sheets, now concluded, and a more financially demanding second phase aiming at rebuilding the fishing activity to gradually overcome the damages caused by the Tsunami. You can visit their website and read this article published by the local daily newspaper La Provincia and decide to give your help in their project.
This is a real way to help the Tsunami victims in my opinion, not by SMS. 😉
When I became a member I also purchased some of their merchandise I’m proud to wear, but there was a really original thing I couldn’t miss: the Planiverso.
As you can read in the description it’s actually a big poster showing the world upside down with the meaning to give back dignity to the so called third world. I like it because it’s cool and with a serious meaning at the same time, but now that it’s hanging on the wall of my room I can’t but notice the area around the Indian Ocean every time I look at it.
It’s as if the Tsunami did really put the world upside down…
Update: Mrs. Piro wrote a touching letter to La Provincia about the Tsunami tragedy. After some days of thinking I wrote my reply which you can read here. They cut it a bit, but they did it perfectly since you can read here on the blog what’s missing.
The funny De-Lurking Day
This is so amusing I couldn’t agree more, since it’s about a matter I’m involved in myself: Lurking. 😉
I spotted it on manteblog, the blog of Massimo Mantellini, but the original idea comes from paper napkin.
Statistics tell the true, but are they just numbers? Oh, no, there are real people behind those “unique contacts” which make up for those graphs, don’t they?
So they proposed the De-Lurking Day by inviting readers to leave a trace of their usually silent presence writing a comment on the author’s blog.
There isn’t the chance to comment on my blog, at least until the new website will be up and running (hint! hint!), but if you’re in the mood why don’t you send me a “Hello, I’m the lurker which made your #### unique contact of the day!”? 🙂
Ehm, no I won’t start donating 1 Euro to aid the Tsunami victims for each e-mail I’ll receive. Sheryl of paper napkin did that and had to close the comments due to their unexpected high number!
Do you know italians donated a total of 28 millions through the 1 Euro per SMS campaign for the South East Asia tragedy?
The whole total will go for the donation campaign, but mobile operators will be happy when we’ll understand our credit needs recharging sooner than expected. Even I fell into the “trap”… and I’ve already recharged the credit, doh!
There are better ways to donate out there by using your credit card or other payment methods.
Seneca once said “Who spends his life traveling very often will have many guests, but no friends”. Change traveling into browsing and guests into reading blogs and we’re talking about the same thing: Lurking. 8)
I’m a lurker myself because I love silence and I work better in silence. Today you’ve got the chance to not be the usual lurker if you’ll e-mail me. Don’t take the bad example of some friends who can click on anything, but can’t write a few characters in a simple e-mail…
End of the Year Thought
I know that with this post I’m breaking the promise I made in the last one, but it was planned to be posted as an end of the year thought since a long time. After all this might be an example of the good and bad of being an independent software developer following the motto “it’s ready when it’s ready”. 😉
The 2004 has been a particular year, with some changes in my private life and pretty different from what I planned at the beginning, so it couldn’t end without some thoughts about the hard work as a waiter during the last months. I benefited from this experience in many ways, well beyond what people could think, especially the ones who don’t read the blog. 😉
This was an article published on the local daily newspaper La Provincia about a charity dinner held at Villa d’Este the last November. I worked voluntarily for that dinner but I didn’t like at all some of the things I saw there and the tone of the article, so I wrote a first letter to the director of the newspaper published in the feature with the same name. The letter was ironical and meant to propose a thought to the readers, but it wasn’t appreciated, to say the least, by some colleagues, who felt involved in some way, so I had to write a second letter to clarify my point of view. Fortunately someone caught the point and the discussion went on with a letter by Luciano Forni, a former senator, and with others from some readers here, and here.
I got compliments for the courage of writing something like that, but I’ve been also surprised by the venom tongues of some colleagues, people who are used to accept compromises to be able to work, think always about money (or the lack of it) or haven’t enough neurons to distinguish irony from charge. My letter was a general thought about the hypocrisy in the modern world, which is even more actual if you consider what’s happened with the Incredible Tide in South East Asia, the so called third world…
I close this post with a sentence inspired by the director of a restaurant I worked for during this summer, a long time friend, brilliant and always busy in keeping his old habits and his life style: in his opinion italians should return doing humble works like in the past, in particular young ones with a degree and the “stench under their nose”.
How true I can say and I appreciated his words even more since he was referring to me as an example of a good worker.
So let’s close with the sentence I remember from the movie Life is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni, said to the waiter-Guido (Benigni) by his Uncle: “You’re serving, but you’re not a servant. Serving is a supreme art, God is the first servant. God serves men, but he’s not a servant to men!”
Back to work now, “le grand cirque” of the world must go on! 🙂
Update: irony inside irony, if you’ll have the patience to read my two letters, just take a look at the horoscope at the bottom of the page, I’m a Leo. 😉
The Clooney effect
The Clooney effect, that’s how they called the 40% increase of american tourists who visited our Lake of Como this summer.
Actually, since the Hollywood celebrity purchased Villa Oleandra in 2002, a 25-room 18th century villa in Laglio, a little village near Como, the attention of the international gossip-related press started to focus there and more recently in june the choice of Villa Erba as the location for some shots of the Ocean Twelve movie made the rest. 🙂
On local newspapers I’ve even read that our lake should become the Beverly Hills of Milan in the intentions of the provincial administration. Beverly Hills or not, american tourists are very welcome here, especially if they’ll bring their PDA with a copy of Ecpc to help them discover the secrets of the Euro coins and maybe start collecting them. 😉
I’ve never seen George Clooney in flesh and bones around here yet, but I’ve been curious enough to take a couple of pictures of his Villa Oleandra while I was biking around Laglio during the last may:
Villa Oleandra from the center of Laglio and the footbridge connecting the Villa to the upper section of Clooney’s estate.
Back to my software… do you want a little-big anticipation about the incoming version 1.4 of Ecpc? FREE VIEWER, that’s all I can say!