i-muse became a registered trademark at last, it grows and evolves both as a product and entrepreneurial adventure!
From the work of the last months comes the new website, designed by Luca and launched in italian and english, our first newsletter, and a series of activities which had a strong acceleration thanks to the effort of Guido’s new marketing assistant, Francesca, a brilliant girl who gets things done, with whom I daily share our headquarters in Como, together with Paolo and Samantha in the nearby room.
At the same time the development of the i-muse platform is going to reach another important target: soon we’ll launch i-muse Creator, the content management system of i-muse, the tool that allows to visually create tours for the video guide by assembling and synchronizing audio-visual contents. A software that reserved for me a number of technical challenges during its construction.
Happy for the challenges won and the positive climate inside the team, after the summer stop I think an intense time is waiting for us and it will bring new satisfactions.
It’s really difficult to explain how hard startupping is, especially in Italy and in a time of crisis: loaded with good will and patience it’s the right time to build and hope for a better future.
In the meantime we enjoy ourselves an healthy summer stop to recharge batteries, physical and mental ones!
See you soon for other news about i-muse!

As the last year, I’ve been invited to present i-muse to the students of the Master in Brand of the Territorial Systems organized by POLI.design.
This year I went together with Francesca, our new marketing assistant and, as she said, we come back angry!
In a positive sense I mean: students were enthusiastic to try firsthand an easy to use tool that potentially represents the missing ring between modern mobile technologies and the fruition of multimedia contents made by professionals.
Sending this message to the people who have the power to decide whether to start an innovative project at their own exhibition is another challenge.
From this sort of contrast comes our angryness, so to say.. something that will stimulate us to work harder and try to communicate better with potential customers.
Accessibility was another matter of discussion with students: i-muse offers a number of options that make the application accessible to hearing and sight impaired people.
After this presentation we went back to work to get ready to launch the news on which we’re working in the background since some time: the first one is the new i-muse website, now online in italian!

Giving an effective presentation is pretty difficult task and Guido actually did it by presenting i-muse™ at
Touristech 2008!
On November 28, in the Sala Affreschi of Palazzo Isimbardi in Milan, we attended the third edition of the conference organized by Wireless and dedicated to innovative technologies for tourism.
The presentations were (almost) all interesting, each one focused on a different information technology tool: from web 2.0 style mobile service platforms to community portals for specific sectors such as sailing, from theatrical podcasts for historical town tours to i-muse™, our videoguide platform which aims to make its technology so transparent that the user can see only one thing: quality contents!
An objective not so easy to demonstrate we achieved, as discussed at the conference: the only method is using it and Guido explained this by talking about the i-muse™ installation project at Villa Bernasconi in Cernobbio and its possible evolution.
The date with Chiara, the virtual guide, is set to April 2009!

Apple hit my soft spot!
A few days ago I flew to Berlin to attend the conference dedicated to iPhone developers which took place on November 10 at Freie Universität.
iPhone is the first target of the extention of our videoguide platform, so I couldn’t miss the event that also gave me the chance to visit the german capital for the first time.
As a player of WWII videogames, I attacked or defended Berlin a lot of times on virtual battlefields. Maybe the sort of reverential fear I initially had about Berlin was due to that, other than to my complete ignorance about the german language.
However, walking around the city, alone or with Laura and Fawzi, two friends researchers I met in Toronto during ICHIM 07, my feelings did change: it’s a pleasant metropolis, with bike lanes, an efficient transportation system, little pollution and a lot of stories to tell: from the remains of the Wall to the chocolate sculptures by Fassbender&Rausch (in the picture you can see their unsinkable chocolate Titanic!).
Laura and Fawzi not only did offer their hospitality for my first stop in Berlin, but also helped me appreciating the city, including german and syrian cuisine: heartful thanks!
The contents of the iPhone Tech Talk were interesting, although necessarily not too much in-depth. Two of the speakers were italians, so it was pretty easy getting in touch with them and talk about i-muse™.
And now let’s bite the SDK of the Apple’s phone, since it looks like the ideal device on which i-muse™ will run!

On October 23 and 24 I’ve been in the magic Lucca together with the whole Togunà’s team to attend Lu.Be.C. 2008, one of the most important events in Italy about technology applied to the cultural heritage sector.
We were both among the 40 exhibitors with our stand and among the speakers in the afternoon conference dedicated to partnership case studies between public administration and private companies: the ideal opportunity to announce the i-muse™ installation project for Villa Bernasconi, a wonderful Liberty-style villa in Cernobbio, just recently restored.
Together with the Major of Cernobbio, Simona Saladini, Guido showed a demo of i-muse™ with the first contents made for the villa, impeccably speakered in Italian (thanks Melania!).
At the end of the two days in Lucca my team was really galvanized, a satisfaction that repays us of the hard work done until now to weave the web holding our startup in search of clients a bit at a time.
Big thanks to the staff of PromoPA, organizer the event, in particular to the patient Francesca Velani, Diana Lomas e Silvia Doberti!
Nice were the eco-compatible exhibition desks and panels made entirely by cardboard and great was the concert at the Auditorium San Romano with spectacular lights effects by Son et Lumière.

Interviews, articles, friends, curious people, potential partners and investors: anything and anyone visited our stand inside the Innovation Itineraries area during the four days of Smau 2008!
Tired and satisfied, thanks also to Emil Abirascid, who took care of the forth edition of the Itineraries and led to our stand journalists and reporters, with these results: Paolo interviewed by TG2 and Blogosfere, Guido interviewed by Markom.tv and Lombardia1TV, my interview for Radio24, an article on il Giornale, another one on the Lombardia feature of Il Sole 24 ORE and a mention on Nova24.
I’m happy since there was great attention towards startups created by young adults willing to innovate and change things!
And now the Lu.Be.C. event in Lucca is waiting for us, where we’ll present an important new project for our startup during the afternoon session.
Even at Lu.Be.C. we’ll have a stand where our “Chiara - the virtual guide”, will uncover herself for the joy of heritage valorization specialists!

The center of Milan has been overwhelmed by the events of Innovation Circus for a whole week: talk shows, presentations, exhibitions and interactive labs about innovation for everyone.
With such a theme i-muse™ had to be there! We had the chance to talk about our videoguide two times: during the talk show about innovation in turism that took place at Ottagono, in the center of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, and during Milano in Progress at Palazzo Giureconsulti, a marathon of presentations by creative and innovative local companies.
There was all Togunà team at Ottagono and Guido, during his brilliant speech, showed the audience the best videos and animations of i-muse™.
Paolo then repeated the presentation at Palazzo Giureconsulti in just 5 minutes marked by a virtual gong.
Now we’re ready for the next event: we’re exhibitors at Smau 2008, inside the Percorsi dell’Innovazione area, stand P18. Come and see us there!

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!

Windows Mobile Italy published an interview about our entrepreneurial adventure.
The editor-in-chief Diego Magnani opens the interviews section of the site by posting a series of questions and answers about Togunà and i-muse™.
I know Diego since he was editor of the italian printed magazine Il mio palmare, so he introduced me in the interview by recalling Euro Coins Pocket Collector, the first software I made for the Pocket PC platform.
Since then, mobile devices with the Microsoft operative system conquered a good market share, especially the convergent devices with phone capabilities, and the name of the platform changed to Windows Mobile.
There’s no lack of news at all in this world and Diego has the experience to report them to his readers in an pretty appealing way. Good luck then to Diego for his new editorial adventure.
Enjoy the interview!

i-muse™ now runs even on the Zypad made by Eurotech!
It’s a mobile device with WindowsCE 6.0 operative system, belonging to the category of the so-called “wearable computers” made by the multinational Eurotech.
One of the most stimulating aspects of my role as technical director in Togunà Interactive is playing with the latest devices, and thanks to Eurotech we had the chance to port i-muse™ on their Zypad with the perspective to start some projects together.
The conversion was a hard challenge, especially due to the redesign of the user interface, since the Zypad has a 320×240 pixels low-resolution display.
It’s a pretty compact and multipurpose device, deployable in numerous application environments thanks to the integration of the Rfid, Bluetooth, Zigbee and Gps technologies according to the models.
Now that our videoguide platform supports mobile devices with Windows Mobile and Windows CE operative systems, we can devote our resources to the devices made by other major market players, such as Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch!