Archive for category Software
We Won!!!
I don’t know if it has been for the logo made by Luca, the strong points of the project, the quality of the documentation we submitted, the presentation held with Guido at the Chamber of Commerce of Como last week or even the elegant suit tailored for that special occasion by the Sartoria Orefice ;), or most probably a combination of all these elements, but the end results is that we won the Special Award of the CCIAA Como at the StartCup 2006. 😀
We’re working on something not really new, something others already did by using the latest mobile technologies applied to the sector of cultural goods, but maybe the difference is that we aim our idea towards excellence and the commission got it and decided to choose us, although they told us the other projects were very interesting.
Yesterday in Milan professor Negrini gave us the award during the exciting ceremony of the StartCup finals.
The first picture captured that moment with me and Luca on the stage. The emotion was great, the same emotion that passed through the hands of the photographer.
The second one depicts the team, almost complete since Guido was missing, with professor Negrini and Paolo and Samantha of Opla S.r.l., our main collaborators. The third one shows all the winner groups on the stage of the main hall of the Università degli Studi.
After the ceremony we had a nice walk around the Duomo of Milan thanks to an exceptionally good weather for the season and I took a pic of the Madunina on top of it.
The cash award will help us to quickly get to the prototipation phase of the project, motivate a team that relied upon its own forces until now, and most importantly it opens the perspective to be incubated as a startup in the offices of the Polo Regionale of Como. This if what we actually were looking for, good job i-boys! 
Here the article about the incubation published by the local daily newspaper La Provincia.
The 16 Slides at the Chamber of Commerce
On last friday me and Guido, one of the members of the team I assembled since the beginning of the year to work on a technologic innovation project, held a 16 slides presentation at the Chamber of Commerce of Como.
We have been invited to present the project to compete for one of the special prizes of the StartCup 2006, the annual competition organized by the seven universities in Milan aimed to promote the creation of startup companies.
In front of a commission composed by Paolo de Santis, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Como, Pierluigi della Vigna and Roberto Negrini, two of the best professors I had when I was attending university, as well as Giorgio Corradi, manager for the incubator at the Polo Regionale of Como, we began the presentation with beating hearts.
We felt secure about the strong points of the project, since we’ve been seriously working on it since the beginning of the year, and we did see it slowly evolving on the right path, but you never know what can happen on such occasions, especially considering it was our first presentation outside the working group.
The presentation went well and the commission seemed positively impressed by the project. They asked us a lot of questions and we well exceeded the time we initially had.
There are five candidates in total for this special prize and on wednesday 25th in the main hall of the Università degli Studi di Milano they’ll announce the winners.
We’ll be there with fingers crossed…
Data Recovery with Isobuster
Whenever happens to lose data you assumed was safely stored in your backup devices, you feel angry, sad and desperate at the thought of being unable to recover it in any way.
That exactly happened to a friend of mine last week and I promised him I would have done my best to help him.
He accidentally quick formatted a DVD-RW disc containing almost one year of work. After a search on the Net I found what looked to be the best software solution for this problem: Isobuster.
Loosing data in that way never happened to me personally, so I had to evaluate some of the data recovery software solutions on the market and Isobuster resulted to be the best in terms of effectiveness, usability, price and support.
I emailed Peter Van Hove, the one-man-company behind Smart-Projects and author of Isobuster, and I found a friendly developer. 🙂
He told me he’s going to Cambridge for the European Shareware Conference. You can cast your vote here for his software if you’d like to increase his chances to win the Epsilon Award.
My friend was very happy to know I was able to recover his files, but I think he’d better thank Peter for creating such a good software. 😉
Anyway, loosing digital data is nothing compared to loosing friendship, maybe due to a simple mistake or a misunderstanding. It has just happened to me recently and there’s no software able recover such a situation. Human relationships can be much more complex than any kind of software.
In this case maybe only a candid dialogue could help…
Smau 2006: One Sail, a Couple of Halls and 98 Seminars
The Sail, this is the name of the 1 km long structure by Massimiliano Fuksas covering the new site of fieramilano near Milan, which hosted the 43rd edition of Smau, the ICT international exhibition.
Only two halls were used to contain the exhibitors’ stands and the area reserved for seminars. Speaking with some people they confirmed the impression that something was missing, that sort of background noise coming from big stands aimed to attract consumers and the like. At the same time it was pleasant being able to walk around the fair and ask for a meeting without having to dig through the crowd.
Pretty opposite feelings of course, but they’re both true. This was not a “Smau” for me, maybe they should change the name if they’re going to continue with this new business-only course. 😉
The two seminaries I attended were interesting, one was about software rights protection according to the italian law by Massimo Farina, pretty easy, quick and effective and the other about technologic innovation in point of sales by an IBM speaker.
I had some meetings with people working for companies whose products are (or may be) related to the projects I’m currently involved in, such as Sony’s network cameras and RFID device and service providers. I couldn’t miss a chat with friends in the Windows Mobile areas too.
The area named Innovation Routes was very well organized and hosted numerous stands of italian startups.
One of them was Econoetica, presenting the Arianna PDA city guide. I had the pleasure to meet Valentina, marketing manager, in Firenze during the Vespatour and use the guide for a whole day walking around the city, and at the fair I met her again together with the rest of the staff, Pietro and Luca.
They’re doing well and they got some good exposition thanks to their little stand. I was a real joy hearing again the genuine tuscan accent while speaking with Valentina. 🙂
Next to their stand I also spoke with the Blogosfere.it staff, a network of professional italian blogs, most of which are of very high quality thanks to their experienced bloggers.
They have opened a blog about Smau and posted some pics of the beauties you could find walking around the stands, but they definitely missed the best ones in my opinion… at the Blackberry one you could stare not only at their latest device, the Pearl, but also get a golf ball from two models. Now I just need a golf mace…
$297 for over $3000 Worth of Windows Mobile Software?!?
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on July 8, 2006
Would such an offer be too good to be true?
Oh no, it’s real actually, since the sentence is the slogan of the 2006 Best of Everything Software Package, a package containing the latest versions of winners and finalists from the Best Software Awards 2005, the annual contest organized by the american Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine.
As I previously wrote, EcPc QVGA was a finalist in the 2005 edition of the contest, so it has been included into the package together with 130 of the very best applications and games available for Windows Mobile devices.
I’m satisfied to see my software listed among other great Pocket PC applications and I’ve been even more glad to read the comment by one of the judges, Jack Cook, Senior Editor of Mobility Today, when they announced the finalists. Below you can see a scan of the certificate they sent me. 🙂
For the details of the offer please go to the official website, there’s even a Value Calculator, an Excel precompiled file, to help you determine if the total of the software you’d like to buy exceeds the package price. Very useful addition in my opinion.
They also put together a Best of Everything Smartphone Software Package, selling for $139, which includes over $600 worth of software only for Windows Mobile-based Smartphones. If you have a bunch of Windows Mobile software in your wishlist I’d suggest you to browse the contents of those packages, since the probability to find most of them inside them is high.
There’s also the The Best of Everything Demo CD which is part of the main package and contains the demo versions of the software. It’s free to 2 year subscribers, but you can order it separately for 15$.
Being a developer I agreed to make my software available free of charge to other developers whose products have been included into the package and who choose the same option to share their software. I consider a nice opportunity being able to share software among developers, a sort of digital fair play. Not all of them agreed to this opportunity, but most did, so another thumbs up for the makers of the package. 😉
Speaking about latest versions, I’ll probably release version 1.6 of EcPc before I’ll leave for holidays on august, so that you can upgrade from version 1.5, which is in the package. At the same time we’re building the new EcPc website. It looks great but it will take some time to complete.
The Riddle of the Tailor and the Software Developer
Posted by Albegor in Como, Net-Tailor, Software on June 19, 2006
Whatever could a tailor and a software developer have in common?
I couldn’t answer that until few months ago, when I started working on a technology innovation project commissioned by a prestigious tailor shop in Cernobbio, Sartoria Orefice, under the scientific coordination of the Centro Volta research center. I wrote a bit about this project in the past updates and now that we’re getting closer to its completion, I have been allowed to write more about it.
Sartoria Orefice is one of the few small enterprises in this high quality market sector, renowned for excellence not only in Italy but also in many countries of the world, so much so that a lot of customers come to Cernobbio from abroad to ask Mr. Lino and his son Cleto, who now runs the business, to create the perfect suit for them.
Back to the initial riddle, I am convinced the most appropriate answer consists in one simple word: Elegance! 🙂
Consider the hard work the tailor, guided only by his experience, make every day with such simple tools as needle and thread. Compare it now with the work I did during the last months with tools only apparently more complicated such as bits and bytes to create a hardware and software system which will make Orefice’s work much more efficient and profitable.
Especially the software part was made to measure, as they say, and the end result is as elegant as a finely handcrafted suit. 😉
They’ll be able to expand their business with this system, in fact the reason they invested in it in the first place is because they strongly believe in its potential.
I was happy to find such great people to work with: Cleto, Lino, their kind staff and Matteo from the Centro Volta. By working side to side with them I had the pleasure to learn some of the secrets of a craftsmanship as old as the hills, and fine-tuned by 5 generations of tailors. This year they’re celebrating 150 years since the first Orefice started the business in 1856.
This project gave me the chance to gain experience in a number of fields, from the development of custom software to the latest videosurvelliance and videoconferencing IP-based hardware, Sony’s products in particular, but, above all, gave me the opportunity to learn to deal with people in the best way, understanding their needs and turning a problem into an efficient working solution.
I’d love to apply this kind of approach to another small localcompany . The staff at the Centro Volta is ready to enroll me again, should someone request their direct assistance in a technology innovation project, maybe along the lines of the IComo initiative.
You could contact me directly if you prefer, while if you need a high quality Made-in-Italy suit now you know who call. 😉
With their new system Cleto and his father will be able to assist you all the way from the choice of the fabric to the finest details of your suit, even if you live on the other side of the globe.
Recently I came across a significant quote by Einstein which inspired me the initial riddle:
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Touristech 2006 and Veronafil
Two intense days made the weekend fly more swiftly than usual. On friday I attended the Touristech event in Villa Erba and I spent most of saturday in Verona at the Veronafil philately and numismatics fair.
Touristech is the first event organized by Wireless dedicated to new technologies and digital innovation at the service of the cultural entertainment and hospitality services for tourists. For this meeting they couldn’t choose a better location than the beautiful Villa Visconti, located in the Villa Erba park in Cernobbio. It has been a long time since I had the chance to walk in that park, although I’m often in Cernobbio, and I hadn’t remembered how pleasant and relaxing it is. In fact it was the first time I wasn’t tired when I went home after a day full of conference presentations instead of what usually happens after similar events organized in Milan.
One of the moderators didn’t forget to mention they shot some sequences of the Ocean Twelve Hollywood movie there. After all the benefits of the presence of George Clooney in his villa in Laglio seem to be much more valuable than the works by Luchino Visconti…
The presentations were all interesting, especially for the fact that the subject matter is the basis of a software project I’m working on together with the group of people I assembled at the beginning of this year. People make the difference in everything and this project is shaping up thanks to them . 🙂
I met Paolo Conti, a journalist of Il Sole 24 Ore, the brilliant moderator of the recent Mobile Force & Office Forum 2006 and we had the chance to talk about the project.
After a morning of presentations by representatives of the major players of the tourism market in Italy, such as Touring Club among the others, the event closed with a series case histories of mobile technology applied to outdoor journeys, such as the PDA guide they’re experimenting with at the Villa Reale Park of Monza and the PDA guide currently in use at the Swiss National Park.
Then I spent saturday among the numerous small stands of coins and stamp collectors setup in one of the huge exhibition halls of Verona Fiere. Should I mention this had something to do with the work behind the PC version of EcPc? 😉
My focus were Euro coins of course, and I had the chance to meet some users from the LaMoneta.it Italian forum, but unexpectedly I came back home with a surprise as much as precious: I managed to get the Green Vespa, the only Vespa model ever made for the famous Kinder surprise toys series!
I got to know of this particular toy since I read the book Vroom with a view by Peter Moore and I’ll certainly have another chance to write more about that. 😉
IComo: Patents and Intellectual Property Rights
Posted by Albegor in Como, Net-Tailor, Software on May 14, 2006
Patents and intellectual property rights were the subject matter of the seminar organized by the research center Centro Volta related to the IComo: la fabbrica delle idee initiative, a project aimed to promote technology innovation among the local small and medium enterprises.
The meeting took place in Villa Olmo, the place chosen for the current exhibition devoted to Magritte, and consisted of a series of presentations by company managers and professional consultants involved in the delicate matter of tutelating intellectual property rights and exploiting the benefits and the added value of patents.
The current tendency is to consider a patent not only as a good tool of legal protection for a company’s idea or processing method, but also as an internal asset to make business with, a way of thinking americans already well know and effectively use. Testimonials of this were the managers of big companies such as ABB and Fiat with its CRF (Fiat Research Center).
From the conference clearly emerged that evaluating the convenience and opportunity of registering a patent is a delicate matter and requires the support of experts needed to perform a series of studies and researches in order to be able to produce a strong patent, which may be used as an effective protection tool especially for the local small enterprises constantly facing the counterfeiting phenomenon of a global market.
The innovation technology project I’m currently involved in, under the direct coordination of the Centro Volta, is evaluating these issues and after this seminar I’m even more convinced in the way of registering a patent to tutelate the work we’re doing and then make business with, if possible.
Registering a patent instead of maintaining an industrial secret inside a company has both advantages and disadvantages. With a patent your idea becomes public, but you tutelate yourself for the number of years you’re going to do business with. On the opposite think about the Coca-Cola formula for example. They say they didn’t patent it, so it still remains an industrial secret.
Software is an even more delicate matter if inserted in the patent issue, but that was not discussed in the meeting. The EU Commission is still debating about software patents and since they’re considered a big obstacle to innovation, especially by small developers, I suggest you to read about the NoSoftwarePatents campaign.
The conference ended with a funny and smart presentation by a lawyer who gave the audience some significant examples of the way of working in our country compared to the US. They seem to be different planets in this particular matter, not only by the numbers involved. 😉
Top Talent Award 2006
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on April 26, 2006
“How did you get to know about the Top Talent Award, Mr. Orlando?”
That was the first question an talian voice asked me when I got a call from Austria’s ICNM a few weeks ago. I didn’t remember exactly where I read about it, but it was certainly in the news of a website. The italian manager told me they were having difficulties spreading the word about the contest in Italy, so any help or suggestion would have been welcome.
It’s a marketing job I think, and that might not be a trivial task, even if you put it in the hands of a professional.
However, in the case of my country I also see a certain lack of interest in these kind of events, maybe because of a lack of competitivity by university students or maybe because we’re too busy complaining about the state of the ICT work market to be able to put our creative brains to work and try to make something interesting to compete with other european students… who knows…
In fact from a total of 411 submitted projects there were only 18 participants from Italy. None of them has been selected in any category or even mentioned in the printed publication they sent me, but what surprised me the most has been the quality and the number of submissions from Eastern Europe countries. Talk about lack of competitivity there!
I entered the contest submitting EcPc, including a beta of the PC version. They didn’t have a Pocket PC to test the software, so I had to send them my Axim X3 and when they returned it I risked to loose it because some smartass tried to stole it at the post office in Como, really!
The final selections of the jury in the mobile contents category are good projects, but personally I don’t find anything special in soccer related management software or in Wi-Fi mapping utilities. That’s my opinion of course, the jury evaluated the projects using a number of different criteria.
It’s a good contests overall, it’s not free, but the organization is much better than most of our similar competitions, so I encourage you to participate if you’ve an idea in your brain… and you have the strength to make it real of course! 😉
You should definitely watch the video recording of the award ceremony they made on march 4th at the “Museumsquartier” in Vienna. It was amazing to watch and hear the thrilled winners commenting prize and projects mostly speaking in a not so perfect English. You can almost feel their excitement! 🙂
Congratulations to the winners then, most of them presented interesting projects.
And as Mr. Peter A. Bruck wrote in the introduction of the publication, this contest helps to separate excellence from the huge volume of trash in a digital world full of contents! 🙂
Mobile Force & Office Forum 2006
On april 4th I attended the spring edition of the Wireless forums, a mix of business meetings and conferences organized by the Wireless magazine at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Milan.
I followed most of the presentations of the section Mobile Force & Office Forum since automating a mobile workforce is related to one of my software projects. As a whole, the presentations were interesting and the moderator, Paolo Conti, was a brilliant guy, but the public was not as numerous as the one attending the Wlan Business Forum, a parallel series of conferences focused on broadband, Wi-Fi and Wi-Max technologies.
In particular I found interesting the Psion Teklogix Mobile Show, actually one hour of live show with funny performances by the Psion Teklogix’s technical staff showing the latest barcode and RFID technologies while tracking a shipment from the order to the delivery destination. The scenography they set up was defenitely mobile! 😉
Also interesting was the interview with Funambol’s CEO: he spoke about the company’s history, how they found financial support in the US and he talked about the SyncML opensource software.
In the exhibition area I had the pleasure to talk with the staff of Softwork since I’m currently exploring RFID technology applied to mobile devices.
Also I had the chance to get my hands on the new Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone at the Dangaard’s booth, the Qtek 8500, alias HTC Star Trek… very nice design! 🙂