i-muse at Fabermeeting in Turin
i-muse was among the 30 finalists of the Faber contest, a national competition for creative projects organized by the town of Turin with the support of Regione Piemonte.
Among the three project categories, audiovisual, animations and web, i-muse was in the third one, since it included interactive graphical environments both online and offline.
The prize for the web category went, with good advice in my opinion, to the myminutes.org site.
Apart from the result, attending the contest has been a positive experience, since I spent three days among meetings and workshops at the Virtual Reality and Multi Media Park of Turin.
Other than some contacts with companies that examined the works and showed an interest for the videoguide, it was really interesting meeting and discussing with other young creative finalists, a lot of them in the thirties. 😉
In particular I hope I’ll be able to collaborate with some professionals already working in the Turin area in the arts sector.
The works of the finalists were very good, I hope they will be soon available on the contest site.
My best greetings and good luck to all the people I met in Turin!
In Moscow with the Virtual Tailor of Cernobbio
Posted by Albegor in Como, Net-Tailor on February 7, 2008
Who could have ever said that I would had to install a remote station of the Net-tailor system 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 suits fittings for Styleguide’s customers, a company taking care of the image and style of rich 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 thanks to Styleguide staff, in particular their young manager and founder Ivan and his assistants Nadia and Viktoria. 🙂
I’m 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…
2008: Year of the Rat
The year of the pig is ending and the year of the rat will begin on february 7, according to chinese calendar.
During the last days of december, quiet days spent in creative laziness, I didn’t stop thinking about the events that led me here.
I browsed the i-muse category to recall the stops that led to the founding of Togunà Interactive, watching the Torontolati’s Gallery in particular, which tells the funny canadian adventure.
Even the photo galleries of the Vespatour and the meetings I attended together with the members of Vespa Club Como are among the most pleasant memories of 2007.
A year of big investments actually, fundamental to be able to start my first entrepreneurial activity.
An experience that until now taught me that developing a competitive software is nothing compared to the challenge of finding an agreement with five different people, me included, in order to be able to start a new hi-tech company in a country recently criticized by international press due to its economic, political and social issues.
A wise teaching from hinduism says that man is the real limit of himself. I agree, and I think that it will depend only on ourselves if we’ll manage to turn the good presentations done until now into a profitable business.
Let’s see if the rat will get the cheese in 2008.
Happy year of the rat! 🙂
Togunà Interactive S.r.l. Is Born!
It’s a dream turning into reality: a new technological company is born, gathering five professionals and offering i-muse as its first product! 😀
In this entrepreneurial adventure I involved Guido, Luca, Paolo and Samantha together with me. Five young guys from Como with complementary skills who try because they believe they can succeed.
What does Togunà mean?
Suggested by Guido, who also gave birth to the name i-muse ;), it’s an african word indicating the “house of wisdom“, a sort of covered place such as the one in the picture, where the wise men of Dogon villages in Mali get together to have a talk.
A simple name, easy to explain and with a proper meaning if we recall the weekly evening meetings we regularly have since we started working on i-muse.
The company is just a starting point, although with a solid base, since we built a lot until now thanks to the work done to create a product such as i-muse.
Now we’re on the market, ready to take care of the first customer, and I, as President of the Management Board, feel at the same time the burden and the honor to give my best in order to continue in this adventure together with my partners!
Finger crossed and thanks to our supporters! 😀
i-muse Featured on Comoe20’s WebTV
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 the videoguide in action and ask us if we made the system with our sole forces or someone helped 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 entirely by ourselves.
It’s something pretty surprising actually. Five youngers from Como who try to play as entrepreneurs starting with a product aimed 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.
Vespatour 2006 Part 14: Norcia, Melezzole and Le Marmore
When I was in Toronto three weeks ago I didn’t miss the opportunity to view the Niagara Falls. They recalled me the impressive sight of the Marmore Falls I stared at last year during the Vespatour.
On august 19th, after the visit to Assisi, my solo-journey continued towards Rome, while discovering some of the Umbria’s wonders along the way. I visited Norcia, the town of San Benedetto, a place known for its sausages and ham made from wild boar and pork, and I spent the night in a bed&breakfast in Melezzole di Montecchio.
Rested and restored, the following day I continued the journey on my Vespa and I spent the morning breathing the fresh air surrounding the Marmore Falls area, the natural wonder I already wrote about on the blog.
Here are the 51 photos of the fourteenth gallery of my Vespatour.
As with each gallery, the pictures are geo-localized, which means you just have to click on the map this! button to view their position on Google Maps. 🙂
The Legend of the Good Italian Food
Did you ever stop to carefully read the tag of a food package you purchased at a supermarket?
I rarely did it before reading Paolo Conti’s book.
It’s the synthesis of a three years long inquiry, containing a lot of information exposed in a clear and easy way.
The book deals with arguments ranging from the supermarkets power over the food chain, to the analysis of health emergencies caused by food adulteration, to the opposition between techno-food and eco-food.
All of this always taking into consideration the position of Italy compared to other countries: we have a good competitive advantage in the biologic food sector. 🙂
It’s an advantage mostly due to a slow industrialization process of the food production sector in our country, something which we can exploit now that the consumer attention towards good and genuine food is definitely increasing.
So there’s still hope in order to preserve the good italian food reputation over the next years, so that it won’t become a legend due to invasive production and conservation techniques, supermarkets economic interests and, last but not least, our buying decisions. 😉
LuBeC 2007: ICT and Cultural Heritage
Lucca is a town of magic: I already wrote this when I visited it last year for the first time during the Vespatour.
This year I had the chance to get back to Lucca thanks to Lu.Be.C 2007, the event dedicated to the combination of ICT and cultural heritage organized by Promo P.A. Foundation at the Real Collegio.
A combination which isn’t exactly a marriage in Italy yet: I had the feeling that Public Administration representatives managing cultural heritage and entrepreneurs offering the so called additional services, too often speak different languages.
It’s a natural defect of computer science engineers making things only they can use, and in my opinion this is the strongest barrier in the dialogue between the two sides.
We try to do our part with i-muse: technology, PDAs and Rfid in our case, it’s just a tool.
What really matters is that the service we provide boasts quality and visitors actually benefits from it.
Along this line I appreciated the brilliant speeches of Andrea Granelli, advisor of the Minister of Cultural Heritage, and Ilaria D’Uva from D’Uva Workshop.
Who knows if next year at Lu.Be.C we’ll be able to report some progress towards this marriage thanks to i-muse. 😉
i-muse Presentation in Villa Olmo
Yesterday evening the emotion was great: we presented i-muse in the place where the idea was born: in Villa Olmo, during the 12th innovation technology matching organized by Centro Volta.
In 2004 I visited an exhibition about Mirò, the first of the great exhibitions organized in Villa Olmo, and while I was using an audioguide I got the idea to make a guide running on Pdas.
Then, in 2005, I committed to Centro Volta’s engineers a due diligence study for the project, a study that led me to search for the people to build a team.
This is the first blog post in which I wrote about the project, on march 18, 2005.
Back then the IComo initiative was at the beginning and Centro Volta’s engineers became increasingly more active in supporting local companies along the difficult, although stimulating, path to technologic innovation.
Since then a lot of things happened, and chance wanted that we presented i-muse first at the Educational Silk Museum, then in Canada, and now in the place where the idea was born.
I hope this strange combination will be a good sign for the future. 😉
i-muse on Rfid Italia
Rfid Italia, the italian portal about Rfid technology, published a video interview on i-muse.
Paolo Conti, Rfid Italia’s director, came to Como and had the opportunity to try the video guide at the Educational Silk Museum.
He spent words of appreciation for the system, in particular since we implemented the Rfid technology in a transparent way for the visitor.
Actually a small antenna mounted on the Pda is used to locate the Rfid tags placed on the caption holders and the visitor just have to bring the Pda close to the icons hiding the tags in order to play the content related to the exhibit he’s looking at.
A pretty simple interaction method which proved to be critical for the people who doesn’t feel at ease with technology in general, especially the so called couch potatoes. 😉
The Rfid Italia portal is pretty active lately. For example they recently launched the Rfid Italia Network initiative, aimed to provide consulting, matching and marketing services to the companies operating in the sector.
Enjoy the video!