Best Wishes from the i-muse Team
I mean the Christmas holidays… yes, because the email we sent before Christmas with the team’s best wishes granted us the 4° prize of the XMas Email Awards 2006 contest organized by Wireless.
Now that the prize has been delivered to our office, a 5 Megapixels FIAT digital camera with a sub case :o, I’d like to thank the organizers and the jury.
The case is really nice, we’re almost sorry of opening it and use the camera for the immersions into the Lake of Como some mad guy among us already proposed to test the underwater capabilities of the camera. 
After all what could you expect from someone writing in the Christmas best wishes email:
“… the three mad guys of the i-muse team, the innovative PDA guide for museums and art exhibitions, so mad to believe their project will succeed simply because they believe in it, wish you:…“? 😉
You can see the graphics made by Luca and the other winners on the site of the contest.
The Virtual Tailor in Cernobbio Featured on La Provincia
Posted by Albegor in Como, Net-Tailor on March 6, 2007
After the mention on Business People, the brief article on L’Espresso and the interview on RaiDue, even the local daily newspaper La Provincia wrote about this now famous mythological character. 🙂
An article emphasizing the long tradition of the Sartoria Orefice through the words of Mr. Lino Orefice which belongs to the series of articles devoted to innovation projects completed with success since the Centro Volta’s IComo initiative was born less than one year ago.
When the articles was published, on November 30th 2006, I thought something was missing: at least a mention as the author of the hardware and software system born from Cleto Orefice’s idea which now allows the tailor shop to work in a totally different way. 😕
I would have loved to see that not only for personal pride, but also because I’d like to repeat the experience with another local artigianal company willing to start an innovation project by using informatics tools.
Also it has been the result of a great team work and in my opinion this was a chance to highlight the Centro Volta’s role as an effective aggregator of local skills, the mission of IComo.
Maybe it’s better getting back to work and don’t be concerned too much about that, focusing instead on the message this article gave to readers: the tailor in Cernobbio is an example to follow! 🙂
Consider that Mr. Lino, who always had an active role in the project thanks to his experience, works since 60 years and shows his invaluable irony whenever he reads of people complaining about the increase of the retirement age.
He represents an example to follow for me! 😉
The Hedge of the Infinity
Do you remember Giacomo Leopardi’s poem The Infinity: “Ever dear to me was this lonely hill”?
Well, the one in the picture is actually the famous hedge on top of the hill! 🙂
It’s the hedge, “that excludes the greater part of my view of the farthest horizon“, illuminated by the late august sun, with the brick wall partially covering the view towards the Sibillini’s mountains.
Last summer in Recanati, the last stop of my Vespatour around Italy, I had the unexpected chance to climb upon the hill that inspired Leopardi’s masterpiece, something people can do since 2003 thanks to the Centro Nazionale di Studi Leopardiani.
The picture is now on my office desk and it inspires me to look beyond and ask myself what that hedge is hiding, what surprises the future holds.
I even shot what you can see behind the hedge and I’ll upload that picture in the Vespatour’s gallery I’m working on.
Every now and then I shift my eyes from the monitor, get lost in thoughts while staring at the photo and I recall Leopardi’s writings: “and sweet is the shipwreck in such a sea“…
It really helps having a pleasant and comfortable working environment with little things such as this! 😉
A as Adventure by Anna Maspero
A as Avventura (adventure), B as Bagaglio (luggage), C as Cibo (food), D as Donna (Woman).. and so on till the last letter of the alphabet. 🙂
This is the original layout of the book by Anna Maspero, a traveler living in Como who turned into words her numerous adventures around the world.
A book which captured me for the many hints of reflection about the essence of traveling, which is the metaphor of the life, as Anna says. I read it while I was still mentally elaborating the events of the intense journey I did last summer on my Vespa around Italy, so it has been very useful for me.
I met Anna at the presentation of the book at the local library in Como organized in collaboration with the staff of Il Sole since the earnings of the book were going to be employed for the project Reborning Flowers.
Anna writes we travel “to escape from the routine, but even as habit; for pleasure as to live new experiences and emotions; to follow a dream and to forget an broken love affair; to learn or simply for a wish of freedom; for the joy to leave and for coming back.”
Well, there actually has been all of this in my solo Vespatour.
“For Davide, have a good road!” she wrote as dedication on my copy of the book.
It has been so and it will be again, thanks Anna! 🙂
Vespa’s Sons, 2007 Calendar
For each month in 2007 a Vespa and the smiling face of one of the Vespa Club Como members’ sons: it’s the result of the photomontage chosen as theme for the club’s 2007 calendar, which I’m now showing both at home and in the office.
Really a good job made by Brunella, supervised by Marco and Dario.
My favorites are january and august since they chose child with a pretty peculiar look. 🙂
The calendar is still available at the newsstand Cesana in Via Anzani in Como. An original calendar, especially for Vespa fans.
The Vespa Club Como, of which I recently become member, is very active and with a lots of initiatives for 2007, so this calendar is certainly a good wish! 😉
Everyone Tagged at Trackability 2007
We’re all tagged! 🙂
This was the opening joke of the seminar devoted to RFID technology held on tuesday inside the exposition Trackability in fieramilanocity.
Paolo Conti, always brilliant as moderator, asked the attendees to search for some kind of tag in their pockets. Someone had it inside the car keys (Vespa in my case) for the immobilizer function, someone inside the access badge and someone in the car for the telepass.
Without even knowing it RFID is a technology we’re already using since a long time. There’s a lot of talking about it lately because of its advantages in different fields, but the real problem for its large scale deployment, as has been discussed during the seminar, is its integration with the information system in order to exploit its full potential.
All the presentations were at very high level and at the final roundtable participated for the first time representatives from italian RFID university labs, from the recently born RFID Solution Center of the Politecnico di Milano, to the one of La Sapienza in Roma and the universities in Messina, Parma, Liuc in Castellanza and Supsi in Lugano.
For i-muse RFID is very important. It’s a kind of implementation in a field much less complex compared to logistics or product trackability, but the benefits are relevant and most of all, for the sake of usability, it will be totally invisible to the user. 😉
i-muse Featured on EspansioneTV
20 minutes on TV really flew away! 😀
We’ve been interviewed on ZeroTreUno, the daily feature of the local broadcaster EspansioneTV, to present the project we’re working on, i-muse, the PDA guide for museums and art exhibitions.
Elda De Mattei, the presenter, made us feel at ease and allowed us to illustrate the project in its various aspects, from the technology to the graphics and the contents, an argument for each one of us.
Although we would have loved to tell more we’ve been very satisfied of the final result. 🙂
For me it wasn’t the first time on TV, since I attended Netcafé on Telelombardia in 2003 after I won an award for Ecpc, a software for Euro coins collectors, but this time I wasn’t alone.
So the message has been delivered: we have a winning product, ready for the market in a short time. 😉
I Want You For i-muse
This is the crazy leaflet Luca made to attract the attention on our stage offer, while this is the serious version with a detailed description of the offer and requirements.
It’s actually a search for an extraordinary person! 🙂
Joel Spolsky in his book Joel on Software, recommends searching for brilliant and results-producing people, qualities rarely coexisting in the same person.
Experience in this case isn’t relevant, we know we can’t pretend too much from a student, but it’s clear we’re going to invest in this person so that he or she could take an active role in the entrepreneurial project and watch i-muse grow together with us.
Considering the kind of job, a woman would have a great advantage, but this won’t be a discriminating factor.
A fine presence will, though, and this is not a joke!
Let’s say it: being fine-looking is pretty easy nowadays, it shows respect for yourself and for the people you have to relate to, while being smart is not at all. 😉
As marketing guru Seth Godin wrote: your references are your curriculum, so if you’d like to send it to us write them down before anything else and then write why you’d like to get involved in the project.
Just a few words will be ok, the essential making all the difference!
In Mantua for the Saturn Project
Taking advantage of a couple of spring-like days to say the least, last week I went to Mantua on my Vespa where I’m attending a course by Regione Lombardia, the Saturn Project – support for the enterprise planet, aimed to support new entrepreneurial activities.
The course is intensive and well organized by the Centro Studi Castelli’s consultants. I’m appreciating the practical setting and the direct application of the concepts to the entrepreneurial ideas of the twelve people attending it.
A really useful course for the administrative management of the i-muse project. 🙂
Since I had two contiguous days for the course I decided to sleep at the Ostello del Mincio, a pleasant place and with the best website among those of the Hostels where I slept this summer during the Vespatour.
i-muse Featured on La Provincia
It really was a satisfaction being able to tell for the first time how the entrepreneurial idea which led me, Guido and Luca to create i-muse was born and evolved.
Sara Della Torre, the journalist author of the article about our project published on wednesday on the newspaper La Provincia, translated perfectly into words the whole story. 😀
During the interview I noticed that she was amazed by the numerous positive coincidences which happened during the evolution of the project, such as how I managed to involve Luca and Guido or how we created the logo. 😉
We still have a lot to demonstrate, we know this very well, but probably what isn’t too evident from the outside yet, or it’s a bit underestimated, is how much work we did until now to come to this point.
We’re now searching for a fourth extraordinary person. Finding him won’t be easy at all, so we start doing this early.
Thanks to the office at the Polytechnic things are moving fast now!
Meanwhile we enjoy the compliments the article on La Provincia granted us. 🙂