88 Days

Time passes quite quickly… I am drenched into Giunti Labs now, long days, long hours and lots to do..

First and foremost, the actual situation: we do learning platforms. Well, to be honest, that is not entirely true, since digital content management, digital repositories and “objects” do enhance each and everyone’s performances… so, basically, we do not provide only learning platforms and contents, but we do support companies in “making the most” of what they have in terms of knowledge.. or something along these lines..

So, a fine balancing act, and a tough strategic planning to design and implement, quite a daunting task when you come to that.. still, there is a major advantage that I found in these early days, in a word: will.

The entire company, each and every member of the company is willing to change and do more, differently, better! And, let me tell you, this is a great condition to have when moving around with the hat of strategic planner on! Still, life would be easier should I win the lottery, but this is another story!!

More to come!!!

Gosh… almost back… for those of you that may be concerned at all, I am still alive!!! I have started to land into Giunti Labs, an Italian company which delivers software platforms and solution to support knowledge enhacement, learning and operation support management. I will be in charge of global strategic marketing… not an easy task, as you have noticed my last month has been fully dedicated in understanding where I am, on top of finding a house, not a trivial task…

However, I will have my Web connection ready and running in a matter of days, hopefully, and thus will be back on line and start posting again!!! In the meanwhile, you all take care!!!

I have tried to always post something that could have remotely been of some interest to some of you, so this may come such a massive waste of your attention and overall cyber space, nevetheless… I have to announce that, after six and a half years I will be leaving my company, my job as consultant, will leave IDC and Milan all in one go, to pursue other paths… I will be heading South(ish..), facing the seaside…will become an International Strategic Marketing Manager, with responsibilities also on the Product Marketing side… huuuuuggeeee challenge which I welcome dearly!!

Professionally I trust is a great step forward for a number of different reasons, including the ability to influence a company’s direction and performance from within, from a lifestyle standpoints the gains are massive, will leave the city for some fresh air, next to my beloved sea, no match.

Personally this move will challenge us, yep, since Antonella, my fiancée, will begin this adventure with staying in Milan.. this will force us to go back and being “engaged”, and I truly thank technology, mobile connectivity, blackberry, and the entire lot as this will allow us to keep strongly in touch, well above and beyond phone calls! It won’t be easy, and as in any other aspect in life, some bad sides have to be there to balance the overall schema of things… this distance is one, and a large one! Still, we will manage.

Soooooo, there we are.. that is why I have been lagging in posting news, this is why for the first time since long I have not posted the Finger Food, this will be why I may not follow you all as I have done in the past!

Despite this, I will be keeping the pressure on, and will try my best and write as much as I can, particularly since this will allow all of us to foster a different analytical angle…

OK, time to go back and prepare the “to do” list, have to move a huge amount of stuff, have to copy email address, have to move part of my life!!!

See you later!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since quite a long time, I have been debating about technology usage, and stressed the fact that, quite often, users can be divided into:

It is a weird Friday… there will be huge news in a few days, albeit on the personal side and thus may or may not interest you, nevertheless I’ll make sure to post that “update” as soon as I can…

In the meanwhile, I try to keep up with the Joneses and here it is… Friday Finger Food is served, a touch sparingly…

• Dell seems to get into troubles.. new biz models, new ventures, new market and competitors are putting the entire industry under a strain of changes, and when you add layers to your distribution model, troubles may arise.. and earnings alerts are due…
• SOA was a technology darling some months ago, then Web 2.0 came, and to top all up some corporate IT techies are now back on to virtualisation, security and the lot… back to basics???
• Tough days ahead for venture capitalists??? The Street goes directly to sunny California… seemingly…
• A second Internet? More secure?? How??? 
• Sony is dancing for its latest victory (you know, BluRay…) and some bells are tolling already…
• Nevermind if the bells are those of music phones, expected to rise in popularity this coming months!!!

And more.. I knew I had to go back and play a bit of chess, now I am on the ol’skool side, and before I can get this social it will take forever… and there would me more stuff, and it is all the more unfortunate I have been called into a meeting provoked, incidentally, by that news I will illuminate you all next week!

In the meanwhile, have a great weekend!!!

It was Saturday.. outside the city wasn’t as busy as usual, yet.. I opened up my fatty 15.4″ laptop and thought.. why not have the little one a go!??!?! My girlfriend saw it some days ago on a magazine, I saw one at the Enterprise 2.0 conference…what the heck, it is just €299, it won’t be all that bad if the thingy is just a blunder… so, I went and hunt for the Asus eee PC!!!!

First, find a place where it was still in stock or sold, as a matter of fact, since hard-to-find tech gadgets make the object itself some sort of an icon straight from day one.. provided the tech-thing is worth the while..

So, I found an Asus Point the other side of town, I jumped into a pair of combats and my boots, girlfriend was fast enough to get the car key in a matter of seconds, shoot out, jump into the Mini and set the GPS up!!

Milan was sort of waking up in a decent sunshine.. spring is almost here, so what’s nicest that have a little, smart, light and fun PC to go out and hunt for WiFi spots??? To be on a beach with nothing to do but sunbathing, I guess, but since we are in town..

Shop was where it was supposed to be, too many people for my liking, but thanks heaven I called before hitting the street, and THE LAST ASUS eee was already booked in my name!!! I could then sit back and relax, waiting for my turn in the cue…

Some ten minutes after, we were outside the shop, holding a smallish box, something like the size of a weekly magazine and a palm thick… the little guy was there, lurking at us from a plastic foil protecting its pale white complexion… back home I let Antonella get the baby out and start playing with it, but after a few hours charge, since the battery was absolutely flat!!

After having spent this waiting in weekly shopping trips, finally the eee went “live”… no more than 30″ and the screen was popping with a start up screen, a matter of seconds to type in name, date, time, the usual stuff and there it was!!!

A nice, tabbed screen with some magic words such as work, entertainment, web, stuff like that!!! So, where to begin???

First.. the overall feeling is of a sturdy little pc, the size of a decent paperback, light as light can be (less than a kilogram..), keyboard is clearly on the small side, and yet is fin to type in, I have to say that I am not really a giant, and my hands are quite small, still, the baby is not made for creating your next trilogy the likes of the lord of the rings, so…

All applications are nicely grouped under “tabs”, the same you have in any decent Web browser… it is all there, ready for you to use! The entire office suite is the Linux version (yep, the entire machine is running on Linux, should you do not know that already!) of OpenOffice, thus dead easy to use, pretty compatible with most of your documents, will do for some work whilst you are out!

Connectivity… the usual Ethernet modem connection which, damn, forces me to wait and try the baby on the web, got a tragic USB modem but, wait… WiFi!!!!! There is a little icon on the bottom left of the tab-screen, why not having a go.. mind you, I still haven’ t got WiFi at home (lazy, waiting to buy an Airport Extreme…), but, eventually, there were some six or seven around.. of which two open, and nicely ranked with an “intensity percentage”… got an87% and bam, there it was, into the Web. Just like that, no configuration of any sort, no hassle, nothing, just hit “connect” after having selected the access point, and wait a few secs..

Firefox was up and running (yep, no configuration, installation, nothing, it is all done for you beforehand!!), fair enough the screen (7″) is not exactly massive, yet it does the job quite nicely.. access speed, downloading and the rest of the web experience were in the norm, so quite fast, not an hiccup, nothing at all.. several kind of web sites, with different graphical layout and “intensity” have been downloaded and rendered without problems.

I wrote some stuff, responded to a few mails, Antonella checked for a new couch on the IKEA site, all in the norm! The baby was there, ready to answer our performance calls!!!

Photo upload was hassle-free… put in your SD loaded with your favourite pictures, click on the “Open” and there you are..

Haven’t tried Skype (pre-loaded…) yet, nor the webcam, but the beginning of the eee era in my flat are pretty fine!!!!

Most interesting feature.. do not know, really, it is the ease of the experience that is stunning, something that could remind me of some tales about the Apple MacBooks and such… the start up time is great, very very fast, battery lasted one day and half of pretty intense usage…

Should you buy it??? As a second PC, something seemingly reliable, packed full with all-you-need-applications, easy to use, WiFi enabled, yes, it is a definite yes!!! As your only machine I would actually think twice about the choice, keyboard too small and some work to do with external storage may hinder the fun!!!

If you bash into it, get the card out and get one!!!!! Your lifestyle as modern, city like chaps will have a boost and, seriously, you won’t pass unnoticed!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE: when I went about the “one day and half” battery life, clearly I didn’t mean that the eee was actually ON for all that time, it meant I used it half of Saturday and the whole of Sunday on and off, doing things for tens of minutes each go.. you know the going..

What a week!!!! Had to work pretty hard, a couple of days spent in conference, some stress to build up a significant activity over this 2.0 stuff everybody (still) want to know about, plus a stack of book to read are looming from a corner in my lounge, my shoulder is sort of painful after kickboxing on Tuesday (fun, fun, fun nonetheless!!!), and seemingly, my snowboarding trip over to Livigno is not going to happen.. nevermind the buzzcocks, Finger Food is here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• Nanotech coupled with the “auto-functioning” of DNA molecules to assemble nanotubes structures and… the sky’s the limit, according to some IBM research..
• Gates on video to give us glimpses of the strategic thinking behind some of the latest Microsoft adventures.. which, incidentally, is something Sergey Brin finds hard to digest as much as stone cold prawn curry for breakfast!!
• Meanwhile, Microsoft goes Open!! Whooooops…..
• And everybody’s on the move, these days, including MySpace trying to regain the former glory with some walkabouts into music business..
• The media World is getting heated up.. BBC and iTunes, Vivendi launches Zaoza (chinese for “word of mouth”…) to revamp the former Vizzavi disaster (I told them what to do back in 2002, they didn’t…) with a new hope!! Which do not include Apple in the recipe…
• More.. I am obliged to quote that the DVD new format war has been won by Blu-ray against HD DVD.. now, if you just consider the potential marketing activities and the overall appeal of the two “names” (without even considering some more tech specs) you should have spotted the winner since long ago, before the “war” was even remotely started..
• I have just posted an Homo 2.0 and somewhere in the post I mentioned the concept of “GridBraining”.. there you are, Kluster!! Like the idea, like to hope mankind is slightly more interesting than expected and proposed by lobotomy prone TV… well done chap..
• More on green initiatives, hyper cities and environmental studies.. grid, grid….brain, brain..
• Man is the center mantelpiece.. Microsoft is heading towards enabling the most powerful of all GUI, man himself!! Voice and touch… and considering the explosion of touchscreens in mobile phones… you make up your mind… ah, by the way, crowdsourcing or GridBraining also in the Xbox next game palette????
• On the other side of the tech, there is still the Force you may want to rely upon, to bypass that hiccup you call DSL, so there it it, the new Lucas game.. ok, silly intro, nevertheless I love the thing!!! And there is a new engine to enhance the overall physics of the game, Digital Molecular Matter.. whoops, it is a game, after all!!!

Do you remember the story of that French bank, what was the name, ah, yes, Societe Generale, going head over heels because of a GordonGekko wannabe? There is seemingly a herd on the loose, since UBS, a slightly large Swiss bank, has got some similar problems… meanwhile, why not using tech properly, also to boost the economy?? Evolution does asks for its toll, sometimes, and quite sadly this time is Polaroid to go into the “nice memories” chest of drawers..sad, too sad…

An attempt to buy out 3Com by Chinese Huawey (IBM; PCs owners, remember??) has been immediately stopped as a matter of national security.. or something the likes.. More on 2.0, now is about free publishing of scientific papers, PLoS, a nice add after the YouTube for scientist, Scivee, that made my blog booming with hits when I posted about (OK, just because I put “…Tequila” in the title, spelled wrong, btw..).

How about moving contents from SecondLife to “Multiverse”??? Will SL grow to platform-status for other than socialising??? we said so.. nevermind IBM launched a 3-D datacenter in OpenSim..

And plenty more stuff… China does not like US to go about shooting in the sky,  Serbs do not like Kossovo being independent and make sure the World knows about their feelings, Facebook faces its first decline in zillion of months of steep growth (look out for a new 2.0 champion!!!) (but do not say it too loud, yet..), and Google goes on the Moon!!!!

OK, let’s stop it here, there is a computer-addict syndrome looming ahead!!! So head for the beach, hit the slopes with your boards, do something unspeakable with your lovey-lovey, but heck, leave that keyboard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Or, otherwise, see you next week!!!

Peace.

I have to admit, this blog is also very useful to have all your notes in one place, some sort of repository of (hopefully) fairly intelligent thinking…

So, since I will have to work pretty heavily on the entire spectrum of the 2.0 saga, I have to jot down some notes… ah, yep, I will be part of the discussion tables at the closing event of the IDC Innovation Forum that will be held in Milan next March (here is the info and whereabouts of the Forum), with the likes of Don Tapscott, Derrick De Kerckhove and a stack of Web pundits, artists and creatives, it will be a blast, believe me!!

Right, so… notes… the evolutionary path is, quite nicely indeed, a sort of step back to the village-like, tribal relationships of the societies pre-industrial revolution. There is a reprise, this time thanks to technology and with no Luddites in sight, of the necessity to exchange human relationship with the “piazza” of my liking.

It is even more important aspects of this evolution. Globally, you may have noticed, there is a massive outburst of social-related activities, themes, actions, whatever… green campaigns, humanitarian efforts, sustainable economies, cultural crossovers, it is a huge mixing, bridging, communicating, helping.. it seems like there is a real, planetary conscience that is guiding some acts of a large number of people.

I happened to discuss this with some Web experts at the recent Enteprise 2.0 conference and with a couple of university professors in the past couple of weeks, and we were all very interested of the implications. The question was whether it is the Web-network evolution that have ignited the process or it is rather a genetic attitude of mankind to seek for the community that has enabled the Web to become the social network we know today. The more techy amongst us actually feel like the hype and the “media” coverage upon Internet since the early 2000s is the real engine of this renewed planetary surge of the masses, whilst there has been a flimsy quoting the Band Aid in1984 as potentially the first massive conscience raising that have triggered the necessity to a better and more tight communication amongst actors in the social canvass… nice altogether.. guess we can really state that all the most innovative or evolutionary tech advances stem from a “communication” need, that is for sure..

What is more interesting it the actual disintegration of some capitalistic logics thanks to the Web and the social implication deriving from an hyper-connected World. The shift of power from producers to users is a substantial change in the orthodoxy and liturgy of the economy rite. What is indeed scarcely perceived and increasingly kept under the radar by who-knows-who is the actual revolutionary power of the Web as it is structured nowdays. It would be possible to reorganise and determine social canvasses, political agendas, country foreign political position by the power of referral, by free-flowing information, by scarcely controllable exchange of view points by geographically dispersed groups of people.. you know what I intend, being “discussant” is ever more powerful than simply being “listener”.. yet, this is kept under control by painting the entire “thing” as a youngish, sort of head-in-the-clouds stuff, the social Web is about SecondLife, some music sharing quite often via illegal platforms, photos, videos and rubbish like that.. you know, young stuff has never been very dangerous.. whilst the reality is about a massive net of brains working in well determined and shared directions.

I am personally stressing the concept of “brain-sourcing” as the highest effect of the “crowdsourcing” phenomena or the entire social evolution of the Web.. more so, why not using “GridBraining”????

So, it is a new specimen of human being that is born before our eyes or it is simply a permutation of the actual?? Is the Web something we use, we live, or is a prosthetic of our selves??? There is something like an “Homo 2.0″??? Video of my presentation at the Turin School of Business (audio in italian, for the slides let me know,  it is IDC stuff and copyrighted..) … More to come…

Just back in the office after a long two-day conference, held in Milan, on Virtualisation and Enterprise 2.0. I run as speaker and chairman some of the sessions yesterday and the entire of today’s discussion on E2.0.

Admittingly, I have tried to get all speeches and presentations on Monday as a sort of preparation for today big show.. I trust it went real fine!!!

Virtualisation technologies and SOA strategies have, admittingly, set up the enterprise IT environment to dynamically absorb all potential changes stemming from the E2.0 evolution. Most interestingly, we run a small in-conference survey on SOA perception, and over 50% of respondents admitted SOA was a fundamental pillar to respond efficiently to any potential market change. Very little about the techology complexity mix, very little about the nitty-gritty details on virtualisation (despite an hefty presence of VMware…), a lot of attention and feedback on the implied strategic and business changes SOA may enable. Cool.

Today the event went even better.. the room was full of very interested attendees, and the conversation, thanks to the two opening speeches, was directed toward the Web 2.0 social impact and the aftermath within the enterprise environment. The Q&A session went on forever (had to stop it at the end, quite an unique occurrence, I dare say..), the audience was most interested into networking math theories, Barabasi, adaptive systems and the complexity theory… questioning was raising towards the panel (myself, the italian managing director of Viadeo, Pietro Gentile, vice president of Intermedia and journalist expert in 2.0 topics, Claudio Pasqua, SEO and an early enthusiast of social networking and evolutionary web theories) as to address all those issues, asking for some clarification on likely futures opening up in front of the business community, about personality “caching” and data security, the evolution of Second Life and synthetic worlds… honestly, up until yesterday I had in front of me an audience that, when listening to such topics, coupled with words such as “change”, “strategy”, “evolution” et alia, most time was head-shaking, smiling, doing all sort of body-language mix up as to say “rubbish”..

We have all being absolutely stunned by the response, the interest, the willingness to know more and act accordingly. I have also to admit, there is very little knowledge on the fundamentals of the complexity theory, small worlds and the rest of, say, Barabasi thinking are far from being well distributed and understood, and yet I trust there is a massive change in approaching the systemic evolution of the enterprise into a rather more performing, market aware and “discussion-driven” actor. These are good news, more to come as soon as I have gathered some feedback and organised my thoughts!!

One year ago I was engaged by an organisation to revamp their internal structure and to revise their Web strategy to make the most of the social evolution Internet was consolidating into a massive evolutionary step. So, I said to myself, guess it is about time you do start to participate, dive into the synthetic world, experience to the fullest possible extent.

Now, considering that the entirety of what is around actually fits all, I decided that writing down some stuff would have suit me fine, adding some bits and bobs along the road.. so, one year ago this blog saw the cyber-light!!!!

It has been quite an amazing year, now that I come to think to that, I have significantly changed the way I do work, the way I experience the World around, my thirst for new “things” has exponentially augmented and, in parallel, I notice that the more I have enlarged my personal boundaries (provided I have any at all), the more a subtle feeling of dissatisfaction was crawling alongside the more positive feeling of being exploring a path to the future (or whatever it may be, good fun nonetheless…).. it may be what a professor was calling “mediatic illnesses”… a strange group of pathologies that stem out from the endless crossroads, opportunities, possibilities, connections, informations.. it comes from abundance, pretty much like obesity for the First World countries comes out of the utter food abundance..

Nevertheless, I love being in this time-space location, it is ever so interesting, a damn evolutionary ditch we are about to jump and surpass, love to see what is on the other side.. provided we avoid the curse looming over 2012!!!!

So, whilst I am singing “happy birthday to 88days!!”, you may well keep on and enjoy this Friday’s Finger Food!!!!

• Whilst the entire World is getting ready for a-smartphone-in-every-hand approach Barcelona seems to suggest, someone is arguing that even a champion of consumer digitalisation such as Apple may start feeling the hard truth behind a recession… a CMO stated that the first cutback in consumer expenditure should and potentially will be in entertainment and then on home improvements.. maybe in US, I recall a similar survey for Italy and we are supposed to cut back on food.. what about all those assumptions are a pile of rubbish, particularly when set up to justify an already-defined position?? My thought, mind you…

• Future??? Look eastwards, towards the rising sun..

Japan’s 100 million cell-phone users represent the most diverse—and discriminating—pool of mobile subscribers on the planet.

• I still believe, as it was back in early 2000s, Japan may have some lessons to give out.. watch out in Shibuya, Omotesando and Ginza, should you like to be an high tech leader in the coming years…

Says software engineer Ken Wakasa: “People’s expectations are very high here compared to other regions. That’s why we get good feedback.”

And it is all about “expectation economy”, for those of you still there to understand what the experience economy is (was, fool, was)!! You don’t care? Fine, history will forget about you ever existed at all..

• Incidentally, most big guys including Intel do believe the World is going to be curious, fast paced, full of expectation and mobile… there you are, dished out.. (more on silicon chips here and here… a nice war is undergoing???)

• And, furthermore, there is an increased attention in building up conglomerates of must-have brands working sort of holistically together, such as some talks between Nokia and Google are actually suggesting.. markets are getting slightly complicated, much better to lock in customers in a well defined experience than having them wandering about..

• It is complicated by tech, economies, geopolitical trends and also by the chromosome sets you may have.. men love user-generated contents, women like streaming.. you do whatever you like with these insights, on top of painting gizmos in titanium grey or fluffy pink …

• And Dell buys a e-mail service provider, MessageOne, as to compete with MS and Google… so, what, the competitive scenario will get further complicated? Hardware vendors are trying to lock in with some puffed up brand equity the end users?? Ah, right, something like Apple, then….

• Yesterday a journalist asked me about Web 2.0 and its impact over the financial services, and there was a question about what banks do in SecondLife.. going away from it, as it seems… banks may be slightly more worried about the impact of global crisis, and less about avatars… won’t discuss any further, should you love chatting about it, let me know and I will oblige happily..

And, more.. let alone the above mentioned wars and squabbles, the social networking arena is also adding to the scenario complexity, M&A all around… (interesting, if cleared from some silliness such as these..); Murdoch builds up a Web sort-of incubator, whist chatting about with Yahoo..ops… get one out of many Barcelona Mobile World Congress reports…LBS and maps, plus mobile advertising to come, ouch!!

NY Times made the headlines when decided to have a free-for-all Web version of the daily, now it is cutting down by a 100 its editorial jobs…. Japan seems to be out of doldrums..

And, yes, now quitting Facebook is getting slightly less complicated.. not that my post had anything to do with it, clearly!!!

Fine, there we are… I desperately want to close this week, the opening of the next one will be smashing, I have to head a two-days conference in Milan about virtualisation and enterprise 2.0, hope I can report about the outcomes! In the meanwhile, have a nice weekend!!!!

Barcelona event is setting up an utterly dynamic environment for each and every mobile user; communication capability dramatically improve in speed and reliability, handsets are becoming the real next-big-thing with their “smart” declination, the outer Web has long since transformed in a social platform able to let you grow, learn, interact and ultimately “be” whomever you like.

In this terribly interesting ecosystemic shake off, mobile operators realise they have been hedged, or rather they are loosing client’s ownership, provided they ever had it…  quite rightly Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, stated that pundits such as Google or Yahoo have so far delivered a better “mobile experience” than operators’, which is altogether pretty weird, if you come to think to the starting points for both this industry conglomerates..

You know what??? I recall working with some of the big guns in the mobile industry, right at the verge of the UMTS era, say some five years ago, and the overall, consistent, solid approach was along these lines: “the network is my capital, so everyone has to pay to use it”, “clients are topping up and there won’t be much of a market share shake off” and, when presented with service strategy such as the Japanese DoCoMo or KDDI, thus based on an aggressive revenue sharing model (roughly speaking: you provide the service, I put in the network, every penny coming from this wedding will be shared accordingly..), I can still hear the words “no way” resounding all around the room…

Those very shortsighted managers did not even consider the possibility to act and plan in a systemic fashion, thus accepting the fact that the entire industry was not revolving just around “them” but there were some concurrent R&D and marketing strategy that were already shaping the marketplace, absolutely and indisputably well defined. By the way, I have a slide deck dated “2002″ proving the above…

So, now doomsday has come… and clients are slipping through the fingers of mobile operators in terms of “attention” and “equity” perception. The crisp money mobile companies did accumulate in the past years now is merely a remnant of what was once an empire.

Admittingly, that could possibly be slightly harsh and not quite accurate, but the message is all about “expectation”, “relative importance” and “experience”. In this sort of strange equation, users expect from mobile operators to have an always-on pipe, quite likely a fast one (HSDPA/HSUPA as tendency) and that is about the end of it.. ah, nop, one more: all-inclusive tariff plans. End of message.

The experience is about handsets ergonomy and usability (I told them, let me boast this!!!), multiple connectivity opportunity, and all the IP based services you can master, plus the media fundamentals, video-photo-sound, at the highest possible level. The rest (thus the pipe) is commodity, pretty much like expecting light when switching on a lamp..

The Vodafone payoff is “Life is Now”… may I remind that someone said that life is that thing happening whist you are busy doing something else, which is probably the case for some of the mobile execs in the recent past…

Browsing around, I bashed into a strange sort of a project.. nvohk, of which you find the banner down my sidebar, is a nice attempt to build up a community that will contribute to run (partially) an eco-friendly clothing company..

For a rather smallish annual fee, you are entitled to participate to such decisions as logo design, advertising strategy, marketing et alia… some of the “perks” of being part of this experiment are, I believe, rather intangible, as per the satisfaction to be “in the process” whilst the idea of having about 35% of profit shared with the members in form of “buying certificates” for nvohk products is kind of nice…

Yet, it won’t change the world, it will definitely pump some fresh air into my wardrobe (eventually..), will have me as part of a social-conscious community, and I may say “been there” should the thing really boom up!! Most of all, it is a nice experiment, someone called “socialism 2.0″.. nobody did??? OK, let’s do it from here, then!!!!!!!!!!!!

Life is truly amazing…

… call me Snake…

And with that you thought you could master your way out of Facebook reach!?!?!? Wrong!!

The NYT reported a sort of nightmarish ordeal to have your data removed from Facebook servers once and for all… it actually reminds me of some lines I read some time ago about the spectacular attitude people have got recently in giving out large chunks of owns identities, despite all the fuss about privacy and personal data protection.. we are all cache-ing quite happily our beloved information, much more interested into adding friends to the already almost-useless pile of horrid nicks, without even considering than all those stored infos may be used against our desires, or as it seems will reside forever somewhere in the Net.. is it a new form  of eternity we are all seeking?? Becoming a long string of 0 and 1 is the ultimate in cloning??!?!?

On the serious side, there were already some concerns about the type-happy attitude we have all got, particularly since the idea of sharing infos amongst sites to speed up logging in procedures and such is increasingly under scrutiny..

I believe there was a “dissertation” here (text in Italian) about our online attitude towards sharing-socialising-posting… as said

we are what we browse

we are what we message

we are what we chat

we are what we mail

we are every information we produce, access or transform

and every change we make in the matrix is and always will be us!

Just a thought, mind you…

We have since long heralded these were times of changes, deep and systematic changes, basically an evolutionary step was taken before our eyes.

Yesterday the Barcelona Mobile World Congress slammed the doors open on a brand new future: definitely mobile and incredibly smart!!! All the major handset manufacturers have launched either brand new hyper-powerful phones or revamped massively some ol’darlings.

New specimens that are making all the technofans drooling are popping up about anywhere… SonyEricsson Xperia X1 is one heck of a smartphone, and please notice the nice add of HSUPA connectivity on top of the now-basic HSDPA.. users may start (where available..) enjoying uploading auto-generated contents at a decent speed and thus augmenting the mSocial experience level.. and somewhere there is a S-video connectivity…

Yep, there are the much awaited Gphone prototypes on the catwalk, they cracks open the very concept of “smart” and “phone” suggesting the future may have a simil-mobile-smart-phone form factor to add/substitute the laptop environment… particularly when considering that most of those smarties are yielding a smashing Wi-Fi capability to top connectivity up..

Also check a bunch of Samsung’s.. SGH-G810, a top of the range, feature-full smartphone, its sort of younger brother i200, topping the whole bunch up with the ever-so-gorgeous Soul, and Nokia N78, N96, and the list goes on (why not including the nice and crisp Garmin NuviPhone??)… (btw, thanks to Telefonino.net for the infos…)

You enjoy browsing around..

Bottom line, the platform for a significant change in lifestyle is on, pretty much available to the everyday man, albeit an above-average, well off technofan for the time being, services are all converging into the mobile device to enhance and top up the users’ experience… it is still a matter of understanding where are the systematic users that will immediately shift communication paradigm to embrace the new tech (the posers are not interesting in the long term mobile services uptake..), and how these may eventually relate to the slower tribes/clusters… again, it is a matter of crossing the technology chasm..

One hurdle will be tariffing and data packages.. the easy answer is an all-inclusive monthly fee, plus an ecosystem of pay-per-use third party services, but the basics such as calls, Web navigation (down and upload) and a basic GPS navigation should be easily available and hassle-free… we will see…

Still, on top of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and lots of other such things, we are forced to include a Mobile 2.0?? Already done?? Dunno, but you got the overall idea…

Being “social” will pass through the mobile device in an empowered way, and as we said back in the early UMTS days, the mobile may actually become a super-hub of anyone’s digital lifestyle, able to connect and re-distribute contents and activities to the more bulky, less mobile items of our XXI century experience.. and yep, that includes our beloved laptop!!!

Fine.. I know I have been lagging a bit recently, but to my partial justification, I have got an hell of a lot of things to do, conference to cover plus a deadly number-crunching exercise to pester my days and haunt my nights!! Plus a few more other stuff…

And, to add to the list, today is not much better.. however, I have to collect as much as possible in Finger Food, as to keep you going until the storm subside!! So, there we are, very little commenting, hot links and have a nice ride!!!!

Being on social networks may also be deadly boring!!

On Microsoft, Yahoo and some Google intervention!

And, wow, Yahoo shares are above the MS offer!!! 

Meanwhile, in Japan who owns the Web owns the future, no Yahoo shares’ selling here!!! 

China is opening its eDoors during the Olympics???? 

Firefox Mobile??? Hidden behind your screen!! 

Developers Kit for the iPhone due on February, as it seems! 

A very mobile “mobile phone”??? huh??? 

Motorola on sale and nobody’s opening the wallet!! 

Dubai is increasingly “dubaiest”!!!! ù

And Spain enjoys it!!! 

Global warming?? So do not waste water, then!!! 

More about water and “green development”. 

Incidentally, LG and “green air conditioning..” 

In the Web, an OpenID is marching fast.. 

And, in times of subprime crisis, the Germans stand solidly!! 

Gosh, bit of a run-down version of Finger Food, but I trust this will do for a few days, I will catch you next week, in the meanwhile, enjoy the weekend, some sunshine should you be around Italy and, why not, the rugby Six Nations games!!!!!

Peace.

Here we are.. Friday finally!!! A slightly grotty weather outside, sort of dump and warmish, welcomes the arrive of the overly-deserved weekend and, clearly, a new FingerFood session, marked by some eye-popping events..

• The biggest one of which I trust is the hostile offer Microsoft has just launched for buying out Yahoo, a smashing $44.6 billion, aka a 60%+ premium over last stock valuation… it is planned as a potential countermeasure against Google overwhelming power, and yet it is a subtle balancing act the one Redmond is looking to undertake.. merging such as the potential one above are re-defining the marketplace and as such the complexity involved is beyond management comprehension… we shall see more of it, and not sure it will be a nice sight altogether!
• Ah, by the way, is Microsoft also paying for the proposed acquisition of Maven Networks Yahoo is going to close??? Mind you, peanuts.. $150 million….
• In the meanwhile, Google is sort of staying put, missing some analysts’ expectations.. the war is about to blow up…
• So, a nice add is this set of earnings alert… cautious SAP and Sony, whilst Nintendo is still swirling merrily like the jazz I am listening right now!!
• Once we were cyber… and today we are all greener than Ireland!!! Nice one, it seems green tech investments are outpacing those Web-related ..
• The US telecom world is getting sort of static and complex at the same time.. say that, after having distributed technology and some advanced solutions, now it is a matter of understanding how to improve service bundles???
• Incidentally, Motorola suggests it may sell or spin off (you name it..) its cell phone division, given the on-going slipping off in the global ranking since the 2004 Razr success… (an eye on the actual results from Kodak should eventually be a nice reading on how to spin off effectively, or else…) … Samsung climbed at 2nd via superior R&D efforts, ruthless quest for top notch design and an eye to tech specs… there will be what?? An Asian powerhouse to face the full Nokia blow??? nice…
• Amazon is sooooo busy now assembling Kindles, that you may not find someone sending you a paperback… demand rising, everyone’s happy, then!!

And more.. whilst shopping heavily, Microsoft has got also time to set up an Innovation Lab in Dubai, the war on HD formats is still on despite, admittingly, BlueRay has got that something more in terms of branding capability(HD DVD, please..) … China starts to face the hard truth, being part of the global gotha of market-driven countries comes with some hardship as well..  and, and, and… and I have to jump into an unforeseen meeting before running off Milan for the weekend..

So I must say.. this is it for now, have a nice weekend you all and catch you next week… a busy one, mind you, having to present the evolution of “Homo 2.0″ as I called the social implication of the more famous Web 2.0 impact.. than I will be off and give a speech on virtualisation strategy and impact over the Enterprise 2.0 evolution.. gosh.. hope someone will soon consolidate the Something 3.0, I am getting slightly bored… See you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The new IMF estimates about the economic condition on a global scale are telling a story where the word “recession” may not be explicitly mentioned, but “subprime crisis” makes the headlines.

Overall, there is a contraction of 0.3%, from a former 4.4% growth rate to the actual 4.1% (and a 4.9% in 2007…), given the impact of the crisis from the “Gekko” dashboard to the real economy. The US economy, unsurprisingly enough, bears the premium of a further reduction, -0.4% over the latest forecast, to a mere 1.5% of, say, organic growth, which will be coupled with some “spill-over” from 2007 to rise the US economy by2.2%.

Europe will be massively hit by the crisis, considering a reduction from Autumn’s forecast by 0.5 percentage points, an overall 1.6%, and a sliding off path more marked during the last quarter (same thing apply to the US, for consistency purposes!!). China and all emerging markets will slow down a bit, the Dragon will slip back from an initial 11.4% to a current 10%, allowing some overheating pressure over the economy to ease, but more notably the African countries will augment their positive impact on a global scale, posting a nice 7% growth, one percentage point above 2007 results. We saw that coming, supported also by Far East investments and “petro-dollars”. However, the IMF notes that

the deteriorating economic conditions could exacerbate pressures on major financial institutions that have already suffered big losses from the subprime crisis.

A nice warning, but quite off-timing I dare say… we are all wandering what actually is the work done to align risk management practices to the Basel 2 requirements..

Still.. if we apply what happened in the US, and the potential spillover of the subprime crisis to the credit environment (potential??? The Amex results yesterday - 10% decline in net income and some “$438m set aside to cover bad loans” stated the Financial Times) are chanting that story for a supposed above-par marketplace, nevermind the rest…) is it possible that another financial black hole may open up in East Europe??

Quite interestingly, the current Italian political turmoil, according to the IMF, should not affect the overall performance, set over a “healthy” path and stressing that all political conditions are “a worry” but all forecast are made on a pure economic evaluation… as if the two aspect, in a modern ans systemic socio-economic ecosystem, are totally separated and with no area of cross-over and influence!!!

It is so incredibly short-sighted not to consider the “system” as the real ruler of all human interactions and the main pillar for a viable and “effective” future… we may need to see a shift in global power and importance towards the East and the South of the World before realising we have missed a chance..

OK, stepping into far too complicated realms to be addressed in a short blog post, yet if anybody is at all interested I am more than happy to take it to an higher level!!!!

Today is a pretty weird day… the Italian government fell under the strikes of some swingers within its grouping, leaving behind part of the Italian electorate cheering at the event, whilst there should be vast amass of worries to begin with…however, there will be plenty of time and room to discuss, should this be of any interest, such a drama as the Italian political scene..needless to say, timing is most inappropriate, given the economic and political scenario looming ahead, coupled with an array of international challenges difficult to understand and analyse by those who do not think “systemically” but care for their own wallet..

Still, it’s Friday nevermind what, so it is about time to have our Finger Food ready for nibbling, so there we are!!!

• Noblesse oblige, I have to include some comments (international, just in case) about Italian recent political turnaround… long since someone said “it is not impossible to govern Italians, it is useless..” and by the way the owner of this sentence and myself are radically at opposite political views.. I rather quote “Obi Wan Kenobi, you are my only hope”, and see whether there is life in outerspace, it may help us a tad..
• Second massive news spot: Davos!!! It is all getting along nicely, with plenty to discuss about sovereign funds, supposedly going to run the universal fate, something Soros was accustomed to, and something about how green is your backyard or, rather, some chit-chat over the recent turbulence on global economy… full blown event here!
• John Donahoe is the new eBay CEO and will have to lift the company to the former glory.. daunting task, mind you, since the market has got a number of new Web darlings, the site has witnessed some harsh time with eCrooks (nice one!!)..long term, a give us something new to cheer about, John.. mind you, it was going all that bad, according to Compete…
• Windows Vista and its new upgrade!?!?!?!? ROTFWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! please….. or are you rather thinking about Windows 7???? and IE8??? seriously guys, you should stop those pills..
• In the meanwhile, Dell is adding Ubuntu Linux to its flashy XPS range of PCs, on top of some more dull Inspiron.. just a nice change, isn’t it??? UbuWhat????? Gosh.. there you are!
• Wikipedia would like to know why those who post on Wiki actually do so… ego, for heaven’s sake, ego!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or willingness to participate to something worthwhile, interest, keen on sharing…plenty of reasons, including something like “spare time to waste in a constructive manner apart from running wild with SecondLife..”
• The above statement about spare time to waste in a constructive manner has always included “reading” within answers’ range.. as found, there is a booby trap in the library: some books make you dumb.. or dumber, depending on the case… follow the link, fun to see…
• Millions of millions of users for virtual or synthetic worlds.. but how many??? 173 million to latest K Zero counts.. and growing, I trust… an hefty population that would be probably interested in cross checking what’s behind the fence..
• Everything is “Open”, and at CES this was remarkably undelined.. however, and the Italian politics with 39 parties running the show may testify, too much choice turns out to be unproductive and detrimental, as highlighted in the linked post, particularly when referring to consumer electronics, open connectivity, wireless industry and such… , I believe there is some wisdom here to put at work….!!
• To add to complexity, MySpace will begin offering videos since its latest agreements with BBC and ABC.. gosh, my eves are going to get complicated, must revamp the PC home section, I believe.. don’t you find however quite boring the fact that everybody does everything just to lure you?? Is the concept of “champion” such an absurdity today?? I rather have variety..
• Diamonds may actually be girls’ best friends, but gold and platinum are surely best buddies of scared investors and shaken markets!!! Record highs for both in the last few days…
• America begins to realise that hegemony is a dream long gone, the planet complexity is beyond control, or at least is a long shot away from a single country ability to manouvre.. multi-polarity is an issue to face, disgregation of power and the rise of micro-geopolitical centers.. working at the edge of chaos, managing complexity, augmenting the overall reaction capability, improve lateral thinking are paramount for companies, nevermind a country… a nice primordial broth..

Plus, some nice earnings alert to care for (including those down-putting statements from Apple, however bloated with Air it may be.. and the reason behind Nokia success…), Dubai is working hard to became the Islamic world financial hub, Billy Gates is patting on the back of world leaders from the Davos speaker corner, a chart about East meet West sort of chat..

Virgin Galactic is gettin’ out (but the outer space is not the only target, India may be a nice alternative still).. and playing with toys makes the life and story of Nintendo a nice tale, above all expectations (price rising in Japan..), China is still running fast, but some sweat on its forehead begins to show, together with some social “modernities”, sort of…

Right.. time to close up this session, the sky is clear, temperature is sort of late winter, early spring like, tomorrow I will hit the slopes to try out my new snowboard boots (nice sturdy Nitro Anthem, a picture is here, just in case…), hope to be back on Monday and with all my pieces at the right place!!!

Have a nice weekend you all!!!

Today is the opening day of the annual Davos Economic Forum, and the scenario is hard to forget: first of all, a magnificent and perfectly winterly landscape, a tad spoiled by a significant global financial shake off, a ever so complicated balance between the East and the West of the World, a tactical shift of business confidence from developed markets actors to the rampant ones, notably India, China, Russia, Mexico.. also I would add there is the awaiting of Bush’s closing act and the stabilisation of the Persian area, the growing interest in ripping out part of Sub-Saharan Africa from famine and foster a new markeplace (with Chinese and Arabic money, perhaps?!?), the role Europe will take over the global chessboard, given its internal extreme differences, both in economic and political terms and an invisible parallel divides North and South as never before, I would argue..

Climate changes, financial turmoil, political unrest, the ingredients are ready to build up a spectacular first course.. or the perfect storm, this depending on the intelligence and social responsibility level all the top guns in Davos will show…

Let’s hope for the best…

It is a gorgeous day in Milan, the sun is shining bright and it seems winter is out of the way, at least for some time.. it feels like Spring, and these will be our first Finger Food “al fresco” for 2008!!!

• Web 2.0 or anything .0 is increasingly perceived (finally, for Heaven’s sake..) as a potential business tool, or at least it is appreciated people discuss about markets, business, companies et alia not only in meeting rooms or at coffee machines… StrategyEye is supposed to gather and analyse this amass of blurb… nice one, guys, nice one.. you may end up being bought by some research powerhouse and drop working in London SW borough in a matter of a blink!!!
• YouTube is still in the leading position…oh, yes, we are talking about videos here.. in this Compete post, there is a clear market picture that suggests how YouTubers are more active than any other video-community on the Web… what is the main differential driving users to roughly quadruple the visits on this site compared to the behaviour of other groups??? Recipe for success anyone??
• Some time ago, in a far far away galaxy, we heard about Google mimicking Microsoft and blatantly searching for a similar spotlight.. there came the desktop application, the interest in the corporate environment, the “me, everywhere” sort of approach and, last but not least, the .org after the name.. philanthropy is on the agenda of the Fantastic Duo, but as it seems here, it will take a Google-only road..
• Oracle is back!!! And BEA was then gobbled down and digested! BUT the M&A frenzy is hitting badly, and Sun goes shopping too.. MySQL is on the menu! Nice add for both, albeit of different magnitude and overall strategic and branding value.. will we see more of it??? Some likely picks could possibly be Compuware and Unisys…the industry said..
• A friend of mine just told me that the UK marketplace is looking for replenishments, people to foster and support the growth..incidentally this was a nice supporting article! And, i we want to consider that in US the situation is heading the very opposite direction (unemployment rising over 5%…), two hypothesis: US is definitely on a crisis landslide, and the global power may shift a little bit over to Europe and some Far East, and there it goes, or there will be another geopolitical trouble spot to sort out with a nice and surgical war… debatable?? Of course, help yourself!!!!
• By the way, European corporation are increasingly looking eastward… andSouth, to be fair… and where there will be some sort of potential and market development… right, yes..
• The week has been also pestered by the MacWorld event.. ok, should you be at all interested (and you should, who knows, there may be some directions you may want to tackle…) here are the Day One, Day Two and Day Three roundups… just in case you have nothing better to do!!!!!!!
• Funny, though… there will be a new definition of “pitch black” coming shortly, since with nanotubes some scientists have created the ultimate black, an hellish substance that will eat the light and give nothing in return apart from that shiny and quite worrying shade of black… mind you, it would look amazing on my motorbike….
• Nevemind what, SecondLife economy is there and growing… mind you, that “charging VAT” thing….
• Meanwhile, it seems there is a lot of talking about the “evolution” of the role of Second Life.. I had some little chat with Nobody here, and there are also some projects on how to back up the entire experience of a synthetic world, as to preserve its essence for future reference … the interesting debate stemming from this post is about the determination of value, what is fundamental to be backed up and what can eventually disappear into the dust of time… SL, as possibly the entire social computing evolution, is not easy to frame, since it is fundamentally composed and brought to life by people, their feelings, needs and creativity. Back up that, then…
• Whilst talking, China is about to overtake US as the leading Internet market worldwide, in overall number of users.. that was not exactly a tough prediction to make, wasn’t it???
• Rankings, more rankings.. the 2007 top growing web sites!!!  Ok, there is some little “red lights” here, but apart from the obvious, it is interesting to notice the P2P bias of the rank.. now that we are all connected, what’s next??? making the most of the connection, I believe…

By the way, since I believe that the above is more that enough, and considering that I am desperately crying for some early sunshine, I believe I may leave you with this early 2008 Finger Food, with a small recommendation: take your time, slow down, do not get bogged by evolution, IT, the Web, best of all, do not be a “Google generation“.. impatience does lead to skim the surface  and miss the innermost.. to play with words a bit “life is best lived where Googlers fear to tread”!!

Enjoy your weekend, catch you later!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That time of the year has come, pretty much like xMas, my birthday, the first MotoGP race or the very first swim before summer season starts: MacWorld!!! (One out of the zillion links you may already have…)

The 2008 edition will be remembered possibly for the flashy side of computing, the unbearable lightness of being Apple, the MacBook Air. A thin jewel of hardly 3/4 of an inch max, a featherlight computer… basically a MacBook on diet like, say, comparing Jessica Alba with Kate Moss, without illegal boost, mind you…

I won’t spend more time on it, it is gorgeous, stylish, the ultimate tech fashion statement, nothing all that new when considering Apple, isn’t it???

It is rather interesting the attack Steve Jobs is setting up at the movie industry or, better, how consumer actually USE the movie industry.

iTunes Movie Rentals is going to revolutionise the movie experience.

Rent any movie for 24 hours, choosing from a large collection from majors portfolios such as 20th Century Fox, Universal, Sony, Warner and the rest of the pack, watch it on any device you may like, with obvious preference for Apple hardware (Macs, iPod, iPhone, haven’t read about iTouch…), pay $2.99 or $3.99 and there you go… a thousand titles by the end of February, more to come, and add to the pack some TV shows, concerts, video podcast and some more goodies..

From your couch directly to the smashing flat screen you just bought on sales, your digilife is going to get pampered, boosted, enhanced, whatever!! Isn’t that nice????

This move was somewhat expected, and yet it is quite likely that this will change massively the entire industry approach to entertainment. Also, more significant, it redefines the concept of “ownership” compared to “timely experience”: it is not necessary to own, it is rather more important to experience something. I do not need to “have” everything, to hold it in my safe, I could and possibly will be much more selective, and the entire idea of value could be reorganised.

Clearly, we are talking about movies, really not a cornerstone, but heck, life is a glittery game nonetheless!! See whether Steve Jobs is able to make another miracle, at least for himself and Apple’s shareholders!!!!!!!!!!!!

By the way, nevermind what, in my wardrobe there are no black turtlenecks…

I have started my blogging experience a little short of a year ago, and I have to admit it has been rewarding and challenging, fun and worrisome, but most of all it has been like a long, unplanned backpacking trip along the roads of social evolution and global changes! And, should you be so nice to have read me all along this time, it is a bless for a curious being the like of myself..

I have started this personal journey when MySpace was one of the coolest place to be in, SecondLife was supposed to position as the next big thing for human interaction and business ventures, one year ago there were articles about how cool is blogging about, the entire 2.0 was an humongous affair encompassing and including the whole of mankind and any aspect derived from it (almost, say…).

Then, I went on holiday in Tanzania, Zanzibar to be precise, and spent a whole week without even thinking about wearing shoes, my feet gorging on white and warm sand and more white and warm sand, my skin crackling into the African sun..let alone considering the World stressed about whether being 1.0 or 2.0 or x.0 at all…

I stepped into a plane, packed full with over-talkative holiday village goers, and slowly but surely I hit the -2° in Milan… a night sleep, on it was the PC the morning after and here it is…

MySpace has been dubbed as “uncool”, nevermind the overall results (incidentally, this drop in page views I saw it first mentioned here, dating back Sept. 11th.. ouch…), SecondLife seems to have trouble in mocking the real world as someone was hoping it would have done (silly, silly, silly!!!), recently the most “real” stuff, money, has been quite regulated and there is no longer that “be there, be rich” sort of approach (something along the lines of the first appearance of the Web in our daily existence back in, say, ‘95), and most of all there is no longer such ranting about “2.0″….

More importantly, CES in Las Vegas has finally completed the transition to a “business-determined” social ecosystem to a “consumer-driven” fabric… I read endless analysis concentrating on how the corporate environment has to mimic the private users dynamics, how important is to accomodate users’ needs, also in technology terms, as to foster a superior working environment, tailored and geared to make the most of each individual working style and “social graph”….

Now, this is the next one you will be pestered about in the coming months: SOCIAL GRAPH.

Six degree of separation, networks, nodes and hubs, this is all making the news, together with complexity theory and chaos.. finally someone have made the point: interconnecting more than a billion people is not as simple as plugging a PC into the socket.. it is a matter of re-defining the social canvass, it is a matter of managing a life of endless information streaming across the planet, it is about one, large, living organism… quite a long time ago I posted about what I called LITO, Living Information Technology Organism.. we may all want to go back and study evolutionary theories instead that SecondLife for Dummies…

Welcome back, I hope a marvellous 2008 for all of you!!! It will be a nice ride, stay tuned!!

Jingle bells, jingle bells….. The Christmas feeling permeates everything, people rush around with massive presents, ribbons and wrapping papers are defining the color palette of the city, the sky is ready to cover all with a fluffy white cover of snow… apart form the latest, since Milan is quite warm today and inundated by a glorious sunshine, the rest is pretty accurate so far… to add to the glory of this moment, there are my Xmas Finger Food in all its luxurious display!!!!

• The Top, the Best, the Everything… it is a flourishing of rankings, including the worse tech development of 2007…. Microsoft won’ t be all that chuffed about it… nevertheless, Vista tops it up, Office is there, Zune player likewise… to compensate, Leopard and the iPhone are around… is that being a touch too picky or what??? It is Christmas after all….
• As a reinforcement of the above.. Microsoft suggests that XP enhancements with SP3 are kind of fine, but Vista is waaaaaaay better!! Yep, will be running for it…
• Business ideas with a thrill for 2008??? Go invest in the Balkans!!!! With some Free Tax zones, alleged returns on the 20% mark, endless growth potential, the area is attracting investors and FDI doubles year on year.. unfortunately the overall geopolitical stability of the region is only slightly more substantial than the last snow before springtime. Tangled ethnic roots amongst countries, religious blurred boundaries are stressing the overall balance, every little sparkle may turn into a massive firestorm, story actually gives out warnings. Still, you may want to have a go!!
• To keep on going along the same line, do you remember we said China was actually some sort of hope for the troubled African countries?!??!? I dare say I have been read where it counts, since the World Bank had decided to play alongside with Chinese’s development funds to support Africa!!! How nice, just about time!!!! What would someone do to maintain the spotlight is beyond me…. there are some words to put this in the right context… exploitation is one, hypocrisy another one… incidentally, World Bank stated China and India economies are not as strong as previously supposed.. by an hefty 40%…
• Running out to fetch the latest smartphone???? Hold to your cash, Nvidia is going to launch a super-cool and powerful mobile graphic card to play smashing 3D games on your once-called telephone!! And digital TV, and pictures with terrific detail resolution, and anything you have ever dreamed of.. (you should check your dinner habits, what dreams are you playing with??!?!?!?). GeForce 5500 uber alles!!!!!!!!!
• You could maybe run also some metaverse on it??? Something hopefully cool as Meet-Me, the Japanese response to SecondLife??!?!? Unfortunately not for gaijin…. damn, browsing around Tokyo would have been fun…
• Otherwise, you may also hit China and stay at some luxury Jumeirah hotels.. you know, Jumeirah, that one running the Burj al Arab in Dubai…. another glimpse of China-UAE nice relationship and a confirmation of the fact that football and rich people are everywhere (and Italian pizzerias, yes.. there was one, run by a guy from Bologna, in Atacames, Ecuador, pretty hidden believe me..)
• Since few decades, if you want to learn about how to defend yourself, your family or your entire country, possibly a talk with some Israelis would have set the right direction to pursue, today if you aim is cybersecurity, still the Middle East country is a likely choice, coupled with some former Soviet republics such as Estonia!!!! Nice, real nice, a setting for a new Bond movie… there is always a way to become famous…
• You may also want to use the Web and participate to the global interview bonanza with, trumpets please, Al Zawahiri, the second in commad of Al Qaeda… talk about Internet pervasiveness… some secret service report may eventually come up with the idea that Bin Laden is no longer in Waziristan but in an unspecified SecondLife island…
• And, what about having a Wi-Fi coverage of the Mecca for the Hajj??? A mesh-network of 5210 routers in in place… you cannot stop looking at the World and wonder..

Whilst we are all with our noses up to see the first glimpse of Rudolf heading the reindeer pack, the sky give us a naughty galaxy, check the NASA!! Damn… anyway, Xmas time allows dreams to come true, and you may have Gheddafi, the Lybia’s heart and soul leader, sitting in the old Franco’s mansion in Spain and listen to some flamenco.. how weird you can get? You don’t care?? Me neither, and yet building bridges across the Med is not such a bad idea, particularly when considering that the Maghreb is swiftly becoming a massive exporter of gas, and may substitute Russia as the EU gas darling, despite Putin’s Time award as Man of the Year (after Bush a couple of years ago..), is then that the reason behind the flamenco dances mentioned before???

Santa should also uses a bridge over Rio de Janeiro, instead of flying over the city, which seems to be a rough ride given the arsenal amassed by drug dealers and their attitude towards hitting any potential Police helicopter!! What a life, mate, what a life… sometimes it yields nice surprises, such as this Physics professor from MIT, 71 years old, as the next Web star!!

When back from holidays, you may find a new Internet Explorer into your inbox, the IE8 version has just passed a strong Acid2 test..or you rather have a peek at Firefox 3 Beta??? No problems, best served hot!

And more, Xmas recipes from NY East Side, a Nordic retreat for a white atmosphere, London’s lighting up its streets and cobbled alleys, the Christmas jewelery madness in Dubai……

I trust this may actually be enough talk, I may be back before New Year….

I have spent these last few months enjoying this blog initiative to the full, it has been exciting, hopefully interesting but most definitely rewarding in terms of relationships I have been able to build up with some of you, all around the World.

For these, and other reasons I would keep private for avoiding an easy emotional drift, I thank you all and wish you a truly magic Christmas and a magnificent New Year!!!!!!!!!!!!

Peace!

Second Life is a plethora of different things, depending on your perspective, your attitude and will to explore… it is, as previously said, a spectacular ecosystem to foster communication, collaboration of some sort, and occasionally it is a learning platform…

If you put all these things together, and add some festive atmosphere, there you are: two Rome’s universities are having their Xmas and New Year’s party together in Second Life!! Università di Roma Tre and UniNettuno, a distant learning leading university, will launch the party at 5pm CET, both at the Roman premises of the URT and on line, on a Second Life space… the RL (real life!) event will be broadcasted onto the island’s screens, there will be DJ sets, dancers and the whole paraphernalia!!! The entire event will be streamed over satellite channels Dec. 31st.

It is designed to be an opportunity for those international students of UniNettuno that want to keep in touch with fellows, it is an opportunity to ignite a cross-fertilisation program between universities and foster collaboration!!  Meanwhile, get your flurry sorted out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am slightly concerned… yesterday the UN assembly voted a moratorium on death penalty, 104 nations wanted it to stop, 54 are still believing in death sentence as a deterrent or a solution… seemingly, the Italian diplomacy played a significant role in aggregating consensus, for once it actually did something valuable..

Problem is: I have found no mention of the event (’cause it is an event…) in the Web sites of international newspapers around the globe… from Australia to USA, travelling with the Sun, I have not encountered one mention of it…

Now, I trust that things like “what’s wrong with Hillary’s wardrobe” may be utterly interesting, a massive robbery at Cartier it is also a hit, Amy Winehouse being released will finally let me have a decent night’ sleep, and forth, but I personally believe that communicating a decision like starting to stop killing people by law, on a global basis, is sort of relevant to mankind…

Unless, and this is the scary thought, it is all a fad by the Italian press and politicians, given the present gloomy atmosphere around the political enclave inhabiting Rome it could well be a childish attempt to reinvigorate the national love for the ruling caste!!  (Obviously joking… obviously..)

Could you please help me out on this, and drag me out of embarrassment?? Any news??? Something I have missed???

Ah, yep, merry Xmas…..

Hey there!!! Here we are, again…

It has been a hell of a week, lots of Xmas events including a PR and Communication agency event (nice eve, Grandangolo!! Tks a lot!!!!), party with my kickboxing team, a DJ set from Gotan Project courtesy of American Express…plus a couple of dreadful projects to finish off before, largely before Xmas…

So, your weekly helpings of Finger Food is on the dietetic side, but will replenish next Friday, just before you all leave!!!

• I know that there are sights and little tears in remembering those days spent over the keyboard, trying to code that silly game, listening to the cassette recorder to spot the very beginning of that program your friend lent you.. Commodore 64 was part of childhood paraphernalia (at least for some of us..), and it is a pleasure to say ” I was there” during its 25th birthday celebration! Real good fun, I have to admit, the opening of a brand new world!!
• Brits are mad with social networks… ’round 40% of Web users do kill time socialising on wires… more than anyone else in Europe.. Language? Superior Web dexterity? Utter boredom? Ugly and unappreciative circle of friends?
• Nicely enough, whilst chatting away with 3D friends and socialising on countless sites and improbable topics, Britons are also doing something to have a place in which keeping on socialising!!! A massive wind-farms conglomerate in the North Sea will provide England with a massive 30+ Megawatt… kudos, really..
• More on the “green bug” (yeahhhh) here and here…. from small business to car manufacturers, is a green bonanza larger than a St. Patrick’s street parade!!! Will see where all this awareness takes us all…
• Regardless the above, business is business and Christmas tree are booming in price since China and, surprise surprise, the UAE are pushing up demand… poor Santa…
• And UAE is actually distributing “economic fuel” also into the BRIC structure, notably in India.. Mumbai will benefit, nice Xmas present!!!!
• Despite taking a different path from US Fed, the EU Central Bank will have to acknowledge an inflation hike in the Eurozone.. incidentally the highest in six years… further interest moves ahead.. time to keep tight??!??!
• But forget all of the above and go playing!!! Perhaps with a Nintendo Wii, provided you can actually get one!!!!