Finger Food (11)

Some days it may happens you wake up with a weird mood, it could be the end result of a bad dream you rarely remember, it could be the first chilly night after summer, it could be anything but, regardless, you feel edgy and most welcome the silence.

The opening of today’s Web newspaper (I do not do TV in the morning, too sad and boring, quite often..) is focused on the events in Myanmar, which I rather call Burma as an homage to its history and heritage (I may be wrong, but alas..). I certainly know that that is not the sole area in the World where repression and regime win over mankind or perhaps that is the common perception, and yet there is always a sparkle somewhere in human beings that allow you to nurture some hope in the future.

The global community has asked itself around the World to wear a red t-shirt to virtually close the gap with all the Buddhist monks that are quietly fighting the Burmese regime and asking for any human being’s right: freedom. An sms has circulated around the world, this is the text:

In support of our incredibly brave friends in Burma: May all people around the world wear red shirt on Friday 28. Please forward!

Forward it.

A house, water, food, dignity and freedom are fundamental pillars for mankind to be named as such, and the World is largely below par on those… is this redundant writing? Is this rhetoric, heard already, simplistic? I do not care, I have got a red t-shirt. After all, we always praise the importance of virtual, eSomething, feeling close to the Burmese people thanks to a piece of fabric is not too weird, then..

Below are the weekly Finger Food, the tone and topics are in some cases a few days old, thus may actually clash and shriek against the above, yet this is another “nevermind”…

• You thought all your browsing those pointless, silly websites, including the unspeakable of ones.. would lead to nowhere??? Wrong, at the very least you may walk around your personal garden made out of your browsing… silly?? Nop, have a look here!!!
• Everybody goes social!!!! We had time to discuss about cyber identity, some of your comments were spot on the issue, and there we are again, more social networks!!! You know what??? How long since a cyber-sociopath disease will actually be formalised???
• Restrictions are never ever a good idea to foster, and despite the image of the V-Father, Virgin Digital (the digi-music shop..) is shutting down for good, as it seems… beware of DRM!!!! In the meanwhile, the Mule gets whacked..pointlessly, I dare say…
• Let’s get started with changing the course of things… the Sun is an unexploited source of energy, someone calculated that it would be needed just 1% of the desert surfaces covered in high tech mirrors to give the Planet a more than decent injection of energy… and since in Australia there is plenty of sunshine, here we are! Kudos!!! The more, the better..
• There we are, in fact!! Honestly, I didn’t make beyond the first page, and still it is fascinating, we may get some energy back from X-Algae, mutant seaweed or something.. as we said, any little helps…
• So, Dell goes green… or, at least, it is starting to.. the most interesting aspect of it all is the “network” approach the company seems to take when considering CO2 emission and relative reduction: Dell suppliers and such are “forced” to abide a set of “green” requirements the PC behemoth has set. A tiny step forward..
• A little while ago we went on discussing about identity issues whilst moving around the Web or virtual worlds… here is another little piece to add to the collection of “how to”. OAuth is out for trials and open discussion, have a go!!!
• I have always been fanatic about cultural cross-fertilisation, and most aware of the power of serendipity.. thus it comes of no surprise to hear that a Microsoft team got a crush on an algorithm to detect HIV virus activity and, eventually, target a counterattack.. incidentally, the idea came from a work done on spamming protection tools… There is a little note drowned into the article, stating that the amount spent on this research is no more than a “rounding error” in planning budgets, think about what you can do with mistakes like that..

Plus O’Reilly Web2Open @ Berlin (everything seems happening in Berlin, these days, from our – IDC – ICT Forum to the Metaverse Summit in December, plus other..), and Halo 3 is conquering the gaming space, Dubai is becoming the money hub in the Middle East thanks to NASDAQ and OMX merry-go-round, whilst EU has decided to have virtual-VAT in SecondLife (but to be paid in full, real money…)… innovation?!??!? Please…

For you all, do enjoy the essay on “fame” that Stephen Fry has just put on his blog, and for those of you leaving in UK, could you please digital-record for me the new Jennifer Saunders comedy ” The Life and Times of Vivienne Vayle”?? If that is anything as funny as AbFab, I need it!!!

Have a nice weekend, I will pop over to Tuscany to hear my brother’s stories about “freaking-two-weeks-in-Tenerife” and my mom moaning over her “far-too-packed-with-candles” birthday cake!!!

Remember, red t-shirt…

Italian eGovernment.. that’s virtualisation of Nothing!!!!

During the past few weeks….during the past few months… ok, fine, during the past few years Italy has been struggling in building up a decent Government infrastructure.. we’ve had it all, thieves, convicted ministries, leaders acting like stand-up comedians at international meetings, singing prime ministers, the whole lot of absurdities.. This was coupled by an appalling public finance management, the disappearance of billions of Euros into someone’s pocket and so forth.. it is impossible to follow it, let alone report it in a post so follow my advice, should you have a burning desire to know this circus and if you are really fitted with strong guts, and go for books such as “La Casta”….

However, in this sort of third world (please, no offense to the third world countries, utmost respect!) mess, Italian rulers have been so barefaced as to foster eGovernment initiatives.. needless to say you should have a Government as such before even remotely trying to apply any sort of virtualisation to it, but nevermind..

Another Italian miracle was accomplished swiftly, since the latest Cap Gemini report states Italy is at around mid-ranking in the eGov evaluation score, and is above par (82% vs. an average of 75%) in overall quality of the services available. (Note: this is not a miracle at all, but, hey, that’s all we have got on the menu these days…)

That is something the entire nation was actually waiting to know (as if…), now it seems Italians would also like to understand whether this immense wealth of technology and cyber-functionalities are able to find something like 98 billion Euros missing (vanished, evaporated really..) from the taxation of gaming machines (aka video pokers and so forth…) across the country… that is a nice amount of money, considering that the latest “Legge Finanziaria” (the sort of yearly set of financial and fiscal measures and activities…) wasn’t remotely close to half of that amount and it made the entire nation shivers in terror for starvation and missing holidays….. the 2008 “Finanziaria” is about 12 billion, as it has been reported, that makes 1/8 (rounded..) of the due amount… you find the money, Italy would happil y trail around for, say, the next five years??? An entire legislature??? wow…

We were such a grand country…damn..

The role of IT…an alchemic question… (2)

Incidentally, this was a nice survey I found on BusinessWeek.. keep on going, CIO, keep on going…

Mashup….wazzuuuuuupppp??????

We all know that some of the features that people keep on tagging as “Web 2.0″ are about content creation, elaboration and management, as to obtain an auto-generated content stream to “widecast” … this is quite nicely combined with the possibility to have two or more set of contents (web sites, information, data, whatever…) interacting to create a brand new entity, an hybrid, an end-results of a careful dosing of ingredients.. aka a “mashup”!!!

Now, that has probably been a kingdom few fairly skilled individuals could fathom and approach, and then mash, mix, combine were all words for the initiated ones ..  but today, this all come down to a dead-easy level, as it seems with this Intel (wow!!) MashMaker!!

Vivienne Westwood has said just yesterday, at the celebration party held in Milan for her 35th anniversary in the fashion industry, that

this is a terrible World, in which anybody thinks anymore: everybody’s watching TV, nobody’s reading or looking for arts, and yet people constantly want to express themselves, but have got nothing inside and nothing interesting to say, they are boring…

This may actually be slightly harsh, but considering Ms Westwood is the least she could have said about the current intellectual bankrupt we are witnessing, still it is nice to sit and wait about the results coming from combination, cross-fertilisation and fusion of different experiences… after all a meticcio is actually stronger than the separate parts…

However, and despite the above, one word of advice (not that I am anybody to take this honour..): as all top DJs could tell you, two good songs do not get mixed nicely together into something worth earing all that easily, superior skills (intelligence) are needed to arbitrate amongst parts to reach a better One.. and skills (…) are in short supply..

The role of IT… an alchemic question..

I am back from the Forum IT held in San Gimignano, right in the middle of Tuscany (home, for a change!!!) and in a wonderful location.. why this sort of “touristic incipit”?? One reason, mainly, a small tiny winy detail: that quiet and lush environment stirred the most stunning flow of conversation, quite a lot of business considerations and an amazing array of personal chats and, quite a rare occurrence these days, of the utmost intelligence and elegance.. I must say a soothing experience and quite refreshing indeed..

The business issues were all related to the current role of Information Technology and its company champion, the CIO, in the present evolutionary scenario.. the debate went on a couple of divergent directions: a sort of initial mainstream idea was pointing out to the IT being a mandatory and, as of today, commodity function within the organisation, the other standpoint, later on in the day, headed towards the strategic role of IT as enabler of a new sort of sentient organisation, therefore forcing the CIO role to a connection, a hub of utmost technology competence coupled with (at least) a thorough business understanding..

That may sounds like “so what..” kind of a stuff, however I have been posed since 1995 with two  questions: the importance of the SMEs market in Italy and how to rise the IT to strategic level within any company’s board… I believe today there are plenty of research and data that pinpoint the alive-and-kicking dichotomy between technology and business, the role of the CIO as a guardian of an almost forgotten druidic knowledge of IT and as the paramount driving force of a new business capability… as per the importance of SMEs in Italy, that is still lingering about..

Around 60% of companies has stated, in a fairly recent survey I happened to read (details upon request…), that the utmost company priority is about cost reduction, and immediately after that 25% quoted “development of new product/services” as a top priority, whilst the main trouble areas for an IT management are about keeping the internal IT skill set alive (39%)  and how to integrate heterogeneous systems into a coherent technology fabric (34%), it is no wander that CIOs complaint about the scarcity of resources to develop new initiatives… and yet, the discussion is always about the strategic role of IT as if all business functions and evolutionary capability would not set their roots into a rather firm IT ground. Most of the IT crowd I generally meet points out that the more pressing need today is about finding the right language pack to discuss with business folks.

As pointed out with some friends at the Forum, the business declinations of information technology today are the pillars of Hercules between success and failure, IT is the detonator for superior strategic acumen…

Ops, there we are again, it is all down to brains and management ability, I guess…. quite an hard call sometimes..

Finger Food (10)

I know it is not Friday… I will be travelling to a “Forum IT” with some journalists and a few top execs from the IT industry for a weekend of brainstorming around the role of Information Technology and its moguls in the present (and foreseeable) economic evolution. Nice one!

So, I have been gathering some nice bits around to keep you going for the next few days..

• First come first, so energy is again on top position.. also, it is interesting to notice that our shared thoughts about the overindulgent approach to the importance of innovation and ideas may generate monsters of silliness such as this weird plans on how to save the planet from darkness of a post-oil economy…. however, together with Web 2.0, energy is hot on the list, here, and also here. We should have started this battage much earlier.
• It would then be a nice thing to do to us (taking care of the energy, the planet and us, all included..), before this goes a bit too far… on top of disintegrating our ecosystem, the mankind (politicians, businesses… ) approach to pollution and global warming is depriving us of adventure, exploration, food for those of us still believing Man is a word to be proud of…
• Few days ago I pointed out how mobile comms were driving India to the stardom and out (for at least part of its population) of starvation, now it seems the same can be done in Africa. I would like to have the opinion of a dear friend of mine who works in the area … at least, it is nice to read and soothing to know that some can be done .. ah, quite obviously it is of the utmost importance that new masses are up and well to become a mass of new buyers (at some point in time…), since all the other buyers across the World have been kind of squeezed to buy also when there was no money for it (subprime anyone???) but this is maybe beyond the point, isn’t it???? Much better to believe we are sooooo nice and concern about others…… (Note: read down the comments section.. Thanks Jamil..)
• And, since privacy is an issue, the most advanced amongst us are Tor users.. what is Tor?? This will explain a bit, and as it seems it is not a nice position to be a Tor-server administrator.. now, I am wandering, would that responsibility and related court calls apply also to free WiFi access, Fon and friends (go on, I know some of you will have some literature about this..)???!?!? Gosh, you cannot do a favor and immediately someone is at you… damn…
• To complicate matters, femtocells are a real offering … what are femtocells??? Browse here, Dean is an old colleague of mine and truly knows about it…I believe, however, it will be a nice add to already complicated tariffing schemes and non-usage of advanced tech (HSDPA??) by the “everyday man”… still, nice to know that, maybe one day, I will be able to make or receive a call in Milan underground, albeit it will be a matter of reprogramming people politeness level (pretty low now, to say the least…)
• This is fantastic!!! Is SecondLife generally hosting reproductions of real cities??? Fine, a real city hosts a reproduction of Second Life!!!! There is really no end to it… so get it all sorted out here, at Dr.Dobb’s Life 2.0.. the funniest of it all is the breakfast.. I usually starve in the morning, my real stomach asks for real food… will be there later, then, anybody minds???? And, about real cities, walls and the lot, here it is, an Italian construction company hosts your house, the exact reproduction of the house you are going to buy, in SL… avatars can go and check, modify, control, experience.. this is kind of nice, isn’t it??? Maybe done already somewhere else, but seems to me a good way of using virtual reality to its best. Thanks to Punto Informatico for “digging” the news..
• btw, SecondLife is hosting an eBay based auction system… mind you, just for land… are we going to have sub-prime loans any time soon??? Joking, that will be fun to watch… OK, OK, there are also some nice serious bits happening in SL, and particularly information (oxygen for free spirits) gets a nice reward … kudos to Reuters… thanks Nobody Fugazi!

There we are… ah, yes, this has been the week Microsoft got a fine from EU for being naughty-naughty (and everyone’s concerned about the aftermath of it… or cheering up, indeed), the iPhone is finally making its inroad in Europe, despite having (at the time I wrote this comment..) no 3G capability but compensating instead with a huuuuge ego from Cupertino (O2 strangled in the deal..), together with across-the-continent pricing issues already , Digg changes some bits and it’s digging deeper into users’ experience….

I will report about, and possibily from, the event but, in the meanwhile, I leave you with this… I truly believe Stephen Fry is one class on his own, chapeau and enjoy the reading!

Catch you later!!

UPDATE: since Web 2.0 and all the talking these days point to “collaboration”, “world conscience”, “community”, have a thought at this… grid computing at mankind’s service, known already?? Cool .. for once, I would like to believe it is pure and true..

Broaden your horizon..

Every now and then I like to share with you some feelings, ideas, simple thoughts about anything that sort of moves me somewhat.

As most of you, I like the idea of being part of a larger World than my immediate surroundings, I love the fact that lots of my friends are scattered allover the World and yet we keep in touch, we share bits of our lives and, ultimately, we grow together. Since I began travelling, I couldn’t stop longing for being on the move, by plane, car, boat, bike, feet, all but staying still.

Which, unfortunately, is something I have to do most of my time, workwise now, and because of a much greener age, some times ago. Damn.

To overcome the issue, and then long before working age, I started reading. Anything, really. I travelled first class to Asia with Salgari, and from that onward I went allover the place. Then I got into knowing things, and then again I read about anything I was remotely supposing could have been of any interest.

Today, Internet is grand!

Again, I do not say something new to anyone of you, you do exactly the same thing, possibly to a much higher extent, still I read every single day ePapers, news and sites from any place on Earth, I browse, explore, listen, watch, write, collate. I try and extend myself beyond physical boundaries, cultural traps and everyday’s boredom.

Today, the New York Times has opened up its wealth of knowledge and thinking to anyone interested. You may be readers already, or you did, so this is sort of pathetic, but to me that is another open door over something.. cannot wait to explore…

Then, I may find a good tip on where to head for my next trip (December holidays are coming soon…better book it..), and then there we are, reality and eReality come together nicely!!!!

A broader horizon is always a great gift.

I am all in one piece.. I mean in one place!!

You know, since quite a long time we have all followed the latest “virtual” hype, and today our cyber identity is fragmented and scattered in zillion of different places..

This would be a case for a good psycho therapy, needless to say virtual,  but instead of lying down somewhere in SL and telling a flurry how complicated and desperate was our childhood (nevermind our adult life, to come to that…), someone actually thought about gathering all our remains into one place, which was basically sort of “pre-Web 2.0 BigBang” kind of status…

Some months ago I believe it was IBM going about a cyber passport (sort of) to go and byte-jumping across virtual immensities to experience different worlds whilst maintaining our electro-personality (or virtual projection of real-life personality, as some studies do actually argument..), then someone cristallised all that in the nicer idea of “aggregate lifestreams”… here is a nice compendium of thinkings… (oldish post of Steve Rubel but kind of OK to read..)

Quite clearly, being our personality a kaleidoscope of emotions and interests, it is unlikely we can satisfy our curiosity all in one place (otherwise any marriages would really last forever!!!) whilst, on the other hand, it is quite disturbing to think about our entire time spent in chasing the update of “n” contacts, profiles, sites, virtual friendships and so forth… so, post once and distribute allover, collate ourselves into one space (sort of…say… my space.. kind of… but seems a spoiled idea…), have all your eBits in one place, all you created, everything, a “river of news” for other to swim in and enjoy (like this example here..)!!

eClippings then, a personal working table, a barebone website, a social network element without the social and the network as they were, it is about MySelf and You… seems like a nice way to go back to square one, where the individual is the pivot, emerging from the mob and allowing a selected group of people to have full access to his entire eLife. The cyber existence has got another layer, the individual, 360°, on top of the social network…

Or, rather, is a hyper-MeNetwork … I am networking myself… I am stepping over the six degrees that separates Me from Myself from I…

Yep, guess we may need a good doctor any time soon.. funny though…

SL and virtual memorials…. anyone else outside US????

I truly believe that any kind of prevarication upon any Man on Earth is disgusting per se and stupid in essence (we need everyone, and as evolutionary theory proves we need differences to go further…), as I believe that keeping alive the memory of our beloved is fundamental not to linger in the past but to keep the best of what it was in our trip ahead..

So, SecondLife, being today a subsection of our lives nonetheless, is hosting memorials dedicated to those who lost their lives in some of the most tragic and unbelievably atrocious events in modern history, such as the World Trade Center attack and the Vietnam war. Fine.

But, since SL and all the other virtual worlds are, by definition, worlds and not a replica of USA, wouldn’t be fair and, for once, a demonstration of superior intelligence of normal human beings compared to that of politicians, to consider also the immense death toll suffered by populations in Iraq and in Vietnam?? The world is larger than we think, and unfortunately suffering is quite a commodity nowadays, if we really are building up places that should be fairer than real life, have a thought. It is necessary to give out an example, use the possibility offered by tech to say something meaningful..which is something I may do not, but hey, it’s just me, an aristocratic buffoon…

Emerging Technology… why not…

The World is no longer the place it used to be!! This is a nice one I heard few days ago at a meeting, and beside the obvious silliness of the remark (if you have read “Siddhartha” you know already that you cannot bath twice in the same river…), it is interesting to keep track of changes and what technology may represent as evolutionary driver.. not solely to try and guess the future (nice quote here … Niels Bohr..) but to enjoy the possibility of multiple future waiting for us ahead..

A nice factor to consider is the actual social cost and planetary distribution of tech advances, and whether these shows may actually make the press in a six-months-time as they move from talking to doing.. which is what we need most to be on this Planet (and possibly on the surface..) when one of those future may come true. More to come, I believe..

SecondLife is a FreeLife???

It seems it is, actually!!! A group of avatar (people??), amongst which there are journalists, photographers, writers of all sort and most definitely virtual freelancers, hired directly online to tell the rest of us about SecondLife and its wonders: FreeLife is born!!!!

Couple of things: it is written in both English and Italian, it can be pdf-downloaded from several locations across SL …

Is it all alive and kicking then, despite the doomsday reports of businesses jumping off the SL phenomenon??? Seemingly so, the fun is still there! The fun, yep…

Northern Rock, sub primes, USA and the systemic approach to life…

I have been told, quite recently, that probably my way of approaching things and the way I do try to look at problems is way too exaggerate, somewhat too broad, far too high-fly.. fine..

However, as it seems, the world is massively entwined in a strong systemic fashion, and truly you cannot avoid but looking at the whole picture, top-down, bottom-up, left-to-right or whatever is the way you want to wander around things, but broadening your view is never ever a redundant effort!!!

Several times we have discussed and approached issues and ideas from a challenging position, considering the “System” as the main entity… now we are facing with a massive crisis, mainly fostered by “panic” into that herd of people that has been gathered around the myth of an “accessible-to-all” financial realm… and forced, to inject fresh energy into the system, to access a stack of “wealth” that, in real life, was not in their normal reach.

This is far from being a “caste” based approach to life, is solely related to the simple truth: most people today are living way above their real financial status. We could open up a massive discussion on whether this is morally correct or not, whether this is necessary or not, whatever, bottom line is: the entire system is somewhat living “above par” but with no real skills for doing so, it is a fake position, it is a deceit.

When, every now and then, part of the system does not align immediately with a modification stemming somewhere else, or simply when the change velocity in some of the systems dynamics is faster than the one needed to “spread the news” and upgrade the other parts of the systems, there we are: Northern Rock style crisis.

Another reason behind the brutal reaction to a maybe not so virulent occurrence is the high empowerment of scarcely literate (in financial terms, clearly) masses, easily herd around via news, hypes, credos.. when this mass gets scared, it reacts running a stampede.. you better keep off its path!!

An entire country system is currently living above par and its global influence is far too massive.. I do hope there won’t be any hard wake up call in USA, should China go about as all the Northern Rock “creditors” are doing these days.. the fall out would not a nice thing to see, particularly if you are windward..

Finger Food (9)

Tiptoeing through the days, Friday is here again, with its basket full of promises, high expectations and good intentions…plus another stunning day… the city woke up in a beautiful late Summer morning, sun shines and warms up the air, I got into the bus with my MP3 playing the new rock “event” on airways, Virgin Radio (Branson’s a pervasive chap…)..pretty cool… got my nice tie on, have to go to business meetings, security market analysis presentation, so my weekly Finger Food will be more “fingery” than usual, I believe…

• Do you remember, guess it was last Friday, when I pointed out that was that Branson bloke (see above…) who was launching Virgin Galaxy or whatever… thought that was already kind of funny, but this is quite a nice laugh also!!! Particularly, being Italian , if I consider the poor ending of the Alitalia corporate history.. nevermind.. ah, the space frenzy is not over, big brains at work here!!! People may be overvalued sometimes…
• When I came back from Japan, after three weeks of systematic exclusion from press and the like, I found that the US housing crisis, the sub-prime issues and a bunch of other nice things had kind of hit the market badly… the aftershock kept coming our (Europe) way, sending a chilly shake down countless spines.. so, it was about time to inhale fresh air into the global arena.. and, quite an enlightenment to us, went the news that the global economy is no longer US centric…. really??? Did we really need to wait until the end of 2007 to know that???? Do come along… despite the somewhat debatable thinking that the pivot of the world is located somewhere between NY and LA, there is quite a lot going on in the rest of the planet… and, yep, since quite a long time ago!!! The rest of the World protects US, they say, for a change.. which is about the very first time I heard something like in my life!! You never know…. wow…. I would go crazy if Italy comes about saying it will export democracy to USA.. a pasta invasion we cannot afford any more (wheat is kind of expensive nowdays..)
• The above also happens because technology may help out in bridging some gaps (not all, some…maybe.. sometimes..), and communication is a definite plus… a long time ago we were debating on the perfect usage of 3G comms deployment, suggesting that, probably, cellular communication would have exploded also to support green field evolutions or to connect those part of a country simply too costly to cover with a decent array of POTS solutions.. India seems to follow suit.. and that is nice, apart from some paternalist approaches you may read along in the press, since all the obstacles, increased competition, a bit of fear to lose ground (see above…) will force everyone to evolve, hopefully for the best…
• Clearly, to support evolution, you need to have energy aplenty, as China seems to know today.. and, since all the energy the World-body needs comes mostly from oil and gas, and including the fact that oil and gas are (broadly) owned by countries slightly difficult to discuss with (that includes obviously the ol’ Russia of ironman Putin and Friends), according to US and some European countries, so what about going back to play with nuclear power???? Yesterday one of our politicians went about the same route, since most of the Italian energy supply relies on oil and gas from foreign countries..
• However, since the war for oil seems to be a tough call, you may well go for Plan B.. I would suggest to give ironman a quick call, considering the plutonium he planted allover the place, there may be some spare…. on the other hand, the left over of your sushi may give you some alternative boost also…
• In the meanwhile, Web 2.0 keeps going… have you ever thought about mashups?? Or that 2.0 was all about you playing around with the ol’Web? Or .. or.. or… got lost??!?!? Nevermind, Yahoo thinks about you!!! (Gosh, this was an awful one, my apologies for the utter fall in creative writing..)
• And the Web really changes the way we think about friendship… really??? Is it friendship or acquaintances we are talking about here???
• And, since it is Friday after all, have a look at this!!! I love London, it is my favorite city over the entire planet, you may know that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And, since a night like that may cause troubles, why not using the Tunnel and get the French to sort out the steamy consequences of your ride into town???? Europe united, great idea!!!!!!

And MySpace keeps on transforming from an user-generated space to a simple, old fashioned already-made content distributor, Hollywood included, bells are already jingling for Vodafone and its plans of xMas unlimited music downloads or something, and Nintendo is still ahead in the consolle battle, and Google will enter the mobile comms industry, and.. and…

And I am going off to this meeting now, and then off to Liguria, nothing much than nice food and a book to read, whilst waiting for the MotoGP on Sunday!!

Have a nice weekend you all, back on Monday!!!!

PS It wasn’t such a quick-and-dirty post after all, time flies when you enjoy…

Web TV.. damn, just got that satellite thing..

Now… we knew IPTV was kind of hot on someone’s agenda, and as it seems, it still is! MySpace (wasn’t that place where you used to mingle and meet…) is going to launch miniseries on its portal..

I will keep it short: what about the autogenerated contents??? Or, admittingly, this post was true at the end???? As soon as the mass is there, ready to digest the next rubbish, there you go, it’s on its way.. so much for creative freedom..

At least, as soon as one is down, somewhere in cyberspace there is always another place for the pure ones!!

But, as it stands, now I have got a satellite connection, three WebTVs, two DVD readers, plus a PlayStation and three laptops, a couple of MP3 readers and a portable media player.. would I ever see the sunshine again?? Would I ever see this planet the way I remember it last time I went out???

Again, think about “attention”.. beware…

Conversational marketing.. or you rather shut up????

The advent of that “social networking” stuff lead us to believe that interactions would have been the next hard currency, it makes everyone believe that opening up to the “others” would have been beneficial to whatever-I-am-supposed-to-do in my life, personal space or, yep, business…

Now, that would actually be sort of true IF interactions, and thus all the wording, commenting, talking, sharing would not turn into a sour soup of scorning, disdaining, despising, loathing and such niceties… that’s the trick…

So what??? Companies start thinking about “conversational marketing” as a potential way (tool, idea, unconscious thinking…??) to interact, interlude and flirt with potential customers and maximise the so-called (by someone..) “relationship economy”… personally I believe we are talking about a “referral economy”, if we really have to put a tag on it, therefore it is not the link that matters, but what is the message content flowing amongst links (people, mind you).

That is a risky business… artificially augmenting the information flow or number of forced links amongst users may, yep, increase positive brand perceptions and spread the word, but also a massive blunder may resonate like a screaming child in a small car.. pretty disturbing, I believe..

And, most of all, the above will gain speed proportional to the “mass” involved… the more, the better/worse..

The argument here is about effectiveness: if I ask for information, ideas, perceptions, whatever, am I able to act upon it, when I do receive a massive flow of data, directly from the very heart of the market? Would a company be able and fit to react to whatever direct market response it may receive??? Otherwise, that two-way (clearly is two-way…) conversation is pretty much like the one you generally see in politics: someone protest, the others change, change, change and change to change nothing at all in the end.

Now, you may actually not throw a full political system down the drain (you can’t??? Really??? That’s a pity…), but clearly you can shift your spending power, disposable income, cash, MONEY, somewhere else..

Since, the most important currency today is not “interaction”, we have aplenty, is “attention”. And that is scarce, when you may have nothing interesting to say or, worse, you are not able to listen…

Get it right, mate…

More on SciVee…

Sometimes we get it first!!

More on scientists “youtubing” around..

Silence please…

Quiet…

Everything’s real in virtual worlds..

Every now and then (in Internet time that’s the time in between lunch and dinner..) virtual worlds are coming back (never went away, mind you…) with rejuvenated energy and a bunch of titanium-like statement, pretty much like the one Paul Twomey, CEO of ICANN, made at the Influence Forum 2007 in Australia (here).

Mr Twomey argues the virtual world will most definitely be the future of global commerce, nevermind ecommerce.. One of the most interesting factors would be, seemingly, the migration of “gaming experience” into much more commercial interactions, as thus to maximise an already established “virtual experience” into a real life problem-solver tool.

And, since SecondLife is the current champion, that is the springboard for future thinking..

Now, despite SL keeps on producing nice bits of activity, such as auctions of virtual goods (for real money, to come to that, again!!), there are few issues to be sorted out before ever thinking about having virtual worlds as the solution for troubled consumer spending patterns and new industrial value network..

Again, it is a cultural approach in the first place, do not forget that most of the people interacting at a decent level of complexity over the Web are a well defined tribe and, by no means, a proxy for a more society-wide assumption of what interactions would look like in the near future.

Then, there is a matter of the technology involved or, better, the ease of the virtual experience that would be required to transform it from a game-like system to a more business-effective ecosystem (data flow, control, identity match, data storage, retrieval, regulatory and compliance…).

Then, the “cui prodest”. In a business environment, at least up until today, anything entering the door downstairs should produce a business enhancement in some form, being that strategic positioning, operation streamlining, pure and simple profit, whatever you may consider “enhancement” but, I trust after the Internet bubble of circa 2000, companies would not, and should not do something just because “it is cool”.. What you consider cool and must-have may not be seen likewise by your value network, that meaning a problem in coherent supply strategy, co-marketing, awareness building policies and lots of other nice edgy things..

As already stated by some press, large corporation are reconsidering the SL presence, since early results were not as expected. Which is, per se, a massive blunder… expecting what???? Selling what??? In a place where most people go and interact with others, have fun and live the experience of being there… guess they may be little concern about buying “real” goods (or marketing message) and rather going for fun things such as angel wings to fly around (or gather for discussing issues, as in a large instant messaging platform…at least for now, then we will see….!!!).

They are all missing the point. Virtual worlds are in the first place a nice corporate training ground for alternative positioning strategy and tactics, it is also a nice laboratory to experiment tribe clustering (customer segmentation, to use a paleolithic definition), and to prove the ability to listen instead of pestering with information… virtual worlds are places where the “power of referral” is fundamental, but you should get the referral in the first place, and what you did in a “PreviousLife” is not a guarantee to find one in a byte-based world.

So, culture, technology, strategy, communication. In a world, the entire corporate structure. Get to work, soon. Otherwise don’t bother talking.

Mr Twomey may be right, but he needs convincing a hell of a lot of people, first…

Back off Tina Tequila, Science is on air!!!!

I believe that, for at least a bunch of us, the advent of satellite TV was not cheered because of the latest adventure of silly housewives, gory face liftings or the latest in reality shows, but also for the possibility to dig into the realm of science, in a sort of childish attempt to understand how the heck that people could have traveled faster than lightspeed, or why, oh why the deoxyribonucleic acid got that silly name in the first place.. ok, fair enough, those were not the questions haunting our nights…nevertheless, it is interesting to notice that, after having the new Web forms populated by boobs, silly jokes, stupid videos and overly bloated egos, someone thought that, why not, some (to some) interesting topics may get the dignity to got out from classrooms, awful ftp-based web sites and get broadcasted!!

The chemistry lessons of my high-school teacher were absolutely great, it would have been great to see those on web videos, fun and knowledge were going well together…

Anyway, there may be also other such examples, but I guess that an initiative out of the usual broadcasting networks or more recent Web TV initiatives is such a wonderful example to stress that the Web is a tribe-oriented space, and not all tribes are brainless…

Finger Food (8)

 Is it really the first Friday we have in September?? Looks like it anyway.. weather in Milan is nice, the sky is luminescent blue, that sort of blue you only get in September, it is still warm despite some little morning chill.. and, boringly enough to most of you, I will hit the beach once again, ’till it lasts!!!

I have been hiding myself for the past couple of days, got actually lost in sorting out a couple of projects, hopping around energy issues and a quite interesting (!!) study to determine a viable business model for innovative(again!!!!) IT solution in the tourist industry.. let you know if at all interested… plus I went on training for my Autumn trailrunning attempts.. got over the 10km run so far.. pretty good I guess for a week training..

However, nevermind the b@§&%$£# said Sid Vicious, here we are with our most sought-after Friday Finger Food!!!

But, first and foremost, the week witnessed the final departure of Luciano Pavarotti.. I have always loved the immense emotional power of an opera, that feeling of being carried in a faraway country of beauty and enchantments,  I do not need to praise his life and talent, I simply admire once again the magnificent power  of the human genius and I bow  to whom spread his for the World to rejoice.

Therefore, it may just become a squeak my pointing out that:

• We are so madly in love with living la vida loca over our virtual worlds, such an escape route from the boredom of everyday’s life, that we actually felt the necessity to bring with us, on top of our pathological deviances, also all the fuss and hassle …. money, a house, possession and, why not, a nice Virtual credit card!! Now, this kind of spoils the fun of having a flurry as an avatar… 
• I purposely put further down the line the main tech event of the week, since you may have already read more than  your fair share of news about… still, when Stevie moves, the entire industry feels like “doing something”, thus Bill and his disciples went about, who know, perhaps, it could actually be… a Zune with the phone…and you may want to wait a while for other news about it…
  
• iPod iPhone, Nano, Classic… fair enough it is hurricane season!! You already know all about it, it is thus a matter of “touch and play”!!! I still believe it is a nice move to presidiate the entire “user terminal” value chain and distribute services over it.. so stop talking about “too many product launches people may get confused about”… plenty of room and choice for everyone and (almost) every pocket, after the storm will come around the soothing of a nice music or a lovely movie to snuggle and watch…Steve competes against himself, this is quite a remarkable achievement, don’t you agree??!?!
• The new trend (new…) is then about touching, so nevermind what you read about in Freud’s theory, touching is ever so cooool!!!! Touch me, touch me!! Microsoft gets, yep, touchy…. then what????
• It may actually be time to grow up sometimes, and as the guy from BusinessWeek is pointing out, is also about time to find your right space in eSociety, as you have tried to do in real world.. your space, if you are above 20 and mentally sane could possibly not be MySpace, but rather Facebook??? And yet, your past will haunt you forever, untidy friends, those silly parties on the beach, the picture of that less-than-subtle tattoo you got during a night of excesses, you truly hoped that “…all those moments WOULD be lost in time, like tears in rain”. Wrong, mate, sadly utterly wrong!!!!
• And, to put all things together, this is absolutely great!!!  I simply adore this man, he is freaking mad and he is making a zillion million tons of money out of his most childish and adventurous dreams!!!! Branson’s Virgin Galactic travels… since I read Flash Gordon’s adventures back in my childhood at my aunt’s house in Livorno, I was stunned by the idea of jumping around the galaxy.. mind you, a friend of mine did it, but that was at a party in Amsterdam and I guess cannot be taken in any serious account… however, got my holiday planned for when I retire, I believe…  WOW, again, genius…

There are a few other bits, quite a lot of attention on IP TV (and that makes the par for Apple..), some hints about a British credit crisis, which after US seems reasonable, the US government that has stated its priority in capturing Osama, dead preferably (we are few days off the infamous day, quite boringly normal to beat the drums..), and nicely enough we may actually have, few years down the line, some of that gorgeous specimen of human beings a là Dark Angel (Jessica Alba is unclonable?!?!? toooooo saaaaad..), providing that Manticore is somewhere in Dorset (more plainly, in UK you may study and experiment with embrios containing some “animal” genetic material..ops..) …

Heading out, have a great week end, you all!! Bless.

China vs. the Pentagon!! And Seattle gets worried nonetheless…

The Financial Times reported that last June some alleged Chinese hackers, and furthermore from the “People Liberation Army” cracked successfully the Ministry of Defense site!!! That’s the nicest one since “War Games” and “Matrix”…

As it seems, the Chinese army peeps into US (and some EU..) military or governative sites, the US does the same with China (heck, those are surprising news, aren’t they?????), and there it goes… but suddenly, something hit me: the name of the US Defence Secretary is Robert GATES!!!!

An unconfirmed rumor about Microsoft putting a ban on springrolls in cafeterias will definitely be crosschecked shortly…!!!!

Just give me a Gcall….

I wonder… sometimes it seems there is a personal affair in trying to limit Apple in any possible way or, otherwise, piggy back on Steve intuitions and follow suit …

We are not yet accustomed to have the next mobile experience in our life (I mean, iPhone…) and there is already a (juicy???) contender, coming directly from the Fantastic Duo… is the Gphone a reality coming our way??? Quite nicely, and considering the “hardware” skill Apple has got (plus undebatable design prince, Jonathan Ive), Google is betting its mobile fate on software rather than anything else… not exactly software-software, as the “intelligence” behind iPhone is pretty sharp edged anyway, but on a cluster of apps and, why not, some “pluses” such as mobile payment systems… actually, they patented a Gpay… no, well, Gbuy, as to avoid misunderstanding.. and a GPS antenna to pester us with geomarketing initiatives, plus the GMail…

Nice load, I guess, and yet I am wandering whether it is still that time when you wanted to be branded from head to toes (limiting your experience???), and furthermore, where is the advantage I got in having all that, which is basically exactly the same I have on a nice smartphone nowdays …. are we still back to tariff???? Has Google got a strong-enough brand equity as to leverage it into the mobile communication space????

We’ll see…