Now, this is interesting… PDI Index.. Power Distant Index.. it measures, roughly, the ability of a system to allow those at the lower end of the scale (say in a company..) to comment and disagree the ideas or whatever coming from the top..

Horizontal culture and system, vs verticalism…

• China more verticalised: 80
• France, the first in Europe: 68
• Italy, good second in Europe with 50, and then 40 for the US, 35 for Germany, and the most horizontal society is Israel, 12…

When compared this “index” with the impact of a very horizontal media like the Web.. you do the math, and understand where Internet could either disrupt or die forever..nice food for thoughts, I dare say,..

BTW, numbers quoted by Jacopo Barigazzi, an Italian journalist..

Sounds like I should go back and write..

Let’s start with the Venice Sessions.. It is a yearly Innovation event, held in Venice (really?? How weird…), sponsored and run by Telecom Italia, the Italian incumbent telecom operator (again.. redundant explanantion!?!?! )… I am now listening to Ahmad Humeid, a Jordan entrepreneur and blogger (http://www.360east.com/)

It is most interesting to notice that the Internet would be one of the preferred channel to improve and foster freedom and innovation, and the work to be done is huge when considering that, for instance, the Arabic version of Wikipedia is still far too small to cater for the needs of more than 600 million Arabic speaker..

Apart from the fact that I thought Arabic speakers were slightly more, but the call for more contents and critical knowledge in the Arabic perimeter is highly interesting…. I have cases to mention in which the attempt to foster innovation in the Arabic world goes via a far to aggressive digestion of “westernised” contents and practices…

Creative Commons, Al Jazeera, Twitter, content production, UGC…all at your disposal to understand and open up your mind..

Nice to be back!! and apologies for having written just few, very trivial words, but heck, before the marathon I have to prepare for the 10 Km and the Half..!!

There we are again… I promise (not that you were dying for this..) that I will try and keep this blog space kind of alive from the darkness again!!

So, to start with something interesting, here we are… as you all know, Japan is potentially the most interesting country in terms of mobile usage. I am talking about the actual mobile lifestyle that is alive and kicking in the streets of, say, Tokyo, and the amount of attention the mobile world absorb.

Since the early days of DoCoMo and its venture into the territory of the revenue sharing models, Japan has witnessed a plethora of interesting, useful and appealing services flourishing and landing over the mobile handsets Japanese provide not to have farthest than a meter from their hands… mobile in Japan is not simply technology, but a prosthesis..

Having said all of the above, a company called Tonchidot (team of six…) has created what they called Sekai Camera. A “camera” function that, geotagging your location whilst you literally walk around, provides your iPhone with information about the object/item/monument/whatever you are bashing into it at a given moment…

Fine.. at TechCrunch 50 the audience went off the roof, seemingly..

What sounds slightly complex is the geotagging capability, GPS based, into a supermarket.. still, impressive how six people, highly focused and with a vision, are able to stirr attention this way!!
Lovely, back to the garage?!??!???!

There is always hope…

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.