Telling a story

I recently finished the wonderful Freakonomics book which, in my 2006 revised edition, came with a bunch of blog posts from the Freakonomics blog. And, my friend, it’s been a revelation: I really enjoied Lewitt and Dubner blog style: they don’t write posts, they tell stories instead (I just subscribed to their feed, by the way).

And here from my decision; I want to start telling stories instead of reporting facts, I want a major personal commitment to my Yellow Line blog: I’ll start with a mandatory Post Day a week, based on Friday evening (CET) and look where it’ll take me from there; I won’t romance facts, I’ll just try to write in a more compelling way; what I want is a blog I’ll enjoy to re-read, instead that a blog I just enjoy writing for.

You, my loyal readers, will be my judges.

Photoshake your Flickr shots

Leeander just sent me this preview of PhotoShakr: a juicy and enjoyable Flash/Flickr mashup with interesting interaction design tecniques.

Se it functioning below with my shots, just start clicking on the “shake” button and start interacting with the “pool”.

Idearium: new season now online

Idearium is the premiere interaction design online magazine in Italy; since year 2001 the site has gathered a strong community of designers, usability experts, managers, programmers and smart people and it has its derivations in the Interaction Frontiers event organized by your truly and Leeander (the founder of Idearium).

In its 6th year Ideairum comes with a brand new site and a whole innovative SecondLife presence on a nice islet with all the things you need to spend some good time among friends.

The islet will be properly open during Turin Barcamp 06, just click on this SLurl and join the party.

Linden Lab mission

Here’s a truly inspiring quote from Linden Lab mission statement recently posted on their blog:

“We are working to create an online world having the exceptional property that it advances the capabilities of the many people that use it, and by doing so affects and transforms them in a positive way”

Well: good luck guys! Hope you (WE) are going to succeed!

Smart and smarter

“I’m smart enough to know people smarter than me.”

Slideshare

Slideshare is to presentations what Flickr is to photos.

Brilliant. Useful. Quick. Social. One button. Sharable. And, oh, so web 2.0!

The software, developed by the usual suspects at Uzanto, is actually in private beta: I have some invitation left I haven’t planned to use, so you might want to leave a comment under this picture to receive one.

And you also can take a look at the slides I shared.

Interviewed by IDEO on Mobile scenarios

A few weeks ago I received a mail from Jennifer Leonard asking me for a brief interview for a paper whe was writing. The interesting thins is Jennifer’s employer: the uberfamous design firm IDEO: they’re preparing a deep research on mobile future scenarios and wanted to hear the thoughts of this humble Italian guy.

So, here below all the questions and my answers; in their full form.

IDEO: When you think about the future of mobile multimedia, what comes to mind?

Matteo: I have this dream in mind. That - as Bill Gates correctly pointed out (and
this is probably the only time I’m completely agree with him) - mobile devices,
cellphones in particular, could be the main ingredient in the solution of the
digital divide. They’re cheaper, more reliable, with long lasting batteries
and with already existing wireless networks.

Thus, when I think about the future of this type of devices I see vertical multimedia application and devices capable of very few tasks at the same time, but absolutely perfect in these task accomplishment.

Even if at a very seminal stage Mobup is a perfect example of what I’m saying. Just install this less-then-40KB app on your cameraphone and you’ll transofrm it in a full featured moblogging platform. Dare I say Ubicomp?

I: What are you most excited about?

M: I’m 30, and just a few years after I was born the first personal computers
appeared. I saw their raise and the computational power becoming greater anbd
greater. Now the same thing is happening with cell phones: just 7 years ago we
had narrow-band monochromatic devices useful just for talking and sending SMS.
Now we have broadband multifunctional devices where - if you like this kind of
things - you can also receive TV programs and films, you can use them as
photocameras (I’ve choosen a Megapixel device to be used as a slim camera
always in my pocket), you can read your favourites weblogs… just as you were
in front of your computer.

If this is happened in this short time-frame, the next 7 years are going to be even more exciting!

I: Where in the world are the most interesting things happening?

M: Tough question. US have a GREAT wi-fi diffusion, but is in EU that mobile
networks are becoming mature. Thus it’s here in Europe that we’re seeing great
innovation in mobile services; but Japan (and the wider Asian area) is a
challenging competitor.

I: Any unmet needs you can think of when it comes to mobile phones?

M: Usability. Let me spell it: U-S-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y; Nokia is probably the
cellphones manufacturer who’s trying its best in following usability and ergonomy
principles when projecting its devices. But we’re light-years faraway the accomplishment of this objective; I still haven’t found the perfect device where everything is easy and quickly accessible.

I: What would be your dream mobile phone application and/or service?

M: Me and my wife had a baby last year (Francesca is in her 10th month while I’m
writing) and - since I’m often far from home I’d like a mobile who can be “awaken” when she performs or discovers something new (a new movement, a new expression, a new word learned, etc.), record it and send it to me to be viewed. That would be really lovely…

Just after The Frontiers

This is REALLY a tough sequence of tough tough days. But let’s say first things first,

The Interaction Frontiers has been a wonderful event packed with great speeches from bright minded speakers. I expected something like 90 people but we largerly exceeded 100s! (with a pick of 120 people in the same room during a working day!!).

This is a short video of the atmosphere we had:

Flickr is plenty with photos of the event, just to let all you know the mood we breathed last Friday: this was probably the first Innovation related event with great deejaying live (I scratched too!), we had great speakers (too many to be named) and robots walking among us and interacting (break dancing too!)

We had bloggers who blogged their feedback (Italian readers might find a very nice report at Intense Minimalism) and - given this was the first time we tried such an innovative format - I’m very very VERY happy with the results. I’m really proud of being one of the conference producers (and Leandro, my partner in crime, is really proud too).

My thanks goes to all the speaker who provided such high quality content, to our sponsor Kallideas who made the event possible and - last but not least - to the University of Milano-Bicocca which confirms itself the most innovative place in Milan (even if they have creepy wi-fi policies

Just a quick note: posts are going rarefy in the next days since I’m down learning the real estate market (I’d say I’m really enjoining my first Gabetti days: a lot of cuttin edge project one after the other; and the meetings with the people deputed to make this real-estate-idiot mind become shining are simply inspiring)

Update
The national press gave us some real cool attention:

Trofie and pesto alla genovese for the bloggers

I think this is one of the first experiments of this kind in Italy; It’s indeed the first I participate in: a gourmet gift for Italian bloggers consisting in 500gr of Trofie pasta and a small jar of pesto alla genovese.

(note: my RSS subscribers might have already read this coming out from the Flickr feed, I apologize with them)

This package is part of an interesting marketing campaign organized by the Italian typical food maker “San Lorenzo” focused on the blogosphera word of mouth power: they’re sending some packages to the italian bloggers that make request of (and, as a side note, without any explicit request of advertising via their blogs).

My personal opinion is that this is a cuttin edge guerrilla marketing tecnique for the Italian Market, were everything in the digital marketing arena is stuck at the 468×60 gif animated banner (more or less, I’d say )

After a little bit of research and link following I found that one of the heads behind this lovely initiative is Antonio Tombolini, one of the brightest Italian new technology entrepreneurs (he was the man behind the Esperya firm).

Even if I see a nearly complete frozen innovation market in Italy, something is slowly moving. And whether you’d want to test the effectivness of this campaign just take a look at the list of blogs that featured the product.

Update: the initiative has been upgraded to “permanent edition“. If you have a nearly 6 months old blog, subscribe to receive the free pack on your blog half year birthday. (I’d say this decision is kinda brave since most of such young blogs in Italy could be far from being well-known).

Farewell matteopenzo/blog welcome Yellow Line

After something more than 3 years on Blogger I’ve now finally made THE decision.

The switching to the english language expanded my user base on one side (BTW since this is going to be an English blog, I’ve imported just the posts written in English), and my blogging activity on the other side. I also needed something that could automatically track my asides such as Flickr and could easily handle tags; something with a great WYSIWYG editor and a great free template base: I’m not a designer anymore, I’m not a CSS guru, I don’t have time to fine tune the Xhtml. That’s why I moved to Wordpress for the CMS/engine side and to Squibble for the template (something on the frontend side will probably change as the time goes by).

I’m still a WP virgin, I certainly need sometime to browse/play with themes and plugins, for the moment there’s some AJAX magic on the comments and search engine thanks to Squibble.

The blog name also changed: you’re now enjoing Yellow Line (you can find more info on the name here). If you already subscribed to the feed just sit down and relax, I already managed Feedburner to point ot the new feed; if you haven’t subscribed yet, do it now.

The content receipt won’t change too much: just a little of personal life, Eyetracking, Innovation and Mobup.

Enjoy.

P.S. Thankyou Simone for the Wordpress installing and initial configuration and the FTP permission settings.