That’s how some weeks ago I received a box with the iLiad that travelled for more then 6 months from blogger to blogger (and sign of this travel were visible both externally and internally the device ) and tested it for a whole week (it also happened to pass to my friend Massimo Pettiti, Innovation Director at 3 Italy).
The main reason I subscribed to the test was that I am really interested in this type of technology and wanted to touch it before spending money.
Fast forward to the end, before my personal considerations, am I going to buy it? In one word: no.
Here below the four main aspects I consider relevant:
Screen technology: the iLiad uses the eInk technology for displays and boys it really rocks! The reading experience (and the imagestoo) was far better then any other digital display (LCDs/LEDs based or portable devices such as the iPhone/iPod Touch) I ever owned. It was really like reading paper: the more the light the better the experience. YES.
Haptic interface: even if the iLiad weights more or less as a normal paper book I had serious problems in managing it in every position but being sitted with the device (preferably) in both my hands: reading while in bed was almost impossible since my hand covered part of the screen and every time I had to turn the page I had to change position. All the navigation buttons are placed on the left and are quite difficult to be understood (even if the affordance of the “turn page bar” is really good). NO.
User interface: page selection is a pain in the arse; the icons meaning is mostly obscure and no alternative text appears to help; I really disliked everything about it. NO NO.
Battery life: I received it with half the battery, used it daily, passed to Massimo for one week and sent it to the next blogger without recharging. Cool! YES.
The iLiad is a great reader; it’s plenty with connections (comes with wi-fi on board) and expansions (two different MM card slots) capabilities. But unfortunately the overall experience is too low on user interaction and the paper-book still wins.
New map tool for real estate listings
While the Microsoft database Utility rebuilds, AGAIN!, my entourage database (and yes, I know I’ll have to delete the file and have it recreated from the Exchange server, but I’m always optimistics with computers) I decided to finally find some time to write something on this now seldom updated blog (and my feeds stats are here to prove this).
After a couple of weeks of implementation and tuning (where we learned that messy Javascript code performs better then the state-of-the-art) we finally released to the public the beta version of the Gabetti map search (a demo video lays on my Flickr page) for real estate listings (those of Gabetti obviously - at the moment).
Nothing so new (apart from the fact that - as far as I know - the ONLY other similar tool in Italy is MAIOM - which we tried back in 2006 to explore the potential of geomapping tools potential for the real estate market): satellite view, small geocoded houses, balloons with overview of the house, AJAX, panning, etc.
But I really find useful, and haven’t find in any other site apart Coldwell Banker’s (which works only in Firefox, on my Mac), is the usage of Point Of Interests (POI): we started from the hypothesis that price, square meters, number of rooms are important DETAILS not something you use when deciding to buy or not to buy (I find VERY interesting the usage of POI tha has been done in Walkscore)
When I bought my home I had two main objectives: i. find it in a pleasant neighborhood and ii. near to all the services that make life more comfortable (supermarkets, cinemas, restaurants, kinder-gardens, etc.) and a satellite view enhanced with POIs makes this task extremely straightforward.
We’re still in BETA and are plenty with enhancements to code and deliver (better user experience, better feedback, capability to search for streets and not only for cities, price/sqm filtering capabilities just to cite a few) but are really curious in evaluate how will the tool perform on our web users and how will our RE agents perceive it.
Things too cool to be silenced
It’s been really a lot this blog is now under silence due to my new home moving operations (more on this soon, promise) but I’ve recently been parte of a couple of things that are just too smart not to be written here.
Gabetti Real Estate map mash-up
We just released the brand new map search for Real Estate listings on the Gabetti site; it’s a .NET application mounted on top of ViaMichelin API that you could use to look for an house in a specific area in Italy. The geodata are collected from the huge Gabetti listings database and placed straight on the cartography.
We’re actually in semi-private (you should be a registered Gabetti site user; registration at the site is public and free) BETA and are collecting users feedback to improve the application.
Uh, as a side note Gabetti is the first real estate company in Italy to have such an application.
My pal Leeander has really done a marvellous job for this year edition collecting a supa-dupa speakers frontline: Nicolas Nova, Bruno Giussani, Bruce Sterling, Elizabeth Churchill (Yahoo Inc.), and many more.
As said the conference is completely free but reistration is required; use your Yahoo id to subscribe on the Upcoming page.
I really feel bad not to have updated the blog in the latest weeks, but I had the chance to store a nice amount of things to say and still need to have the calm time to fix some aspects of my private life; that’s why don’t expect to find me here too soon.
Before the barcamps, before the foocamps, even before Frontiers of Interaction here it stands the Drink Link: just add a part of unconference, some friends (it’s simply matter of case that among these friends you can find some of the brightest minds in Italy) and a cool location. Drink Link to serve you madam!
I received an invitation to the first edition of 2008, organized by Leeander and friends at the Bastard Headquarters in Milan to showcase the new idea they’re working on: an open source hardware technology to let spimes interact with data and people: the Open Spime project.
I’ve seen the early early stage of this technology, even before the first prototype, and I can say it really rocks!
Update April 9: the event will be streamed live on the .
Concentration
Black and green. I mean: green IBM3270 font on a full screen whole black background; no browser, no feeds, no email. Just the black background, your text and you. A cool parenthesis of concentration.
I miss that word so much in my last weeks life: we delivered the most complex release of the Oracle Enterprise One ERP at Gabetti early in December which kept us REALLY concentrated on making all the amount of old data take their right place in the new system (and also fixing some errors inserted in the old systems during years which made OE1 simply mad).
And then there’s the 2008 budget planning, Second Life, analysis to be made and data to be properly understood. And, wow, this is the end of an overwhelming year dude!
On the personal side of life we’re hitting the start of our new house renewal: discussions with the architect, choosing the right pool, planning the suite bathroom (I replicated it on Second Life to help my wife understanding my ideas better), choosing the doors, the windows, managing all the papers…
I’m tired. I’d like to have more time to manage all the things. Need to slow down. Just a little bit. And that’s also why posts lacked here in the last weeks.
Oh… and thank you writeroom for these 15 mins of distractionless writing.
UPDATEAlberto, while back linking this post, discovers a bond I sincerely have bypassed: the concentration feeling you experiment Writeroom donates you follows the same path Ev highlighted in his LeWeb3 speech: it really seems that innovation, more than from making software more complex, arise when you try to make it simpler. Thanks Alberto!
Enterprise 2.0
Let me first of all say I’m really sorry to simply have dropped last Friday post, ahem, story but both me and Barbara were busy in the final phase of our new home (more on this soon); on aoperation that really took most of my spare time and that helped inspiring next Friday topic (stay tuned).
These few lines to say I’ll be at the presentation of “Community Management“, a cool book about enterprise 2.0, that will be held this evening at the SIAM 1838, Via Santa Marta18 in Milan starting at 6pm. See you there.
+400 sales men in Italy. They created the internal community because of their role in the market: they need innovation to preserve their leadership.
In their commercial area there’s a lot of old style sales style, but they try to differentiate from the rest of the arena: they have young engineers as salesmen who love their own job. They’re passionate about their business.
But as the company was growing both in its dimension and complexity the needed something to make simpler the communication between the centre and the sale network and vice-versa. They also needed an excuse to gain attention on this new opportunity.
The community was the answer.
In the meanwhile they bought two different companies that really brought a huge expansion in their sales network, and the tool was fundamental in the integration of the new colleagues.
6/7 months from idea to delivery. They’ve chosen a strongly mediated approach in order to have the people to exclusively speak about their business and avoid abuses of the software (such as complains about not having supa cool company cars .
Great potential: organizations need people that correctly interpret company philosphy and translate them in organizational methodologies that support company business. Practice bonds people, technologies and behaviours together.
Wenger says that people learn by entering as novices in practice communities.
Companies are already using knowledge management tools to aggregate peoples knowledge and help colleagues to have their work done. But technology seldom is successful (44% of people thinks that itranets really improve their works, IDC in 2006 found that 25% of our time looking for informations).
KM is the past.
Every company is a babel tower: multiple applications, silos, UIs; rigid central management and configurations; long change cycles by the IT department.
Enterprise 2.0 is the usage of social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their customers/partners.
Interaction between people stands visible and durable as time goes by. Enterpise 2.0 change our intranet in an ever-changing structure lead by users: enterprise level tagging, wikis, blogs, etc. (Microsoft Sharepoint)
Why adopting these 2.0 tools? Efficency gain (RSS feeds), competitive pressure that oblige you to continuously innovate.
Informal organization brings strong advantages: business efficency, reduced operational costs, improved customer satisfaction and company morale.
He cited Bravo and 500 FIAT cars cases where customers where strongly involved in the product projects (millions customers’ ideas to create the new 500 minicar).
Collaborative learning: learn by by the knowledge exchange between networks of people;
Informal learning: non intentional learning that represent the main quota of the learning on the job.
Self development: training the managerial skills of each one; huge quality levels of the participants is the assurance for a correct collaborative learning.
Too late. Really gotta go, hope to find the rest of the seminar backed-up online. And - s**t - cannot listen to Luca De Biase’s speech.
A tailor-made world
If you read this blog you might know I use the yellow line underground to travel to work; without driving I’m plenty with time to read and, most of all, to let my mind run free. Early this week I was thinking on the strange way that took me from loving baggy pants to the way I dress today. As I grow-up I’m loving tailor made stuff more and more. I have nice shirts, but I prefere my tailor made ones: they’re more confortable and they simply fit me. Same thing for my suites: most of my preferred are tailor made.
This is probably because of the years on your shoulders teach you how to fall in love for details and how to appreciate the uniqueness. Probably. For me at least.
Tailor-made has always been a synonym of richness. Just think about Ferrari cars: each one is made by hand following its owner’s desires. They even have a dedicated web site.
But we were talking about my thoughts, weren’t we. Yes sorry. Let’s get back to them. While thinking about the way life changed my taste I suddenly realized how the tailor-made=rich equation is becoming less and less common (by the way: my pal Marco helped me discovering a great tailor that prepares shirts for us for just 40 euros, drop me a line if you live in Milan and need her contacts).
Examples? Here they come: each morning I have personalized news and informations via my Bloglines feeds; I sleep on a latex
mattress that modifies according to my body shape and weight; I choose the films/shows I want to see at the time I want them on my IP TV (more to come with things such as Joost); etc. etc.
You might say this is not truly tailor-made; they’re just (very good) approximations of what tailor-made really is. And you might be right.
So what about future trends? I actually see two main trends in this area for the next years.
1. Atoms from bits
The first 3D printers are reaching our desktops with a price that’s more or less the price os a laser printers 15 years ago (or, if you like, you can build one by yourself); today they could be useful for rapid prototyping, but tomorrow? If you imagine a future rich in nanotechs you can then imagine to create your shirt in a 3D modeling environment and then making it real using your printer. Want more? Buy the specs of your favourite digital player and let your “printer” build it for you. Fully functioning.
Kinda too futuristic huh? I agree, even if I think that my generations will see this future. But take a look at the next trend.
2. Personalization through data-mining
Google, the greatest data miner on earth, has started the creation of synthetic models of real buildings, linking them to the original through Google Earth geodata and images. Given a number of items big enough, you might “invent” an object and find a very similar one between these items. You just need a proper way to search for it; and Google is indexing the world: I can imagine to model an object I’d like to have, give the model to google, and shop for the (already existing) approximation of it. Nice huh?
I really think we already have the knowledge and the algorithms to perform such a project. Any Venture listening? (if the answer is es you might want to contact me via Linkedin)
Creating the helpdesk experience
We all have, sooner or later depenging on how you feel lucky, a frightening story about helpdesks: labyrintic menus, looping hold-on messages, and ultra-dumb helpdesk guys (ever felt that strange experience when every guy you talk to asks the same identical question before passing your call to the next one?).
Believe me, I’ve always been kinda unlucky with helpdesks. Unfortunately. So I was happy my first day at Gabetti to discover I would have worked shoulder to shoulder with a small helpdesk team serving our 1000 agencies on IT related problems.
Back in June 2006 the only way to contact the helpdesk was to give a call to a phone number behind which laied an exchange that took care of the call forwarding to the first free operator. In other words the process was something like
call the number
stay at least 15 mins (if you’re the lucky boy) on hold
explain your problem to the operator (other 15 mins, at least)
wait until the IT team solves your problem
A syncronous helpdesk is a waste of time for everybody: for who has the problem and for those who solve it.
Then we started innovating the technology and the processes below the IT helpdesk; our keyword was “asyncronous”.
The first step was to provide the support team and our users with a web interface, with proper problems sections, to communicate and manage tickets. We’re really really happy with the open source software OTRS which could be managed both via email and web and is plenty with personalizations.
That was an important shift from syncronous to asyncronous assistace which brought some interesting features to our helpdesk structure:
Our clients wouldn’t have to wait for a free operator to communicate their problems anymore
We have the power to simultaneously close a large number of tickets in the very moment (that is to say make more users happy in less time)
We can prioritize problems (both basing on the quantity and quality data of our users’ problems)
With just this change we obtained a huge (nearly half an hour) speed up of the ticket opening. Not bad, huh?
But the we moved fast forward both from the technology and process points of view: we rolled out Gabi, our Virtual Assistant, back in July to manage the whole help desk front-line and, more recently, we choosed to prioritize our asyncronous tools (such has gabi itself and the online helpdesk) by cutting the telephone helpdesk times from 8 to 3 hours a day.
Even if this strong move towards the asyncronous life style hasn’t already showed its entire potential the results are huge: the mean life time of each ticket is now something less than 1.5 days and the monthly helpdesk performance has gained full 44 man hours (which is something more than the Italian equivalent of the work week).
The importance of the place
I’m writing from my parents’ couch in Mantua, a small and ancient city a couple of hours from Milan, the city who hosted me for the first 18 years of my life; before moving to Padua for the University and then to Milan to start my “adult” life.
My wife always enjoys shopping in Mantua due to the small dimensions of the city itself: you can tour it by feet all its trendy shops in a couple of hours; and you can also stop by an excellent bar for a delicious cappuccino; doing this it’s not unusual to step by one of my childhood friends (just tomorrow I had a chat with Zelo, who’s now working part-time at a local bookshop plus continuing his artistic career).
Life in Mantua is stressless and quiet; you can feel the raising lifestyle od the inhabitants; and the food is terrific.
In Milan everything is fast. You don’t have time for nothing but business. Chaos & disorder are powerful forces in this city. Concrete is everywhere. You barely can use your car to do shopping but public transportation really deserve an empowerment.
But I still leave in Milan. And I’m so happy with this that I just bought a new and bigger house (we’re still in the redesign phase; I’ll post some shots on Flickr once we cosolidate the architect’s proposal).
But the rest of the answer is about potential; Milan has the potential to become more liveable, to transform itself from the ground up cutting the distance between the city and its inhabitants; continuing to remain an innovative city. Milan is a city for the youngsters, for the makers, for the thinkers.
Milan is a city where this is possible. But this and this too.
My professional life is still based in Milan and my forecast is that this won’t change in the next 10 years. But I won’t age in this city: I prefere move my family to cities moresimilar to the one I was born in. I prefere a return to my roots while keeping my innovation potential intact.
The long tail of helpdesk tickets
I should have had lunch with Leeander today to discuss the 2008 edition of The Interaction Frontiers, the innovation related seminar we co-produce each year. Just a few minutes before our appointment he SMSed me cancelling the lunch. After a while, while at lunch with my boss, I received a call from Leeander where he told me he was in a mess managing the calls after an article on Virtual Assistants (he’s an Interaction Design Director at Kallideas, and they actually produce VAs) on a major Italian magazine.
A Virtual Assistant is basically a 3D human-like interface that processes natural language (both spoken and typed) and is ahead of an artificial intelligence engine which takes information from a knowledge base.
I’m gaining more and more knowledge on this subject since we’re developing a VA - named Gabi - at Gabetti (see here a video interview with some interaction with the VA, in Italian) , together with the Kallideas team, to manage the basic support at our IT helpdesk. And - since the pilot phase launch early on July 2007 - we started training Gabi.
We choose the training arguments by taking a look at the most frequent items on our online helpdesk: we released Gabi with basic knowledge on PC, printers and network problems and then moved to email and password management.
During a meeting, early this week, with our Helpdesk manager and the IA expert from Kallideas I was taking a look at the tickets data to understand which arguments need to be teached to Gabi next and then BOOM I “saw” the long tail in these data.
It’s not long ago that I finished reading the inspiring The Long Tail book by Chris Andreson: looking at the ticket statistics I saw how the higher number of tickets was concentrated in less then 10 different arguments and, from there, the number of tickets decreased rapidly while the problems our users were declaring raised impressively.
It was pretty interesting finding my first tail, but now problems arise: VA are very good at managing a small amount of know-how helping with this large numbers of users; but we’re now going to face a nice task: managing a large amount of information to help a relatively small number of users… uhm… need to go deeper into this to better understand the most effective solution.
) and tested it for a whole week (it also happened to pass to my friend Massimo Pettiti, Innovation Director at 3 Italy).
