I’ve started doing things professionally on the web since 1997 (10 years dude ) and I’ve been fortunate enough to start up quite a lot of projects and - quite obviously - to quit them down due to lack of time, low profits or - ups - lowering interest from yours truly.

CIRI was a Javascript then Perl search engine with only Italian Hip Hop sites in its index. It’s been the first (and mainly the only one) in its genre and, before Google entering the Italian market, it was the leader, period. I turned off CIRI mid 2006 due to the impossibility to compete with Google index.
Reason: lack of profitability (due to Google entrance in the same market)

CIRI eventually lead to the creation of the HOTMC.COM network which I co-founded and co-managed till late 2006; the birth of Francesca and my entrance in Gabetti forced me to leave the whole property to my Pal Simone due to lack of time (he’s a great Director and Owne, IMHO).
HOTMC.COM is still the leading Italian online magazine about Hip Hop and its community is an ever growing thing.
Reason: lack of time (due to changes in my professional and personal life)

The last (in time order) project I quitted has been Flashability (I decided to make the decision public yesterday on the Flashability site - in Italian): an online magazine devoted to the spread of the usability culture in Macromedia Flash (now Adobe Flash CS) helping a lot of developers worldwide to design better interfaces (back button, ya know what I mean?).
During time I lost my interest in the technology and my job wasn’t even bond anymore to Flash, finding good contributors has always been a mess so… why keeping it alive?
Reason: lack of interest

And, you might wonder, what about Mobup (the open source mobile uploader to Flickr)? It’s development is currently freezed, but the project is still in my mind and heart.

I’m going to live blog each event (surprisingly I’m the only guy I see just two guys - yours truly included - with a laptop connected to the open wi-fi lan here).

Stefano Pezzi - Core Soluzioni Informatiche

Stefano comes from Bologna, his company , CORE, is partnering with CRS4 (who’s hosting the seminar) some other companies in Sardinia to work at the SIT project for the Regione Sardegna.

The SIT project aims at the creation a database to host and communicate geographical data of the Sardinia Region giving the chance to use these data in touristic and city planning applications.

Stefano’s presentation is very VERY technical (probably too much, IMHO) he describe the whole layer structure of the SIT app and the usage possibilities. The whole application is based on standards both W3C and ISO while Stefano admints that some of the services aren’t standards yet such as the tools for path retrieval and the tiled map service.

The intersting thing is that they developed a Javascript API set to interface outside applications with the SIT framework: when the project started Google Maps (and its API) weren’t on the market and they wanted to build something that would have been reusable and extendable. Nice move! (but what about porting the APIs to something more compliant with the current de facto standard?).

Stefano Sanna - Beeweeb

Slide

Stefano immediately starts with a humorous intro on himself (his a friend, and I can assure his ALWAYS a laughable guy) and then introduce the difference between Mobile Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0.

He says tha if we speak about Web 2.0 is because Web 1.0 existed, so since we speak about Mobile 2.0 it is because mobile 1.0… existed? sure? Who really used WAP? NOBODY! With wap we were entusiasts with the devices not with the applications; we were just trying mobile!

Web 2.0 is about building a platform: develop applications that can be mashed-up together; Mobile web 2.0 is uding Web 2.0 on mobile devices (eg. widsets); Mobile 2.0 means having native apps on the mobile devices that uses web 2.0 services and dedicated sensors.

What is now a barrier for a lot of applications (eg streaming on Mobile) is the cost of traffic; the mobile companies are now fully aware of this and are about to mass release flat mobile connections. So once the costs of connection won’t be a problem any more Mobile web 2.0 can really arise only if user experience and developing costs will be (at least) comparable.

The next step in mobile applications is to transform monodirectional phisical tags (such as Shotcodes) to bi-directional phisical tags users could write and modify (imagine a bi-dir tag at the supermarket were the choice of the product becomes social).

Marco Guiso - Interoperabile
Marco starts talking about openGIS, a system to create HTTP requests for geodata. This is another highly technical speech: I start doubting I’ll be able to properly blog the talk.

Marco’s aim wa to build a software that could “cannibalize” geodata available on the web from different sources. To do this he used AJAX, some OGG web services (SITR, Landsat5, 3D Marine, etc.) and Google maps.

Now it’s my turn to give a talk. See you later!

Matteo Penzo - Mobup