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Archive for the ‘technology’ Category:
Masdar City: ecology, hype, or middle way?
Today I found the existence of an interesting project: Masdar City (the official website, and Masdar City on wikipedia), an eco-city near Abu-Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) for some 50,000 people, which will be built in the next few years, and the first available residences will be sold in late 2009.
The project will cost about 22 billion dollars, and tries to be very eco-friendly, using renewable energies and eco-buildings.
This introductory video (both in english and arabic) can give you more details, even if it’s quite an advertisement, rather than a documentary.
First, it’s remarkable that an arab nation goes in this direction. I’d like to point out, though, that “artificial” cities (cities planned from scratch) are always difficult to “grow”, because their citizens are not “natural” as in normal cities, but must have an incentive to go there. Think of Brasilia, which has been a moderate success for the great urban plans, but also because Brazilians were poor, and they were a lot and needed shelter. Will Masdar be successful as well?
In any case, I’d love, in the future, to live in an eco-friendly, not-so-small and not-too-big city, like Vancouver, for example, which ranks among the top ones regarding ecology, life and economy.
From this topic, I also stumbled upon the wikipedia page of Enrico Mattei, a great italian leader and entrepreneur of the mid-decades of 20th century, who led ENI (the national energy company), made tough decisions, and was killed probably by the seven sisters of energy and/or CIA because he endangered their interests.
I sometimes think of doing something lasting and meaningful for mankind, but people that tried that often share such bitter ends.
It seems that the only way to win the inertia of an overriding economic power is to find a way to soften the change, otherwise bad people will kill you.
If you think about it, it’s (sadly) perfectly normal in a human society (I mean, to preserve the position you earned), in which a single person can’t really stand the power of huge corporations.
I don’t have a solution, I’m just observing.
And you?
Al Gore in Rome: a success for the launch of italian Current_TV
I’m just back from Rome, where I witnessed the launch of the italian Current_TV, the first non-english-speaking version of it.
I was invited at Jovinelli theatre together with about four hundred of other bloggers, technologists, journalists, students and such. It was a great idea (thank to friendly and hyper-energic Marco Montemagno and others), and a great occasion to meet some bloggers that I read, but never met in real life (Paolo Valdemarin, Massimo Mantellini…).
Al Gore, founder of Current_TV, was the main guest.
Enjoy some pictures I’ve taken with my modest Canon EOS 400D (you find these, and other, creative commons Attribution-only photos on my flickr account) :-)
Outside Jovinelli Theatre in Rome, just before the event.
Inside the theatre.
Luca Conti, a.k.a. Pandemìa, a famous italian blogger and latin lover.
Me (Simone Brunozzi) with Daniela Cerrato (Virgilio.it).
Marco Montemagno, italian technologist and journalist for SKY.
Who’s this guy? Can’t remember his name… hmmm…
Well, if he dyes his hair with black, he could resemble Al Gore… :-)
Luca Conti and Marco Montemagno, while Luca is asking a question to Al Gore.
People.
The thing that everybody loved about Al Gore? His boots!
Final word: a great event, and I wish Good Luck to the italian Current_TV!
Current_TV: Rome, Italy, with Al Gore
Today I’ll be in Rome, for the presentation of the italian branch of Current_TV; Al Gore (founder, together with Joel Hyatt) will be there, and I will ask him this question.
Concentrated solar by SunRGI
Read this article on LighterFootStep about the new SunRGI concentrated solar product.
The principle is old and simple: concentrate solar power, using magnifying lenses, and put a photovoltaic cell under it.
They added a cooling heat sink to dissipate the enormous amount of heat generated.
Watch this video for a demonstration:
Hope to see this technology soon! Maybe it will save us from Data Center pollution.
Second Life
Second Life, if you don’t know it, is a three-dimensional online world, in which you can portray an “avatar” (a virtual alter ego) an explore this virtual world, interacting with people, building things.
In Hindu philosophy, an avatar (derived from the Sanskrit word avatāra) refers to the incarnation (bodily manifestation) of a divine being (deva) into planet Earth. If we can call our real life “first”, this “second” one refers to our “incarnation” in the virtual world.
I’m involved in Second Life since mid 2006 (it seems ages!), when the media weren’t talking about it yet. There were a little bit less than one million registered users, of which only a small fraction was active (I can guess 20%).
Today, in may 2008, Second Life has roughly 15 millions of users, of which the active part is about two millions.
They’re not big numbers, compared to Facebook or MySpace, but being active in Second Life requires bigger efforts, first to learn the interface, then to understand how to enjoy the virtual world.
My biggest achievement in Second Life is the perfect reproduction of a religious monument, the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, one of the most beautiful in Italy (and a World Heritage Site), and perhaps in the entire world.
If you don’t know Assisi, the wikipedia page on Assisi can help you, or you can just look at this picture of Assisi I’ve taken two days ago.
You can see some pictures on the official website of the Virtual Assisi: SecundaVita.com (latin words for Second Life).
Recently, we had two interesting initiatives in Virtual Assisi.
The first is the costant presence (twice a month) of the Mayor of Assisi, engineer Claudio Ricci, portrayed below:
The second was a virtual visit of Assisi, with students from New York city (here the video):
Big companies are investing in Second Life, and Amazon.com itself has a weekly developers meeting on one of its Second Life Islands:
Ah, by the way: Did you know that I got my Job at Amazon.com through Second Life?
It’s a long story… one day I’ll tell you everything.
Personally, I think that Second Life it’s still for early adopters, but has a great potential in the years to come.
Do you use Second Life? Do you find it useful?
Joel on Microsoft Live Mesh
I didn’t find the exact words to describe Microsoft Live Mesh, until I found them on Joel Spolsky’s blog:
“And what is this Windows Live Mesh? It’s a way to synchronize files.
Jeez, we’ve had that forever. When did the first sync web sites start coming out? 1999? There were a million versions. xdrive, mydrive, idrive, youdrive, wealldrive for ice cream. Nobody cared then and nobody cares now, because synchronizing files is just not a killer application. I’m sorry. It seems like it should be. But it’s not.”
Robert Scoble agrees: Why Microsoft Live Mesh will fail with early adopters.
What do you think about it?
Twitter Power!
What is Twitter?
A web application that allows you to post SMS-style messages, follow other people messages, and interact with them.
Today I want to give you a great list of the best websites, tools, and guides about Twitter!
01) Twist : see trends in Twitter, and compare them. An example? Ubuntu vs Vista.
02) TwitterLocal : tweets nearby a location.
03) TwitterLocal Stats : locations with top tweets (spolier: Tokyo is number 1!).
04) TwitterFeed : feed your blog to twitter.
05) Big Juicy Twitter Guide: a MUST for wannabe/newbie twitterers.
06) TwitterVision: showing a world map with instant tweets (also in 3D).
07) Twistori : a social experiment, in which you can see current tweets, selected by special keywords (love, hate, think, believe, feel, wish).
08) Twitbin : a Firefox extension to tweet faster and easier.
09) Twitdir : a Twitter directory.
10) TwitterKarma : it fetches your friends and followers from Twitter, then displays them in a way easier to navigate through.
11) TweetScan: Real-time Twitter search.
12) Remember the Milk for Twitter : if you use Remember the Milk (as a personal and time management tool), you will love this add-on for Twitter.
Finally, some miscellaneous links you may find very interesting:
Scaling Twitter: making Twitter 10000% faster.
17 ways you can use Twitter.
Snitter, a Twitter client for Mac and Windows.
Twitterrific, a nice Twitter client for Mac.
10 ways to use Twitter.
Twitter in plain english (video).
60+ Twitter tools.
The several habits of wildly successful twitter users.
17 ways to visualize the Twitter universe.
How to build a Twitter agent.
Top 10 Twitter Apps, by ReadWriteWeb.
The official Twitter blog.
The Twitter Fan wiki, with lots of precious resources.
TwitterBuzz, the most popular links on Twitter.
Did you like it? Well, I think it’s time for you to follow me on Twitter!
[UPDATE 02/may/08] Check out this statistic analysis of Robert Scoble’s tweets.
[UPDATE 09/may/08] Tracking links on Twitter: Intwition.
Twistori
Twistori is an “ongoing social experiment“.
I’m not completely convinced, but… it’s interesting, at least, and the website is simple and clean.
It uses Summize.com to collect “twits” (or twitts, with double T?) in real time. Thank to Twistori, I re-discovered Summize, which is a great tool to analyze Twitter trends.
