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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!
Lifehacks
I always read Lifehacker.com, a very useful website with tons of interesting tricks.
Today I’ve found Steve Rubel’s LifeHacks on del.icio.us… a treasure I want to share with you.
Happy reading, and happy Life-Hacking.
State of the blog!
Today, may 3rd 2008, my blog has 20 feed readers, 3 technorati reactions…
…and my twitter account is followed by 60 people (and I’m following 102).
I’d like to make this blog more popular, and my goal for the end of the month is:
20 100 feed readers;
3 10 technorati reactions;
60 100 followers on twitter.
Let’s see if I’m able to do that.
If you love me, spread the word about this blog, tell your friends, and if you use a feed reader, subscribe to my feed!
Also, I’d appreciate your comments on this blog, what you like, what you don’t!
Thanks a lot!
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Today is May 1st, 2008, and here in Italy (yes, I’m here for 17 more days) it’s Labour’s Day Holiday.
Since tomorrow is friday, many people took the chance to go away (sea, mountain, lake, whatever).
Instead, I’m still here, in my small apartment near Assisi (enjoy my Creative-Commons photos here on Flickr).
Surfing the internet, I stumbled upon this 1974 book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (see what Wikipedia has to say, or read the full text online).
Robert Pirsig, the author, explains his own concept of Quality: non-intellectualizing, non-conceptualizing, Zen-like direct viewing of the universe. Logic, and Reason, still have an important role in seeking awareness and understanding, differently from the Asian “Zen” philosophy.
In the words of Wikipedia:
“… He understands that technology and the “dehumanised world” it carries with it appear ugly and repulsive to a romantic person. He is, however, capable of seeing the beauty of technology and feels good about mechanical work. The author demonstrates that the cycle maintenance may be dull and tedious drudgery or an exciting and pleasurable pastime; it all depends on the inner attitude and peace of mind, or lack thereof…”
And again:
“Pirsig attempts to reveal rationality’s pretense to be the ultimate and sole source of knowledge and argues for an approach to knowledge that is more varied and inclusive. He seeks a perception of the world that also encompasses “irrational” sources of wisdom and knowledge - in particular, the bursts of creativity and intuition that seemingly come from nowhere and are apparently not rationally explainable. Pirsig seeks to demonstrate that rationality and zen-like irrationality can harmoniously coexist. He suggests such a combination of rationality and mysticism can potentially bring a higher quality of life.”
I’ve read some excerpts of the book in the past, but I’ll definitively read it very soon.
There is a very important reason why, on the title of this blog, you read “Zen and Life of Simone Brunozzi”.
Zen, in my case, is an attitude, a search, an answer, a target.
This book will help me in seeing things more clearly.
I also suggest you to take a look at this blog, Zen Habits. He seems on a path very similar to mine :-)
Outsource your design with 99designs.com
Today I discovered 99designs.com, a website that lets you run design contests: you set up a contest, and the relative prize, and then wait for designs to come. After one week, you decide which one is good, and pay it. Cool.
Design contests are often an exploitation of designers’ time, but in this case it seems that rates are fair, and clients are cool.
They offer, for example, guaranteed prize contests, in which clients pay in advance, and then the winner gets the cash directly from 99designs. In this way, clients can’t just exploit good ideas and then manufacture them at lower costs with their own designer.
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
I suggest you to read this great post on HereComesEverybody: it is about Gin, Television and Social Surplus.
This excerpt is illuminating:
For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before–free time.
And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.
And again:
In this same conversation with the TV producer I was talking about World of Warcraft guilds, and as I was talking, I could sort of see what she was thinking: “Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves.”
At least they’re doing something.
I will definitively buy Mel Blake’s book: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
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.
Lotsa Creative Commons images, for your blog!
I currently write on two english blogs (didn’t I mention www.SecondLifePros.com?) and an italian one, and sometimes it’s not easy to find pictures for the posts I’m writing, expecially because I always want to respect the license of the author (which is, by default, a strict copyright).
A nice and fast solution is looking on Flickr.com (the biggest image archive so far) for images with a Creative Commons license, such as:
- CC Attribution license;
- CC Attribution-ShareAlike license;
- CC Attribution-NonDerivatives;
If you don’t know about Creative Commons… You Should!
Thank to this precious information, I just found the perfect picture for my next post… it’s about Gazelles, but… Well, it goes beyond that! Curious?
By the way, thank to Paul Mannix for sharing so many pictures with a friendly license.
Of course, my suggestion now is: PUBLISH YOUR PICTURES WITH A CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE, and make the world a better place.
I will soon do that with my pics.
Internet trends 2008, by Morgan Stanley
Look at this slideshow of Internet Trends 2008, released by Morgan Stanley. It’s interesting.
It’a all about:
- usage patterns
- social networking
- widget-ization + component-ization
- measurability + transparency + customer satisfaction
- video
- monetization
- mobile
- emerging markets
- recession
My take? We’ll meet a revolution very soon.
[inspired by Pandemia from his italian article]
Review of AllTop.com
Guy Kawasaki’s new creation is called AllTop.com: it is a very simple and clean website which collects RSS feeds from selected sources, and aggregates them in logical categories.
I simply LOVE this site, because it helps me keeping track of some web conversations and opinions that I’d have otherwise missed.
In almost every category, there are just the most important and interesting feed sources, and nothing more. Time saver, I say.
My favourite categories are: linux, virtual worlds, social media and green.
What about yours?
Check it out and let me know what you think about it!
