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A giant piano in Milano

January 21st, 2010 . Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
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Today I was walking in Milano, Duomo Square. I’m rarely there, and so far I missed one of the coolest marketing installations I’ve seen in the city. Especially because it promoted a project sponsored by the municipality.

As seen in several other cities (we’re never first in this kind of stuff), a Metro stair was transformed in a giant piano.

To be fair, I walked away realizing I didn’t remember the name of the project. Just that it was sponsored by the city. Which is not a good outcome for a marketing campaign.

What stroke me, though, is that people walked up and down the stairs. Smiling. Not only groups of people, even old ladies, business men. They smiled. Alone. They even stopped, jumped, played for a few seconds. That’s uncommon to see.

I shoot a video, but I’m going to post a better one I found on youtube.

Stay tuned, more to come.

Lifehacker Effect

December 11th, 2009 . Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Screen shot 2009-12-11 at 09.02.55

Sic transit gloria webbi.

Stay tuned, more to come.

Gmail tagging hack

December 2nd, 2009 . Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »
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You know those times when you realize you have a few gmail conversations that belong to the same macro-topic, but due to subject changes, dumb reply prefixes (some Italian localized clients – Outlook and Blackberry to name a few – use R: instead of Re: , and gmail goes wacko), or simply people starting a new conversation, everything got scattered around?

Sure, you can label them all, but when it’s only 2 or 3 conversations, it’s overkill.

My feature wishlist on this matter would be:

  • Conversation merge: the ability to merge together two arbitrary conversations.
  • TAGGING!

I used to point at gmail labels to explain the concept of tagging to people, but that’ doesn’t quite cut it. Unless you want to end up with an infinite list of labels, defying the purpose of having a list in the first place, you need another way to add metadata to a conversation.

So here’s my DIRTY little hack. It’s not something I would use daily, but for a few projects where things got messy, it helps.

You just have to add the word “tag: ” followed by your tag within an email in the conversation.If the tags you want to use must be kept private for some reason (say you’re tagging a conversation “nuisance” – people might get angry for that :) ) you just have to reply to the conversation, erase all the recipients and address it to yourself.As as you don’t change the subject, gmail will keep it properly grouped with the rest of the conversation.

There. You can then summon all the conversation you tagged by searching for “tag: your tags here”.

It’s not perfect (expecially if you often mail about “tags” combined with the words you use as your tags) . But it works.

One workaround can be coming up with a made up word for tag, such as “mytag”. Hey, don’t look at me, I just have the ideas, it’s your job to find the shortcomings.

Stay tuned, more to come.

A weekend that is out of this world

November 25th, 2009 . Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
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Let me tell you about my weekend.
No, it’s not the boring chronicle of a sleepy afternoon spent watching the game on TV and some tedious housekeeping work.

This past weekend, Astronauticon 4 (http://www.astronauticon.it) was held in Lecco, Italy.

Astronauticon was the name of the annual meetup of the users of forumastronautico.it, the largest Italian space geek community.
Starting last year, roughly before Astronauticon 3, some of us forum users and “mantainers” decided that we needed a better institutional presentation. We decided to lay the foundation of ISAA, the Italian Space and Astronautics Association.

After three editions of Astronauticon in Montecatini, this year we moved to Lecco, benefiting from the huge help of the Deep Space Astrophile Association, that happily opened the doors of their fabulous Planetarium for us space geeks to flood in :-)

Special guest of honor was Col. Edward Michael Fincke, NASA, USAF, Twice on board the ISS for two different long term missions, up to a total of a whole year, six months as station commander.

What. A. Weekend.

The public response was HUGE! The model was different from the previous conventions (we used to have an hotel with congress center, so people would have to register…). Partly because of NASA rules, partly because we had committments with the local authorities that helped us funding and presenting the event (have you ever had a whole theater for your event? ;-) )…but hundreds of people came to see Astronaut Fincke talk about his experience in space and learning about our association.

We were absolutely amazed by the ability of Col. Fincke as a communicator and by his people skills. Having lunch with him (enjoying a meal together is an Italian tradition he came to appreciate soon during his stay) was always fun and relaxing, and the passion and the patience of his speeches (and he gave quite a few of them) were so genuine.

We had no doubt about his technical abilities, but now that we see he’s a great HUMAN BEING we know that NASA is still sending the “right stuff” up there.

www.isaa.it
www.astronauticon.it
www.forumastronautico.it

The importance of perception

November 12th, 2009 . Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
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When it comes to improve the customer experience of a service, a substantial improvement can be achieved by carefully designing the frontend process.
One of the most important aspects to work on is the communication with the customer.

A prompt and accurate communication can be the rug under which to sweep mild inefficiencies.

I wish I could provide you with an extensive case analysis, backed with loads of data. But I’m no expert on this, and I speak solely as a result of personal experience as an “educated customer”.

Two examples:

A couple of days ago I decided to send some flowers from a web shop (super famous worldwide flower shipping brand).
I chose the flowers, I wrote the card, I entered the recipient details and I proceeded with the checkout, entering my credit card information. During the whole process a button on the top of the page offered live chat assistance.
So far, so good.
I confirmed the order, and I was taken to a page, with an error that lamented the lack of sender and recipient data, with a summary of the data that was actually empty. A click on the “back” button and my session was terminated.
I hit the assistance button. I waited for a sales rep for maybe five seconds.
I explained my problem, and then…I received NO answer for the following FIVE minutes.
In the meantime I got a PDF receipt in my email, with the correct addresses.
After five minutes the operator confirmed that my order got through OK.
A minor issue had become a (light) source of “stress” for me, because I was left without feedback from an assistance service that is supposed to be “real time”.

Totally different situation:

I took a train a couple of hours later.
Trains in Italy, as I guess in most of the world except Japan, are a synonym of inefficiency.
So, there we were, travelers and commuters on the platform waiting for a train.
Since Milano is final destination for that line, the train arrives full, and has to be readied for the trip in the opposite direction.
A commuter asked the station employee waiting for the train if the delay in the arrival would have had an impact on the departure time.
“Yes,” he answered “the train is 5 minutes late, but *I’ll do my best* to have the cleaning squad working inside the train while I do the routine brakes check to save time and make an attempt to leave on time”

The train left the station five minutes late, but the presence of the station employee and his description of the tasks he was in charge of in order to minimize the problem had a very good impact on my perception of the service.

Bottom line: bring customers into the loop. Tell them how long they are supposed to be waiting, the status of their work in progress, what are you doing to make things work. The payback is subtle, but substantial.

Stay tuned, more to come.

Night shift

October 14th, 2009 . Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
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Howdy world.

I’m writing this post during my second night shift in console (see previous post for where I work)

Everything’s quiet so I’m catching up on a few things I’ve been putting back. Yeah, I shouldn’t probably say so. Whatever.

I just had a nice…uhm…wave exchange with a friend I haven’t seen in a while, and I have to say that wave is cool but inadequate for real time talking. As an IM tool, I mean.
It does have a few advantages over regular IM (mantaining multiple conversations on different topics by replying to different blips, perfect for a professional digressionist like me :) ) but the interaction is still a little clunky. You can send a blip by pressing SHIFT+enter (avoiding adding a new line) but it’s still not as easy as it should be.

It’s a great tool for working collaboratively on a document (and that makes me wonder when will they port some of the wave code to Google Docs…) and a glorified gmail client for asynchronous communications.

Like most people in the IT world, I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. Having sent a few invites (I have one left and I’m not taking requests :) ) I can start using it with other people and see where ‘s the value for me.

I think the reason why everybody seems to find it intreaguing and hard to understand is that we’re used to consider editing, real time communication and asynchronous mail exchange three different domains, with different actions and languages.

I’m not sure mixing them together is a good idea but I definitely want to see where is this thing going.

Stay tuned, more to come.

Update on life, the universe, and everything else.

September 14th, 2009 . Posted in Michael | 2 Comments »
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I just disabled the forwarding of my shared Google Items on my personal blog.

It looked like a good idea at first, but sometimes I just want to share stuff without adding a comment, and having the whole article reproduced in my blog, even if fully credited, just didn’t feel right.

I’m sorry for cluttering your RSS readers with stuff you probably could read elsewere.

If you’re still interested in my picks, and my ramblings about them (English and Italian) you can follow me on Google Reader or check out this web page:

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/michael.sacchi

And since this is my personal blog, without agenda or purpose, I can say something about me, since it’s been a while since my last update.

I started working, as a contractor hired by a third party, for a major mobile carrier in Italy. My job doesn’t require outstanding skills, but I get to have a peek of the inner workings (both technological and organizational) of a pretty big corporation. And I get paid for that, which is not bad.

I got an iPhone and I’ve got mixed feelings about it. I love it but a few things really annoy me. I might write a stupid review, just to fill up some bits on this server.

I also got a Google Wave invite, back in the end of July. I feel superguilty because I’ve got a lot of developer friends (AND I listen to Leo Laporte crying every week on Twit and TwiG that he still hasn’t got one..) that would die to give it a spin, and I barely touched it.
It’s still too unstable to be useful (and, for the time being, confined in a testing sandbox) and I don’t have the time and the energy to dive into the things I need to learn to exploit it as a developer.

Again, right before Google hands out invites for everyone and their dog I might write something about it.

Speaking of dogs, my dog (well, my family’s dog) died a couple of weeks ago. You probably don’t care, but I miss her and I thought I’d want to remember her, so it felt right to blog about it. Bye Backy.

It’s been a hectic summer, a moving and a new job. I didn’t get any real vacation, so I’m burned out already. In September. That sucks.
I scored a pair of ski on Freecycle so there’s a chance that I’ll be learning to ski this coming winter. That might make up for my lost summer vacations.

Oh. One last thing. In the last few weeks I’ve been obsessed by my spoken English. It’s never been very good but it’s getting worse and worse because all I do is read, sometimes write, but never actually say anything. So if you’re an English speaking friend of mine, feel free to call me on skype or something because I need help :)

I’m going to crash on the bed. I’ll be back soon.
Until then…

…Stay tuned, more to come.

Test

September 7th, 2009 . Posted in Michael | 3 Comments »
Tags:

I’m test posting this from my iPhone. The wordpress app doesn’t seem all that good. I mean… Can’t you RENDER the HTML in the posts?

Shared Items – August 1, 2009

August 1st, 2009 . Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
  • A world without the browser

    • July 31, 2009 – I respectfully disagree.
    I think the apps will be swallowed by the browser.
    Ot at least the line will get thinner, in the opposite direction than the author suggests.

    Sounds like one of those article to keep in the drawer and compare with reality in 3 to 5 years.
    I don’t care if this guy’s really into this market. I think he’s plain wrong. Or really uncapable of making his point.

  • Bad Apple: An Argument Against Buying an iPhone [Rants]

    • July 29, 2009 – I should start a blog. Isn’t it what I said yesterday?

  • Spazio Italiano

    • July 29, 2009

  • Changes in Apple attitudes force changes in Google Latitude

    • July 28, 2009 – This and the recent AT&T-Apple ban on Google Voice are making me VERY doubtful about my plans of getting an iPhone.
    I’m waiting for a decent contract for an Android phone.
    Ok maybe I’m a Google fanboy, but Apple is behaving in ways that, if it’d be Microsoft, everybody would be screaming about. That’s not how you “think different”, Stewie.

  • Is Cursive Handwriting Dead? [Ask The Readers]

    • July 27, 2009 – Last year I had to take the TOEFL test. Before the test they ask you to copy a long statement where you promise you won’t reveal the content of the test (very American, I must say).
    Well, they ask to “write, do not PRINT”.
    Now, I don’t know what they mean with “print”, if is actual printing or writing in PRINT. But the test administrator had me rewrite my statement because it was WRITTEN LIKE THIS. It took me like 10 minutes to write 10 lines in cursive. I’m INCAPABLE of doing so. And now I know why they call it CURSE-ive. Damn!!
    I do sign in cursive, but it’s more like repeating a drawing for me…

  • Mozilla Releases Initial Design Mockups for Firefox 3.7 [Firefox]

    • July 21, 2009 – I don’t get it. Chrome/Chromium is blazingly fast, it runs so many circles around Firefox that convinced me to forgo all my extension to tap into that freshy fastness…and what is Mozilla working on for the next release? Yet another UI change.

    How about ditching 3.7 and see if 4.0, rewritten from scratch and – why not – with webkit does the magic?
    Firefox is great, it’s been my loyal browser for 9 years, since it was called “Firebird” (or was it something else before that? Phoenix? That.). But you can’t just sit and thrive on your hard gained 25% mkt share. Now, more then ever, the web is changing. Evolve or die.

    (written in Chromium for Linux. Yes, it doesn’t support Flash yet. Who frigging cares?)

  • Come la tv odia internet: in Usa e in Italia

    • July 18, 2009 – Aggiungerei questa bellissima maniera di parlare delle cose, professando la propria totale ignoranza e incapacità di comprendere, ma giudicando negativamente a prescindere.
    Ma come si fa a vedere certe cosa?
    Prostituzione è la parola piu’ frequente dopo “blog” in questo video!

  • 07/01/09 PHD comic: 'I'm sure of it'

    • July 3, 2009 – Totally happened during the thesis work, 2 years ago.

  • Extrapolating

    • July 3, 2009

  • Toga! Toga!

    • July 2, 2009 – Confermo ZazzA. Pulitzer.

  • Paura di volare?

    • June 28, 2009

  • Bike Mi: inaugurate altre 8 stazioni per un totale di 1200 bici

    • June 26, 2009 – Non ci avrei scommesso un centesimo. Lieto di aver sbagliato.

  • Game Theory

    • June 24, 2009

  • La rivincita dei nerd: Obama e Star Trek

    • June 21, 2009

  • Bene, finalmente

    • June 17, 2009

A world without the browser

July 31st, 2009 . Posted in Shared on Google Reader | No Comments »
Tags:

I shared this article in Google Reader, see the original article on Mobile Open Source here:
I respectfully disagree.
I think the apps will be swallowed by the browser.
Ot at least the line will get thinner, in the opposite direction than the author suggests.

Sounds like one of those article to keep in the drawer and compare with reality in 3 to 5 years.
I don’t care if this guy’s really into this market. I think he’s plain wrong. Or really uncapable of making his point.

This morning I was contemplating the browser war, which has started again. IE vs. Firefox vs. Chrome vs. Safari. Nice fight to watch, something that takes me back to memory lane when Mosaic was my browser, when the fight was Netscape vs. Microsoft. You know, the browser is the center of our Internet experience. Everything goes around the browser. Google is built around the browser. Microsoft and Yahoo just agreed on a search deal around the browser. The browser is everything.

Then I got an epiphany.

The browser is going to disappear.

Whhhaaaaat? Are you crazy?

Ok, ok. Let me try to explain ;-) I saw the birth of the browser. I attended the third World Wide Web conference. I started the first web company in Italy. Once Tim Berners-Lee came up with the hypertext concept and created the idea of the web, I even thought about building a browser. I did. I still have some Tcl/Tk code somewhere. Others were much better and faster… The browser was the perfect visualizer for the web on a desktop. The hypertext meant links. Links need to be clicked. We had the mouse. We had big screens. We had a chair and a desk. Great match. Boom, the Internet was born.

Then came mobile.

I haven’t seen one single implementation of a browser on a mobile device that actually makes the experience good (not great). Do not tell me you like the iPhone browser. It is horrible. It is probably the best you can do on a small screen, with no mouse. Clicking is a pain. Zooming and panning is a super-pain. You click when you want to scroll. You yell.

If you can choose between browsing on your PC or on your iPhone, what would you choose?

Exactly.

Now let’s talk about Mobile Apps. They are built for interaction without a mouse. With one finger (the other hand holding the device). They are quick, immediate, intuitive, interactive.

If I have to choose between checking the weather on my PC or on my iPhone, what do I choose? The iPhone. One click. Done. I do not have to sit, open the browser, click and re-click and maybe even type my zip code. It is there when I need it.

Think about it. Mobile Apps can deliver a better experience then those on PC. Granted, I am excluding the productivity tools where you need a lot of typing. But those are few and you will need a keyboard, a desk and a chair. When you do not have to do a lot of typing, a mobile app becomes preferable.

Where is the world going? To mobile. The new Apple Tablet will blur the line even more. But it will be a mobile device for sure. An e-book reader + video player + music player + weather viewer + news viewer…. All with your fingers. All with little apps. All with no mouse. All with an App Store where you can find everything you need. The world is all going to mobile. We will spend more time without the mouse than with it.

This is the Internet era all over again. Back then, we had hundreds of small companies that started with the goal to build web sites. Now, every company wants an iPhone app. You can deliver more value with an app, than you can with a web site. More interactive, more personal, 24/7, in the hands of your customer, with push capabilities.

The result is that every company will have a mobile app, and hundreds of small companies will be created to support it. That you will “navigate” between companies moving from an app to another. That the search engine will not be on a browser, but in the app store (or in the search engine of the app stores, which someone should start developing fast…).

This is going to change the world as we know it. If the browser loses its centrality, ads will go somewhere else. The search engine will be way different. Someone has to invent a platform to link apps one to the other, of course, but the infrastructure is there. It is the engine of the browser itself, with its HTML, AJAX, CSS.

The browser will be swallowed inside the apps. We will have a world without the browser. The future is all of a sudden clear to me. Well, the browser fight looks kind of moot now…

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