Tiny infobits, huge shockwaves

technology

E tu, Apple? Patents as nuclear weapons; how to use them as a deterrent to slow down competition.

Posted 4 March 2010 - 11:19am

E tu, Apple?

Apple has finally decided to use patents to slow down the competition, represented by Android in the current form. The interesting spin to the news is that Apple is not suing Google, which develops Android, but is suing HTC, a handset manufacturer and one of the main adopters of Android.

From geeks to the masses, from culture to economics and politics. Internet is changing everything.

Posted 3 March 2010 - 2:40pm

Internet and technology in general are changing just about everything we can think of. What gets hit first by this transformation?

This article about politics is one of the first of its kind that I have read so far. It describes a pretty simple idea to change US politics by abolishing the Senate and replacing it with a Reddit style platform that would allow all citizens to vote on propositions.

Patent for what? It seems that this Facebook patent covers what we were already doing in 2001/02

Posted 27 February 2010 - 11:54am

I did not have time to go through the details, except reading the Slashdot story, but this patent, the way it is described in the abstract, covers what Splinder (the largest Italian blogging and community platform) was already doing in 2001/02; and BTW, Splinder was part of a US company based in NY (Tipic Inc. of which I was the co-founder and CEO).

Data at the center: this is the way to go. Invert the paradigm and let data organize itself (as much as you can).

Posted 24 February 2010 - 10:45am

I have been exploring this concept for a while now. Again, this is the right direction, and, as you can see from the video, the most interesting application of the concept is the innovative text input. Cool innovation from Germany.

Interesting concept: telepresence robot that allows social interaction

Posted 24 February 2010 - 9:41am

This is a bit counterintuitive. Why would you want to put a videoconferencing system on a robot? Well it actually works, and it can be just the beginning of an interesting concept. 

Multimedia at home

Posted 4 December 2009 - 9:32pm

I spent a few days configuring my new Acer Revo 3610. I installed Ubuntu 9.10, Boxee, UbuntuwinTV and Minitube (among other more mundane stuff).

I had to figure out how to fix the sound and the screen resolution, because I am using an HDMI cable to connect the Revo to the Samsung LCD TV.

Experiments

Posted 13 November 2009 - 3:59pm

I have been experimenting trying to integrate this site (powered by Drupal) with Facebook and Twitter. The Idea is to let my friends comment here using their accounts on those (and other) platforms.

So far I have not had much luck, because the FB module for Drupal cannot handle FB usernames, so if you commented here, your comment would appear as xxxx@facebook.com; the Twitter module, is still buggy and it seems that development has halted lately (hopefully I am wrong).

Exponential times, Net/Web and innovation

Posted 11 October 2009 - 11:41am

I was invited to give a talk at Bristol Meyer Squibb for a Marketing Seminar in Paris. The idea was to give a sense of the change happening on the Net/Web, how it affects corporations and what can be done about it. 

It was an opportunity to formalize some of my thoughts; if you're interested, the presentation is attached. It is a high level overview, nothing specific. The objective was to explain how fast technology is changing everything.

Decentralized power generation

Posted 10 September 2009 - 10:28am

I have been thinking about this for years and now it seems that the technology and the business model are ready for prime time. Not that I wanted to start a company out of it, because the business is too much capital intensive for how I like to work.

Living Technology - Odense, Denmark

Posted 7 March 2009 - 12:53am

Save complications from a nasty Chickenpox (Varicella), and if I do not scratch too much, I'll be attending the Living Technology Workshop in Odense, Denmark (March 17-18).

When I get well I'll have to prepare a 10 minutes presentation.

Dolomite Mountains, Trento, Italy

Posted 30 January 2009 - 5:13pm

I am attending the First Workshop on Scientific Knowledge Creation, Dissemination and Evaluation.

The discussion is about the evolution of the scientific paper in the 21st century. There is a pretty diverse group of people attending, from accademia (computer scientists, philosophers, etc), from the industry (mainly scientific publishers), from the EU commission and random people (like me).

As usual people are split between:

Rimini, Italy

Posted 8 September 2008 - 11:18pm

I am in Rimini attending the Perada Summer School; it is about pervasive adaptation ... Feels strange to be back to "school" :-)

Winchester, England

Posted 4 August 2008 - 4:53pm

I am in Winchester, the AlifeXI conference starts tomorrow.

An (indoor!) BBQ will take place in a few minutes. It's raining and I am looking forward to see how an indoor BBQ works ;-) that's England!

When I left this morning Milan was hot and mosquitoes would not let me sleep. It seems that I will not have these problems here.

Looking forward to see if there are any REAL viable technologies that can be used on the Internet.

Cognitive Neuromorphic Engineering

Posted 21 April 2008 - 1:22pm

I am attending the Cognitive Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop which is organized by the University of Zürich and is being held in Capo Caccia, Sardinia.

The place is fantastic, and the talks are excellent.

Models, super models and computation

Posted 10 April 2008 - 1:25pm

One of the first things I noticed, when I started reading about Bio-Inspired AI and neuroscience, is the notion that we cannot say that we "really" understand something unless we find a suitable "traditional" mathematical model that approximates it in a way or another.