October 2006

Andrey Golub

Hm... it's not everything so clear with the new FON router. Their last firmware seems to not be the right OpenSource anymore.

Please see what the dd-wrt author and ex-FON developer says about that:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5083&highlight=fonera

P.S. I found this topic mentioned HERE. It's a nice article about the FON, but the comments are not so nice I think (even if there was Martin participating personally) :)

Keywords: FON, La FONera, Martin Varsavsky, Open Source, dd-wrt, FON firmware

Andrey Golub

Digital Media in Italia- Un'iniziativa per interrogarci sul ruolo dell'Italia e per programmare il nostro futuro.

Executive Summary (in Inglese)- e` una proposta di azioni per dare all'Italia una posizione leader nei “digital media”.

E allora andiamo avanti? Italia, Forza! Avanti nel mondo digitale!!! ;)

Keywords: digital media, Italia

Andrey Golub

Uuuufffff...
I am very happy to share now with my friends and all MilanIN B.C. members that a general-purpose collaboration agreement between the FON and MilanIN has been discussed and agreed yesterday in Bologna, the new FON residence of Italy.
I was very happy to finally meet in person Robert Lang, the FON European Leader, and also to get known the Italian FON Team managed by famous brand communication master Miquel Sal.

Unfortunately, because of some logistic problems of this meeting, there was just a very short introduction of myself to the Italian FON Team. I am sorry guys, I promise to come to Bologna once again very soon, if you invite me!:) But with Robert I had a chance to chat a bit about everything :=) I am not able to share here the main subject of that discussion, but I think the both sides have left quite satisfied. It was also a big pleasure for me to discover that we have a common friend (it's another pro-active personage :lol:), Eric Le Bihan,- Robert is of the best opinion of Eric.

I'll let you know some later what actions do we plan to perform together and what's the biggest concern of the both sides.

Keywords: FON, FON Italy, Miguel Sal, MilanIN, Robert Lang, Eric Le Bihan

Andrey Golub

Some more efforts... and we now have the summary document about Business Club “MilanIN” updated till October!
Thanks to our great Leader Pier Carlo and... his wife that still(?) supports this man always working and never sleeping ;)
(grazie di cuore, Silvia!!!)

Keywords: Pier Carlo Pozzati, Prospetto informativo, MilanIN

Andrey Golub

Well, I think Michael should be proud of himself, since now his picture and a link to his profile appear on the Home Page of one of the most important Italian Business Social Networks- Business Club “MilanIN”!

Michael Tabolsky is the MEMBER OF THE YEAR 2005 of B.C. "MilanIN" ! Tadadada :)

Keywords: Business Social Networking, Member of the Year 2005, MilanIN, Michael Tabolsky

Andrey Golub

ECCO COSA CI MANCAVA (alla nostra Piattaforma)!

Pier Carlo mi dice sempre "ci vuole un CHAT", ma a me il CHAT non mi piace :) Forse qui ci vuole una conferenza voce, oppure, e` meglio, una Video-conferenza? :))

Ma dai, ci andrebbe benissimo anche Skype! ecco lo qua, il esempio di E-bay (e` un'altra piattaforma di Collaborative Working & Knowledge Sharing, per chi conosce solo "MilanIN" :lol:).

LA STORIA:
I venditori avranno la possibilità di comunicare con gli acquirenti tramite Skype (Chat o a voce) per rispondere velocemente alle domande degli acquirenti, aumentare la fiducia necessaria per vendere oggetti complessi o costosi e favorire la comunicazione con i compratori trasformandoli in acquirenti fidelizzati. Attualmente la possibilità di aggiungere l’opzione Skype è disponibile solo per certe categorie merceologiche.

Gli acquirenti che trovano nelle inserzioni il logo Skype, devono cliccare sul pulsante Chat o Chiama, e usare Skype come farebbero normalmente. In questo modo possono avere tutti i dettagli necessari per fare acquisti, contattare il venditore con un metodo alternativo e avere risposte immediate alle proprie domande, senza dover aspettare di ricevere una email.

Keywords: MilanIN, e-bay, Skype

Andrey Golub

Well, the question is almost correct :), but it's wrong by the logic of how is world organized. I think it's IE, as a User Application, had to be ready to support the most Internet standards. But since M$ never studies the market but they prefer to CREATE the standards with their $$$, there is nothing to do for the world but to check if our Web Application/Services "will be supported" by IE7.
Such a shame to M$ guys, such a shame, but well, there are (still) so many people using Windows and its "best optimized for the modern Internet" Web Browser called "Internet Explorer" :) I know I am a dreamer, but I really hope that year by year M$ will be loosing its market, until/if they turn to the people their face, not their ass with $$$ symbol written on it as today! Well, what should we expect from the IE7 in respect of the RSS/Atom feeds?

Valid only

Is your feed valid ? If you or your customers are outputting content with invalid characters, an undefined namespace, or a non-breaking space ( ) the Windows RSS Platform will disregard your feed updates. A snapshot of Google Reader's subscriptions last December found about 7% of the feeds it indexes are not well-formed .

Use modern feed formats

The platform includes support for feed formats RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0, Atom 1.0. If you are still outputting in RSS 0.91, RSS 0.92, or Atom 0.3 IE7 will still support the format, but you are encouraged to upgrade to a more recent feed format for the best support. Feeds that reference a DTD are considered a potential security issue and the feed parser will reject the feed and display an error message.

Auto-discovery

Can web browsers easily find your feeds? Internet Explorer 7 tries to auto-discover feeds referenced as a link alternate in your . IE7 mimics Firefox's auto-discovery behavior, so if you notice your feed(s) lighting chicklets in Firefox you should be all set. Your web server can help identify feeds by serving the correct types for each feed type such as application/atom+xml or text/xml. Browsers take a number of steps when trying to identify your feed. If you produce better output the browser does less work!

Check for valid feed names

Do you have a valid feed name? The Windows RSS Platform supports feed names between 1 and 120 characters in length and may not contain a back-slash ("") or Unicode control characters in range 0-31.

Check for valid feed markup

The Feed Validator can help you find more issues in your feeds that might cause problems for feed parsers. The feed validator project is open-source and you can run your own local copy using Python.

P.S. This technology analysis was first time met by me in an article of Mr. Niall Kennedy.

Keywords: Atom feeds, Blog, IE7, Microsoft, RSS feeds, Niall Kennedy

Andrey Golub

This week I decided to go to visit my good friend Andrew in the Netherlands over week-end. I like this country, Amsterdam much of the other places here, but I always come to stay at home my friends in Eindhoven.

It was so nice to talk to them the last changes in my life, and also to hear how's their live evolving! And for sure the first thing I had to do as soon as we get a pause the evening, is to check my e-mail since I was waiting for some important news to arrive. So I plugged my laptop, received the ugly news from Andrew that he does not have a wi-fi network at home, and therefore I asked him if he knows there are some close neighbors that have FON? It's true that I hate dealing with network cables since you loose your movement freedom, and also for me it was not important if to use Andrew's ADSL of somebody else's shared connection.

- WHAT IS FON??? Andrew asked me...
Well, I believe there are people that do not know FON, but they should be all out of IT sector I was supposed. But Andrew works in high-tech so it was a nice surprise for me! Having explained to Andrew the idea of FON (it's the worldwide wifi routing service for the registered Users and in the future probably a Google-analyzed User Profile for e-Bay [potential]clients, that was enough to impress my friend) and the achievements of FON Network deployment effort, my friend has confirmed that it should be a great idea, but will make sense, on his opinion, only for the big cities like Milan and crazy countries as Italy (just my example :lol:).

“Holland is different, Holland is pacific”!
Well, we went to the FON Maps portal and discovered that there are 3 other people living 500...1000 meters from the house of Andrew and they have FON! ;) I know Andrew lives not in such a city center and it's not the overcrowd here, however there were few FONeros and 3 of them very near us! Also we checked the FON nodes over Eindhoven and ... get that Holland is NOT really different from Italy!

FON is EVERYWHERE! :) And that's nice!
Now my friend, as soon as his requested on registration as FONero is executed, will be able on his road from home to his office be “almost always” on-line with his GSM/wi-fi communicator (that has good wi-fi and full package of Internet communication tools, including Skype). Also it seems that in the city center Andrew will not need to pay money anymore for GSM calls to his friends, but to call through Skype everywhere (he is a heavy user of Skype that's why the “discovery” of FON is so important for him)?

P.S. Having this nice chat and while navigating on FON Maps over Milan, I've moved my eyes to Segrate side, the place where I live in Italy, and found there are TWO NEWS users since the last time I checked the map (it was 2 weeks ago). It's my personal hint for the others- to have a JPG shapshoot of my nearest locations taken from the FON Maps service, and I always know where to go for Internet when I walk/bike in the city.

Keywords: Andrew Issaenko, Eindhoven, Italy, Netherlands, Segrate, FON

Andrey Golub

This night still in Holland I met Vadim, my friend and founder/owner of Gravitrin, the revolutionary product for rehabilitation of different kinds of spinal illnesses, and we spoke about our nearest meeting in Milan with a very important world known medical company. It's nice that I found some connections to there through our Business Club, Mr. Franco G. helped me a lot. Now we all hope that this really great product will arrive also to the Italian market.

MilanIN is working! The only thing I can say now ...

P.S. Here is a product info summary about the Gravitrin.

Keywords: Franco Gualtieri, Gravitrin, Vadim Konovalov, Andrey Golub

Andrey Golub

Last week-end I was flying (Milan->Amsterdam and back) by KLM airlines (Royal Dutch Airlines) and I have remained a bit surprised with their prices and their quality of service. For the prices it was the same or lower price as for another economy class flights of Ryanair, AirOne, VolareWeb and similar low cost networks, for the service... please read it below.

My friend Andrew, the guy I was visiting in Holland, said me “It's the ROYAL service (KLM), so why are you surprised? Would the Queen support a bad service from your point of view?!” :)

My confusion was that during the flight, ordered as “cheap/economy” I repeat, I was given a good (Italian) meal + a beer + coffee, the thing that usually happens on full-fare flights, right? At least I do not remember any of my other economy-class journeys where I was so happy with their on-board service! It happened with me only on Alitalia/ AirFrance/ similar full fare flights, when the meal was good and also the service acceptable (not always!!!).

Probably my friend Andrew was right, i's the Royal service and (from his joke) it's the Queen who personally controls the QoS of Dutch airlines? :lol:, but who knows!

Keywords: Andrew Issaenko, Andrey Golub, cheap flights, low cost airlines, KLM

Andrey Golub

Taken from beet.tv

RSS has driven the growth of the blogs by allowing consumers to aggregate feeds fo their favorite content sources to one simple page. NewsGator has one of the best -- and I am pleased to say it's quite popular with Beet.TV watchers. 

We met with NewsGator CEO J.B. Holston at the Beet.TV studios the other day. He explains the basic workings of RSS.

J. B. tells us just as RSS fueled the podcast phenomenon, he says that RSS will be essential to the growth of online video. RSS is absolutely essential. As Robert Scoble says if you don't employ RSS on your blog, it's "dead".

This is the first of two interviews with J.B. Download its video here.

The complete story is here: 
http://www.beet.tv/2006/10/rss_made_podcas.html

Keywords: J.B. Holston, NewsGator, RSS, beet.tv, podcast, Andy Plesser

Andrey Golub

Just ask aboutus.org, it knows about MilanIN! (well, the first was Wikipedia)

Keywords: MilanIN, wikipedia, aboutus.org

Andrey Golub

Giornata Mondiale dell'Usabilità. L'evento avrà luogo il 14 Novembre 2006 a Milano, presso l'aula magna dell'Università Bicocca, dalle ore 10 alle 14.
Chiunque sia interessato può partecipare gratuitamente registrandosi al sito www.webusabile.it

I temi trattati quest'anno saranno la prototipazione e la creatività.

L'evento sarà moderato da Michele Visciola, presidente di UPA-Italia ed autore del best-seller italiano "Usabilità dei Siti Web. Curare l'esperienza d'uso in Internet".

Keywords: usability, Michele Visciola

Andrey Golub

For those who could not attend the joint event of Edelman/ Technorati, “TOP OF THE ITALIAN BLOGS”, here is the presentation.

Keywords: Edelman, Technorati, Blog

Andrey Golub

THE CO-CALLED ANTI-TERRORISM/ PETROLIUM WARS? :(

NO, IT'S ALL ABOUT THE EMMIGRATION!
THERE ARE 300.000.000 PEOPLE LIVING IN THE USA!

Keywords: USA, emmigration

Andrey Golub

I think I would quite agree with this said recently by Vincent Wright on his MyLinkedinPowerForum networking group.

How Is Your Request Being Perceived?
Top Seven Questions About You And The Communications You Send

1. If you use just one approach to inviting people to your Linkedin network, will all types of people in your network perceive your invitation the same way?  Will one type of invitation work for everyone you know??
2. If you target C-Level Executives, how will the presence (or absence) of your email address in the name field be perceived?  Are you certain that you're not losing business with it? If so, prove it.
3. If you forward a job you have posted on Linkedin, how will it be perceived by professionals who have little, if anything, in common with the job you're forwarding to them?
4. If you are wishing to win business by being endorsed, are you perceived as under-endorsed, over-endorsed, or endorsed "just right" (to paraphrase Cinderella).
5. If it is obvious to the receiver of your invitation that it was important to you to put the most minimal effort in the invitation you're sending them, how do you think your invitation will be perceived?   Do you think it will get you the business results you're seeking - without your investing quality time in your invitation?  (Build a great invitation or two - and reuse it with a little imagination, a little creativity.)
6. If you haven't spoken to a connection in over a year, how do you think your request for assistance will now be perceived after a year of not talking with one another?

7. If you have never worked with someone, how do you think your request for an endorsement will be perceived?  Has anyone ever endorsed you without knowing you or, at least, knowing your work product?

It's the perception, it's the empathy that matters.

Keywords: MyLinkedinPowerForum, Vincent Wright, Linkedin

Andrey Golub

WE HAVE DONE IT !!!

Yesterday night it took place an event of self-presentation of Pietro Martani, MilanIN Member, the owner and general manager of Rentxpress and Halldis. Therefore this night's discussions were all near the Real Estate market and international expansion of Italian businesses.

It was really a very important Event for the Club! Why?
Because it was the first MilanIN-organized Event after the long Italian summer vacation:=), and also because MilanIN has picked up about 100 new Club Members since the last official event.

The fresh people were waiting for a next MilanIN Event, and we (Org-Committee) knew this so we tried to be as much prepared as possible.

Honestly, even if I was sure there will come lots of people to listen to Pietro since his story of success is something really worth to listen, but I could not imagine that there will come SO MANY people!

We were taking pictures, I'll show you later when they're on-line in our Picture Gallery.

As usual for MilanIN, after the night selected speaker's talk, there happens so pleasant ah-hoc networking.

From the new interesting people I met yesterday there was Marco Tabarelli who has impressed Pietro Martani a bit since Marco, after having just arrived, even before the official speech of Pietro, has declared that they two need to speak about a possible partnerships for their businesses in Norway! I found Pietro a bit shocked, probably he did not expect it will be so easy for him to meet a potential business partner through MilanIN.
I continue talking to him: “MilanIN is working! and it will work also for you!”, and that time there was also an evidence of it :=)

I think Pietro has picket up lots of Business Cards of important and probably very useful for his business people. I found him very satisfied at the end of the Event, the Event that has ended btw with 5 bottles of a good Champaign offered to MilanIN by Paccino Cafe` (as a sign of their strong collaboration commitment?).

Well, about the rest it's all the same: there were several great, interesting and important people!

The Org-Team was presented as complete, Massimo has arrived a bit later but we could speak anyway about the latest human-networks initiative of CISCO (Massimo works for CISCO).

There was also Piersergio Trapani (”the volcano”:lol:) and this time he has proposed himself seriously to collaborate with the Org-Team of MilanIN. Let's see! We agreed about a joint meeting later this week for Marketing and Operations Groups, where Piersergio will also come (I hope together with his always beautiful Francesca!).

The other very pleasant surprise was the appearance of Elena Lidonnici, a person we always wished to see as a part of the Marketing Team of MilanIN, but she was too busy with ESSELUNGA's PR :) Yesterday Elena told us she is changing her job and this time it will be something even much important (brava Elena!). Also she told us there will be a surprise for us since she is gonna have more free time to dedicate to MilanIN, and also because her new job should be “in some way” crossing with Social Networking and MilanIN (she did not explain how exactly, it's yet a secret :lol:).

What else?
Of course on of the key figures there was Andrea Falzin, a bit tired this evening, I think he works too much (probably too much for his employer and also for MilanIN) :), Marco Marzagalli, brave as usual (bravo Marco!) :), our “heart” Silvia, well prepared as usual, and also there were few people not yet Club Members but very curious.

Please allow me to skip here my BEST COMPLIMENTS :) to MilanIN's President, since I think I am making too many compliments to him lately and I am afraid he will stop working over-the-top if we thank him too much for this ;)

Well, that's it :)

Keywords: Andrea Falzin, Business, CISCO, ESSELUNGA, Elena Lidonnici, Halldiss, Marco Marzagalli, Marco Tabarelli, Massimo Brembilla, Milano, Norway, Pier Carlo Pozzati, Piersergio Trapani, Pietro Martani, Rentxpress, Silvia Lenich, Social Networking, Andrey Golub

Andrey Golub

Today in the morning me and Andrea had an appointment with a VIP person from a very important multinational Company in their local office in Milan. The subject of discussion, as it was initially planned by us, was to invite that Manager to play the role of a bridge between MilanIN and his Company in the partnerships project. Speaking easy, we were going to propose to that Company to become our partner/sponsor in some Club's initiatives, and we had all the arguments to bring the partnerships project home, but ... :)

but... :), as it happens quite often on the last few months, the person itself had demonstrated a very big interest to be involved personally/with his network/with his money (?) to MilanIN, so we did not arrive to the initial agenda for this meeting (his company).

Well, it's not a pity at all, since we know there are lots of companies that could partner with MilanIN in this venture, but it's really difficult to find a suitable person that could be a MilanIN's representative in the next important Italian city, as soon as the National Expansion of MilanIN will take place (very soon!).

I believe that the meeting of today was really important for the fate of our Club, and I am also very happy that the idea of MilanIN has this magic: Went to get sponsor's money but picked up a potential business partner!

Keywords: MilanIN, Social Networking, National Expansion

Andrey Golub

Mi piace davvero quello che ha scritto Stefano Vitta di BBF2006 ed il modo in quale e` stata fornita connessione WiFi durante il evento! Ha-ha-ha :)

Per esempio questo e` bello: “Ovviamente c’è anche la possibilità di avere una connessione WiFi previa compilazione di un modulo relativo al noto decreto Pisanu. Il problema, però, è che firmando questo modulo do anche il consenso a passare tutti i miei dati TUTTI ad ogni sponsor ed espositore presente autorizzandolo all’invio di materiale commerciali, etc.”
LA STORIA DI STEFANO E` QUI.

Eh Italia, un paese delle meraviglie? :)
Non so, non volevo dire un altra volta lo stesso, ma... AVANTI PER IL MONDO CON FON !!!

Keywords: BBF2006, decreto Pisanu, FON, Stefano Vitta

Andrey Golub

Well, it has happened !!! and there will be no more excuse for the people working with this site via Internet Explorer :)

The award-winning Web browser from Mozilla is now faster, even more secure, and totally customizable to your online life.

PLEASE DOWNLOAD MOZILLA FIREFOX-2 !

AND DO NOT FORGET ABOUT THE EXTENSIONS

Keywords: Internet Explorer, mozilla, Firefox 2

Andrey Golub

As shared in the morning by Matteo Canto, owner and managing director of Aviomar Italiana srl and MilanIN Member, with the people involved/ interested in the Space Adventures project:

Avanti col prossimo cliente orbitale...volo fissato per il 9 Marzo 2007! http://www.spaceadventures.com/media/releases/2006-10/454

Special thanks to Lorenzo Starace for his pro-active communication.

Keywords: Aviomar Italiana srl, Charles Simonyi, Lorenzo Starace, SpaceAdventures .it, Matteo Canto

Andrey Golub

Just forgot to put here the info when it was actual. However it's better late than never, right? :)

MyLinkWiki for LinkedIn | NetworkingGroups

(thanks to Andrea Falzin e Marc Freedman for the signalization)

Keywords: Andrea Falzin, Marc Freedman, MilanIN, MyLinkWiki, Networking Groups, Social Networking, LinkedIn

Andrey Golub

There was a rumor recently today, and now it's confirmed personally by Thomas Power.

Ecademy, a social networking site for the business community set up at the height of the dotcom boom by husband and wife team Thomas and Penny Power, is considering putting itself up for sale. It is thought the business could fetch as much as £20m. The company is understood to have hired corporate finance boutique Unity Capital to advise on a potential deal.

...

The company, which claims to have 100,000 members, enables business people to develop individual online networks to make contacts through its website. It also has forums and blogs for professionals in various industries.

The complete story is here.

Keywords: Ecademy, Thomas Power, Social Networking

Andrey Golub

It's one of my favorite topics about Internet technologies :) My friend know I hate flash (right, those stupid cartoons!) and always avoid flash-enabling Web Sites. And here is another person like me :), presenting few good arguments for why Web masters should not become big flash-lovers:

1. Flash needs bandwidth. Flash files such as bitmap images, embedded movies, and those using sound effects take a moment to load.
2. Flash annoys users. A quiet office or a peaceful night can turn annoying if there are several users of Flash. This is because sound effects, previews and several ads spoil the quiet ambience.
3. Flash disables back button. Meta refreshes and other tricks are used by designers to disable the back button of a website.
4. Flash causes serious trouble to third-party developers. Problems in editing, modifications and charging might occur.
5. Flash are hated by search engines. Not every search engine is able to index and crawl the content of Flash websites. Hence, search engine cannot direct visitors.

So the the Web Site owners still pay to Web Developers for using of Flash technologies for their creatures? :( It's not a question to nobody, it's a cry of my soul :)))

Keywords: flash, web development, search engine

Andrey Golub

I found this report exceptionally interesting, useful and enjoyable! It's true I still did not finish reading the whole paper (it's 115 pages in total!), but it's just because of a great mess with VoIP clients migration at the office:)

• A survey of technology thinkers and stakeholders shows they believe the Internet will continue to spread in a “flattening” and improving world. There are many, though, who think major problems will accompany technology advances by 2020.

“Hundreds of Internet leaders, activists, builders and commentators were asked about the effect of the Internet on social, political and economic life in the year 2020. The views of the 742 respondents who completed this survey were varied; there is general agreement about how technology might evolve, but there is less agreement among these respondents about the impact of this evolution”.

here you can download the paper, on web site of Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Keywords: Pew Internet & American Life Project, technology thinkers, the future of Internet

Andrey Golub

Well, most of you did not probably know, but it was not possible to use PayPal till recently for the people with Location=Russian Federation, and also their pieces of plastic.

The people were using some similar but a bit strange systems. Now it's resolved. Big thanks to PayPal for supporting also Russian e-market! ;)

Keywords: Russia, PayPal