Paolo blog: Ramblings on Web2.0, Trust, Reputation, Recommender Systems, Social Software, Free Software, ICT4D and much more

I’ll be in Milan on March 31st at the University of Milan-Bicocca. More than 200 Italians Internet Citizens will gather to Propose an Alternative to Italia.it. Read the press release and join us!

Ritalia (http://www.ritalia.eu) has officially launched today in an effort to breathe new life into Italy’s tourism portal, www.italia.it. The initiative serves as a focal point for anyone interested in discussing, developing and defining the guidelines to evolve the national tourism site. Ritalia has quickly developed into a web phenomenon in Italy, growing spontaneously through word of mouth, as more volunteers offer their professional services.

This is an entirely grass root event: in a purely hacker spirit, Italians will unite to contribute their love, passion, knowledge and skills for the country they love. It is fresh news that Marco Ottolini, the previous “Project Director” of Italia.it recently resigned and he will be at rItaliaCamp as well! I cannot at all forecast what we all will be able to accomplish but I can already feel the power and the passion. Join us, it will be unforgettable!
Read also Robin Good’s Crowdsourcing Italy’s Tourism Portal: Italian Independents Get Together To Rethink Italy’s Institutional Web Site - RItalia which explains in detail the history and how this mad crowd gathered online. I see you in Milan on March 31st then. It will be fun. And passion.

I know this blog seems to be turning just into a list of videos and what is even more depressing (for me) is that I was nowhere near to foresee that videos would have been so powerful and spreading over the Web. Anyway, this is too cool not to embed here (note I don’t speak about “link to” but “embed into”). Read Sony Announces Ground-Breaking, 3D Online-User Community for PS3 Called “Home” or watch the video.
It seems a lot like SecondLife (I just saw SecondLife once while at a BarCamp in Turin) but the strong point for Sony is that it is installed by default in every PS3 box so this can be huge!

First (1) look this video on Youtube

Then (2) consider this news on BBC that says Robots could one day demand the same citizen’s rights as humans, according to a study by the British government.

Then (3) it is finally the time to go to watch The Second Renaissance, one of the short anime films which form part of The Animatrix collection.

Then (4) it is time for reflecting and trying to understand where this world is going and what you want to do about it (do you start feeling the jack on the back of your head? I do).

I’ve been interviewed on Radio24 about CouchSurfing, the best hospitality social network in the world! It was only for few minutes but it was my first time on radio and so I post the file here so that in future I’ll be able to find it again. If you are interested, you can download OGG file (in Italian).

You can see the video on the chinese section of new italia.it portal (also uploaded on Youtube or embedded in this post). I know my (Macaronic) English is far away from perfect but I would expect a better message from our Vice President especially when he wants to convince people to come to Italy, and considering he has people working for him writing the text and he had the chance to film it as many times as he wanted. Actually after watching it, I feel too feeble for making any comment, so I’ll just write down what he said because I think I need to see the words to let them go.

Please
visiT the Web site buT
please
visiT
iTaly.
We’re
the best country in the world in terms of
culTure,
landscapeS,
arts,
history,
cities,
villeegis,
beautiful
countryside,
seaside,
mountains,
that is Italy,
you know or perhaps you’re dreaming about,
but please,
visit our country
we will welcome you warmly,
and with a beTTTer organization.

UPDATE march 25, 2007:
Backstage of Rutelli video “Pliz, visit Itali”