ostinelli|net

Stone Balancing & Happy Holidays

Roberto Ostinelli — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:21:43 +0000

Here it is. August, again. I’ve been having my holidays earlier this year, something in line with the fact that I’m everyday more looking for persons and avoiding people. Therefore, in a few days I’ll be back and stay at home during all August.

Though, I do realize many of you will soon enough leave to seek for their own time out. This is my best wishes to you for a relaxing and enriching summer holidays.

Today I was on a wonderful beach in southern Sardinia, called Cala Fuili. All the stones there were just unresistable to me, as I realized that it’s been two years since the last time I’ve been spending some quality zen time at stone balancing (aka rock balancing).

Here are my latest stones, up for you all.

Happy holidays.

identi.ca launched!

Roberto Ostinelli — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:29:42 +0000

A new microblogging service has been launched yesterday, called identi.ca.

It is almost a Twitter clone, but the source code of the platform running the service, laconica, is open source and contents are copyright by the contributors and available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. It implements OpenID and is heavily based on XMPP, which should ease up scaling.

In these day, Twitter is experiencing serious scalability issues on which a lot has been written and discussed. Seems therefore that identi.ca is benefiting from this to increase its visibility, and I have to say I’m quite impressed on how the number of its subscribers is groing fast.

Certainly, Twitter has been the first popular microblogging service, which has mad up our minds on the usage and communication possibilities of such services. For many reasons, it is therefore interesting to see how this evolves.

Btw: for those who simply adore getting their desired name on new hype services, this is the time to register ;)

OpenSpime Monday

Roberto Ostinelli — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:51:09 +0000

Those who follow me on Twitter may have already known that some exciting news about OpenSpime were going to come out today.

So here it goes! I am happy to announce the launch today of:

the OpenSpime Developer Network;
the OpenSpime protocol website;
PyOpenSpime, the first OpenSpime library written in Python.

Curious? Here’s a technical video introduction to OpenSpime.

See you in the OpenSpime Developer Network to discuss projects and implementations of OpenSpime!

What happens in FaceBook, stays in FaceBook

Roberto Ostinelli — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:02:02 +0000

Food for thought.

AdSense for FeedBurner

Roberto Ostinelli — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 11:28:25 +0000

Two days ago FeedBurner has enabled its users to include AdSense in their feeds. Yep, you read it right, not only in the post themselves, but in the feeds too.

Seems a logical evolution to do, since often feed readers do not visit their authors’ websites. But somehow:

feeds were born to ease the gathering and reading of news, though the last thing I want is something that slows me down in this process;
AdSense has often seemed to insert meaningless and inaccurate ads along with the associated web page.

This is enough for me to hope that authors will seriously consider, before inserting these ads in their feeds, the reasons (plural) why they might be doing so.

Google, iPhone e GPS

Roberto Ostinelli — Sat, 31 May 2008 22:44:39 +0000

Segnalo rapidamente due articoli interessanti:

codice di geotagging è stato trovato dentro alle SDK dell’iPhone, il che ovviamente lascia aperte speculazioni plausibili sull’inserimento di sistema GPS sul 3G iPhone di prossimo rilascio;
Chi segue un minimo l’evoluzione di Google, non può non sapere degli sforzi che Google sta facendo relativamente allo sviluppo di algoritmi di triangolazione con i ripetitori, cosa che abilita funzionalità di posizionamento di telefoni cellulari senza l’utilizzo del GPS (peraltro spesso inutilizzabile al chiuso). Sembra che il gigante californiano sia prossimo a lanciare servizi di geolocalizzazione a larga scala attraverso le API di Google Gears.

Tutte cose alle quali sono ovviamente interessato, soprattutto nell’arco delle mie attività presso OpenSpime. La internet of things passa anche da questo.

Songza, the music search engine and juke box

Roberto Ostinelli — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:47:48 +0000

Mi sono già occupato di siti quali Musicovery e Pandora, che permettono la scoperta di canzoni in base ad algoritmi di prossimità basati su assonanze e recommendation engine di carattere sociale.

L’altro filone dei portali di musica online è relativo al fornire la possibilità di ascoltare pezzi il più rapidamente possibile, appunto come un jukebox. Aveva avuto il suo piccolo successo ProjectPlaylist.com, che era poi riuscito ad accapparrarsi addirittura il dominio playlist.com, prima che gli piombasse - come spesso accade - la RIAA addosso (seppure a tutt’oggi il portale sia ancora aperto e funzionante).

Vi segnalo su questa linea Songza, che si presenta come ‘the music search engine and juke box’. Nulla di nuovo, tranne qualche (a mio avviso) inutile tentativo di estensione quali la possibilità di twitterare in modo più o meno diretto il pezzo che si sta ascoltanto. Trovo sia però sempre utile seguire l’avvenire di questi tentativi, se non altro per capire vari elementi e sfaccettature della continua lotta sui DRM.

Al Gore’s independence promise for Current Tv

Roberto Ostinelli — Sun, 25 May 2008 18:20:16 +0000

A lot has already been written on the recent SKY’s event in Rome, “Al Gore meets the bloggers“, where the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize has introduced to Italian bloggers his concept and visions regarding his latest project, Current Tv.

I was particularly interested in repeatedly hearing Al’s promise for Current Tv’s independence from any private or public organization. Here’s a video I’ve filmed with some relevant extracts.

At the end of the show, David was able to have a few words with him, and quickly introduce OpenSpime. Al was kind enough to wish us good luck in our project :)

Bloggers

Roberto Ostinelli — Sat, 17 May 2008 17:32:06 +0000

Alcuni di noi si riconosceranno. Con affetto, a tutti i bloggers :)

First OpenSpime message on Twitter

Roberto Ostinelli — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:55:12 +0000

Sometimes I just let myself go to simple pleasures in life. Check out the first ever OpenSpime Twitter authenticated message ;) More to come.

Interested? Follow us on the OpenSpime Developer Network!