Vic Peacock's blog

Startup status does not last forever!

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Mon, 21 May 2012 20:49:00 +0000

Reading this post on the reasons why Path and Flipboard are no longer adopting the Lean Startup model, my intuition tells me that the true reason is because they are no longer startups.

It probably does not make sense to stay lean when you need to scale. Scaling is a big effort that require a heck of resources. When a company decides to scale, it can no longer afford to make pivots. Yes, because there is a committment on the infrastructure which renders even small changes extremely expensive.

This means that when you decide to scale, you must do it right. And to do it right you need to have learned everything about your business.

So, I believe that Lean Startup has its own scope and it is a mistake to try to apply where it is not appropriate.

Google Knowledge Graph: a further step towards the Semantic Web?

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Mon, 21 May 2012 19:46:00 +0000

...maybe yes!

According to Google, Knowledge Graph is the new frontier of Web Search. From the video below, it seems that Google was able to build a huge semantic network that will be exploited to retrieve semantically related content to a query.

However, it is not yet capable to fully understand natural language queries such as those showcased by PowerSet a few years ago:

1. Books on children

2. Books for children

The above queries differ only on the prepositions: "on" vs "for". Standard search engines get rid of these words in the indexing phases (they are "stopwords". Unless the content is indexed differently there is a minimal chance that the right results will be selected for the different queries. In other words, for Google the two queries are identical.

If you think that you may overcome this problem by putting the query into brackets: "books on children", Google will only return results that contains the string "books on children", which is not exactly what we are looking for.

Being a book ON children means that the book should tell stories about children. This is a PROPERTY of the BOOK object. More precisely is the value of the attribute TOPIC for the concept BOOK (if you speak RDF, it would be the triple topic(book, children)).

I don't know what exactly are the plans at Google, but if they really want to make progress towards the Semantic Web, they should turn their "classical" indexes into an RDF version of them where the text of the pages is semantically parsed and the semantic roles extracted. This is a very computationally expensive task (well, IBM Watson did it).

But it is not enough. Google should also process the query differently, i.e. without removing stopwords like prepositions as they carry essential semantic meaning as in the above queries. The technology for doing this already exists and it is also quite effective. I am sure Google is onto it.

Spam ads

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Sun, 20 May 2012 19:13:00 +0000

Google's contextual ads are too "contextual". For instance, when you visit your own GMail spam folder, it prompts you with an ad for the term "spam", as you can check from the picture below:

You might notice the "Ginger Spam Salad" recipe link that appears over the "Delete forever button".

This phenomenon allows me to talk about "Word Sense Disambiguation", a Natural Language Processing technique that Google seems not using in this situation. Basically, Google is not able to distinguish between the two senses of the word "spam" (corned beef and unsolicited mail).

Lean vs Fat startup debate: an argumentative analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:21:00 +0000

From this vid eo:

Watch live streaming video from disrupt at livestream.com

Mr. Ben Horowitz has pointed out three alleged flaws of the Lean Startup Model:

1. It presumes when you have achieved product-market fit. The supporting example was about measuring success of products over time. iPods did not sell as fast as iPhones, and on that basis Apple should not have introduced other iPod models after iPhone.

This argument is flawed because, first Apple is not a startup. Second, and most importantly, Lean Startup never said that one should use metrics from another products to assess the product-market fit of a product. In the example, exactly because of the risk of cannibalizing iPods, Apple decided to introduce new models (i.e. to do a pivot, as Lean Startup suggests).

2. Lean Startup presumes that once you have product-market fit you can't loose it. The supporting example, is Netscape that once had the product-market fit, but lose it when Microsoft included Internet Explorer in the OS.

Again, the fallacy resides on the fact that Netscape was not a startup. But more importantly, this was not a problem with customers needs, but rather than an external factor that forced the users to accept Microsoft policies/strategies. Horowitz points out that they "did not have the luxury to address the issue in the Lean Startup way". That's not a "luxury", is a rational way to adopt if a company cannot afford to splash milions for crashing new product development. Actually, it is the Fat way a luxury that startups cannot afford. In such a case, Lean provide a way to achieve decent results with a fraction of "Fat" resources.

3. Lean startup implies or assume that there is no competition. What if prior achieving product-market fit, even if the market is large, a scary competition appears. The supporting example is taken from VMWare who take care to invest money in order to be ahead of open-source competitors like Xen and big scary competitors such as Microsoft.

The argument is obviously fallacious because, first not even VMWare was a startup, but secondly because if crashing massive resources to gain competitive advantage works well, this does not necessarily mean that Lean doesn't. When it is not possible to deploy brute force to deal with competitors, Lean offers smart tools (like David and Goliath). One idea is to elicit niches where competitors are weak or not considering so that the startup can avoid direct competition and possibly erode the main market. Lean Startup is in that sense compatible with the work of Christensen's work on disruptive technology and emergent markets.

The problem with Horowitz is not business skills; it's LOGIC. He provided three fallacious arguments against Lean Startup. I also believe that Lean is not universal and there are many contexts where it does not apply well (e.g. large established companies for mainstream products). Also, Lean Startup advocates that once the business scales, the conditions change and probably the methodology is no longer applicable.

Besides, a Fat startup model has several problems, among which "premature scaling". Horowitz was unable to explain how the Fat model could be beneficial for startups as he showed only Big Companies examples.

On the other hand, the Willson's argument was much clearer and plausible:

"Wilson’s argument focused more on how to maximize the probability that entrepreneurs will get favorable exits. He boils down the formula to: (Founder’s Stake) x (Probability of an exit) x (Size of the exit). Wilson says to focus on the first two variables. Accepting more funding will dilute the founder’s stake, but it isn’t going to proportionally increase the probability of an exit (which is based on far more factors). In other words, it hurts the likelihood of a favorable outcome (at least from the entrepreneur’s perspective). Likewise, he says investors are looking to mitigate risk, which is why investing small amounts when a company is young is in their interest."

However, he only focused on one of the many benefits of the Lean Startup model: the reduced need of initial resources. Lean Startup is a comprehensive methodology that make sense for startups (possibly with a few exceptions), and it has several facets.

My personal opinion is that Lean Startup can help startups in finding the right direction towards a sustainable, profitable business model by incorporating failure in the product and market development process. Failure becomes a learning event, which allow the startup to "rule out" the failing paths (or pruning, to use a Computer Science terminology, the "dead branches" of the business opportunity search tree) very early in the process.

Lean vs Fat startup debate: an argumentative analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:21:00 +0000

From this vid eo, Mr. Ben Horowitz has pointed out three alleged flaws of the Lean Startup Model:

On the other hand, the Willson's argument was much clearer and plausible:

"Wilson’s argument focused more on how to maximize the probability that entrepreneurs will get favorable exits. He boils down the formula to: (Founder’s Stake) x (Probability of an exit) x (Size of the exit). Wilson says to focus on the first two variables. Accepting more funding will dilute the founder’s stake, but it isn’t going to proportionally increase the probability of an exit (which is based on far more factors). In other words, it hurts the likelihood of a favorable outcome (at least from the entrepreneur’s perspective). Likewise, he says investors are looking to mitigate risk, which is why investing small amounts when a company is young is in their interest."

Divergent thinking

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 07:40:00 +0000

Dear Readers,

I would like to resume my blog today with an Easter egg.

I stumbled upon this talk given by Tina Seelig about Divergent Thinking and related subjects.

Divergent thinking, when combined with convergent thinking results into Design Thinking.

Design Thinking is what is needed to create new things and change the world. Sometimes people only see the "convergent" side of this process, because they can only see the result of it. Instead, ideas generation is the most challenging part and often hidden. Even Steve Jobs, before getting it right, have explored plenty of designs he did not hesitate to throw away if they did not meet his standards.

Nobody get it right from the beginning. But everybody is able to explore the search space of ideas. But also people are afraid to explore this, possibly large, space because they can get lost. Moreover, many assume that sharing one idea means believing that the idea is the best or the right one from the perspective of who generated it. This a wrong assumption. Generated ideas are not right or good. They are just ideas... that need to be validated. Ideas are assumptions, and assumptions need to be validated. Only after this process, one can say if they are good or bad. If you don't do that, you are simply biased.

This is where convergent thinking unfortunately kick off prematurely. Once an idea is generated, instead of taking position in favor or against it, one should think about how to validate it with a neutral standpoint. Validating, means setup experiments and put the idea at work. Sometimes is very straightforward and brainstorming might be sufficient. Some other times, it can be very challenging and it would require a complex experiment.

In no case, an idea should be classified immediately as a non-sense. Moreover, ideas can be tweaked and made feasible and valuable just by changing the some assumptions that don't work. That is "morphing". As I said before, nobody get it right from the beginning, but there is a high chance that they get it "almost" right.

Another situation is when some assumptions are believed to be validated and in fact they are not. When implemented, these ideas fail just because some of their assumptions were believed true and in reality they were not (e.g. customers like it because I like it). In these situations, one has to have the courage to throw away work done and start from the beginning. This is called "pivoting".

In my opinion, if pivoting is required often later in the process of developing an idea, it means that too little has been done in the "divergent" phase of design. In other words, ideas were not explored adequatelly.

In the divergeng phase, one can use the "re-framing" technique. This is when, one tries to see things from different perspectives. The idea can be the same, but you look at it in a different way. You do this when you say "let's see this as it was that". In other words, you can use different metaphors.

As pointed out by Tina Seelig, metaphors are a very powerful tool to change perspective. Metaphors are orthogonal to ideas. Of course, adding an additional dimension makes the process more complex and difficult to manage. However, the chances to find the best idea are higher.

Dealing with metaphors requires to see things differently. If you see ideas differently, the assumptions might change and turn out to be validated. This is something we do for instance when we change market segments or consider a different use of a product. Well, in reality we don't do this, our users do. Yes, because they are not biased like us by "convergent" thinking: they are naturally "divergent".

That is why, "validated learning" is very helpful. Validated learning is a technique promoted by the Lean Startup Model proposed by Eric Ries. The idea is that assumptions are validated through the building of a Minimal Viable Product (MVP)t that users can test and provide feedback to. Then you learn by measuring the feedback and then iterate the process by integrating what is learned in the next version of the MVP.

To conclude this post, I would like to stress that being a Design Thinker might be challenging if you work with "convergent" thinkers. They tend to see in black and white whereas you see colors. They see one dimension where you see two (like in Flatland). They blame you to bring distraction where they need focus. They see threats where you see opportunities. And most of all, they fear "pivoting" because they have focused so much energy in developing one single idea that throwing it away would represent a big failure for them.

Design thinkers know that faillure is the only way to success and they are just fine with it. For 100 bad ideas there might be a good one. They know that the only way to seize it is to rule out the other 99.

So don't be disappointed if you don't find what you expected in the Easter egg.

Happy Easter to everybody!

Vincenzo

iOS developer... kind of wanna be :-)

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 10:41:00 +0000

I enrolled the Apple's iOS developer program and getting ready to start development of iPad/iPhone apps. I am really excited because it is something I was not doing (developing software) for a long time. In fact, I was able to teach programming but being a developer is something else.

(Well, I developed software in Prolog, but that's something else...)

I really like XCode IDE and the features of Objective-C. I plan to become proficient as I believe that the future of computing is with mobile devices and the cloud. That's also Apple's vision and I am willing to play a role in it.

More to come... stay tunned!

It is never too late...

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 08:45:00 +0000

Today I choose to be positive!

Finally they installed power plugs in Swiss trains as you can see in the picture. It's certainly useful but it comes when now laptop batteries have extended time life. It would have been more useful a few years ago when batteries lasted only 1-2 hours.

Next I expect to have Internet connectivity when nearly everybody will have their mobile Internet plan on mobile devices.

One lesson learned is that innovation bust be deployed in a timely fashion otherwise it becomes obsolete or useless.

Providers of public services need to understand that. If users ask for a new service or an improvement, that means that they need it NOW! They must react fast even with a suboptimal solution.

If I am really hungry, every kind of food will do the job.

Apple iOS5 location-based reminders for Just in Time/Place task assignment

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:21:00 +0000

RemindersApple introduced a new feature in the new iOS 5 that could open several opportunities for developers. As described by Apple here:

A better way to do to-dos.

Next time you think to yourself, “Don’t forget to...”, just pull out your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch and jot it down. Reminders lets you organise your life in to-do lists — complete with deadlines and locations. Say you need to remember to pick up milk during your next shopping trip. Since Reminders can be location based, you’ll get an alert as soon as you pull into the supermarket car park. Reminders also works with iCal, Outlook and iCloud, so changes you make update automatically on all your devices and calendars.

I have explored location-based reminders in one of my works on Kinetic User Interafaces. I instantiated this type of reminders to a shopping-list (UbiShop) scenario where a shared shopping-list is used to send reminders to people when they are located in a place where items in the list can be purchased (e.g. near a grocery store).

This not the only application of location-based reminders as it is applicable to several other situations. I called this "just-in-time/just-in-place" task assignment. You can find here a research article on this subject.

If Apple will provide API to manage location-based reminders within the OS for developers, what I have conceived can become a true reality. I am very excited about that and willing to dive into it.

You can watch below a video made by some of my students who implemented a prototype of Just-in-Time/Place reminders for the UbiShop scenario.

Hype

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 19:32:00 +0000

a real-life exponential growth!

Apple iTunes App Store glitch

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 09:18:00 +0000

As it is common for many people living in several locations, I have several iTunes accounts. It happened I purchased (well, it was free, but technically it's the same) an App from the Swiss App store which has now been removed. However, the app is available in another country's App store for which I have an account.

Now, when I am connected to this App store my iPod detects an update of the application (from a different country's App store from which it has originally purchased). When I try to update it, it asks me again the original country's App store account password, which I provide. But the result is that it bounces back to the other App store and tells me that the app is no longer available.

Currently, I don't see any workaround for this problem.

Of course, it is in general very annoying having to switch from one account to another for updating the apps (including selecting the different iTunes stores and wait that everything loads).

Google Translate Mistery

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 19:20:00 +0000

This is funny!

It seems that Google Translate uses prediction as in Google Instant Search but in a strange (and inconsistent) way.

I was looking for the English translation for the Italian "andare d'accordo".

I typed the this: "Andare d'acc" and Google immediately translated into "get along" (see picture below):

Then, once I completed the expression, Google changed its mind and gave a different (wrong) translation:

(Note that "Agree" translates into Italian "essere d'accordo")

I cannot actually explain this strange behavior. Any comment about that is really welcome. :-)

Interview on Digital Natives on RSR

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Tue, 11 May 2010 19:07:00 +0000

I have been interviewed during the LIFT 2010 conference by Radio Suisse Romande (RSR) and the interview has been broadcast today as part of the Médialogues program. The episode (and the interview) is now available as a podcast on the RSR site.

Question de génération

Le multimédia à travers les âges. [podfoto / fotolia]

Le multimédia, il y a ceux qui ont vécu avant et ceux qui sont nés avec.

Connexion internet, téléphonie mobile, réseaux sociaux, abondance d'informations, comment vit-on avec suivant son âge?

Quel effet cela produit-il entre les différentes générations? Quelle est la perception de ceux qui ont 20 ans?

Avec Julian Zbar, étudiant à l'université de Lausanne, intervenant à LIFT 2010, Vincenzo Pallotta, chercheur et professeur d'informatique à la Webster University à Genève, Gaetano Stucki, consultant nouveau médias à Cinémas Tous Ecrans et Sacha Brasseur, consultant pour le Festival du rire de Montreux.

écouter

télécharger la chronique

Lift Workshop @ Webster - Lift conference

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Tue, 11 May 2010 12:12:00 +0000

Lift Workshop @ Webster - Lift conference (18th June 2010)

Human Language Technology for the Information Society

Natural Language Processing is at the core of information technology, especially now that information is pervasive, distributed and easily accessible.

In this event we will gather researchers and professionals in the field of computational linguistics to discuss around the current challenges and implications of processing natural language for the information society.

The event is made of two parts:
1. In the morning and early afternoon, the scientific workshop DART2010
2. In the late afternoon, a panel of local researchers and professional in the field of Human Language Technology. Each panelist will give a short presentation and afterward the panel will answer question from the audience.

The full event is free of charge and it will be followed by a cocktail offered by the Webstr University Geneva.

Why must I always restart my computer in Windows?

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 11:03:00 +0000

Look at this alert:

Shame on both Adobe and Microsoft because I don't really see the need of restarting the computer to install UPDATES of an application. This of course never happens in Mac-OSX or Linux.

From the user's perspective this is an ANNOYING service disruption. I agree that my applications should always be up-to-date, but I cannot accept that I have to stop, wait for reboot and resume my work just for updating applications.

This is not something that happens sporadically, it almost always happen and, worse, the user is almost never warned in advance that the system need to be restarted before installing the updates. This is a system design flaw which affects system's usability. Usability is not just fancy, colourful or transparent GUIs as it seems Microsoft is almost exclusively focusing on. I believe that these guys has to think about a more holistic view of usability which of course includes the notion of UNOBTRUSIVENESS. In other words, please help me in doing my work without hassle.

My book published!

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:46:00 +0000

Cognitive Language Engineering

Towards Robust Human Language Technology

Vincenzo Pallotta

Abstract: Human Language Technology is essential in coping with today's information overload. To scale up, it must be robust and capable of making sense of noisy data. This book explores the topic of cognitive language engineering as a key for robustness. It can be used by students and practitioners alike, as a computational linguistics textbook and as a toolbox

for building robust natural language understanding systems.

Keywords: Language, Computing, Linguistics, Information, Understanding, Cognition, Intelligence,
Knowledge, Semantics, Software.

About this book:

"Pallotta's insight and critical discussion of the underlying mental models are core issues of present-day cognitive language engineering" [Prof. Hon. Giovanni Coray, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Switzerland].

“From a computational linguistics perspective Pallotta's book provides students and researchers with a powerful toolbox and many examples of real-world applications.” [Prof. Rodolfo Delmonte, University of Venice].

"Pallotta’s work on cognitive language engineering is a stimulating and well written treatise on models for computer applications that can interact using natural language. Practical and robust natural language systems begin to become a reality with this
fascinating work." [Dr. Afzal Ballim, Computational Linguist].

Number of pages: 407

ISBN: 978-3-639-21814-5

Price: 79 Euros

What's wrong wih Google Wave?

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:26:00 +0000

I am among the "fortunate" users (or better testers) of Google Wave preview (thanx Radu!). Nowadays, there must be many Wave users around...

After so much hype, I am feeling skeptical about Google Wave.

First of all, it is not a compelling technology: does not fill any gap. Google made us familiar with products that came at the right moment to solve compelling problems. Google always did it very efficiently. But now it seems quite different. If conversely, Google is trying to create something new, then Wave does not feel as something new or dramatically different. I have the feeling that somebody is telling me: look, watch what we can do with current web technology! Isn't this amazing or miraculous?

Second, it is not "simple" (in the Google's sense): it is not just about features; it is more about usability. The Wave client present itself as a kind of white canvas where you are expected to do something. But you don't know what to do. Well, there are many functions that remind us familiar applications such as e-mail, IM or social networks. But in what Wave is different or similar to them, is hard to tell. Shall I use it as e-mail, as a chat, as a wiki? Any old familiar usage I choose would make Wave overshooting. The feeling is that you end up thinking: "so what now? I could do the same with XYZ".

Third, it is an early beta product. It does not crash, but many menu funcions are grayed. Something appears and something else disappears... I understand that it is a preview, but we are accustomed with the Google's quality of beta products (e.g. GMail). If I look at Google Labs prototypes, the quality is much better. I also noticed a new way of promoting products: Wave has been announced long before its release as a "revolutionary" technology. It should not be Google in saying this. This should emerge from its usage as it has been the case for Google Search. This approach is more similar to European practices in innovation where great headlines appear long before the start of a project and whose results always deceive expectations (e.g. the Quaero search engine).

So, far the above are, I would say, "minor issues". The main problem is to understand what Wave actually is.

I asked myself two questions:

1. Is Google Wave a substitute of asynchronous Internet communication?
2. Is Google a collaborative technology (such as Wikies or Blogs)?

For question 1, of course there is persistence in the (possibly asynchronous) Wave conversation. But also real-time: synchronous conversations. But you are not free to choose! If you write a message in a wave and some participants are online, they will see you typing (or interacting with a widget). Is this something that people really want? When I need to interact synchronously, I use IM or Skype. If I use e-mail or discussion forums it is because I don't want to interact in real-time with the recipients.

For question 2, what kind of collaboration is enabled by Wave? Threaded discussions are nice, but they already exist in various forms in discussion forums (e.g. USENET newsgroups) or in even certain CMSs. The real difference here is that you can "discuss" in real-time and possibly hide some piece of discussion to some participants.

For what I can understand for the first impressions, I think that the Wave client is misleading. The client is hiding the potential of the Wave platform. Wave is a protocol and a client-server technology. When a Wave server is running, any client application can interact with it through APIs. This means that anybody could design a different client for interacting with Waves. If this is true, Wave makes much more sense.

For instance, one can imagine applications that combine not just Wave technology but any other Internet technology such as VoIP or social media. Waves become containers of content that can be exchanged between people both synchronously and asynchronously, in a transparent way. Moreover, Wave robots can participate to the interaction and provide additional services. (By the way, Robots remind me IRC's bots that could read the incoming messages and react accordingly).

What I expect from Google is to provide us with some compelling use cases for Wave. Not just fancy demos of two maps that can be moved at the same time, but real collaboration scenarios.

It's always someone else's fault...

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:48:00 +0000

Dear readers,

I urge to express my opinion on what I think is the most spread attitude in the world. I notice everyday that people (unfortunately including myself) tend to look for external causes of unpleasant events and situations. It is a pervasive phenomenon: in politics, in family, at work, basically everywhere!

That's not the way it should be. We should try to look at ourselves first, and consider our share of responsibility in bad situations. This doesn't mean that we are the sole responsibles: that would be the opposite extreme. But, what if we recognize that we are, to some extent, contributing to what we don't hesitate to blame? Even if we are not directly responsible of some mistakes, we can never be sure that we did not contribute (even minimally) to them.

One common example, which I believe this kind of intolerance spans from, is family. Family is often the sandbox of intolerance where members train themselves to blame each others. The first reaction when something wrong happens is to find the culprit... Why we don't just try first to calm down and find a solution by assuming that we are all equally responsible for what happened. After all, one could say: if you did not cause the problem, at least you did nothing to avoid it!

Do I have a cure for this disease? Yes, I do. Well, it's very simple measure but hard to put in practice. It needs a lot of effort and good will. We must change attitude towards people near us. We need to admit that we are responsible in a way or another and we need to help each other to find a solution. We need to step back and change perspective and attitude: from inquisition to understanding.

Don't get me wrong. This does not mean that we have to forgive who committed wrong actions or crimes. It's just that we should try not jumping at conclusions that have as the only goal to save ourselves. We are all in the same boat!

Finally, I write this because I realize that it is this attitude (a kind of unjustified rage against the others) that is causing most of the problems I had, have (and will have) in my life. We cannot change the world if we don't change ourselves first. The first step is admit and take our responsibilities. The next step... I don't know. Maybe this would be just enough.

Telephone companies: no more voice, please!

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 09:23:00 +0000

This message is addressed to telephone companies. They struggle in understanding that there is a new world outside: the Internet! Please, let us choose how to communicate. Please, free us from the tyranny of telephone numbers and land-line cables.

At home, ADSL can be replaced by cables or optic fibers to convey more rich media. Telephone numbers can be replace by a wealth of VoIP services (Skype, Google Voice, etc.).

Thes VoIP services can now run on all mobile phone platforms (iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, etc.). This means that classical voice communication is no longer needed to be offered by the telephone carriers. Only Mobile Internet (UMTS, HDPSA, etc.) at reasonable rate is indeed necessary.

Internet replaces telephone communications for good. They are cheaper, richer and more efficient. But telephone companies seem not understand it. They keep offering rates for both voice and Internet communication, while it would be reasonable to offer them separately.

I hope that somebody else will agree with me and start a movement to fight this tyranny.

I work in one of the "top 10 universities for adults" in the world.

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 08:25:00 +0000

MSN encarta published an article where it reviews the top 10 universities for adults.

Here is the motivation:

Webster University, St. Louis, Mo.
Webster focuses on practical majors in areas such as procurement and acquisitions management, and human resources development. That's one of the primary reasons 96 percent of Webster grads find jobs or continue their education within six months of turning the tassel.
Course schedules are flexible and students might take advantage of exchange or travel-study options. Dual-degree capability and a strong alumni network can help motivated grads land a job more easily.

I currently work as an adjunct professor at Webster University's Swiss campus and I am very proud to be part of this institution.

Support the economy: spend more and pay less income taxes...

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 15:50:00 +0000

I wonder if this idea has also been explored and discussed. I don't know how to search for it. So, I simply state it and see if somebody reacts.

Everybody agrees that economy is healthy if people spend money by purchasing produced goods. Everybody knows also that when you buy goods you pay one tax: TVA.

So, the reasoning is simple. One of the reasons why I cannot spend money for purchasing goods is because I owe income taxes to the state, which in turn already takes money from me through TVA.

So I propose that you pay income taxes only on earned money that you don't spend in goods and for which you already have paid TVA. This measure would push people in spending more their earned money because they can deduce this money (not the TVA, but the whole amount) from incomes taxation.

You would pay instead taxes for earnings from financial speculations and interests.

My question is: is it feasible? Are there any problem with this proposal?

I really hope somebody react to this post.

The future of Italy is in its past.

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:05:00 +0000

Where are the economic opportunities for Italy? They are mostly in its past!

Where exactly? In its culture heritage, in its wonderful resorts, in its beautiful lifestyle full of art, music and fine food.

If you were about to choose a place where to install a R&D center for a big company, would you chose a place where living is easy? Yes of course!

But why this does not happened in Italy, which fulfills this requirement? The answer is simple: all the rest is missing!

What is basically missing is infrastructure for business, lightweight bureaucracy, an international environment (Italians who live in Italy barely speak their own language), business and technical skills of local people (here I mean not just managers, but ordinary people), competitive universities and research centers.

So what? Maybe our last chance to survive an economical disaster is to capitalize on our past: history, art, fine food, music, ... Somebody already calls Italy the "World's Disneyland". Why not? Entertainment is big business and we possess the necessary "know-..." What is missing now is the "how"!

Where is Italy?

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:27:00 +0000

EUROPEANA is a new initiative to bring the European's cultural heritage to the Internet.

It is a huge digital library that has been by the European Digital Library Foundation.

Here is the list of participant insitution and as you can see (this is at November 2008), Italy is missing. Yeah, Italy the craddle of "renaissance" culture with Da Vinci, Michelangelo etc. is not part of the effort.

Italy is again missing an opportunity of being part of the cultural discourse that is developing in Europe.

Multi-touch input: when is it really needed?

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:40:00 +0000

Multi-touch input is an emerging input modality where several point of pressure can be detected on a surface.

To a great extent the success of graphical user interface was that it was possible to perform direct manipulation of graphical objects with minimal effort, namely pointing and clicking. The mouse lies on the table and does not need to be continuously held by the user. Then, switching from mouse to keyboard is very easy (even better with touchpads in laptops).

Now with multi-touch screens the user has to make the additional effort of point on the screen with two hands. I see it comfortable only in the situation where the screen is a tablet. But still in this case the multi-touch feature is not really needed because the user hold the tablet with one hand and interact with the other.

If the multi-touch screen is a tabletop as in the case of the Diamond Touch or the Microsoft Surface, then I see a possible comfortable use, especially for multiple users.

Then there is the case of multi-touch input on portable device such as the iPhone. In this case I believe that the multi touch feature is not really necessary. Users of mobile devices use only one hand and one finger.

A strong case for multi-touch input is touch pads in laptops. As in the case of the new Asus EEPC and the new Apple MacBooks, the possibility of making gestures with two touch points is very useful. This is true because when the hands are on the keyboards the two thumbs are naturally located on the touch pad affording for combined movements.

My conclusion is that multi-touch input is not applicable everywhere and one shoud be careful to not force the user in making unnatural physical movements for interactions that can be made effortlessly with simpler input devices.

My political position...

noreply@blogger.com (Vincenzo Pallotta) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:01:00 +0000

I participated to a survey on political issue in Switzerland issued by Perspektive Schveiz and I got this nice diagram that shows my political position compared to the views of political parties and average people in Switzerland.

I am very proud of this result because it combines liberality with left-wing views, often considered (mistakenly) as incompatible.