Looking at the current US campaign from Italy is somehow curious since we don't get US TV here. Are there other candidates besides Howard Dean?

Italy 'heads piracy shame league'. Italy has the highest level of video and DVD piracy in the western world, according to a report. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Heh... we can't wait for the next DRM to hit the market to have something new to play with ;-)

How much will it take to fix email? One? Two? Five? Ten years? Whatever, at some point somebody will figure out how to stop this madness.

Then, later on, I'll be probably sitting on a sofa with a grandson on my lap, surfing the web and finding this post I will produly tell him: "See? It wasn't always like it is now".

Today, in 2004, I'm receiving messages from computers trying to infect me, messages from people claiming I tried to infect them, messages from server all over the world telling me I'm not supposed to send email to somebody I don't know and I have never tried sending any message to.

I'm seriously considering quitting my email client.

PS: no kid, don't worry, in these days I'm running an operating system most other people is not using which consequently does not get infected by computer viruses. It's made by a company named Apple. What is Apple? Well... this is another story...

It's great to have Technorati back. The new version is cool, fast and efficient. I find Technorati to be the most useful utility for bloggers, very important to make my blog the social tool it is today.

Dina Mehta: My Blog is my Social Software and my Social Network.

I have always thought about weblogs as one of the pillars of "Social Software", even if recently I have seen the term used to indicate sites such as Ryze, LinkedIn, Friendster, Ecademy and in the last few days Orkut.

I have joined all these services, but so far I have not met anyone I didn't already know somehow, at the same time blogging in the last two years made me meet a lot of friends, partners and customers.

I'm not saying that these services don't work, I have played a little fith LinkedIn recently and I'm planning to try to use it to find new prospects, but they didn't do any magic. This weblog did.

Files 'overloaded' Mars probe. Hundreds of data files accumulating on the computer belonging to Mars rover Spirit may have crippled it. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Looks like we are not the only ones getting stuck with useless log files from time to time ;-)

I hate spam just like everyone else. I find totally untergeted spam (like some spam I get in Chiese) quite irritating, but I found this piece of spam kinda fun: at Magician's Gallery you can get a suspension chair 20% off. "Would you like to add fifty to one hundred dollars to every birthday party you do?" ;-)

Yesterday I received my copy of iLife '04. The official reason for the purchase was to get the latest version of iPhoto: with more than 2500 photos stored the older version had become unusable. The true reason was to get GarageBand.

I've been playing only for a few minutes with this new app, and it really looks nice. I'm no musician (I did study piano for a few years and I can more or less hold a guitar), but I guess I'll release here some GarageBand creation: it's simply too cool.

Now... which CC license should I use? :-)

PS: Yes, iPhoto '04 works quite well.

The New York Times has been using RSS successfully for quite a while now, this is why I'm asking. A very interesting and useful feature of the NYTimes site allows you to see all articles relative to a topic. For example, here's the Dean, Howard topic.

Now, wouldn't it be cool to be able to subscribe to the RSS feed for a specific topic? The Times News Tracker is a paid service now. Not only I would probably pay for such a service (something I wouldn't do to get email), but I'm sure companies would happily pay for corporate accounts to be able to add customized topics' feeds to their intranets aggregators.

As the developer of a topic-based RSS aggregator I can see huge advantages from such an approach.

Also: is the list of topics used by the Times public? It would be great to be able to use an ontology defined by the NyTimes. We have a simple OPML-based format for available, but even some other kind of complex and powerful topic mapping format would do: it would probably be a simple byproduct for the Times, but a good base to build new parts of the web.

About two years ago we learned that we were supposed to leave the apartment we were living in. Back then we decided to find some land and build our home.

They started building it last year, in March.

After endless struggling with real estate agents, banks, builders, plumbers, electricians, painters, carpenters and a whole list of other people, last week-end we finally moved to our new home, during the two most rainy, windy and muddy days in San Martino del Carso history.

Waking up yesterday morning with a bright sun (sigh) shining on our bedroom window has been beautiful.

For the first time in years we are taking stuff out of cardboard boxes instead of putting it in. This also means that now I will have again time and mind to fully concentrate on daily work and writing on my weblog.

Amazon protesters release priests. Three priests seized by people campaigning against an indigenous reserve in Brazil are freed but protests continue. [BBC News | World | UK Edition]

For a second I thought it was still an issue with OneClickBuy[dot accent] or something like that ;-).

Dave's new experiment is definetly going somewhere.

I have posted the OPML list of feeds I read to the server, an now that it is polling my list to track changes. Cool.

The next thing I'd like is doing this the other way around: having my copy of Radio polling Dave's server in order to be able to subscribe to additional feeds (and possibly keeping several aggregators in sync) simply clicking on a checkbox there (checkboxes are already available).

The server could also smartly suggest additional feeds or, comparing my preferences with outher users', automatically subscribe me to new sources.

Until not much time ago you only needed one Apple computer to be cool. Now you need at least a cluster of 100 G5 to be considered. Once you have plugged all your Macs, Apple's new Xgrid is what you need to get them working together, with zero config.

I'm starting this year with a brand new phone. For the last 8 months I used a Sony Ericsson T68i, but I've been disappointed by this phone. It's true that considering the feature-set it was cheap, but the fact that I had to reset it every few calls because for some reason it randomly stopped working made it a pretty poor phone.

So I went back to Nokia, buying a 6600. This has been a totally weblog-driven purchase: I picked the 6600 after reading Joi Ito's and especially Russel Beattie's weblogs.

It took a while to get it working properly with my Mac (it's not supported by iSync), but after some googling I got it to synchronize with my Address Book (pictures associated with people in the address book are sent to the phone, cool) and I can get on-line via bluetooth/GPRS with my PowerBook on the road.

The built-in camera seems to be almost usable: I can take a picture and send it via email right away, which is kind of cool. The included Opera browser works pretty well and the screen is big enough to let you do some web surfing directly on the phone.

Another cool feature is the ability to use any midi file as a ring-tone and ring-tones can be associated with specific users or groups. I guess I'll let people in my address book choose which song they want to be associated with when they call ;-)

Okay, it's a week old but it's still pretty new, uh?

I have great expectations for this 2004, it's beginning in a far better way than 2003 did.

2003 started with fears of a war to get rid of Saddam Hussein. 2004 is starting with the hope of elections to get rid of the current US administration. The additional good news is that it looks like weblogs and the web in general can influence this process, at least a little.

On a professional level, having just split up with our VCs in December 2002, 2003 started full of doubts: will we be able to survive on our own for the next year? 2004 is starting with the knowledge that we did quite well last year, we managed to develop a cool new product and we have plenty of ideas for this new year. I have a great team of partners and a great group of customers, we'll do wonders in the next months.

On the personal side, 2003 started with the project of a new house and some empty land. In 2004 we will finally be able to move to our new home.

So, happy new year to everybody. Thanks for being here, fasten your seat belts and enjoy the ride: it's going to be fun.