Telecommunications Etiquette

Fantastic! I’ve been vindicated! On page 15 of this week’s Economist there is an article about SPAM and SPIM and communications etiquette. It’s interesting as they cite the historian Matthew Sweet who notes that the telegram was initially seen as an intrusion, as well as the phone. He gives a funny example of a woman in 1903 who received a phone call while she was dressing and then, after, reflecting on the experience realised that she had just had a conversation with a man as if they had met on the street – except she was totally naked! Hah hah! It makes me think of all the times I’ve answered the phone while on the toilette! Watch out blackberry! Anyway – I thought it was interesting.

Urbino’s Web Radio

Congratulations Big Brother!

This evening at 6 pm Urbino time, Alessandro Bogliolo is hosting the public listening of the 1st hour of programming for the University of Urbino’s web radio project. I worked on this in the early stages, and just want to say how happy I am to hear that its now going live! Congratulations everyone! Good work!
I think the link is www.radio-campus.it. But if that doesn’t work after this evening, the link will be on the UWiC web site. I want to listen to it too!
Again – good work everyone!

Here’s the press release

As suggested by Prof. Bogliolo, here’s the press release that explains our participation in his computer science course. This is going to be fun! I say “our” because I mean WAKE UP MADISON – ITALY IS CALLING!!!!!!

Hee hee!

I’m at work now (don’t tell!), so I’ll leave you for now! Here is the link to the PDF file. Reality Show Press Release

Busy busy!

Man – it’s been too long since I last wrote! It’s been really busy here. First let me catch you up.
As I said a while ago, I started working for a company (can’t say the name!) on a web-radio project here in Madison, Wisconsin. I started on September 2, already almost a month ago! First impressions? Nice building, friendly people. Lot’s of space. You can really tell that it’s new. There are two of us working on the project, me and my supervisor. He’s a really nice guy, we have lunch together often. It’s great because there’s a bar very close to our office. Actually, it’s not a bar, as they don’t serve alcohol! They call it a cafeteria, but it’s not part of our business – it serves a number of businesses in the area. Kind of like a diner. They make good sandwiches which is important. Cultural note number 1: lunch is from 12:30 to 1:30. We have to “punch in and punch out” with cards like a bank card. Actually, we “swipe” the cards, but the expression they use here remains from when the employee time machines made a hole in a paper card (“punching”). My supervisor told me this the first week. We “clock” a 40-hour week, and get paid over-time for all work we do above that. My supervisor is responsible for the project development, so he has to make sure we’re on schedule, this requires a lot of overtime, but I’m learning alot!
I haven’t met everybody at work yet, there are people in accounting and payrole that I haven’t met. They gave me a brief tour of the company, but I’ll be honest, it’s alot to remember. Anyway – the people in my department (research and development) are pretty nice. It’s also a relatively international group, with me from Italy, a programmer from India, a technician from china (who’s also finishing a doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and an Irish guy who is in charge of testing. It’s really nice, because everyone here knows what it’s like to be from another country, or has worked closely with people from another country, so I get lots of help and advice.
My supervisor (I can’t reveal his name, but we can call him Frank) has told me that this area of the United States had a lot of Scandinavian immigration in the late 18th and 19th centuries – which has influenced the accent and culture. The general Wisconsin accent (as far as I have heard) is really clean and easy to understand. It reminds me of the accent uses in Halifax, Nova Scotia (where mum is from).
I’ve also heard that there was an article in the newspaper regarding Professor Bogliolo’s use of my blog in his course teaching! We’ll be famous! Heh heh. This is really cool, I’ve already got a comment from Ilaria from the Economics Faculty in Urbino. Hi Ilaria! Thanks for the comment! I am really enjoying my stay in the US (although I haven’t found Salmo pond yet). I’m also happy to answer any questions you have or tell you anything I can about this experience! Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Big Brothe (Prof. Bogliolo), could you send me a copy of the article? I’ll post it! That reminds me! I think I’ve convinced my coffee friend Kate to enrol in the Urbino CS on-line course. Prof. Bogliolo could put her to work, I’m sure! I haven’t found out whether she’s enrolled yet or not. So, we’re all one bit international family! Feel like putting in your two cents? Comment please!

Today’s idiomatic expression is: “to put in your two cents” – it means to contribute your opinion to a discussion.

That’s all for now – I’ve got to get back to work!

Unbelievable!!

Wow!!! I have been contacted by Professor Alessandro Bogliolo from the Computer Sciences department back home – he wants to use my blog as the base for an on-line English language course in Computer Science! It’s really nice of him to think of this, but I didn’t know a blog could be used for this!!!!!! It sounds pretty strange, but great! Do I get royalties (heh heh)?

This is really exciting! It’s “university Big Brother” and the blog will be my confessional room!!!!

Anyway – I’ve pasted Prof. Bogliolo’s message here below – and responded to his e-mail a resounding “SI – D’ACCORDO!”! He will send me the partifculars by e-mail, and I will keep you all informed!!!!

 

From: Alessandro Bogliolo

To: Roberto

Cc: md@sti.uniurb.it

Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2007 22:41 AM

Subject: proposta

Caro Roberto,

ho avuto modo di leggere il blog in inglese che hai aperto in vista del tuo stage a Madison e mi e’ venuta un’idea…

Forse hai saputo che dal 2007/08 il percorso online del nostro corso di laurea adottera’ la metodologia CLIL (content and language integrated learning) per insegnare agli studenti la lingua inglese insieme alle discipline del corso. Esperti docenti di lingue stanno sviluppando un nuovo corso di inglese online per il quale occorre una story line.

L’idea che mi e’ venuta e’ di impostare il corso come un reality di cui tu sia il protagonista. Il tuo blog potrebbe essere lo strumento di osservazione che utilizzeremmo per collegare il corso di inglese alla tua esperienza di studio e lavoro. Con il tuo consenso potremmo ispirarci liberamente alla tua esperienza ed eventualmente utilizzare i tuoi stessi post (che da quanto posso giudicare sono scritti in perfetto inglese) come spunto per alcune lezioni.

Che ne dici?

A.B.

PS: Fammi sapere al piu’ presto perche’ il corso avra’ inizio in ottobre e c’e’ molto lavoro da fare per organizzarlo.

(Micro)WaveCamp

Finally I found where the torrid summer was waiting for me: in Sesto Fiorentino last week at the WaveCamp!

As soon as the organizers realized that the temperature inside the MediaCenter tent was well above 40 C, and that nobody was around in the morning, the schedule was dramatically changed and the WaveCamp was renamed MicrowaveCamp, being much more affected by the sun than by the sound.

Nevertheless, the barcamp was interesting and the Saturday afternoon session was great, with at least 3 worthwile speeches:

1. the analysis of network infrastructures made by Stefano Quintarelli;
2. the announcement of the cooperation between FON and the University of Urbino, made by Alessandro Bogliolo (see the picture below…) and Stefano Vitta;
3. the discussion with Manlio Mallia, a SIAE representative, about copyrights and new media.

Alessandro Bogliolo talked about the role of open wireless access networks in the diffusion of web communities, and conducted a comparative analysis of FON and UWiC. FON is creating a worldwide community of users who share their own internet connections. UWiC is creating a regional dense community of users who can access free wireless services without even going to the internet. The objective of the cooperation between UWiC and FON, which has been announced at the WaveCamp, is twofold:

1. creating a worldwide dense community by offering open access to free services worldwide
2. developing a worldwide wireless campus offering wireless connectivity worldwide to university students.

I hope both goals will be met very soon!

From Manlio Mallia I’ve learned that SIAE fees are not too high for a non-commercial web radio. That’s good news for URC@!

The entire session was streamed by robingood.tv in real time, but I’m not sure that the videos are still available on the web.

My camera didn’t work (probably because of the temperature, since it is working properly today) but I found great pictures of the event on flickr, like this one

which is highly representative of the status of the campers, this one

where miss wavecamp wears very well a nice UWiC top, and many others.

Total minutes vs Uniques

Nielsen NetRatings has introduced “Total Minutes” as a new statistical tool for measuring the total engagement of people in a web site. According to the new tool, Google is no longer the top ranking web site. Moreover, while Google is the first web site in terms of unique access in each country, the ranking in terms of Total Minutes changes from country to country.

I’m not sure that the time spent on a web site is a good measure, since it depends on the service provided by the web site. For a search engine like Google, the less time I need to find what I’m looking for, the better.