Author: atrasatti

Born and raised in Italy, US resident. Innovator with a soft spot for developers. Currently director of developer advocacy @kin_foundation, previously @Samsung_IoT, @Nokia, an advocate of the open Web

BREW grows

According to this press release it seems like TIM and Sprint are going to include BREW services on their networks.
Ok, the press release actually does NOT say it, but you will agree with me that joining a Qualcomm conference entitled “BREW Your Way” can only mean that participants have something to do with BREW.
TIM has never had this kind of services and my perception was actually that they never wanted to be “entangled” by a single software and solution provider. They have the Openwave gateway, they have Ericsson wireless cells, develop a lot of software internally, run Sun servers, run some services with BEA, some with Tomcat and so on. They certainly haven’t selected a single big provider.

It will be interesting to see which services BREW can provide that TIM could not provide before.

UPDATE: I just found another article about it and it much more explicit (but short)

Smartphone usage report

M:Metrics releases some statistics every month. Statistics abuot value added services for mobile devices, of course.
Every month our PR team concentrates on a different topic. This month is about smartphones.
It is interesting to see the differences in Europe and USA. I think it is particularly interesting to note that RIM and Palm are leading in USA. These devices might more PDA’s than smartphones, but once again it is hard to draw a line between a “normal phone”, a smartphone and a PDA.
In Europe UK leads the way and this is not surprising. I have to add that UK leads the way also with regards to internet usage, online gaming and more. In this field Italy really falls far behind, unfortunately.

Click HERE to read more.
More statistics are available for free in the Press Release setion. Enjoy.

Britney Spears? No, thanks

I am in Madrid and the hotel only shows Spanish channels, plus a couple of French, RAI Uno from Italy and another couple of German channels.
Among the German channles there is VIVA. It’s a music channel, much like MTV, so I can watch it… Or actually listen to it.

Last night I found my new favorite “pop-trash” group: Shanadoo. It seems a Japanese group (also the lyrics are mostly Japanese from my understanding), but the site is mostly German. I don’t know much, but if you like trash-pop, then you HAVE to listen and watch the new “King Kong” video. BTW you can also buy it on iTunes or Amazon.

What’s up?

I have been quite for almost a month here. Certainly not because nothing happened, quite the opposite, too many things happened and I could not find the time to post on the blog.

In short, I joined M:Metrics, if you still did not know it. New consultancy, new duties, new things to see and learn, many things to follow. And all the old ones such as WURFL, of course!

M:Metrics is a company that makes measurements and statistics about mobile devices usage. Many techniques are used and many statistics are generated. This new consultancy is very interesting for me, because my previous experience has a great value for them (mobile devices, VAS development and WURFL, of course) but it is also a new world for me as I have never worked in this kind of company. Most of the times I had to generate simple graphics or CSV files that would be elaborated later. So this is a totally new experience for me as we collect data and then we have analysts generating reports about the usage of mobile devices and VAS.
Device descriptions are really important and this is why WURFL is central in my current occupation. You will soon be able to see the results of my current work.

Among the other things, a new WURFL was released.
It’s been 6 months since our last public release, not because we did not do anything, quite the opposite, we did so many things that we always felt like we could do a little more before releasing. This is a BIG update, thanks to our regular contributors and many developers from around the world we are able to provide a new XML with more than a thousand real devices!

This is not all, of course! The Wireless FAQ is coming back and we will need support from everyone to bring it back up-to-date and make useful. Expect a new launch soon.

What about the W3C? Yes, I know, I am following many things all together, but I can’t resist, they are all so interesting. The DDWG charter is almost completed and we are just refining the last bits in the documents. I will attend the Workshop in Madrid and I am in the Programme Committee, which means that I have to review the position papers and proposed presentations.
I am looking forward to the workshop as we received a lot of attention from many big companies (that I can’t name) and I can tell you that it will be very interesting.
All position papers and presentations will be made public after the workshop, so everyone will be able to read them.

Right now I’m in London in the new M:Metrics offices, 5 minutes from Piccadilly Circus. Today is mostly sunny, so a nice day, considering that it always rains around here! 😀
I will be back in Milan at the end of the week. Next week a few days of vacation, then a week in Milan, then Madrid. This is going to be the busiest summer I ever had!

Seattle Strange Things

I have been in Seattle for three days now. These are a few things that attracted my attention. Things that seemed strange or at least different for an Italian visiting this big country.

First things that catch your attention are things very near you… The bathroom! 🙂
The bathroom, in my hotelroom, has two lights. One is a standard light to actually see when you are in the bathroom…. The other one is to HEAT. It’s one of those lights that you also see in some fast foods or places where they want to keep food warm. It’s right above the WC and feels warm while you’re under it. Today, when I was going to take a shower I left my towel under it and it was a little bit warm when I got out of the shower. It probably did not have enough time to warm up more. Amazing!

Second thing are buses. I take the bus to go to the office. Yesterday was the first time I took it. Interesting thing is that in the very center of the city there’s a “Ride Free Zone“, which means that you can use the bus for free. You get on and off anytime you want. If you get on in a ride free zone and get off out of it, you will have to pay the full price of the ticket.
I think it’s a cool service because anyone can move around the center of the city for free without a car. Sounds like a good idea not to use a car. “Downtown” is actually bigger than the Ride Free Zone, but still seems a very good initiative.
Bad thing about the bus fares is that during the rush hour you pay MORE than during normal hours. This does not seem like an incentive to avoid using the car during the hours in which there’s the highest traffic problem.

Third thing, but probably most people who lives around here already knows it: it rains all the time.
Funny thing about it, though: most of my co-workers don’t use an umbrella. It seems like they are so used to the rain that they don’t “avoid” it.

New opportunities become reality

Tomorrow I’m leaving. I will fly to Seattle and stay there for a week. I will be back in Milan on Sunday 28th.

I will hopefully also have time to read emails and maybe write a little more here.

Funny story
I told my parents about a new work opportunity. I told them I am going to fly to Seattle. They are all excited and happy for me. Too bad I can’t really explain to them what I do. Not because I’m a CIA agent, but because it’s just too technical and too specific. They just know I do “stuff for the phones”. Funniest thing my mom says is “If only you had gone out play with your friends instead of playing with the computer!” (which was a Commodore 64)

Anyway. I’m really excited about this trip, I can’t wait to be there. Lots of new things to do.

About freedom

In Italy, like in many other countries, gambling is illegal.

Gambling is legal only in casinos that are managed by the Italian government, there are 4 or 5 in total.

In the last few years some gambling machines commonly called “video poker” were legalized. These machines were legalized with the excuse that there’s a fixed rate of wins. Players may not win money, but tokens. Tokens can only be used to play again OR spent to buy something in the same place where you played. For example bars have them, if you win you can get a coffee or a sandwitch or something else. You basically trade them.

How do online casinos relate to all this? Is it legal for me, that I am Italian and live in Italy, to play an online casino that is in some foreign country where casinos are legal?
According to a recent law in Italy, it’s not legal if the casino did not request permissions and paied the fee, of course!

What if I want to access one of these site? Click here to see it.

In short, the page says that you may not access the site because it does not respect law number 266 of Dec, 23rd 2005.

What makes me think most about this, is how the government decides that I may not gamble. I am happy that they want to protect me and make sure that when I go to a casino there are no tricks and that they don’t steal money, but blocking my browsing is a little bit too much in my opinion.
What if one day I reached the Italian borders and got asked “What are you going to do in Switzerland?” and I reply “I am going to a casino” and the officer told me “You can’t go, because the casino did not agree with the Italian government the rules of each game”.
Isn’t this the same?

Also, how do you technically realize this block? Is the Italian government going to provide a list of blocked IP’s and all the Italian ISP’s block them? How quickly are the casino sites going to buy new IP’s? How quickly will they change domain names? How about proxy servers? May I access those sites using, say, a French proxy? What if I use a modem, connect to a French ISP and get on the casino site? Are they going to control my telephone line? Spy all the packets going back and forth on my computer?

I am not the kind of person that wants to protect his privacy at any cost, but this feels a lot like an intrusion. Technically it is going to be a big problem to keep track of all sites and IP’s. Sorry, but this does not seem like a definitive solution.