Gabetti digital signage

Posted on 17/09/2006 by admin

Or, as I’d like to say: starting the innovation of the real estate market; Gabetti Open Points are interactive windows we started spreading through italy. They’re a 24h/7 Gabetty agency where you can search for an house or office, simulate your loan, and leave your data to be contacted by an agent.

Gabetti open point These interactive shop windows are built using a supercool fanless hush computer, a 32” Nec LCD screen and a touch-sensible ultrathin film that converts the existing glass window into an input device. Even if the technology isn’t so cutting edge I’ve never seen something similar applied to a shopping experience, moreover if we talk about real estate business.

There’s an interesting effect that we observed as more and more of this open points appear in our shops: the Observers or – as my boss likes to say – the “Broken Window effect“. When you use one of our Open Points immediately a huge crowd becomes visible on your back: curious people that have never ever seen something similar: a shop window that can be touched to interact with a monitor. WOW.

If you leave in Italy (or planning a trip to) be sure to leave a comment here below. We’re starting with a promotional initiative that involves the Open Points and a mass market distribution firm. you could try these machines and also win a 150.000 euros worth prize.

Mobup with GEOtagging now available

Posted on 30/08/2006 by admin

Flickr has recently released a new tool to display geotagged photos and manually geocode existing ones.

I’m very happy to announce that the NEW version of Mobup (v.0.4) is now freely available with a function to automatically geotag your photos using an external bluetooth GPS device.

We’re supporting ALL the external GPS devices that could be used paired with a bluetooth cameraphone. If you don’t have any you could buy one for few bucks on eBay (I’ve bought mine there, and it’s plain great!)

All the Mobup geotagged photos are visible not only on Flickr and its maps but also on our very own mash-up prepared by Tom Landspurg.

Sigurtà Garden: a bad example of italianity

Posted on 20/08/2006 by admin

Update: be sure to give a read to the comments below.

I spent last friday with my family in one of the least known and most spectacular gardens in Italy: the SigurtÃ garden. it extends over 125 acres and was built in 1600; it hosted ancients VIPs such as Napoleon the 3rd and is open to the public since 1978.

It’s really a jewel and since a few years we visit it once per year to be astonished by its treasures. We like to rent a golf-kart to go through the garden since its quite huge (more then 6 kilometers of drivable paths): it’s a enjoiable experience and the best way to experience the various sights the garden offers.

The cost of the kart is 12â‚¬ per hour and it can hold a maximum of 4 people (don’t ask me why, this is the park law).

After this long intro let’s go directly to the reason for this post (with a subject so unusual here on Yellow Line . We took the cart at 3pm and enjoyed a wonderful visit to the park (they use electric power and have a pretty poor top speed, so it’s confortable for a man follow the kart by feet).
We were 5 + Francesca (Barbara, my mom and dad, my sister and yours truly) BUT – for the last 500m – my father reached us on the kart and once of the park patrol immediately stopped us asking for one people to leave.

When we left the kart (it was 5pm) at the rental office they asked us an extra amount of 3â‚¬ per hour for the extra people the patrol reported driving the kart (I don’t want to go against this decision, we made a mistake and it was ok for me to pay for this. I made the sum and lend 30â‚¬ to the officer, but then he asked for other euros since – he said – we took the kart at 14.35 (I was sure – as previously said – it was 3pm since I had a call frpm Barbara in the very moment they gave me the kart keys, and my phone took the call at 15.02pm).

So we had to pay the extra half-hour EVEN IF we didn’t ejnoied it. 37euros against the scheduled 24â‚¬ (+6â‚¬ of ticket for our error) with no receipt from the park officer. I complainded strongly about this but no money was refunded.

This is my first effort to keep everybody aware of this (the park is plenty with foreign tourtists): keep track of the time you take the kart and double check it’s the same time they write on the voucher.
I’ll then forward this post to the park director citing the name of the employee who asked for the money.

Thankyou for your attention. Now back to the usual topics on user experience, cameraphones and eyetracking.