3 months running (and counting)

Back in mid May I futurized a 10Km run after 30 days of training; I was far from being credible but guys here I am, I reached (and broke) the 10Km limit yesterday in a one hour, partly under a smooth rain, evening run near home (10,42Km, 1:00:08; 5′ 45” per Km).

I had to move really far from home not to fall in temptation to stop and go back: since my body wanted to relax my mind was forced to choose different (physical) paths to keep me moving forward and more distant. I’m really impressed on how much the nikeplus system was strategic to achive this result: it provide me with music, statistics on the run (eh eh) about time, distance and speed.

I recently reprogrammed my training so to be based on time more than on distance so to force me to properly manage energy and speed: I used to run very fast – 4 mins per Kilometer – at the beginning, and slightly moving down to 6 mins per Kilometer at the end of the run), the result is that I’m increasing the distance ran in the same time (thus increasing the medium frequency).

I’m really starting to love running; it makes me feel better, healthier and more mentally relaxed. I burn stress and I can free my mind of every thought but the feeling of my body, the feet, the legs, the arms. Once finished I really feel nicely tired, satisfied. And it’s a nice discussion topic too (my morning breakfast barman is a runner too and each and every morning asks me about my latest achivements :-) ).

Nikeplus is genial: easy to install, easy to use, one button to fire it up. But guys: let our web site experience enhance with the next release and – please oh please – provide me with a solution to the lack of data pairing between iPod and iTunes after I substituted the shoe sensor. I can say i already tried with no effect this, this and this.

Things too cool to be silenced

It’s been really a lot this blog is now under silence due to my new home moving operations (more on this soon, promise) but I’ve recently been parte of a couple of things that are just too smart not to be written here.

Gabetti Real Estate map mash-up

Gabetti Map Search V.1.2

We just released the brand new map search for Real Estate listings on the Gabetti site; it’s a .NET application mounted on top of ViaMichelin API that you could use to look for an house in a specific area in Italy. The geodata are collected from the huge Gabetti listings database and placed straight on the cartography.

We’re actually in semi-private (you should be a registered Gabetti site user; registration at the site is public and free) BETA and are collecting users feedback to improve the application.

Uh, as a side note Gabetti is the first real estate company in Italy to have such an application.

Frontiers of Interaction 4

Frobntiers of Interaction 2008

This year the conference will talk about the more and more computerLESS World we’re living in. You can join us on Tuesday, July 1st from 9am to 5pm for a FREE DAY (lunch & breaks included) in Turin (Italy) (complete info on venue here).

My pal Leeander has really done a marvellous job for this year edition collecting a supa-dupa speakers frontline: Nicolas Nova, Bruno Giussani, Bruce Sterling, Elizabeth Churchill (Yahoo Inc.), and many more.

As said the conference is completely free but reistration is required; use your Yahoo id to subscribe on the Upcoming page.


My video introduction to Frontiers of Interaction 2008 from Matteo Penzo on Vimeo.

UPDATE: the conference has been a huge success; you can see all the talks video and the photos; we’ve been featured on a major Italian innovation newspaper and on Wired too!

Conclusions

I really feel bad not to have updated the blog in the latest weeks, but I had the chance to store a nice amount of things to say and still need to have the calm time to fix some aspects of my private life; that’s why don’t expect to find me here too soon.

Call to action: take part at Frontiers of Interaction and give a try to the brand new Gabetti Map Search.