Free wi-fi in Italy

Story 1: My parents recently returned from a trip to the Greek islands. We’ve been able to arrange a Skype video chat nearly every night at aperitif time: every bar had a free wifi connection. Every bar.

Story 2: my friend Gianfranco Chicco recently returned from a 6 month stay in Amsterdam (he’s the PICNIC conference marketing manager) and his main problem in Milan (!!) was to find open wifi networks (let me stress it: not FREE networks. OPEN. He was ready to pay for a connection.

How could you explain this?

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The internet of things in my bathroom

I’d like to thank Paolo Guglielmoni for asking me to write a guest post on his Geek Advertising blog; Paolo is Creative Director at LeoBurnett and has created this fantastic idea of merging his Advertising background with his Geek passion. The site is really worth a look.

If you can read Italian (or if you can stand the Google Italian to English automatic translations) you’ll find my thoughts on Internet of Things and how oure children will laugh at non-connected objects the same way we laugh at audiotapes.

Oh, and I also speak about the Withings, a superbly designed wi-fi scale that has found its home in my bathroom.

Frontiers and the other European conferences

I’ve first met Laurent Haug, Lift Conference founder and CEO, back in 2006 for his conference first edition (my speech was about an assistive technology I developed and patented called Flash Voice); since then Lift growed to become one of the top 5 innovation related conferences world wide (Lift Asia just finished and they have a Lift France edition too).

I’ve talked Laurent about Frontiers of Interaction and how cool was this year edition (hey, all the speeches are available, for free, in videos!) and his was so kind to ask me to guest blog on their site. You can find it here.

Moving a little bit norther you should take a look at PICNIC conference, where our friend Gianfranco Chicco is head of Marketing, which is taking place tomorrow in Amsterdam (my pal Leeander will be there).

I’m really looking forward to host both Lift and PICNIC organizers next year at Frontiers10.