Oh and, it’s late night here and I got about a couple of hours to make the video so don’t mind me looking kinda weird:

http://blip.tv/file/786463

I wasn’t sure if I should post this but, hey I just can’t shut up.

I’m working with couple of groups on a few projects. The thing is, sometimes I’m really disappointed about how some research project management [setup] and design tasks are done here at the university.

So, the guys are usually from old school: emails (communication) + MS Word (documentation). Now, this was a bleeding edge like, how many, 10 or 20 years back?

Here’s a little [recent] story. A guy is writing a spec doc using wiki, emailing the link to the group asking for a feedback. “Finally! someone’s getting it right”, I thought. Guess what: “uhm.. this isn’t good. we got our golden standard: MS Word”. Well, the guy copies & pastes that into MS Word doc.

Some people modified the document (you know, the review feature) and email it back; some others (like me) just email the comments. Now, of course I wanted to read the others’ comments too (hey, yes, we’re talking about collaboration here) but here it is: OpenOffice just don’t want to show it to me! Oh man.

“Guys, not that I don’t want to but, sorry I can’t read your comments…”. Right, so someone converts the reviewed MS Word doc into PDF and email it back to me. I finally got to read it all, and of course I had my comments on their comments too. I send another feedback in plain text back: conversion to MS Word, email, back to MS Word, PDF, email,… you get the feeling, don’t ya?

Well, poor guy couldn’t figure out any more where it begins and where it ends. I guess, he just started almost from scratch.

My question is, is it a real collaboration? Oh, come on, give me a break! Please, just try at least get acquainted with new concepts and technologies we have living in 2008!

• Wiki. “Wikis are used in many businesses to provide affordable and effective Intranets and for Knowledge Management”
• Instant messaging. See “Practical Use in Enterprise”
• Shared calendars
• Chat rooms and forums
• … and a lot more!

Aw, did I mention social software? Aw, and did I forget to mention that you can push all that stream (of course, including emails) into a RSS feed?

What? Oh come on guys, give it a try, at least!

I guess the problem is, it is sometimes (rather often here) hard to deliver this sort of information to a boss (the guy who doesn’t know much of technology) in a comprehensible way: advantages that gives you a certain new technology. And the project managers who work directly with those bosses often afraid of the new stuff - afraid to fail and be blamed for that.

I was about to “wtf, are you kidding me?! I hope we’re not in 1938 and 1938media doesn’t think the US represents the “whole world”. Just kidding.

Fortunately (for me), Daniela posted a YouTube link (I didn’t realize to check on YouTube in the first place) and some comments too.

Although, Loren Feldman always seemed funny to me, besides that Chris found an incredibly nice and simple way to describe what data portability is about to everyone:

Here’s another thing: “Google = Evil”, says Nicco:

About two months ago I noticed that Google was marking my website, nicco.org, with a notice that said “This site may harm your computer” as part of natural search results […]

[…] I immediately contacted Google and was directed to StopBadware.org […]

“We have received and processed your request for review of your website, nicco.org/. Google’s most recent test of your website found no badware behaviors on the site. As such, the Google warning page for your site has either already been removed or should be removed shortly.” […]

- replied The StopBadware Team a couple weeks later.

[…] “Should be removed shortly” my ass. It’s almost a month later – March 10 – and my site is still marked as badware. […]

[…] What is going on? I am really, really angry. Google thinks they can simply decide I am evil, and no one should visit my site, without any justification and with no recourse?

Now, these issues might not seem connected with the net neutrality but it certainly feels like every time a startup enters the BigCos they want control, more control, … and even more control! The feeling of power, right. Well, that’s wrong. I can’t stand it, I’m gonna have to bring up this quote: “With great power comes great responsibility”.

Well, I can understand Google might feel responsible for the services they provide to their users, but not this way!

What do you think?

Now, I’ve come across Russell Beattie’s post: Peep - an Open Twitter Server and thought why not to start-up kinda “twitter service” in Italy? Like, settle up a deal with the major providers (Vodafone, Wind, TIM, and well Three too maybe), run something similar to what Russ did, and setup an SMS-to-jabber box.

Anybody knows if that exists already in Italy? never heard of such a thing though… btw, I was just wondering how many italian twitters are there.

If someone’s interested drop me a line (hey, yes, I do speak italian :).

Since then I’ve got now a lot more reasons why I should actually do it. One of them is I’ve joined DataPortability group. I’m still more of a spectator than a contributor - my job’s really keeping me busy these months. But I figured sooner or later I’m gonna start doing something for real so I needed a place where to experiment, too. Well, it isn’t just about data portability or social networks. I’ve got some nice ideas (well, at least it looks like it so I thought I might start-up digns.com company at some point.

Right now, I’m just really happy I finally got to my blog and I’ll do my best to keep it updated.