English

That was pretty exciting. A free, big, enlightening event about the “Google Stuff”… Ok, ok. Who spoke with me here knows that it was NOT so enlightening: most of the knowledge they brought from USA is and was already available on the web. But that’s probably not the point. The point is, I believe, to share. Share the culture, the vision and… the APIs. The Venue: Wembley Stadium!!! I went there for mainly two topics: Android and AppEngine. About Android, the presenter, Mike Jennings, was very funny (and you will see him as the second presenter in the video below) and a “great character”. But his knowledge of the Platform was pretty basic. I believe he sort of Project Manager or something like that. Plus, in the second part they invited to do a “technical talk about the SDK” a guy, Carl-Gustaf Harroch. He is developing an application that involves a bit of LBS (Location Based Services) and some Google Maps. Ok nice, but he straggled quite soon with our questions about… almost everything of the SDK. And, yes, I was quite bastard with my own questions. Come one: how can you do a talk like that without even knowing “enough” what is the meaning of the Tags within the AndroidManifest.xml? He was even quite young and not very confident, and he was unable to introduce the basic concepts before talking about more complex and in deep stuff. At the end, quite disappointing session, I must say. Probably, I knew more about it :-P . The USB freebie ;) About AppEngine, I went to a “CodeLab”: a session where you are supposed to code. And I did, focusing more on my own Python code. They were available for help and questions, either about the application they proposed to build, or about your own. “In chair”, Mano Marks: confident. Probably too confident. But, at the end, he was helpful, even if an answer or two where quite “upsetting” (I mean: if I ask a question about something you don’t know, and I tell you that you are wrong, don’t be arrogant and confident; wait and see my proof!!!). Now, let’s see the Keynote: ...

Deadly Funny!!! [Original Source: Zein’s Blog]

Today, 10th of September 2008, the final, complete, clock and anti-clock wise test of the Large Hadron Collider was a major success. The LHCis working and ready to start to “crash protons”… and probably blow up your (our all) mind ;) . 4.5K-1.9K: brrrrrrr Some interesting links (that are updated on a frequency of 15/30 minutes): LHC Cooldown Status - It shows the temperatures in the different sectors. While they were testing it was on an average of 1.9k!!! O_o ...

Some scientists working on the LHC at the Cern of Geneva had a cool idea to make people aware of “what” they are going to do. On the 10th of September there will be the First Beam (more info on the official website/blog), and I like the way they make sure people understand it’s NOT the end of the World. My personal answer to them is: Hey man, this shit is good! ;) ...

How can I say it without being unpolite with M$? … I simply can’t! [Original Source: melablog.it]

I don’t have an answer to this, it’s too early (we don’t even have a screenshot of it). But I strongly suggest to take a look a the Google Chrome Comic Book: a very new, fresh, funny and precise (!!!) way to introduce an incoming software. They discuss a lot of different topics: * Problems they wanted to solve * Performance * Process Isolation * Javascript VM and Performance * Sandboxing * Phishing and Malware * UI principles Very interesting. And, again, very innovative. Ah, the Rendering Engine they chosen is… WebKit (what a surprise!!! ;-) ) and… it’s fully open source. An early leaked screenshot follows. ...

In the last period I’m spending some time working with Google AppEngine: if you don’t know what is it, be ashamed! :P I would like to highlight a couple of interesting resources that can make the life of who works with this framework/hosting platform/cloud computing system easier: * [Google AppEngine Cookbook](http://appengine-cookbook.appspot.com/) with a lot of good recipe (there are few now, written by the Googlers, but I'm sure it's gona blow up soon) The App Gallery, with a lot of interesting applications already in production phase ...

Google finally announced the winners of the First Round of the Android Developer Challenges. There are 10 x $275,000 prizes and 10 x $100,000 prizes. $3,750,000 in prizes!!!. Not bad I must say. There are some pretty cool apps, with a very clean and nice UI: demonstration of the power and flexibility of the Android Graphical Widgets Framework. Take a look at them in the official gallery. Congratulations to the Winners!!!

There is this article from the Financial Times that I would like to link here but, because it needs a registration (that I strongly support you to do), I quote it here: Italian party seeks to block new mosques By Paul Bompard in Rome Published: August 25 2008 02:24 | Last updated: August 25 2008 02:24 Italy’s Northern League, the populist, xenophobic, sometimes separatist movement that is a key component of Silvio Berlusconi’s governing coalition, has proposed new legislation which would effectively halt construction of new Islamic mosques. The bill, which the League’s chief of deputies Roberto Cota is expected to send to parliament next week, would require regional approval for the building of mosques. It would also require that a local referendum be held, that there be no minaret or loudspeakers calling the faithful to prayer, and sermons must be in Italian, not Arabic. Chances of this being approved as it stands are slim, since it clashes with a number of constitutional rights and there was no immediate support from either Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party or from the ex-fascist National Alliance. But there has been cautious support from the small, ultra-Catholic UDC party, and the proposed anti-mosque legislation undoubtedly reflects widespread feeling among Italians that some defence against a rapidly rising Islamic presence is needed. At present, the Muslim population in Italy is estimated at 1m, with 258 registered mosques. The Northern League, which theoretically favours the secession of northern Italy from the centre and south, won more than 8 per cent of the vote at the April general elections, and has always trumpeted defence of national values of the northern Italian “race” as the natural product of its homeland. Without giving details, Roberto Maroni, the rightwing interior minister from the League, also said in April that “nomads” – as Italians call the Gypsies, although most do little roaming – who were not Italian citizens and did not meet conditions to stay would be deported to their “countries of origin”. The League has capitalised on a wave of xenophobia, of fear of crime committed by foreigners, and of preoccupation with illegal immigrants, which did much to help the Berlusconi alliance win the elections. CopyrightThe Financial Times Limited 2008 ...

LOL! :D