2007 - June
Current Affairs
Surfing Technology
Micromega: “The world’s most lightweight eyeglasses”; Toward a “Full HD” television; Softonic heads toward Italy; Via Michelin: new navigators with integrated services; Two-way radio with Bluetooth.
Micromega: “The world’s most lightweight eyeglasses”
VIP glasses weighing just five grams, thanks to a titanium frame patented by Venetian company Micromega.
A frame weighing less than 1 gram, for a total weight of 5.5 grams. Lightweight is the key word when talking about the pair of eyeglasses invented by Roberto Carlon, the owner of Micromega, the world-renowned Venetian optics maker. The Micromega eyeglasses, essential accessories that come in the most original designs, are in fact being used by such celebrities as singer Elton John (who bought no less than 46 pairs), fashion designer Anna Fendi, TV journalist Gad Lerner, politician Enrico Letta, film director Gabriele Salvatore and even the current President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón.
There are only three components in the Micromega glasses: a 50-centimeters-long titanium wire twined following a special technique to substitute for weak parts like bolts, cements, soldering and plugs; high-refractive organic lenses that are the thinnest, most lightweight and most durable on the market; and finally two transparent nose-pads. One variant comes with natural corn temples, available in various models, instead of the titanium temples, which in their turn can come in different colors such as gold, blue, pink or green.
This frame was patented in Italy and in the U.S. and requires just two small openings to fix the titanium wire to the lenses. Lenses can therefore be of any shape: among the most popular are the wing and leaf shapes. The glasses sell for 320 Euro or more. But one should keep an eye open also for the more “traditional” models (though the term traditional would be a bit misleading, as all of them are highly original) which sell for as low as 169 Euro. An upcoming line of precious ‘jewelry glasses’ (scheduled for June) will come with set rubies, emeralds, sapphires and other stones.
The only shop currently selling Micromega glasses is in Mexico City, but New York is a natural next step. “Our eyeglasses, the most lightweight in the world, can not be a mass production item,” explains Roberto Carlon. “But if we can establish a business relationship with a New York reseller like we have in Mexico, we would be more than happy to sell our collections in the Big Apple.”
Micromega Ottica
San Marco 2436
30124 Venice
Tel. and Fax: +39.041.2960765
www.micromegaottica.com
Toward a “Full HD” television
The new LG Electronics plasma and LCD television models.
The television set of the future will be “Full HD” according to LG Electronics, which has presented a new range of TV sets that make use of the XD Engine technology for contrast optimization and that feature high image quality and an appealing design. But what does Full HD actually mean? LG Electronics defines it as “a visualization format that improves the quality and sharpness of high-definition images (HDTV), providing a 1920×1080 pixel resolution.”
The LY95 series comes in four sizes (37”, 42”, 47” and 52”), all Full HD with a 1920×1080 progressive resolution (6 million pixels) providing undistorted images. Its thin 9-cm-thick glossy black screen allows you to hang it on the wall, while the thin 10+10 watt side speakers provide Surround Max sound. Thanks to the new backlight you can view up to 92% of the colors in the NTSC spectrum, providing a natural image rendering. The Intelligent Eye function automatically adjusts image brightness according to room light levels. In addition, the True Viewing Angle technology used in the LY95 series, with prices beginning from 1,699 Euro, allows you to maintain a uniform contrast level and minimize color shifts and distortions also when not viewed from directly in front of the screen. Less innovative in its design, but more affordable, is the LF65 series, with prices beginning from 1, 499 Euro for the 37” sets.
The new plasma TV series, called PF95, offers sets that range from 50” to 60”, with a 1920×1080 progressive resolution (6 million pixels) and dynamic contrast that reaches up to 15,000:1 (in the 50” model) and 1,500 cd/mq brightness. The PF95 series can convert low-resolution analog signals into high-resolution signals, while the XCC technology improves the quality of fast moving images, common in action movies, and minimizes ‘ghost’ effects. Esthetically, the new series comes with touch control, 8.9-cm thick screens and 10+10 watt side speakers assembled within the structure. Completing the features are the DVB-T tuner and two HDMI outlets. The 60” model sells for 7,999 Euro.
Information:
World Web site: www.lge.com
Italian Web site: www.lge.it
Softonic heads toward Italy
The leading European Web site for free software download is to launch in early 2008 its new Italian site.
The first European portal for searching and downloading freeware and shareware, Softonic (www.softonic.com), is to break into the Italian market. After sweeping the Spanish market and marching in grand style into the British and German markets, the young ‘new economy’ Catalan company (average age of its employees is far below 30) is to launch its Italian site in the early months of 2008.
Softonic offers efficient search engines of a database that is overflowing with downloadable software. The current database, in its English version, contains computer programs, utilities and games for all operating systems and devices: Windows, Macintosh, Palm OS, Pocket PC or cell phones. The Spanish site offers in addition programs for Linux, plenty of drivers and an online discussion forum. Each software (of both programs and games) is reviewed extensively, offering high-definition screen shots.
But the main reason for the Barcelona-based company’s success is the ease and security it offers for purchasing and downloading software. For a fee of 0.79 Euro you can download freeware that has already been scanned for viruses without the long wait you often experience with official download proxies and, above all, with the ease and certainty of finding whatever you might be looking for.
Softonic also presents itself as a global guide for a knowledgeable and secure use of the personal computer, offering analysis and troubleshooting services in its Deluxe and SoftonicPro plans.
Via Michelin: new navigators with integrated services
From the “Info Traffic” function to vocal synthesizer, the features of the X-960, X-970T and X-980T Europe, the three new ViaMichelin satellite navigators.
The great attraction of the new satellite navigators recently released by the Michelin company is their integration with the Web site www.viamichelin.com and with the Michelin Guide. The new models are the competitively-priced X-960; the more advanced X-970T, and the complete X-980T Europe.
The lowest priced among the ViaMichelin satellite navigators sells for 229 Euro and covers the European continent. It weighs just 136 grams and comes with a 300 MHz Samsung processor, fast in processing itineraries and in seeking alternative routes, a GPS receiver with a GPS Sirf III chipset, as well as a 3.5” color touch-screen.
The X-970T model comes with similar features but with the addition of an RDS/TMC “Info Traffic” function for updates on road conditions. Coming up soon is an update service on information regarding street addresses, weather conditions and even parking availability, through a Bluetooth® cell phone connection and subscription to GPRS services. Recommended price: 329 Euro including maps of Italy, 399 Euro for the “Europe” version.
The latest arrival, the X-980T Europe satellite navigator, weighs 260 grams, sells for 449 Euro and comes with a 4.3” screen offering the possibility of choosing among a maximum of six different routes, including the one recommended by ViaMichelin, a possible route for cyclists and one for pedestrians. It offers maps of 25 European countries, fast navigation processing provided by a 416 MHz Intel processor; a more powerful sound system, thanks to 3-watt speakers connected to a vocal synthesizer, for announcing street names and directions in nine languages.
Two-way radio with Bluetooth
Midland 445 BT by CTE International: Communication range of up to 10 kilometers
The ease of talking with no cords attached using the Bluetooth technology is not limited to cell phones alone. Today you can talk as easily using the Midland 445 BT radio by CTE International, the first in the world to come with the Bluetooth function built-in. A water-proof device that has a transmission range of up to 10 kilometers and that comes with accessories such as earphones, helmet set or Bluetooth intercom set, allowing you to call or receive calls hands free. This would be indispensable for motorcyclists, for example (for their benefit was indeed designed a PTT button to use in case of outside wired calls), or for mountain climbers (using the VOX function that offers 6 sound-sensitive levels to allow responding without the need to press any button).
Features include 38 CTCSS RX and TX tones, 20 stored channels, Dual Watch for monitoring two selectable channels, and a multi-functional backlit display. Another attractive element is the fact that in Italy the PMR446 device (license-free in Europe) does not require state authorization, only proof of ownership.
Current Affairs
Tell Me what You Drink and I’ll Tell You who You Are
Observe Italians when they go in a coffee shop for their regular cup of coffee. They walk in, they order their espresso in small cups, and gulp it down - and its all over. Some add sugar, others ask for some milk to be poured in the cup.
But then, when they come to the actual drinking, they also gulp it down in no time. Why do they do it? If you look at the scene from the American viewpoint, it’s absurd. Even at Starbuck’s, you dwell on your coffee product for some time before the actual drinking. Lets look into the scene - threse different scenes - more in detail. Maybe there is something important to be said about these mundane gestures that needs to be said.
Italian coffee houses - called ‘bars’ - may not even have a place to sit. The most important feature is the long and narrow counter table, or bancone. Behind the bancone wait the baristi for your order. Sometimes you pay before at a separate counter. That happens mostly in big cities, especially when they don’t know you. After you order your drink by simply saying ‘a cup of coffee,’ ‘una tazza di caffè’ - only Americans say espresso - the barista puts the blend in the machine and pours out the thick, black liquid directly into your tiny coffee cup. This cup was kept warm by being stored over the machine, and when you pick it up it should be steaming hot. At this point you put some sugar in it, or some milk, if you want. And you gulp it down. Then you pay. And you’re off. The whole thing may take only a few minutes, depending on your familiarity with the barista, who may want to talk.
Why do Italians do this? Is it for the taste? Is it a ritual? Why don’t they sit down and relax for a while? Lets begin from this last question. Italians do take their coffee seated - after their meals, and, especially, when they are not alone. When they are, they may wish to sit down to do chores, of which the coffee is only an accompaniment. Read the sports section of a paper, or fill in a crossword puzzle. But if they are alone, they don’t feel compelled to sit to have their espresso. They gulp it down standing, usually at the counter, in front of the barista. So do they come in for a taste of coffee? Is it a ritual? Pointing to the importance of taste in the whole business is the importance Italians give to the quality of the product. They are very exigent, especially in the south. A poor cup of coffee is the certainty of the client’s not returning. (This is why, on average, one should never drink coffee in railway stations or airport, when they know you are there only for this one shot). But taste alone does not seem to be enough to justify the gulping down. But if it is a ritual, what kind of ritual is it? It’s really hard to say. It’s more like a climax of something else. You wake up, you leave the house and eat a roll for breakfast - and you gulp a cup of coffee before going to the office. But even if you take you breakfast at home, you usually gulp your coffee in one stride. It seems to me that the moment of the actual drinking is the moment may Italians find their focus. I would rather stay in bed, but I got to go. Let me just have my coffee and I am gone. The same seems to apply to coffee breaks, pause caffé, when one enters the coffee shop one for the brief duration of the one-cup ritual.
Americans have at least two traditions of coffee-drinking. When drinking a long cup of house coffee, Americans take their time. Even during a coffee break. They take time. The same applies to the drinking of espresso coffee. You order your cup and pay. You pick it up. You spice it at the service desk. And you sit down and drink it. Nobody really drinks their coffee standing at Starbuck’s. And if you do, you then and there know that they must be Italians. Americans, too, sometime focus by drinking coffee, especially by sipping house coffee over that nasty report that doesn’t seem to want to get written. But more often than not they seem to defocus by drinking coffee. A cup of coffee - house or espresso - is part of a ritual of relaxation that may also comprise a paper, a book, or a laptop computer with a WiFi cannel open on some hot spot.
The Italian ritual then seems to point to an instant of intense flavor. The American seems more open in duration. May this be the key? Americans drink coffee at work to find or keep their focus. But they also sip it slowly when they want to relax. Italians punctuate their daily routine with short coffee breaks, to evade, postpone, or forget that routine. Be that work, or any other scheduled activity. It’s a way out - an instant pointing to the stars above. Pure bliss. Or the striving toward the vestige of pure bliss.
Which brings me to the very personal key I have found to all this. One day, I was preparing for my preliminary exams, and I found amusing to think that in an Italian home coffeemaker can be found all the four elements comprising the sublunar realm in Ancient Western cosmogony: earth (the coffee), water, air (the steam), and fire. The thought passed my mind as I was loading a coffee-maker designed by the architect Aldo Rossi, la cupola, ‘the dome’. Now the dome may be said to symbolize the curve of the horizon, a striving to rise above the earth to join the celestial spheres up there. Wait I second, I thought. Rossi’s cupole come surmounted with a black or a light blue sphere. In Italian ‘light blue sphere’ translates into ‘sfera celeste,’ which also translates into ‘celestial sphere.’ So there it was, what coffee really may really for Italians: A moment they take to strive for something superior and unattainable. Happiness complete. It’s the moment you rise your head and look at the stars - in a cup of coffee.
Culture
Antonio Canova: Beauty in Marble
Possagno, Canova’s birthplace, celebrates the 250th birthday of the great sculptor with an exhibition from July 29 to November 1. “Prince Henryk Lobomirski” will be displayed for the first time in Italy.
The purity of marble, the folds of the human body made vivid by its sensual luster, the indescribable sweetness of young bodies ascribable to Greek mythology. All this represents the extraordinary body of work of Antonio Canova, celebrated on the 250th anniversary of his birth (1757-2007) with an anthological exhibition near Possagno (Treviso), providing the opportunity, unique in Italy, to admire a sculpture never before seen in this country. Full Story
Culture
A Cheyenne artist in Venice
Until until 30th September 2007, on view the provocative installations of the native american artist.
Walking around Venice from June to September it will be easy to fall into the brilliant installations of the artist Edgar Heap of Birds that from the beginning of this 52nd International Art Exhibition of Venice, they are changing the face of the lagoon City. Edgar Heap of Birds is a Native American artist promoted from the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian of Washington, DC . Full Story
Viewpoint
Public Libraries in the Internet Age
Public libraries and the professionals who staff them still play key roles in assisting the public in navigating the oceans of information now available to them through the Internet.
Futurists, editorial writers, and countless others have been ready to play a funeral march for the public library for years, arguing that the Internet will eliminate the need for libraries, even books. But visit a public library in the United States and you’ll find they are being used more heavily each year. The Internet has led to dramatic increases in the circulation of all library information services and materials in ways that extend the use of those services well beyond the walls of the brick and mortar building. Full Story
Current Affairs
Social networks for trans-national relations
The communities created through social networking, in constant expansion since 1995, are not only playgrounds for timid teenagers but new forms of socializing for workers and students on the move – offering new important business opportunities as well.
Social networking is today one of the most developed and talked-about forms of online communications. It is practiced through Web portals where one can create his or her own space, which can take the form of a personal museum or a multimedia diary or a virtual meeting place. Generally, the scope of social networks is to create and maintain ever-expanding networks of friends which usually cross national borders. These can play an important role in the European Union, where people are more and more likely to move through the various countries: a new generation of European citizens who manage and enrich their social ties thanks to these types of technological instruments. Full Story
Current Affairs
Surfing Technology
Blu-ray player at Home Theaters; Panasonic launches its IP Monitoring line; Google Earth and the Gombe Chimpanzee; The USA are hit by the “digital divide”
Blu-ray player at Home Theaters
The first Sony Blu-ray disc player to be distributed in Europe is the BDP-S1E.
Blu-ray discs are the same size as compact discs but can store up to 25 Gigabyte of data, that is 50 times more than a double-layer DVD. This is achieved thanks to the ultra-thin violet-blue laser ray which can produce a bright point that is five times thinner than that of a DVD player. This translates also into quality: 25 GB means a storage capacity of 2½ hours of a High-Definition film at 1,080 lines with a multi-channel Surround audio (7.1 channels), as well as interactive functions and special content. Full Story
Culture
Venice and New York: Points of departure and arrival for contemporary art
Venice and New York are two cities that have always attracted, inspired, motivated and given life to a symphony of the senses, to new expressions modeled by the minds and hands of artists that work and live trapped between the lagoon of Venice and its stones, between the great Hudson River shores and the concrete skyline of New York
Venice and New York: the full stop and comma of the urban and artistic alphabet. In these parallel worlds, the trajectories of the new human icebreakers of color and form that impose themselves on the world of Art with clarity and force, meet each other, cross fertilize and innovate. Within the real and imaginary walls of these two great ladies of the urban world, many contemporary artists create and operate. But the emergent innovators of international relevance are a small clique; a microcosm with international roots. Full Story
Current Affairs
Traveling Ice-Cream
A symbol of Italian immigration and entrepreneurship around the world, the modern ice cream was created in Sicily, as a variant of the sherbet which had been imported by the Arabs. But there are many nations that seek in the dust-covered pages of their history books the name of the inventor of this nutrient and genuine recipe. Make that a yummy recipe.
An agreeable and nutrient treat, the pride of the best Italian culinary tradition, the ice cream has a fascinating and complex history. Who invented this icy cream that we so love to slurp is not really known. What we know for sure, however, is that the cooling of sweet substances and fruit juice was practiced in ancient times by various nations and by people of all social classes, especially in Asia Minor.
Arabs, Egyptians, Romans, Chinese, the French and Spanish all claim, with varying degrees of conviction, to be the originators of this timeless specialty, which started as an icy drink or fruit salad sweetened with honey and then frozen in the snow. Full Story
Dossier
New York: Metropolis in its dreams
The Big Apple developed from a small rural village to a world metropolis in a matter of just a few years in the 19th century, quickly taking the lead over the British center of industrial power, and moving from the early prefabricated buildings to steel skyscrapers.
Fritz Lang had been thinking of New York when he conceived his film ‘Metropolis.’ The Austrian director’s 1927 masterpiece is a futuristic story about industrial progress and the conflict between technology and dark forces. An idea far ahead of its time which caused a sensation. The European-native Lang’s view of New York is that of a night-time city with glittering lights, etching in the moviegoer’s mind a vision of a hyper-technological metropolis almost devoid of a human touch, alien to its inhabitants. Full Story
