News from today in San Francisco… that caught my attention

February 19, 2009

Today I grabbed two newspapers: USA Today (for free at the hotel) and The Examiner (for free on the street). These are the news that caught my attention:

General Motors will be discontinuing (or selling) the Hummer line of SUVs by the end of this quarter (yippie!!). It seems these guzzlers have been deadly wounded when [...]

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Video of Shibuya (Tokyo) at night

February 2, 2009

This video of Shibuya (Tokyo) at night was made by my friend Jose and posted in his blog UnGatoNipon. Jose lives in Tokyo and blogs in Spanish about all things Japanese. He is my point of reference for what is going on in Japan and a great friend.
The video portrays a typical nocturnal view of [...]

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PLEO lifeform is a toy in Italy and a pet in Japan

January 30, 2009

The PLEO lifeform by Ugobe has very different meanings in Italy and Japan. During my sabbatical in Japan in 2008, I was exposed to a gazzilion video-advertising in the subway and, specially in the JR Yamanote Line, a recurrent one was promoting the PLEO dinosaur.

The curious thing is that in the video, this “intelligent” life [...]

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Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, a living lab for sustainability, zero-carbon and zero-wate tech

January 15, 2009

The Masdar City project being built in Abu Dhabi will be the first sustainable city built from scratch to feature state of the art zero-carbon and zero-waste green technologies and, according to me, will work as a living lab for testing new innovations to later apply in existing cities all over the World.

Though the news [...]

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My 2008 in pictures…

January 3, 2009

A classic activity of end of year is summarizing the last 12 months. My 2008 has been full of good things, many as part of my sabbatical. These are a few pictures of the places I visited and the people I encountered. Many more photos should be included, but some weren’t taken and thousands are [...]

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Buying a second-hand Hasselblad in Tokyo

December 22, 2008

So you’re planning to buy a second-hand Hasselblad in Tokyo? I will tell you my experience that you might find useful. I recently bought a Hasselblad 503cx with an A-12 back and a Zeiss 80mm/2.8 lens (the so called “basic kit”).
My hunt for a ‘Blad started a month ago after I had used one several [...]

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Tony Xiao instant photography digital camera available from today

November 28, 2008

Since today, Tomy is selling in Japan it’s XIAO digital camera that features an embedded Zink ink printer for producing instant photos. The concept is similar to the Fuji Instax Mini instant cameras (which themselves derived more or less directly from Polaroid insant film) with the huge difference that the Xiao (which means “small” in [...]

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Writing great titles to get traffic and relevant ads by Robin Good

November 17, 2008

Robin Good is a successful Italian online publisher that I met a couple of years ago thanks to 7th Floor. He is based in Rome and from there runs several websites like MasterNewMedia and RobinGood TV and shares his knowledge through “his” university: POP. I’ve seen him in action in many events like Barcamps, Pangea [...]

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Kevin Robert’s post on Sustaining Families through Technology

November 13, 2008

I read an interesting blogpost on Kevin Robert’s blog (KR is CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi). He summarizes how technology has helped many families to stay together even if they are far away, to share feelings and emotions. To help keep in touch, be it through video-conference, audio, long (email) or short (sms) messages, [...]

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Experiment: Eliminate the use of disposable chop-sticks, plastic bags and bottles

November 9, 2008

I don’t try to be an eco-hero but to test on myself if it is possible to severely minimize the use of certain disposable products. I live in Tokyo, a city which has a lot of eco-friendly habits but also some very nasty ones regarding the use of disposable materials like: chopsticks, plastic beverage bottles [...]

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