CouchSurfing

In August, Patrizia (Pattrizia Schettino, USI PhD student) has been to Oslo for a summer school, did not check in to a hotel, she shared the apartment of an unknown person with two other girls, one German, one Russian, whom she never met before.

This is couch surfing. A network connecting people and places worldwide. Travelers members of the network draw their travel itineraries and ask for offers corresponding to the places they want to see. In some cases, the host is present in the house and might be also a guide and a friend for the traveler. In other cases, such as Patrizia's, one has a home at their disposal for a given period of time.

The homepage of CouchSurfing cites 345,558 couch surfers. And 458,730 positive experiences.

What's new with Fontana di Trevi? It's red!

Few days ago, in Rome, a man throwed a tin of red paint in the water of the Fontana di Trevi: the result is what you can see in the photo (more photos here). This act has been claimed by a futurist social movement and, by the way, has not affected the structure of the fountain (now the water is the same as it has been for centuries).

The whole blog community is in favor of this act, because it makes possible to approach to art in a new and inusual way; also Vittorio Sgarbi (cultural assessor in Milan and well known art critic) says this is a real futuristic act, and there's not any need to condemn it, also because there has not been any damage. On the contrary, all politics are condemning it as an act of pure vandalism.

And you? What do you think about that?

TEC-CH seminar: Cataloguing of CH Objects

Third and last day of the seminar taught by Susan Chun, The Cataloguing of Cultural Heritage Objects: History, Problems and New Trends. Here are some of Susan's favorite RSS feeds that she shared with the class:
BoingBoing
MetaFilter
Lawrence Lessig's Blog
Creative Commons Web site
One Laptop Per Child News
Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog
Plasticbag.org
Wired News
Download Squad
Research Buzz
Engadget
NTEN: Nonprofit Technology Network
The Googlization of Everything
Indexed

Free cultural trips: thanks to SecondLife

Do you want to visit a hundred of cultural places around the world, but you don't have enough time (or money) to do it? Well, SecondLife helps you: not only government and big financial organization are present in this virtual world, also cultural organization are.
The big difference with other type of organization is that here you can see the artworks, like if you were there: for example, in Basilica di San Francesco d'Assisi you can see Giotto's wall paintings. Isn't incredible?

How to create comic strips using photo form flickr

Hello,
I suggest to visit this web site http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/ , it helps to create comic strips using photo form flickr.
It's quite funny!
Enjoy,
elisa
(http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/?id=10085 )

How to create comic strips using photo form flickr

Hello,
I suggest to visit this web site http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/ , it helps to create comic strips using photo form flickr.
It's quite funny!
Enjoy,
elisa
(http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/?id=10085 )

Imagine Cup 2008

Microsft opens the competition for the 2008 Imagine Cup, with the theme "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment." The contest is open for students, who can participate in 9 categories.

Visit to the Venice Biennale: pics & videos

Wonderful short trip to the Venice Biennale, this weekend, too little time to attend the multiplicity of events going on not only at the Arsenale and the Giardini, but also in the historical center of Venice. The Biennale is still being digested and interpreted now in Peter Samis’ class, Interactive Communication for Museums.
Click here for a collective photo evidence of the trip and here for videos of the Biennale

Thesis defense X 3

This session, Antonella, Shelley and Natascha defended their theses.
Antonella presented her content development work for a project of the Polilab, Politecnico of Milan, with the goal of creating a repository of learning objects for kids, in fields ranging from archaeology to science and technology. Antonella's part has been to document and create the content for archeology learning objects. The result: 54 learning objects, of which some have been already implemented, in a format meant to provide information in a simple and engaging way, with the high-level goal of developing in kids a critical spirit of daily life today as compared to daily life in antiquity.
Shelley's thesis theme is "Seeing Identities: Visitors, Viewers, Communities and Tibetan Art", a research based on a visitor survey on the exhibition The 14 Dalai Lamas, held in 2006 at the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich, and a social tagging project on Tibetan art. The tagging phase of the research has been funded by the Rubin Foundation and the Rubin Museum of Art .
Natascha has developed a communication plan for the Museum of Cultures, Lugano, based on the insider's view she had as an intern, in 2006 and her on-going collaboration with the museum, for communication projects.

For photos, see Flickr