10/02/10
Posted in Barcelona, Mobility, Usability | 3 Comments » 
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Next week is the world’s renowned World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, where over 50.000 world experts in mobile technologies will meet and what will be presented there will have a worlwide impact.
Prices range from 599 € for visitors to 4.999 € for an all areas all events pass.
After trying to register twice without success with Firefox I switch to Safari and I get a nice “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris sem. Donec tincidunt pharetra urna.” when requesting my pass.
And this people own all my personal data!
11:23 Update: One hour trying to register and still without a pass. No luck with Firefox or Safari. Calling for help!
11:30 Update: Give up. My colleague Jordi Ramos from RAC1 radio will register me via phone. He’s been through the process yesterday.
12:32 Update: After Twittering about my problems, @soniagraupera from Fira de Barcelona forwards this post to registration support resulting in a really nice and professional phone call from Josep offering help. I refuse because I assume it’s already being handled by my colleague Jordi Ramos at RAC1.
12:40 Update: I get 3 emails with the following subject “Your Mobile World Congress 2010 Registration Acknowledgement”
13:00 Update: Calling Josep to thank him for his help. My initial complain tweet when as far up as the COO of the organizing company.
27/08/09
Posted in Barcelona, Privacy, The real world | 4 Comments » Tweet This Post
In my effort to be a healthy citizen I try to exercise regularly logging all my exploits into my favorite social network dailymile.com. The insane goal: run a marathon some day.
Each September me and my friend Pepepérez put ourseves to a test running La Cursa de la Mercè, a 10Km race organized by the Barcelona City Council during the city’s festivities.
I probably never payed attention before, but this year I noticed something funny after completing the inscription form: my data (along with those from thousands of paticipants) where made public in 3rd company website right after I signed in (is this the live web?)
So now, if you want to know my full name, the date I was born or the sports club I belong to, you can just head to this website and look for my name. Being a public page I bet Google will index it in a couple of days too!
Another hall of shame award goes to the footer of the inscription form with a fine-print font size of 9px and a opt-out checkbox for commercial emails instead of the mandatory opt-in. The registration form is by the way stored in the private company server again instead of Barcelona’s City Council. I don’t even want to think where the actual physical database is.
You don’t have to be a law expert to know that this violates all kinds of data protection regulations especially Spain’s LOPD one of the most stringent in the world.
Dear Barcelona City Council, if you want a lesson on live web just search Twitter for the right tags and see what people are saying about your bad online behavior in real time.
12/07/08
Posted in Apple, Barcelona | 2 Comments » Tweet This Post
When I learnt about the launching of the iPhone by Telefonica in Spain I knew that something was not right. One only has to see the visual and conceptual interference that the Telefonica logo produces on Apple’s website.
Read the rest of this entry »
28/03/08
Posted in Barcelona, Music, The real world | No Comments » Tweet This Post
La Banda Municipal del Polo Norte has recorded a demo CD with 5 tracks and a nice sleeve design which features a bear. Its title “Iros Despidiendo de Todo” which would roughly translate for “Say Goodbye To Everything”, reminds me of Dougas Adams’ So Long And Thanks For The Fish form the Hitch Hicker’s Guide To The Galaxy saga. I’m still working out the connexions between the two.
And by the way, any band that features me in their acknowledgements if of course the best band in the world.
See them tonight in la Sala Monasterio
Read about the concert I saw by La Banda here.
27/06/07
Posted in Animation, Barcelona, The real world | No Comments » Tweet This Post
If you watch the demo reel you’ll see for yourself that you can’t miss it. Open air cinema and free. How’s that?
Xinacittà ’07
We’re still alive…
The 5th edition of Xinacittà is back with all its wit and machinery at the end of June with three magnificent programs. The title is The Art of Getting By: migrations, utopias and inventions. Also, starting this year, we’re packing our bags and going on tour to show our festival all over the world. We’re not leaving Barcelona, but we are moving to a new square: bigger, with more room to lie down and roll around with the joy of seeing our films.
Take note, because if you miss it you won’t survive.
Date: June 28, 29 and 30, 2007
Time: 9:30pm
Place: Plaça de la Mercè. (New location!)
Price: free (yes, everything for free!)
All the info at xinacitta.com
21/06/07
Posted in Barcelona, Design, Interface, Usability | 3 Comments » Tweet This Post
This is the website of ADG-FAD, Art Directors and Graphic Designers Association from Spain. Aren’t designers supposed to know how to design a website? Check it for yourself www.adg-fad.org
Some “killer” features of this website:
- No DOCTYPE at the beginning of the document
- Page is laid out using Tables!!
- Some parts of the are not rendered in Firefox
- Contents font size is 10px wich makes the web hard to read in any decent resolution monitor
- Usage of GIF for titles and section headers instead of correct XHTML markup
- No titles for individual pages. All pages are titled adg-fad.org which is an acronym and the URL
11/05/07
Posted in Barcelona, Music, The real world | 2 Comments » Tweet This Post
Here are the pictures of last Friday’s concert by La Banda Municipal del Polo Norte at the Magic club.
Online concert agendas, e-flyers, some SMS, the band’s MySpace and a great post on this blog were the only publicity for the event and yet, Magic, the Cavern-like joint, was packed with an enthusiastic crowd (even though they were counter programmed by the Telecogresca concert with life acts such as Def-Con-Dos and Antònia Font).
OK, I know, the members of the band are nice people who have lots of family and friends. Add some freaks, two Dutch tourists and blogger celebrity DJ Phil Musical and you get the full house. Nothing new there.
But the fact that many in the audience knew most of the lyrics of a band that doesn’t have anything recorded, nor an mp3 on MySpace nor a Torrent to pirate from, led me to think that it wasn’t the first time those people saw the band perform, and let’s face it, with internet, playstations and p2p who goes out to see a friend’s band a second time? People were there because they enjoyed the band’s power-pop and were repeating experience. Neat.
The first highlight of the night was when me and my friends got into the club and bumped into the band’s singer Polo Sur, who I happen to know. This allowed me to impress my buddies by showing how well connected I am with the Barcelona’s creative scene. Of course these days getting to know the singer of the band doesn’t score as high as if you knew the resident DJ, but still a good start (you probably don’t want to know Magic’s DJ anyways).
After having found a lost guitarrist (there’s always one), Polo Sur welcomed the audience with a cool: “Let the melting begin”, and the gig started to the chords of “Parte Alta” (Uptown), a picture of the posh world of uptown Barcelona which I bet was too familiar to more than one in the audience.
After that, the Sisa-Derribos-Arias-Golpes-Bajos-Antón-GarcÃa-Abril influenced power-pop filled the joint for the next 40 or so minutes, while the crowd was busy singing along and snapping pictures with their digicams and mobile phones, in a truly multimedia experience in which old analog Fender onstage met Sony on the dance floor (get this Bono!). Some even danced, but those are still in the 1.0 version of modern collaborative concerts.
The concert reached its climax with “2001 Entrando Por La Ventana 72” (“2001 Entering Window 72″) a theme you would think it’s based on the events of the 11-S. I’ve read the lyrics many times and I couldn’t be 100% sure, although the fact that in the live act the lead singer was shouting “Oh my god it’s the other tower” might point in that direction.
All in all, good pop, good life act with no drum solo, and witty lyrics that read from bottom to top would also make sense.
Some superfluous data about the band that should give you an idea about their world:
09/05/07
Posted in Barcelona, Music, The real world | 1 Comment » Tweet This Post
At last! La Banda Municipal del Polo Norte live in Barcelona tonight at 11 at at el Born’s Magic Club in Barcelona. La Banda is led by multitalented artist Polo Sur.
La Banda Municipal del Polo Norte, the band that doesn’t have any mp3 on MySpace!
More info in La Banda’s MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/srsrapanda
29/03/07
Posted in Barcelona, Interface, Web 2.0, Why didn't I think of that? | No Comments » Tweet This Post
Zoomap is Googlemaps + a Wiki. Yet another project based on the infamous Google API. But this one is fun to use.
In plain English: you can pinpoint any spot in the world and upload your picture and add some text to the database creating an image tagged location. Once your tag is created Zoomap provides a direct link to it for you to enjoy.
A good and fun use of the Google Api and probably of the Wordpress blogging platform. The closest project I’ve seen to Zoomap is Wikimaps, a plugin for Wordpress that turns your blog into an open wiki based on google maps. Not sure if Zoomap is not using Wikimaps.
Update: Via Dani Julià one of Zoomap creators: The system is programmed from scratch. No Wordpress and no wikimaps underneath.
Check my avatar next to the França Railway Station site of the Audiovisual Institute of the Pompeu Fabra university where sometimes I am and sometimes I’m not.
13/02/07
Posted in Barcelona, Mobility, The real world | 2 Comments » Tweet This Post
I attended the Mobile Monday Peer Awards held in the Espacio Movistar in Barcelona where I was invited by Rudy de Waele from m-trends.org (along with my digital camera and my Flickr Pro account). This edition of Mobile Monday takes place during the 3GSM mobile telephony congress held this week in Barcelona even though it’s not part of it.
You can find all the Mobile Monday pictures I took here.
Finalists had 3 minutes to explain their project to the audience who voted for the best projects via SMS.
Finalists were:
And the winners were:
By the way, the picture at the top is Movistar sponsoring my website at the Espacio Movistar.
And this people own all my personal data!