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Finally I am here: is it what I want? Yes!

Finally! I have just moved to Toronto.

As I said a couple of months ago, I have planned this. And now I am experiencing the North American Way of Life. It is completely different from what I saw as a tourist. Now I really feel something changed. Is it really what I want? Though question. Maybe I can answer in 3 months. Or, maybe I can answer now.

What I wanted is a plan for my life. And in my life there is Bowen, and Toronto. For now, it is enough. I feel I am on the right path. And going to the right direction. What's next? Don't know yet. But I know I have to walk.

By the way, enjoy my two new blogs, whether you want to read about Toronto in english or in Italian you can find something interesting about me and about the city.

My life is interesting, good, great, awesome... Compared to What? (The Paradox of Choice)

Are you happy with your life? 

Whether you are experiencing astonishing success in love and career or you feel lonely and desperate, your answer to this question depends on who (or what) you compare to. So, Are you happy compared to your friends' lives? Are you happy compared to your high-school years? Are you happy compared to what you expected from your life 5 years ago?

I have just read a great book with the title "The Paradox of Choice - Why more is less" by Barry Schwartz. It is all about the amount of choice consumer have these days. And guess what: the more choice you have the more difficult it is to choose. Too much doesn't mean good. And whatever you choose makes you feel unhappy because you are missing many alternatives. Is there a solution? Fortunately, yes: make your choice and stick with it. 

Never look back.

My personal answer to the initial question is

I don't know if I am happy or not, I just know that I wouldn't change my life with anyone's else. I stick with my life even if sometimes I feel unhappy.

I guess this means I am happy, actually.

Winter holidays

I am currenly on holidays!

I will be travelling through Ontario and Quebec. 

You can follow my updates on twitter and facebook.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

(this picture was shot in Frankfurt Airport with iPhone and re-edited with TiltShift for iPhone)

Cross blogging Experiment part 1 of 5 (and Bowen's picture)

This is an experiment of cross-blogging...

NEXT 2 of 5 - READ MORE »

Don't you understand what this post is about?

Go to the next page »

BTW: Who's the super cute girl above? 

She's Bowen: visit his brand new blog!

Hey! She's not single, ok?

What is Woopra (and why it is far better than Google Analytics)

I have already blogged about Woopra. Now, after 2 weeks of intensive use and test, I can give you some insights about this amazing piece of Web Analytics software.

I embed here the presentation for MediaCamp Roma, the social media marketing event held in Rome on Dec 3th 2008. My presentation was about Woopra analytics of course! I made a brief comparison with Google Analytics and the result is... Woopra is better than Google Analitycs!

Thanks to all the guys at MediaCamp Roma, especially to Chris Hambly and Massimo Burgio who made this event possible. It was a great opportunity to share knowledge about Social Media, Social Web and latest Social Trends in the blogosphere. 

I strongly believe that Woopra is a sort of Social Web Analytics. What do you think? Here we go with the presentation "What is Woopra (and why it is far better than Google Analytics)".

What is Woopra (and why it is far better than Google Analytics)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: woopra analytics)

Keep it short, keep it simple - How to format your Email Signature

I have been very busy this week, that's why I haven't posted anything yet. But I promised to blog more frequently on this blog (although I already blog frequently on pasqualeborriello.com), so here I come up with a weekend post!

I have sent lots of emails this week. After I hit the "new email message" button, the only thing there is on the blank screen is my signature. I have noticed it's pretty long, though. Maybe too long? Let's think about email signature: what should you put there? Maybe your full name, especially if you don't use it as the "sender" name. Maybe your email, although everyone of your recipients already knows it. Maybe your telephone number, or maybe not because it's too personal. Your personal blog or your website URL, so the persons you're sending email to can know more about you. Even a link to your facebook profile. If it is a work email you should put a link to your linkedin page so they can know better what you do. Even your IM address (MSN, AIM or Yahoo! Messenger) would be useful. And finally your skype username so they can give you a ring. Finally a personal touch: your favorite(s) quote.

That's what I did before. Before realizing that, by doing so, my signature will become long and annoying. Boring, for sure. I want an email signature as simple as my real signature!

I wanted to find the way to keep my signature short but give all the information to my recipient. The first thought was: let's put a link on my email signature. Even if you cannot put HTML code in your signature (Gmail and Hotmail don't allow you to use <html> code), the full URL will be hyperlinked in most email clients when they will receive your message. Then I realized that my Full Name will be good too, so I started with:

Pasquale Borriello - http://www.pasqualeborriello.com

But it didn't work. The address above is that of one of my blogs. And you need to do one more click to get to my personal information page. So, let's try with my LinkedIn profile. Like this:

Pasquale Borriello - http://www.linkedin.com/in/pasqualeborriello

This is too formal. What about my friends? They don't care of my LinkedIn profile (well, not all of them). Then I realized that I needed an aggregator.

My favorite contact info aggregator is Retaggr.

It lets you put all your information on a single webpage and supports widgets. This business card 2.0 is entirely made in AJAX! 

My email signature is now simply my full name and a link to my Retaggr page. It could work for you too.

Give it a try!

Weekend reading: an interesting article from the New York Times (about technology addiction).

Picture credits: Flickr

Woooh Woooh Woopra! Live Web Analytics and chatting! Why what you need is Woopra

I was listening to Wordpress Podcast when they started to talk about this "Woopra" think. There was a live interview with Woopra founders from France (I guessed from the accent). Oh-my-god! Woopra is the first live web analytics ever released!

What do I mean for Live Web Analytics? And mostly, why is Woopra going to be a great thing for your business?

Live Web Analytics (Woopra) - Woopra is a sort of Google Analytics that provide you with live data from your server. It means that whenever a user visits your site, you can see her (his) visit path directly from the Woopra Application (available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows). Are you annoyed by the 6 hours (or more) delay of Google Analytics data? Then, what you need is Woopra!

Woopra for your business - Whether you are a blogger or you run an online store Woopra is going to change your business! Not only because you can be updated LIVE of what your visitors see, but because there's a chat function integrated in Woopra!

Scenario #1: Blog with Woopra - There's a Wordpress plug-in for Woopra that basically merges data from wordpress (such as details inserted in the comment form) and from Woopra. With Woopra you can engage your readers as you've never imagined. With Woopra you can chat with visitors who are commenting your articles. You can know LIVE the exact navigation path of a random visitor or a returning visitor. You can even help your visitors find what they want.

Scenario #2: e-Commerce website with Woopra or the «How can I help you» feature - If you run an e-commerce website Woopra is even more important! The killer function of Woopra on an e-commerce website is the chat feature. Basically you can provide LIVE CUSTOMER CARE on every website. You can help your visitor find what they're looking for. You can guide them thru the buying process. You can fix problems with the shopping cart, and so on. 

That's something never seen before. Except when you enter a shop and you find a nice shop assistant that will ask you: «How can I help you?»

Last but not least: Woopra is completely free!

Is Change coming? I start to change (here)

After the election of Barack Obama, is Change coming?

You might be interested, then head to change.gov to know more about the president-elect. You might also be tempted to try change.com but you will be disappointed. Maybe.

Anyway, my point is: I'm going to change the blogging pace of this blog. I thought I could write a slow blog on philosophical considerations about advertising, marketing and web-related technologies. But I'm not that kind of person. I'm quickly changing and I cannot slow down my pace to 1 post per month.

I decided to change.

My paz.typepad.com blog will be update more frequently, so that I can excercise my english and express my opinion on international facts and happenings.

My first opinion is about president-elect Barack Obama.

The weekly address from the President-elect will be published on YouTube. Do you think this is a good idea? What if I tell you that comments are closed, and this is only an old style streaming video (a.k.a. webTV)? Do you still believe Obama is 2.0?

The videos uploaded to YouTube by the user changedotgov are all but social: no comments, no video responses, no ratings. And far less views. Is Obama REALLY changing?

Keep in touch: feel free to add me on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Blog Action Day is today!

Today is the Blog Action Day!

This year's topic is: poverty. The best thing I can do is to make you think about poverty.

So, I give you two resources: a definition of poverty and a link to the Blog Action Day website. I want to make you think about poverty, I don't want to use this occasion to advertise my blog.

Facebook is not enough! Why you need to be everywhere and how you can make it

You're on Facebook. And maybe you're on LinkedIn too. I tell you something: it's not enough.

Hundreds of people won't find you on their favorite social network. Some other people cannot spell your name correctly and don't know what to search on Google. A few know your name, are connected to you but don't know you're blogging somewhere on the web.

Even your closest friends are missing something about your online persona.  And it's not good for you, because maybe the will find something interesting and can tell you something you don't know about your niche. Don't you believe me?

An old friend connected to me on Facebook, and asked me something about what I've written on a blog. It was an interesting conversation and I had a great time talking again with him. I put all my blogs on my Facebook URLs so everyone can easily check all my online spaces. And I put them on FriendFeed too!

I've been using FriendFeed for a few weeks by now, and I think it's very useful because it can do a very simple thing for me: track all my contents published on the web (serveral blogs, delicious, youtube, twitter). Although it can be a conversational social network I use it in a very basic way: I just put my RSS feeds in it and it does all the rest!

I post on twitter, save bookmarks on delicious, publish video on youtube and write on several blogs. My friends probably visit two or more of my blogs, but still not all of them. My random readers will probably visit just one of my spaces. So, both to the first and to the latter, I can suggest something I've written that might be worth to read.

Here's my advice for you: try to inter-connect all your social spaces between each other (via a simple link) and use some aggregator - like FriendFeed - to give a unique stream of all your social media. You will get more readers, and you could offer a good service to your loyal followers.

Feel free to add me as a friend on Facebook, btw.