Milan Clinches the 2015 Expo

In an odd show of political unity, right wing Letizia Morrati, and left wingers Massimo D’Alema and Romano Prodi got together in Paris, along with Al Gore to promote Milan‘s bid for the 2015 Universal Exhibition (Expo).

The green-theme, hence Gore’s presence, plus supporting music by Andrea Bocelli and Senegalese musician Youssou N’Dour, meant that Milan’s bid won against the city of Izmir in Turkey. Even the appearance of an Italian football star did not manage to put the judges off. Shame there was no pizza cook though.

Anyway, lots of mutual back slapping has taken place, and noises are being made in Milan about improved infrastructure; read new metro line; increases in the prices of housing, and various other goodies that will ensure the already well-heeled Milanese remain so.

I’m looking forward to the rich experience that I expect from one these Expo events, if I’m still here in 2015, that is. Seven years is quite a long time.

I have to admit to being curious, as I’ve never seen an Expo first hand. Sounds like good photographic material, not to mention the surge in demand for English language courses and translations that will inevitably take place. Might even collar a few more readers for this here blog too.

The downside? None really, aside from the fact that I’ll be 50 in 2015. Now, that is frightening. I mean 50, that certainly ain’t young any more. Still, at least the Expo is something to look forward to in my old age.

For more information, go here: Milan Expo 2015

Blog from Italy meets Volette.com

I met up with Nevadan Joe Tangredi, the guy behind travel site start-up Volette.com, and his Italian cousin Giuseppe, here in sunny Milan yesterday afternoon. Giuseppe works for Endemol, the tv production company, which makes a whole host of programs for Italian TV.

Joe, an ex-Capitol Hill legislative assistant turned web entrepreneur, and I chatted about a number of things including his Volette site and another very interesting project. He also told me that Volette is to launch an original new service shortly. Well, he did not actually tell me what the new service is, alas, but he told me enough to intrigue me.

Once I know more, I’ll write about it here.

It’s quite late now (12:30), and I’m a little tired, so I’m not going to write much more. But I can assure you that I’ll be writing more Joe and his other interesting project. Suffice it to sat that it’s something that could do an awful lot of good for Italy, if it gets off the ground. And I really hope it does.

Watch this space!

Far too late!

I should be in bed, but I’ve been exchanging emails with an American web entrepreneur who is coming over to Milan shortly, and thinking about how I’m going to have a go at helping out an interesting German sculptor, one Jochen Kitzbihler, who is a friend of Gianpietro Carlesso’s, incidentally.

Very interesting times. Life sure is moving me in some fascinating directions at the moment!

Just a thought

As you may have noticed, on Blog from Italy I write about anything and everything that catches my eye, which means older posts may contain information that is interesting.

To make it easier to understand when I made one of my older posts, I’ve played with the code so that the year, and date the post was made should appear. However, you may be wondering if the comment or information is still relevant.

If you do wonder about this, then please remember that you can always leave a comment on one of my older posts and I can then attempt to update information if necessary.  Each post has a comment subscription system, so you can keep up with replies.

And if you wish to correct me, then go for it.  I do try to keep things accurate, but, well, we all make mistakes!

Hope that helps a bit.

All the best to one and all,

Alex

Registering Domain Names in Italy. Dot com or dot it?

Recently Carlos, after reading this post possibly, contacted me to ask whether Italian sites use the .com and .it domain names. This was an interesting question and oddly enough I had been looking at the Alexa statistics for Italy’s top 100 Internet sites recently and I noticed that both .com and .it domains are used by Italian organisations for sites aimed at Italians.

The question is why there is this mix of .it and .com domains in Italy. Well, here are my theories.

Firstly, the registration process for a .it domain is fiddly and nowhere near as straightforward as that of registering a .com domain. With a .com domain you can be up and running in less than a day. However, if you go for a .it domain, if you are lucky you can have the domain visible in around 24 hours, if not, it may take much longer, especially if the requisite forms are not completed correctly. .it domains are also more expensive.

OK, so above is a practical reason why Italians may prefer the .com domain, but there is more.

In Italy, after having worked with (taught) many young Italians over the last 5 years or so, I’ve noticed that the .com domain is perhaps held in higher regard than the .it domain, and, although I have no proof of this, it would appear to mean that in the eyes of your average Internet aware Italian, the .com domain is possibly holds more credibility. There is one good example of a major Italian company using a .com domain – Il Sole 24 Ore – the Italian publishing and training group, whose site is a .com – www.il24ore.com Interesting is it not?

I also dropped in to my response to Carlos’ question that it would be possible to register both .com and .it names for the same dominion, as indeed have I for one of my other sites. And because I have become a little more SEO aware recently, I happened to mention that I thought that having the same site with both domains may cause SEO related problems. Although, with apologies to Carlos, I had no real evidence for this supposition. Naughty me.

Well, Carlos picked up on my SEO related assertion and wanted to know more. Whoops! After a quick search on Google I found some evidence to support my supposition: here And from that article it does appear as though country specific domains can cause problems for webmasters who are targeting different geographical areas, so although I shot from the hip, much like the cowboys of old, I did not miss. Let’s say that my assumption was more an ‘educated guess’.

There are also some other issues concerning the registration of .it domains.

With regard to those who wish to register and maintain an Italian domain, it could be said that the .it domain is restricted to Italian citizens and those who live in countries within the European Union. This means, for example, that Americans wishing to register a .it domain would have problems, unless, of course, they have a company registered in Italy or they happen to have an Italian ‘partita IVA’ – VAT registration. To read more about this and to find out more about registering a .it domain, I recommend visiting the English version of the Italian domain name registration authority nic.it

Carlos’ contact raised some very interesting issues, and this is why, with his permission, I’ve written this post. Although I know something about this, I am in no way an expert. So if anyone would like to add anything or contradict me, then please feel free, and I’ll modify this post and credit my sources appropriately.

Curious

I had a look at Blog from Italy’s world wide rankings according to Alexa’s ranking service today, and I noticed a few interesting things.

First, most of my visitors come from the other side of the Atlantic. This is no great surprise, seeing as the USA is probably the most connected nation on earth. But in a very close second place is Italy. Now that did surprise me, as did my blog’s ranking within Italy: 13707.

I have noticed, and am pleased, that quite a few more Italians have been dropping in and leaving comments recently, but I did not really think they would be that interested in my waffling on about their lovely country. Must have been wrong. Sometimes being wrong is not so bad after all!

The surprises though are not over, though. Quite a few Germans pop in here too, which is great, but again surprises me. I mean I’m sure there are more than a few good German blogs that talk about Italy out on the www.

However, the biggest surprise for me is that people from the Philippines and Singapore are visiting too. Again, I had no idea that people from these countries would find my blog even remotely interesting, but some must – so a big thanks for visiting to my readers from the Philippines and Singapore.

I have to admit that it is little discoveries like this that make blogging so fascinating for me.

Who ever you are, and where ever you are from, please feel free to drop in whenever you like. And thanks for doing so.

Alex – the chap that writes all this, er, stuff