Spring Time

I don't know if I told this before, but I live in a rural place. Every year, we go to the "vivero" (a great site where you can buy plants, flowers, trees, etc), and buy some flowers for our garden.

I share with you a pic that I made today, in the "vivero Guardia", to remember the beauty of this springs times! :)

And this is a photo of a peach tree in my house:


Enjoy!

Writing Matrix project is global!! :)

I told you some months ago, that I'm using statcounter to see my blog stats... This night, I have just realized that I have more visitors from Slovenia than Argentina! Here is the "top 5" Country's visitor:

What a surprise! :) Thanks to everybody for your visits and comments... I'm very happy to see "writingmatrix members" all over the world.

CU!!

Lujan

ExpoImagen 2007

The last weekend I was at Expo Imagen 2007, it was great! There were a lot of brands related with photography and digital images, like Epson, HP, Olympus, Fuji, Sony and more!

I found really nice the "Kioskos" to get printed copies of your photos. I tried several Kioskos, such as Kodak, Rollpix, Noritsu, PhotoSpeed... It's very interesting to see the last technologies in the market. You can make almost what ever you want with your photos, and all this systems try to be user friendly (easy to use for everyone), with nices user interfaces.

I went with two friends, Andrea and Natalia, both work at Rollpix, so they invited to me. It was a really great experience, I'm happy :)

Here are some photos, of course!!

PS: The date on some pictures is wrong (we forgot to change it).

This is my first "Meme"...

My Internet's begginings... This "Meme" (a "Meme" is the analog way to do a message chain by e-mail), was sent to me by Natalia , and I should share with you my Internet's begginings.

When did I start to use Internet? ... It was in the 2001 year, when I started the university. I had my first e-mail account at yahoo, and I used to visit a site called "mundo yerba", where I read jokes and saw funny stuffs.
I became really addicted to Internet because of UOL site. I discovered there the chat! I stayed longs hours chatting, and I have made some good friends. I still talk to my first cyber-friend! His name is Joel, and he's from Buenos Aires city.
But my most amazing discover was Yahoo Messenger. I found it by chance, browsing yahoo page, and installed it in one of the computers at the university. This was magical to me. Then a friend of mine, Andrea, told me about a similar program, the ICQ (R.I.P.).
I want to say that I have found wonderfull people in the "cyberspace". I have met personally with Pablo and Javier, and It was a nice experience :).
My first type of home connection to Internet was dial-up, you can imagine. I only could download e-mail, not browsing. Then I suscribed a browsing plan, hours limited. We (my brothers and I) had only 60 hs to get connected to the Internet. This was the Internet connection war at home!! :D

Well... mmm... oh! I use yahoo or altavista as first sites serching. Then I found Google, and I never leave it, because it's the best.
Nowadays, I really think that a PC without Internet connection isn't a PC ;). I like trying all the web services, so I use homebanking, blogs, chat, e-mail, video on youtube, music... I make reservations to the cinema or hotel, pay my taxes, consulting the weather on line, and so on!!

Now, and because it's a "MEME", I should pass it to three peple more, so:

* Nelba (of course!!)
* Bárbara
* Matute

CU people!!


Trackback: Nelba, Barbara, DolisMolero

Free Software in Mar del Plata

I want to invite all you to the Mar del Plata Free Software Conference.
Free Software is more than a kind of soft, it's a complete filosophy, so, if you are interesting on it, or you want to know what is about it, please, visit http://www.mardelbit.org/content/view/38/95/ to see the event's program.
The company of one of the wrintingmatrix group, Matias ("matute"), is sponsor of this conference!

PS: The event is free!

A Friend's Blog

This small post is to let you know about a blog:

http://subiela.blogspot.com

It's made by a friend of mine, Alberto, wich is a History professor. You'll find his blog very interesting, so, please, visit it and leave a comment!

Winter...

You know about my photography hobbie... well, this time, I share with you a pic of Mar del Plata's beachs in winter, after the rain, and you can see the rainbow. This photo was taken by a friend of mine, Mariana (Mey for everybody), so... Mey thank you!!

36 JAIIO in Mar del Plata!

Since 1961 the JAIIOs (Jornadas Argentinas de Informatica e Investigacion Operativa), Argentine Conference on Informatics, are organized by the SADIO, where in parallel sessions works are published in Annals, results of investigations are discussed and activities on different topics are carried on. Also, conferences and meetings are developed with the attendance of Argentine and foreign professionals.

The JAIIOs are organized like a set of separated symposiums, each one dedicated to a specific subject (one or two days long) allowing the interaction of their participants.

This year, the 36° JAIIO are organized in the city of Mar del Plata, from the 27 to the 31 of August of 2007 in the Hotel 13 de Julio

I list here the Symposiums that will be taking place:

» ASAI 2007 - Argentine Symposium on Artificial Intelligence
Monday 27th and Tuesdays 28th of August
contact: asai@36jaiiomardelplata.org.ar

» ASSE 2007 - Argentine Symposium on Software Engineering
Wednesday 29th, Thursdays 30th and Friday 31st of August
contact: asse@36jaiiomardelplata.org.ar


» AST 2007 - Argentine Symposium on Computing Technology
Thursday 30th and Fridays 31st of August
contact: ast@36jaiiomardelplata.org.ar


» SSI 2007 - Symposium of Information Society
Monday 27th and Tuesdays 28th of August
contact: mailto:ast@36jaiiomardelplata.org.ar


» SID 2007 - Symposium on Law and Informatics
Tuesday 28th and Wednesdays 29th of August
contact: sid@36jaiiomardelplata.org.ar


» SIO 2007 - Symposium on Operations Research
Monday 27th and Tuesdays 28th of August
contact: sio@36jaiiomardelplata.org.ar


» SIS 2007 - Argentine Symposium on Healthcare Informatics
Wednesday 29th, Thursday 30th and Fridays 31st of August
contact: sis@36jaiiomardelplata.org.ar


» SIE 2007 - Symposium on Government and Informatics
Wednesday 29th and Thursdays 30th of August
contact: mailto:sis@36jaiiomardelplata.org.ar


» EST 2007 - Students Work Contest
Thursday 30th and Fridays 31st of August
contact: est@36jaiiomardelplata.org.ar


» JSL 2007 - Free Software Workshop
Tursday 30th and Fridays 31st of August
contact: jsl@36jaiiomardelplata.org.ar


» JII 2007 - Industrial Informatics Workshop
Monday 27th and Tuesdays 28th of August
contact: jii@36jaiiomardelplata.org.ar


» JUI 2007 - Workshop on University-Industry Partnership
Monday 27th of August
contact: jui@36jaiiomardelplata.org.ar

I will participate in the JAIIO, and particulary in Symposium of Information Society. I think is a wonderfull oportunity for the people who live in Mar del Plata. And I also proud because "my" university is one of the locals organizers :)

You can find more information here:
http://www.36jaiiomardelplata.org.ar/
http://www.sadio.org.ar/



CU Soon!!

From Mar del Plata to the world... second part :)

Hi again! This time I want to share with all of you some nice pictures that I took the las thursday. It was seven o'clock in the morning, so you can see the sunshine. Enjoy its!

StatCounter, a great web tracker

Do you have your own blog? Do you know who visit it? Where are they from? How many people have visited your homepage? How many time did they spend on it?

If you want to know the answer to some of this questions, you should try statcounter. You can see the link as a button in this blog, on the right side.

StatCounter is a great website tracker. It allows you to see the stats, and have very interesting information about your visitors. I put here an example of my blog stats. I was really surprised when I have the information of "my" visitor's countries. See that...

Do you have several blogs? No problem, you register only once time, and you can manage diferents sites from only one account, by creating one more "site project".

And the best: it's free!

Try it on www.statcounter.com, it's very easy to register, and you only have to follow some steps to configure the stats's site. Enjoy it!

From Mar del Plata to the World!!

The last Sunday I went to the cost, to share some "mates" (a typical argentinian drink) with my family, and I took some pictures with my mobile phone.

I think this is part of ICT: conneted, everywhere, using technology.

Here are the photos, my favourite place on this city, where I renew my energy seeing the sea... and the sunset!!

PS: To the people who came to Mar del Plata in summer, see the photos of the empty beach and enjoy all the free sand ;)

Internet gaming: understanding the attraction

Have you ever play Internet computer games? This is an amazing and growing business and there are thousands of games and possibilities. Thus, what is the attraction of this?

In the beginnings, the video games were very simply and rudimentary. Only one person could play against the computer, and this was very frustrating and boring. Perhaps the reader can remember the pong game, in which the player manipulates a device to move a bar up and down, trying to deflect a ball against a kind of wall. Fewer years later, new kind of video games appeared. They began to increase the complex level, and involve all senses with graphics colors and some quality sound. Other advancement was the multi-players games that allowed two or more people to play the same game at the same time.

When the Internet comes to the games, it changed everything. To solution the limitation of the players need to be physically present in the same room, the companies developed games in which is possible to play against each others players across a computer network, and then, over Internet. Firstly, this was exclusive for computers, but nowadays, the game consoles, like the Microsoft X-box, have an Ethernet port to connect to Internet. In addition to common Internet games, there are on-line games. This can be downloaded on demand or upon subscription. The players could rent the use of the game for trial few days, and then renew the subscription or erase it from their disks. Other aspect is that this kind of games provides the possibility to adapt the features to the taste of the players. Both aspects together make this kind of games a big new business, because of the thousand of people interested in its.
Casinos, sport games, rol games, strategic … all are available and waiting for new subscriptions. The offer is amazing. Probably you have heard about Quake, or Counter Strike, GTA Vice City. You can play its not only in your home pc, but in cyber coffees. Usual players develop some kind of community, and exchange experiences and bigs amount of game’s hours.

Tell me what is your favourite!! :)

E-Gov: a practical case of ICT application

In my previous post, I said that I would write about ICTs. Well, now I share with you an article that I wrote about e-government. This kind of systems use ICT to provide citizens several services. One of the most important problems of a government is bureaucracy. How much time do you waste waiting in public offices? Do you always find an easy and simply way to solve your problem? If the answers to these questions are “no”, e-gov may be the solution that you are looking for. So, let’s start with the definition of e-gov. E-gov is the acronym of electronic government, and it’s the use by the different government levels of systems based on information and communication technologies, to make the relations between the government and the people better, and increase citizens’ life quality . There are four types of relation in E-gov:
G2C: Government to Citizens
G2B: Government to businesses, in relation to the private sector
G2E: Government to Employees, in relation to government employees
And finally, G2G: Government to Government, in relation two or more government offices.
At this moment, you are probably asking yourself what the goals to develop this kind of systems are. Well, e-gov has three clear objectives. First, efficiency. Have you ever been, for example, in the ANSES office? They don’t know this word. You’ll probably spend all the morning and go back home without a solution. E-gov tries to provide better public services, with better public employees, and minor costs to the government. The second objective of e-gov is transparency. People don’t trust in our government, and these systems are a way to make proceedings clear and transparent. Third and last, the purpose is participation, because with e-gov, it is easier to access public governmental services, and so it is a way for citizens to be more involved in citizen life. This can be implemented by telephonic surveys, public computers to access on-line services, e.g. see your taxes and pays, on line forums about public topics, electronic vote, etc.
Do you know the meaning of “unique window”? You know that the inefficient bureaucratic services obligate citizens to do their proceedings in the different public offices, but with this model, citizens shouldn’t know the internal circuit because it’s transparent for them, and they interact with only one employee, in equal ways through different channels, such us a physical window, telephone or the Internet.To start with an e-gov project it is extremely important to have politic support and their commitment to the cause. Another necessary aspect is to consider access strategies to solve the people difficult to access the equipment and the knowledge required to operate it, named digital breach. Last but not least, it is essential to make a good planning to have the different resources available in all the phases of the project.
Nowadays, there are a big amount of success experiences of e-gov. The first country to implement this solution was Finland. Finland has several economics problems before the collapse the USSR, because it was its most important client. But they renewed their strategies, and invested on technology. They have the most important mobile telephone companies, like Nokia. What did they do? They created an specific branch named Tekes, which has the responsibility to organize and promote industry and technology. And it was Tekes which planned all the e-gov project. Finns can do all their proceedings through the Internet, and home banking is as usual as traditional banking in Argentina. Also, they have the project of the first virtual city, called Arabianranta. All the service will be on line and the people will be “connected”, since the on-line proceeding to have sensors in your floors to know if you fell down. This will be a wireless solution, and e-gov is the key. In our country, we don’t have a central portal of e-gov, but some offices have their page on the Internet, and you can do some proceedings, like obtain your CUIL on-line, know your Rentas debt, or present sworn declarations. One very useful service is the on-line searcher to know where you must vote during the elections, provided by the Judicial Power. And Mar del plata also has its portal, http://www.mardelplata.gov.ar/, in which you can ask about places, proceedings, taxes, etc.

Hi everybody!!

This blog is part of the English virtual community project (http://englishvirtualcommunity.blogspot.com), created by Prof. Nelba Quintana.
My name is Maria Lujan, I'm 24 years old, and I'm from Mar del Plata, Argentina. I'm studying engineering in computer science, and I work in the system area of a public services company. I'm also teacher of TICs in "polimodal" level. TICs means "Technologies of Information and Communication". As you can see, I like computers, and technology in general, so much. For this reason, the topic of this blog will be TICs, news about it, and all the things related.
I'm very happy to be part of this project, so, I hope you enjoy it.

From Mar del Plata,