(sioku’s picture)

Some have surely left already and others are packing their bags, while the rest of you may be thinking about how to get through a vacation-less August. That’s pretty much our story this year, but today we’re putting the finishing touches on a project you’ll hear about soon.

If you’re sticking in town, there are clever and interesting ways to savor even the most familiar places. Obviously, we’d suggest WHAIWHAI. Incidentally, yesterday’s edition of the Radio24 program August: Survival Techniques was about Milan Diamante. Paolo Roversi, the author of the stories, talks about his August in Milan. His advice is not to miss the chance to enjoy the city’s charm at a time when the crowds are thin. Listen to that August 12th interview via podcast (in Italian).

A few more days to wait … the adventure in cities on your iPhone is coming. No guide and sms: the whole experience can be lived through WHAIWHAI app. In our web site there are already all the information necessary to understand features and function. Stay tuned!

We’ve finally refurbished the webpage where you can look back at your own whaiwhai city adventure. Just type in the phone number you used to play and the code you received at the end of the game, and the map will display all the locations you hit and the titles of the stories you read. In this way, you can revisit your experience, reread the stories (since you’ll also get the codes to match the right pages together again in your guidebook) and check your time. So if you’ve played, go retrace your steps on the game log page. But before you do, post a comment on the players’ bulletin board – a huge WHAIWHAI travelers’ log is in the making!

Also, a few days ago the Dispenser program on Rai Radio 2 discussed WHAIWHAI. Thanks goes out to Marco Villa for his entertaining report, which you can listen to below (in Italian).

Author insert a music with WS Audio Player
(Download) this music.

And finally, an intriguing rendezvous about games and videogames called Far Game will take place tomorrow afternoon at the Cineteca in Bologna. They’ve invited us to speak at the event, so our guy Fabio will be there to talk about the WHAIWHAI style.

A couple of days ago, Italian Valley went online. It’s a site created by Wired that collects and describes great Italian innovation stories. These are stories about the people who Wired’s Director Riccardo Luna calls “ItAliens”, that is, “heroes who invent and create in a country like Italy against the odds.” This project came about in conjunction with an Italian Ministry of Public Administration initiative: the ministry, along with Italia degli Innovatori, selected a number of companies and institutions to represent Italy at Expo 2010 (the World’s Fair) in Shanghai. WHAIWHAI is one of the companies that was selected, so we’ll have a spot at Expo 2010 along with 264 other innovative Italian projects. You can find out more about all of these Italian innovations on Wired’s website, but – most important of all! – you can vote for your favorite. The project that gets the most votes will receive an award on July 31st in Shanghai. It’s been two days since the voting started, and so far we’re well placed in the rankings. But we need your support. So without further ado, vote for WHAIWHAI (just click on the little stars) and spread the word!

In today’s edition of the Corriere della Sera insert ViviMilano, three full pages (9 to 11) are dedicated to the Milan edition of WHAIWHAI. There’s an excerpt of stories related to Milanese design that you can read and then “play” in the WHAIWHAI way, to try it out before the new full guidebook hits the stores. If you’re in Milan — now is a great time to be there with the International Furniture Fair and other Design Week events going on — just pick up a copy of Il Corriere, follow the simple instructions in those three pages in the ViviMilano section, and start playing. You can even do it from home, as our new sofa mode has also been activated for those excerpts. Some people have already begun playing… so what are you waiting for!

We’ve been presenting our work to people studying projects similar to ours. These opportunities to analyze and compare our work do us good because they help us keep our boundaries open.

A week ago, Fabio gave a presentation at a symposium called Playing the City, an international event to explore intersections between the study of urban practices and the creation of new, ludic forms of participating in the life of a city. Our appointment was hosted by the Play 2010 Game Festival in Modena, a perfect setting to talk about WHAIWHAI, about the motivation to create a game where players interact with cities. Here ’s Fabio’s talk, which came after Mary Flanagan’s first hour session.

And next Monday, I (GiuliaP) will meet students majoring in multimedia publishing in the Department of Humanities of the University of Rome - La Sapienza. There, I will have a chance to discuss WHAIWHAI as an innovative publishing product. Without a doubt, there’ll be some excellent points to reflect on for those studying new publishing foand media formats.

We sent the Milan edition of whaiwhai to the press today. You might already know that it’s called Milano Diamante. But there are some things you definitely don’t know about it. We’ll list them below. First, though, mark your calendars: on Saturday, March 13^th at 11:00am, we’ll meet in front of the Palazzo Reale in Milan to unveil this new edition. To participate, write to: assessore.orsatti@comune.milano.it. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Tourism of the City of Milan. Send an e-mail to them and they’ll give you all the information you need to participate. Now for some of the highlights of this edition:

- Milano Diamante contains 45 great stories written by Paolo Roversi, an author who knows Milan backwards and forwards and has already fascinated readers with noir novels set in the city.

- We’re experimenting with the option of customizing your adventure through the city: when you start the game, you can choose to read mainly stories related to history, design or music. After working with consultants, we decided that the myriad facets of Milan merit a division of the stories into three categories: one for historical events and legends, one for the Milanese design tradition and notable personalities associated with it, and one for opera and other stories about music.

- Milano Diamante is officially sponsored by the Department of Tourism of the City of Milan and by the world-renown opera house La Scala, with the collaboration of the Triennale di Milano design museum. So we’ve already received lots of support.

- The search this time is for a stolen diamond. You must find it with the help of an inspector, who is trying to catch the nimble thief Salai.

That’s all for now. Hope to see you Saturday!

(illustration by Giovanna Nicosia)

“Do you find walking tours too passive, like sitting through a boring lecture.  Wish they were more like “The Amazing Race,” the popular CBS reality show?” It’s the opening of New York Times article (travel section), it appeared some days ago. The famous heading spoke about us and about Selectitaly, an American tour operator that suggests WHAIWHAI to American travellers.  We are grateful and pleased. It’s a good prelude to our next edition!