FLORENCE - What does the metaverse smell like? Metaverse and AI enter also the world of perfumes. The 21st edition of Pitti Fragranze, the Pitti Immagine salon dedicated to the world of international artistic perfumery, which took place at the Stazione Leopolda in Florence, has just ended. And beyond the new scents and events was also an opportunity to see the trend of a multi-faceted market. Numerous talks on new trends, the comparison between different generations had been the occasion to analyse the impact of Artificial Intelligence and the Metaverse into the world of perfume. The web 3 is someway ready to influence also the perfumes market?
Artificial Intelligence at Pitti Fragranze was presented with Symbiotic Experience, a reinvented perception, an installation whose protagonists were 4 digital artists who work with AI to inspire the sillages composed for the occasion by 4 important noses: Alberto Morillas, Coralie Spicher, Serge Majoullier and Jérôme Di Marino. The result? A unique, immersive, synaesthetic experience, where physical and reinvented reality find a perfect point of union.
As in all thecnolgies, smell in the Metaverse may sound strange as smell is the only sense not perceived in the virtual world. But Pitti Fragranze tried to overcome this boundary with Agharti, the perfume of the Metaverse. The new Italian brand Agharti Scent Score has proposed four fragrances, all based on sustainable ingredients and enclosed in bottles inspired by the Metaverse. It's a sort of immersive experience in which the smell came form different elements of nature.
"The creative director, Barbara Loddo, owner of Aquacosmetics, imagined the stages of a journey towards the center of our planet in a magical world - reported Il Sole 24 Ore. Fragrances materialize from the four essential elements for life, starting with the green scent of the earth to arrive at the refreshing one of water, passing through the heat of fire and the lightness of air"
SOURCE: IL SOLE 24 ORE
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Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
NAPLES - There's a new way to eat fast food and its name is Welly. Welly is the first fast food lead by a DAO, the Decentralized autonomous organizations. The project was conceived "as a new restaurant model born in Naples that focuses on the sale of chicken and salads, with an exclusive collaboration with Shiba Inu, one of the most important cryptocurrency".
"We have built a community of 5 thousand members on Discord - explains Paolo Bellucci, member of the team - we can count on over 50 thousand followers on Twitter, and we have received more than 400 requests for franchising from different countries" .
Welly is based on a typical crypto system, called DAO, an organization that operates online thanks to the decisions of owners (investors) who have a direct influence on crucial aspects of the brand. Design, brand identity, logistical and strategic decisions are the crucial elements of this project: "We want to be the first fast food restaurant in the world driven so much by our Community" continues Bellucci.
Welly isn't just about food selling, it wants to bring transparency in the food and restaurant markeet by introducing a fully traceable supply chain on the blockchain. This model offers to the consumers information on the origin of the products. The menu will focus on chicken and there will be influences from Mediterranean cuisine, with healthy alternatives, such as roasted croquettes instead of the classic fried one". "We have planned a balanced and non-dispersive menu. A smaller menu to better respond to the demand for product traceability" underlines Bellucci.
The fast food idea was born following the launch of a successful NFT collection, which then allowed the team to be noticed by Shiba Inu managers, who then decided to support the project. Meanwhile, Welly will open the first Welly store in Naples, which will be followed by the first ghost kitchen dedicated to Welly salads, a product intended for supermarket shelves and beyond, and then the inauguration of the first franchise expected by the end of 2023."
SOURCE: ANSA
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Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
LONDON - According to Financial Times, The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is considering using a separate entity for the blockchain-based markets business, to introduce blockchain in financial activities. This will become a new blockchain-based ecosystem.
It seems that UK regulator authorities wanted introduce blockchain technology as part of offering traditional financial asset trading. So far, other projects have addressed only a part of the lifecycle of financial activities in terms of trading and settlement of transactions.
"Murray Roos, head of capital markets at the LSE Group, told the Financial Times that the company had been examining the potential for a blockchain-powered trading venue for about a year, and had reached an “inflection point” where it had decided to take the plans forward. It has asked Julia Hoggett, head of the London Stock Exchange, one unit in the broader group, to spearhead the project".
“The ultimate goal is a global platform that allows participants in all jurisdictions to be able to interact with people in other jurisdictions while fully complying with rules, laws and regulations, potentially multiple jurisdictions at once, which has not been possible in a world analog,” Roos said.
SOURCE: Financial Times
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Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
Since few days, all users can use Duet, Google's artificial intelligence, to create spreadsheets and presentations, but also to obtain a summary of the documents you don't want or time to read.
Montain View's company has in fact just announced the implementation of Duet AI on all its Workspace apps, so it will be available on Gmail, Drive, GDocs and so on. Until recently, over a million people could try out the beta version of this technology, but now that it's out of the testing phase, anyone who pays will be able to benefit from it. Duet AI technology had been announced at the developer conference earlier this year: at the time Google will show how it could be used to transform the structure of a document in GDocs into a presentation, or to create a graph with data from a spreadsheet calculation.
A concrete example of what Duet AI can do is Google Meet. During a video call, the tool can take notes and summarize what was covered during the conversation. In case something has escaped your attention, you can also chat with the bot during the call to find out exactly what was said. Integrations with other Workspace applications make it easy to leverage this information, for example by copying summaries into a Docs file. This particular application, however, will not be available initially: Workspace Labs will support AI Notes in the coming months.
Other examples is the possibility of automatically creating a Slides presentation based on your opening notes. This is somewhat familiar territory for those who are already familiar with the artificial intelligence features of the Microsoft 365 suite. However, one specific feature of Google Meet is at least unique: the "join for me" feature allows users not to participate in a conversation and still convey the information to those who participate. Within Google Chat it is possible to have a direct conversation with a generative AI bot. This functionality also integrates seamlessly with other Workspace apps: for example, those who want to summarize a text from Docs or request a data point from Google Sheets can proceed with the request. In addition to AI-specific innovations, there's also a new interface for Google Chat that includes improved search functionality. Support for chat groups of up to 500,000 participants has been introduced.
Duet AI will also enhance Gmail’s existing smart reply feature allowing users to draft longer, more personalized email replies with a tap. Additionally, Google said it’s working with organizations like Typeface and Jasper to enable marketers to use generative AI to create personalized content in Workspace, along with other partners. Despite Duet AI’s ability to dig into corporate files and emails, Google says customers’ interactions with Duet AI will stay within their organization and their existing workplace protections will remain intact.
However, all this technology is not cheap at all: in fact, Google charges $ 30 per user per month for access, at least for large companies, while the price for small teams has not yet been defined. In any case, it's the same price set by Microsoft for its Copilot, which offers similar AI functions but on Office apps.
he diffusion of generative AI in companies relies heavily on secure data management. Privacy is one of the cornerstones of Google's announcement: the data that organizations enter into Workspace won't go anywhere else and won't be used to train new AI models. End users can try Duet AI with a free trial. Data subjects only need to indicate, in addition to personal data, how many employees the organization in question has and whether it is an existing Workspace customer.
SOURCE: TechCrunch
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Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
After National Financial Services and Market Authority (FSMA) told Binance, in June, to stop serving Belgian customers from outside the European bloc, the company found a new way to keep the transactions going.
Belgian customers will now be routed via a Polish entity to escape that effort by regulators to chase the crypto company out of Belgium, the company said. Belgian customers will be put into “withdrawals-only” mode if they don’t agree to the terms of use for Binance Poland, an entity registered within the European Union.
SOURCE: Coin Desk
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Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
JOHANNESBURG - Is there a real alternative to the dollar? Finding the answear to this question is one of the goals at the BRICS Business Forum 2023. BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. "The the bloc is much more likely to offer piecemeal economic and diplomatic alternatives to the US-led global order than to dramatically replace it, analysts say. That could still lead to more tensions with the West as the grouping’s leaders seek to chart out an independent path in a world in flux. But to remain effective, the BRICS will need to manage the disparate priorities of its member nations – a challenge that will not be easy for the grouping to address".
The path to step outside the dollor global econmical power is already designed. "The South African presidency is working precisely on strengthening ties with Africa: on the third day of the summit, among over forty confirmed heads of state, most come from the African continent, as well as from Latin America, Asia and the Middle East" - Paolo Vittoria wrote on the italian newspaper "Il Manifesto".
Expectation is high, more than twenty countries have applied for membership and current members alone make up about 40% of the world's population and 25% of the global economy. Another topic under discussion is the unit of common value in commercial and investment transactions which does not replace national currencies, but creates a stable alternative to the dominant currencies: essentially, not depending on the dollar. In this sense, a sure shoulder is the New Development Bank, created by the BRICS and currently chaired by the former president of Brazil Dilma Rousseff.
So is there already concrete alternatives to trading in dollars? Not yet, but the direction seems to be creation of parallel financial institutions to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. in this scenario, could cryptocurrencies play a role? We don' t need to forget that both Russia and China, decided to invest in the new economy. Russia starting a trial for digital tubles with banks, China proposing to create a Digital ID System, whose goal is to have a sort of control on metaverse users. During the summit hoewer, South African hosts said there will be no proposals for a Brics common currency as an alternative to the dollar or euro.
Julian Borger on the Gurdian really made a powerful analysis of the situation. Borger underlined that "the White House, too, played down the likelihood of Brics turning into a powerful and cohesive bloc".
The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, during a briefing, said : "This is a very diverse collection of countries … with differences of view on critical issues".
In his recorded remarks to the meeting, Putin blamed the volatility in global markets for food and other commodities on western sanctions, and said that Brics would be a force for fairness in international relations. “We cooperate on the principles of equality, mutual support and respect for each other’s interests,” he said. “This is the essence of the future-oriented strategic course of our association, a course that meets the aspirations of the main part of the world community, the so-called global majority.”
It's true that so often absence makes more noise than presence. This is the case of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi reaffirmed China's commitment to protecting the global South's common interests on an international scale, recalling that his country "resolutely supported the common interests of developing countries and worked to increase representation and voice of emerging markets and developing countries in global affairs" in his speech yesterday at the BRICS Business Forum 2023, on the eve of the South African summit of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) but it was not he who pronounced the his speech. His Commerce Minister Wang Wentao did it in his place.
Countries candidated as members are Iran, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Ethiopia and Venezuela. The debate is about how far expansion should go and the criteria needed, India is so far the most cautious. As The gurdian underlined "Brazil supports the admission of Argentina into Brics, but has warned that rapid expansion could dilute the group’s influence".
Source: Aljazeera, The Guardian, Il Manifesto
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Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
BEIJING - China plans to monitor all metaverse users. As the state-owned telecom operator China Mobile reported, it has been proposed the creation of a “Digital Identity System” to keep track of all local metaverse users in the Country. The report by POLITICO shows China wants to assert state control over virtual environments. The idea has been discussed between tech experts and Chinese officials and could set global rules focused on that technology. It's certainly not a good moment for Chian's economical climate. After the Wall Street Journal underlined that Evergrande's request of Chapter 15 protection in Manhattan bankruptcy court could lead to a new Lehman Brothers crack, all finance eyes are fixed on that situation. This choice could describe a new way for China to look toward the future of its own economy.
"The government of China (ruled by the Communist party) has made several attempts to eliminate decentralization inside its borders and closely monitors people’s activities and financial transactions", banning, for example, all operations involving cryptocurrencies in 2021.
On the other hand, the Chinese government is in favor of a central bank digital currency (CBDC): a monetary product issued by the People’s Bank of China whose supply could be adjusted by the financial institution.
According to a recent Politico coverage, in the proposed “Digital Identity System” users will share personal data informations, such as occupation and “identifiable signs.” The informations could be stored permanently and shared with law enforcement agents “to keep the order and safety of the virtual world.” The questions that economists and philosophers are making to themselves in these cases is how safe our privacy will be, after a global ID system like that.
SOURCE: CryptoPotato, Politico
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Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
Zynga announced the release of Sugartown, a new videogame that involves blockchain. It's the developer of cult and iconic videogames such as Farmville, Words With Friends, Cityville. It capturing the imagination of millions of gamers around the world since 2009 with social games. Zynga, is a giant games developer founded in 2007 and based in San Francisco, California.
In the ever-changing landscape of the videogame industry, Zynga has already bet in the future technologies. Infact the company already worked for mobile devices and beyond. Now has made a stunning announcement that is capturing the attention of gamers and fans of technology from every part of the planet: the imminent launch of its first blockchain-based game, Sugartown.
Zynga is really opening new doors in the gaming experience and introducing its presence in the growing world of cryptocurrencies and NFTs. One of the most distinctive features of Sugartown is the use of Ethereum-based NFTs, which allow players to immerse themselves in an alternative dimension full of creativity and exciting challenges.
What will change in the both system? The crypto space and the videogame world? Time will tell.
SOURCE: BorsaInside
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Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
Ilaria Vanni's interview with the web 3 consultant and Dao builder Victor Lardé. Lardé is now based in Italy but he's from France and worked in Malta. His professional activity is focused in supporting many companies towords the digital and web 3 revolution. Lardé is also the founder of the Academy Web3, an online school where people learn how to manage with the new digital tools related to metaverse, cryprocurrencies and blockchain.
"In my opinion we are living a blockchain revolution - said Lardè. We are living a new step in humanity, which is technology, because a blockchain has the potential to change the world and to have a fully decentralized world and to stop with the control and the lack of freedom and the censorship that is now a centralized entity".
Ilaria Vanni is a TV journalist for italian broadcasting and coordinator of The Meta Economist portal. She has a philosphy degree and she's now studing the economic and technological issues connected to the new frontiers of the metaverse.
