One would seriously doubt if there are any words at all to describe what Greece is experiencing these days... The whole country is burning; trees, houses, people, a national tragedy has struck all Greeks and will remain in our memory as the saddest summer of our lives. I doubt if there is anything to be written about what has happened; a work of arsonists this horrible nightmare has already changed the way Greeks will feel about their country from now on; many used the expression "our 11th September" to describe the way we feel about it; the Greek version of "ground zero" was released during these days: no direct violent attack, but a cruel "asymmetric threats" like model was used in order to achieve such a high level of disaster; we keep questioning what will be left from this country, will people be able to live in these areas anymore? Even ancient Olympia was threatened by the flames; there is no humanity left in this world, no honour, no feelings; what kind of future are we building for our selves... We are used to blaming the older generations for all problems in Greece, but unfortunately I can't see why we claim to be better. Let us believe that there are still some tears left to shed for future tragedies...

Feeling depressed because of being away from the beautiful, warm and sunny Greece, I started browsing through the official web site of the Greek National Tourism Organisation (G.N.T.O.). I was delighted to see that they update regularly their portal, already added multilingual support and many other sections and information about tourism in Greece. It is well known that Greece depends on tourism and the number of tourists who visit Greece on yearly basis exceeds the Greek population! This means that the advertising and promotional campaigns should be carried out very carefully and with no tolerance of aesthetic failure. This year's campaign was really astonishing; I was impressed by the images and designing concepts used for the multiple posters that G.N.T.O. released for its advertising purposes. The result is exceptional and the quality of a high level. I managed to download all sample images for my personal image bank. The question is under which license are these images released? Is one allowed to use them as a banner at a web site linking to G.N.T.O.'s site and promote the campaign or not? It is not clearly stated that these images are provided to the public "as is" in order to be used for promotional purposes; on the other hand intellectual property law applies to all works, including these images of course. So am I allowed to post a small banner to my web site without their special permission to do so? I have already done this, but I will mail the web site admin in order to find out how they feel about it... No matter what comes out from this communication, I strongly advise for this summer to... "explore your senses" in Greece!

At a central hotel near Athens (30 October - 2 November), a very important meeting for the future of Internet's regulation is going to take place. I am referring to the "Internet Governance Forum", a conference organized by the Ministry of Transportations and Telecommunications of Greece, on behalf of United Nations. This is the 1st forum that takes place on such a large scale and it is the result of the very successful World Summit on the Information Society that took place in Geneva (2003) and in Tunisia, last year. The IGF is going to be a critical point in Internet's history, as hundreds of issues that have political, social, economical and of course legal dimensions will be discussed. I am so sad that I won't have the chance to attend it, but I am so happy that have oriented my studies at these fields of high importance and value for our future society. For any further information, visit the official IGF website, or the global IGF website. If you can't find the program of the conference, use this direct link.
You can also watch in real time the IGF using the relavant links. The quality is excellent, any connection faster than 512K should be fine for buffering and streaming the content.