The 2005 ended with a very nice present from the american Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine.
Their Board of Experts voted Euro Coins Pocket Collector QVGA to be among the best in the category Miscellaneous Utilities in the magazine's fifth annual Best Software Awards.
As a finalist I joined their 2006 Best of Everything Marketing Program which is granting my software some more visibility, starting with the inclusion into the 2006 Best of Everything Software Package.
Another award which makes me proud of the work I did to create this software!
I'm very satisfied to see my software listed among other great Pocket PC applications and I've been even more proud to read the comment by one of the judges, Jack Cook, Senior Editor of Mobility Today, when they announced the finalists:

"Euro Coins has a very slick interface that is well designed and easy to understand. You will find this program to be an invaluable tool to organize, catalog, and manage your collection."

This is the scan of the nice paper certificate they sent me, as signed by Hal Goldstein, Exec Editor/Publisher of the magazine.

At the Mobile Fun Forum I met Gabriele Di Matteo with great pleasure because I always watch his talk-show Netc@fé, broadcast by Telelombardia every Sunday at 23:00.
While we were talking I couldn't believe my ears he was going to invite me at the show recordings right that Friday. I accepted of course, even if I wasn't totally fine, since it could have been an invaluable occasion not only for my business, but also for my personal pleasure to be able to meet Maria Remi, the beautiful Greek assistant of Gabriele, and Bettina di Virgilio, the nice net-surfer of the show, who works as a designer at Yekdesign and even wrote a book about Photoshop 7.
I was very excited the day I went to Telelombardia's Studios in Milan, but I immediately relaxed myself once I got in touch with the kind staff working there.
I was particularly impressed by the fact that Maria looked even better in flesh than in TV, since they usually tell the opposite, don't they?
Gabriele told me to bring my real collection of Euro coins with me, along with the award and the PDA with Ecpc, and so I did.
When it was my turn I sat down and the interview started. I was a bit confused by what was happening around me, but I tried to stay calm and concentrated to properly answer to the questions of the charismatic Gabriele.
It all went well, although I was not sure about the end result, at least until I watched and recorded the show at home.
You can now see it split into four parts:

• The introduction, in which Maria announces me in the show summary, followed by the nice Netc@fé theme.
• The first part of the interview, in which Gabriele asks me some introductory questions, followed by the interview to Fabio Viola of WirelessGaming, who gave me the prize at the Mobile Fun Awards.
• The second part, in which during the explanation of the software features Gabriele makes a funny joke about Maria's Greece..
• The third part, in which we talk about my future projects, and then Maria closes the show by reading his fans' e-mails.

To view the videos you have to use Windows Media Player 9 or later. Right click on the thumbnails, save the videos on your hard disk and enjoy!
Note: you can switch on and off the English subtitles with the keyboard shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+C.

It has been an incredible experience for me because I never thought (but hoped it) to turn from a spectator into a guest at one of my favorite TV shows.
Do I have to tell you again about how Maria made the studio shine, even if she had a nasty cold that day?
And these are the nice backstage pictures I took. Just hold the mouse cursor over them to read the captions.

The Mobile Fun Awards have been awarded for a contest open to all Italian developers of software for mobile devices, which took place on 28th October in Milan during the Mobile Fun Forum 2003, the first event in Italy devoted to content and entertainment software providers for mobile devices.
The event was organized by Wireless, the Italian magazine for the Mobile Economy, and endorsed by the Mobile Entertainment Forum organization.
I built a Special Edition of Ecpc for the contest and I won the Cellulari.it Special Award, an award designed to reward and encourage independent developers.
I even met some my ex-Trecision's coworkers there, who did loud cheers during my prize-giving, but I was too deeply stirred to understand they just came from them.
The prize-giving occurred at the end of a long morning with many lecturers talking about the great marketing opportunities of the mobile economy in Italy. Many Italian webzines followed the event and wrote reports about it, such as Portel, Cellulari.it and WirelessGaming.
I even wrote an article for the weekly Internet feature of the local daily newspaper La Provincia which you can find here in PDF format, or here in RepliGo format.
Here are the pictures of the event. Just hold the mouse cursor over them to read the captions.

Update: On the December 2003/ January 2004 issue of Wireless there's a complete report about the Mobile Fun Forum 2003 and on page 51 there's an article about the Mobile Fun Awards, with the list of all the winners. You can see a scan of the page here.

The Handango People's Choice Awards are designed to honor those applications that offer customers the best quality available in the mobile software world. Handango Members have the opportunity to vote for their favorite software in numerous categories.
So it was a very nice surprise when I discovered Ecpc almost reached the Top Ten of the Handango People's Choice Awards in the category Best Education Solution!
I was simply amazed I reached the 11th place in such a short timeframe since I published the first release of Ecpc on 16th July 2003.
People's Choice Awards results are now constantly updated as the votes come in and as new applications are released, so if you really like Ecpc now you know exactly what to do: just follow the link and vote for it in the Best Education Solution category.
I think we can make much better than the current 23rd place, can't we?

The kind Diego Magnani, chief editor of the Italian magazine Il Mio Palmare, did it again!
For the third time in a row he surprised me including my website in their special overview about the scene of Italian mobile application development starting at page 17, and I felt very honored to be mentioned among the other Italian software houses like GoWare, PalmoSoft, I.B.I., Bitween, Beeweeb and Siedsistemi, which are realities much more consolidated than me!
In the article they highlighted Ecpc, of course, but I was even more pleased they mentioned Strike or Die.
One note: my surname is wrong by a letter, since they wrote Orlandi instead of Orlando, but I think I can forgive them.

And finally here's the first full review of Ecpc by an Italian magazine. The staff of Il Mio Palmare, from PlayPress Publishing, not only wrote a nice article about it on page 76 of their December issue, but also agreed to setup a special promotion for Italian readers interested in buying the software. By reading the article they can access to a section of the website where they can read the details about how to buy Ecpc with a 20% discount on the standard price. On the Cover CD they can also find a special edition of the Demo with the PlayPress logo and a nice greeting. Thanks to the staff of Il Mio Palmare who gave me this opportunity.

The kind staff of the Italian magazine Il Mio Palmare, headed by Diego Magnani, from PlayPress Publishing wrote a brief new about Ecpc on page 9 of their November issue, but that's just an anticipation of what Italian readers will find in the December issue... they shouldn't definitely miss it!

The staff of the French magazine Palmtops published a very nice article about Ecpc on page 68 of their October issue, in which they highlighted one of the my favorite features of the program, which is the sound effects of the falling coins. Something that makes me forget they wrote "Euro coins Money collector" instead of "Euro coins pocket collector".
They also mention the multi-language support of the software and they're very right in assuming it will be translated in French. Not only French, actually, but in all the European languages I hope!
Note that even in this case the price in the article refers to the first promotional version of Ecpc, version 1.0.

Ecpc appeared in a full page article I wrote for the weekly feature our local daily newspaper La Provincia devotes to the news about Internet and new technologies.
La Provincia is a very important newspaper not only for our province but also for all the Lombardia region and it gets mentioned in the press preview of some national TV channels.
They print about 45.000 copies daily for a total of 300.000 potential readers and I must say the article pleased especially my friends and parents!
At the bottom of the page there is also the report I wrote about the first Hardware Upgrade Workshop, which took place at SMAU 2003 for the public presentation of the new 64bit AMD Athlon CPU.
At this link you can find the page in PDF format, while this is the same page in RepliGo format.
Thanks to Simone Casiraghi, the Internet feature editor, who gave me this great opportunity.

PDA Essentials, the British magazine from Paragon Publishing with the best Cover CD interface I've seen so far, included Ecpc version 1.0 in the CD of issue 16 and wrote a very nice comment about it on page 72.
The nice comment contrasts a bit with the vote not particularly high, especially if compared with the votes of the other Pocket PC applications featured in the same pages. I suppose this is a very good indication of the great love of the British people for the new European currency.
Will they ever enter the European Monetary Union?
Only future can tell that, but in the meantime true coin collectors can already enjoy Ecpc.
Note that the price in the article refers to the first promotional version of Ecpc, version 1.0.

Frédéric Botton, "responsable des rédactions grand public" of the French PDA Magazine, has published a brief article about Ecpc in the September-October issue of his magazine.
The comment is nice, but the title is very meaningful because it condenses in a few French words one of the most interesting uses of Ecpc, that is traveling with your Pocket PC and collecting Euro coins on the go!
The obscured URL address pointed to the French Special Demo of Ecpc which I build for his readers.
Note that even in this case the price in the article refers to the first promotional version of Ecpc, version 1.0.

Get addicted in checking your change.

Never thought about the different coins available in the EU... Nor had I... Until I realized how many different variants there are. ECPC is a great source of information on all the EU coins out there. Not only that, but the many ways of storing you own collection are amazing... Even thought about the left handers like myself by having a mirrored version of the interface. I also found the developer very friendly and helpful at sorting out any issues, and in listening to user comments to continue improving the product... Oh yeah... and that bit in the title... Whenever I get any change now, I always find myself checking it for new coins.

Funktionen:
Bedienung:
Stabilität:

Euro Coins Pocket Collector ist ein wirklich sehr schönes und vor allem nützliches Programm für alle die, die Euro- münzen sammeln. Das Programm ist sehr einfach zu bedienen und läuft auch auf dem Betriebssystem "Windows Mobile 2003" absolut stabil und zuverlässig. Ich persönlich nutze dieses Programm jetzt schon seit ca. 8 Wochen und bin wirklich begeistert davon. Ich denke dieses Programm ist wirklich ein Muß für alle Euromünzensammler!

Perfect.

Gave me exactly what it said.

Ecpc is one of best program in circulation.

I'm really pleased to know that I'm not only a customer number for Albegor, but he has a real interest in the person purchasing his software. I didn't know Albegor, as well as I didn't know his website and his software, but I'd like to say that Ecpc impressed me positively, so I'll follow him again. I'm a very beginner collector of Euro coins, I've got two Italian starter kits and some other Euros from other countries, collected without too much care, with the change or asking friends or relatives to take a look at them and then I swapped the foreign coins with the Italian ones I already had. Thanks to Albegor I discovered details about the Euro coins I didn't know at all: the variant types, the Mint marks, the fact that even the Italian Euros have their differences, hence the motivation to collect them and don't stop to a single coin for year or country, but also to find the various types. Well, I know since now I'll get really mad about it.....

Easy to use and very convenient to manage your Euro coins collection.

As lot of people (not just European) have already done, I have begun my own Euro coins collection. As each member of Euro land has its own personal side which can be different from coins to coins, this mean a lot of stuff to take care of, and I do this on a simple sheet of paper. But a few days ago, I bought "Euro Coins Pocket Collector," and this change dramatically the way I manage my collection. Albegor has released a very nice software with beautiful designs and funny realistic sounds. Easy to use and very convenient, there is a help for each page, and if needed, support is very reactive. During next holidays I will of course take my Pocket PC with me, and hope to be able to fill some empty cases or, why not begin other collections for my children.

Rating:

Real fun! I discovered lots of things I didn't know about Euro coins. I started collecting them quite after the introduction of the new coins. At the beginning I tried to get one for each face, then discovered that there were variants and so... Having the whole collection handheld helps me avoid the keep-it-to-check-at-home syndrome :-) If I may make a comment I would have preferred to have larger images, but I understand that there's people around whom does not have that much spare memory.