Biographical notes

Luciano, during the primary school in the eighty years, knows the world of computers only indirectly, via the "Commodore 64" and "Zx Spectrum" owned by the school friends. After it, the father gifts him a used IBM AT, with 640 KBytes of RAM and a 4,77 MHz Intel processor. With this pc he learns to use the Ashton-Tate's dBase III Plus, with which he makes some amazing things. In the meanwhile, it's arising the passion for the two things: databases and the loss of time. With a problem: The course of studies is incompatible with the second: Luciano chooses computer science engineering.

In Military Service in Teramo (AQ) he knows many friends of Rome then and returns in the Capital. In 1992 he knows, in the elections' poll, Giuseppe Casarano, feature writer of MCmicrocomputer (the most authoritative paper magazine in Italy in the field of computer science) and expert of operating system IBM OS/2 (of which he'll become adept and moderator of the OS2_DEV.ITA), and - above all - linker of MC-link. Giuseppe gives to Luciano the famous Frank Stajano's "Modem manual": a guide to the world of Fidonet and the BBSes.
The unbridled third passion of his life is born: the data transmission. With a 2.400 modem, and 14.400 bps later, he frequents some of the most known BBSes of Rome, among them the Sierra BBS, and SPQR, where he knows Alessandro Bucci, sysop, Stefano Colonna, founder of the Telematic Bulletin of the Art, and Fernando Carello, student of engineering. With the conviction that a virtual technical place of quality lacks in the virtual space, Luciano founds BETA at the end of 1994, a brand new magazine of Information technology, distributed initially through the BBSes, free, in an amazing rtf compiled format (the WinHelp). As author, he knows Maurizio Codogno, and with Fernando and Francesco Sileno they will constitute the technical excellence trio of BETA.

The 1994 is also the year of Internet and the World Wide Web, they definitively explode in biennium 1995-96 with the improvement and the spread of the Internet browser as Netscape Navigator, that allows the design of complex and attractive websites.
Luciano develops the passion for this side, learning well the HTML, the language at the base for creating Web pages, and Javascript with Java programming codes, and becomes responsible of the Hypertexts group of MC-link. He starts to design the first pages of the BETA website, with articles and the first rough draft of the review online. In the same years he meet Paolo Nuti and Marco Marinacci, respectively chief of the MC-link system and MCmicrocomputer magazine, with which he begins the collaboration.

In 1996 he develops the first stable version of the website at the definitive addess www.beta.it, then in november it runs on the servers of MC-link thanks to the partnership with Technimedia. BETA becomes quickly reviewed as an authoritative and reliable online technical magazine, and the website is known and visited from an increasing public of readers. In this period Luciano develops the passion for the open source operating systems, such as the wonderful Linux, he installs and uses for the Web development.

The hash is made, and, thanks also to the publication of "the New Rules" di Kevin Kelly on Wired, he's involved in the New Economy's vortex. In 1998 it catches up an excellent agreement with Telecom Italia (the italian main corporation for telecoms) that, on the server of Tin.it, runs BETA, and participates to the birth of Atlantide.

After that, he obtains an advertising agreement with Active Advertising, for the exclusive concession of the spaces of BETA. In the same year he registers the BETA magazine in the Court of Rome, entering in the narrow number of the official Internet magazines regularly registered.

Nel 1998 he founds Alpharoom, website for research and development on Internet projects, where he describes some guidelines for websites' management and production, and the professional fees for developing startup internet websites.

In 1999 he acquires, together with his friend Giovanni Antinori, a quota of the software company NICE Srl, that in the meantime was founded by Alessandro Bucci and Fernando Carello, as responsible of the Internet division, carrying in dowry BETA, that becomes a network of sites and runs on the company servers.
In 2000 he develops from scratch and realizes ITnews, a daily gazzette of Information and communication technology world and the digital economy, and Handheld, a website dedicated to the emerging world of mixed wireless products.

Incidently, he doesn't read the axiom, expressed by the MIT, from Paul Krugman in "White Collars Turn Blue" ("Consumers don' t want information, they want tangible goods.") and he continues.

Starting from the previous website, he completely designs BETA in dynamic technology. The website gets new face as level of structure, flexibility and graphics, and it give a better consultation, with correlations and intercrossed searches and services.
But 2000 is also the year in which BETA's editorial staff changes its shape. The number of the editors and the voluntary collaborators grow until becoming triple, while more editors write the various contents and the continuous pagination of the website. The character of the editorial project evolves, the technical connotation increases to a wider vision of the world of computer science and information technology.
New categories like economy appear in the magazine structure. And with these, new commercial services see the light.
The network catches up best results in terms of impression, and diffusion of the own specialized contents to an increasing number of portals and publishing subjects.

The three years 1998-2000 in Italy, are also the time of the portals: they expand like mushrooms, with investments of tens of billions as well. Great editors, the venture capitalists, the entrepreneurs, many companies come down in field. The new economy itself and alone knows the boom of the investments and the capitalization of Stock Exchange. It with to the enthusiasm for all that that is Internet, provokes forming of the so-called "speculative bubble": the business of Internet becomes - quickly - overestimated.
After some alarms, in the 2001-2002 the bubble of Internet definitively bursts. The entrepreneus look at the Internet under a different light and the market enters in a phase of "consolidation": in other words, many failures, the contraction of the ICT market itself, the concentration of remaining resources, and the close of many initiatives that do not cover costs and expectations (business plans). But the increase of the Internet world remains unstoppable.
BETA in 2001 closes a cycle, so to speak. There was before that Internet became a conquest land, and continues to exist, even with some changes. In this year, for several reasons that's here superfluous to list, ITnews and Handheld stop of being followed directly from Luciano Giustini, and, also maintaining the plan they begins with, from the middle of the 2001 pass under the coordination of the Nice S.r.l. The changes do not interest BETA.it.



 

See also:

Curriculum vitæ


Last updated: february 2003