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A quick guide to the Italian Web Dot Italy
[Dolores Maria Jimenez]
In the last year, even Italy has met the European average for hostcounting. There have been dozens of new services, most of which are informative, with strong expansion in 2003.Let’s take a look at what it has brought us, the most useful or curious sites, or at least which sites are the most popular with Italians.
To begin with Portale Nazionale del Cittadino (The Citizen’s National Portal) www.italia.gov.it definitely deserves a look despite its pompous sounding title. It is a very useful informative instrument that the State made available to Italians. It went on-line at the end of 2002 and was an initiative of the Italian Ministry for Innovation and Technology. It offers a clear and unified view of Public Administration, and it is certainly useful for non-citizens too.
Let’s move on the really big portals, they are often connected to telephone companies and all have the look of popular magazines, a good point of view for a fast reconnaissance of contemporary Italian reality, they often offer free connection and dial-up, in addition to other services that are also naturally all free like free web mail (yeah, why don’t you open a mailbox with a dot it address?). The most popular sites are www.libero.it, www.virgilio.it (the section called “parole”, or “words” puts numerous linguistic tools at your disposition), www.kataweb.it (its sport section is the best and gives you live reports on the most important events).
The main search engines naturally all have an Italian language versions, so visit www.altavista.it (you can have fun and learn with the translation section accessed by the “fish” icon of Babel) and then there are the classics it.yahoo.com, www.excite.it, www.google.it (Google recently inaugurated a great news service that functions like an automatic research motor for 250 online Italian informative groups).
And talking about information, don’t forget the vast selection of major Italian newspapers online, especially Corriere della Sera, www.corriere.it and Repubblica,www.repubblica.it.
Italian news agencies are www.ansa.it, www.adnkronos.it
To finish with we’d like to point out a pearl of a site, the portal for the Manuzio project which digitalized hundreds of literary works that are no longer covered by copyright. At the address www.liberliber.it, you will find large collection of electronic books which you can download for free in several different formats.
DOT FLORENCE
There are lots of sites with information on Florence, perhaps more than other Italian cities, in the last couple of yearsb Florence has given birth to numerous initiatives that present the city on Internet.
To begin with there is the city’s site www.comune.firenze.fi.it, public transportation also has a site, www.ataf.net, with information on local buses and schedules and then there is the Tourist Board’s (APT) site
www.firenzeturismo.it
An excellent art guide to the city (in Italian, English and French) is on www.mega.it
Last but not least, the web version of our own magazine at www.vivifirenze.it provides constantly updated information on events and services as well as a complete archive of all ViviFirenze’s back issues.
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