iPalatina
By Daniele Gonzales
iPalatina is the result of the cooperation between Thöndo and InformAmuse, a group of incredibly talented Italian “squints”.
The app is an exhaustive virtual tour of the Palatine Chapel in Italy, the best example in the world of the so-called Arab-Norman-Byzantine style. This small 32-meter-long church was built in 1132, and exhibits mosaics of unparalleled elegance, not to mention a spectacular ceiling decorated with muqarnas. The hundreds of facets composing this incredible structure were painted, notably with many purely ornamental vegetal and zoomorphic designs, but also with scenes of daily life and many subjects that have not yet been explained.
This iPhone app is also a seal of friendship between Antonio Gentile (InformAmuse CEO) and I. The two of us met almost 20 years ago while I was still living in Italy, oblivious to my American destiny. And actually, when he moved to the States to study for his PhD at Georgia Tech I was the one who introduced him to a friend in Atlanta.
For some reason too complicated to elaborate here, he was never grateful for this act of kindness. But our friendship survived this hiccup, and we kept dancing around knowing that one day we would have done something more than share a good dinner together.
When he called me a few months ago asking if I was interested in creating the interface for an iPhone app that he and his team had been working on, I knew that our time had come.
iPalatina has been published in the Apple Store on December 31st 2010, and we are already working on its first upgrade and to release editions in German, Italian, Spanish, French, Arab and Japanese (not to mention the versions for Android and Symbian). A few days ago the Würth Foundation summoned Antonio to Stuttgart and they seem very interested in funding the project that now encompasses more than 100 sites across Sicily.
What happens next has yet to be written. So far it has been an exciting adventure that not only produced a beautifully crafted app, but also has the merit to have soldered our friendship even more.
