Jul 23
2008Quick note to help folks (even those unfamiliar with Twitter) track what is being said about your brand.
To view this in “Full Screen” mode, click the 4-arrow button in the lower right corner of the video!
Jul 19
2008
Image via WikipediaHere a cool thing. After haggling with the folks at Wikipedia, I finally got a page “OK’d” on Wikipedia for OpenWine Consortium. 
I thought it’d be important as I setup that organization to outlast my tenure as Executive Director. I’m taking it step by step. Its established now, even attracting sponsors and producing the events (like the Wine Blogger Conference in Sonoma in the Fall). Behind the scenes I am preparing to announce the board of directors, a new strategic partner that will help attract potentially thousands of members, and eventually closing on getting official non-profit status (because there isn’t a membership fee I really need to get some revenue to pay for the non-profit paperwork preparation – a non-trivial task).
In the meantime, its pretty cool to have the Wikipedia page, in a geeky sorta way.
Jul 10
2008
iStockphoto – once my best friend as a blogger – has been edging its prices up ever since being bought by that larger stock photo company (forget the name).
This really sucks. There is definitely a market for a stock photo site that charges $1 per shot given the growth of blogs. iStockphoto.com used to be just great for that. Now its up to $1.40 per credit, minimum of 10 credits, and most of the decent shots (i.e. shots better than a Google search) are 5+ credits! WTF…
Clearly there’s an opportunity here to re-create the original iStockphoto with inexpensive shots made for the rest of us.
Why can’t people figure out this democratic “crowd source” concept…jeezus…
Jul 08
2008
Image via WikipediaHere it is. Wine Life Today in all its glory. Just spent a little time updating the look and adding “My Story” (which I happen to think summarizes whats going on here pretty well).
I like the Digg-clone for wine that was formally WLT, but I have bigger fish to fry. I’ll soon make an announcement of what my next move is in the wine industry but I can assure you things are gonna change – there is a Vincent in the wine industry now and I intend to make that mean something.
Cubicles suck and as of July 3rd, the paperwork I handed in is my official “Hasta La Vista” to cubicle nation(hence my “fugitive of a cubicle nation” tag) but there’s no denying that we all may have to work in them some day. My intention is to make sure that if/when I do, its on my terms.
I don’t feel like I’m going it alone though. As word trickled out that I’ve made a move to the “free” world, friends from all over (virtual and real world) have offered me great advice, support, and love. This is going to be fun!
Jan 28
2008You know those cool “Digg This” badges on a whole bunch of sites? Pretty nice viral marketing huh? What they serve to do is create a way for cross promotion. We’ve had success using the Feedburner “Toast This!” link but it has cause problems that require attention from time to time (you may notice them disappearing occasionally).
Well, I’ve created a WLT Chicklet/badge gallery that I’ll be adding simple Javascript code and badges to. This will allow you to add WLT vote counts and links into every post. I’m also working on a Wordpress plugin to make this a no-brainer for Wordpress. I’ve also e-mailed “AddThis.com” to see if I can get into that little widget they have. We’ll see about that.
I have to give credit to Strumerika on the small chicklet design. Her graphic was cool. I haven’t reached her yet so I may be violating some kind of copyright in which case I’ll take it down (you won’t have to do anything, the graphic is server-based) and change it.
If you want a custom one, they’re pretty easy for me to change. Just make one in Photoshop (including the words), send me the source files, and I can implement it pretty quickly.
Enjoy the Wine Life…Today!!!
Cheers!
Jan 03
2008Wine Life Today announces definitive agreement to purchase Vivi’s Wine Journal
Extends community relation and interaction with the addition of veteran wine blogging site
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Jan. 3, 2008 – In a stock transaction valued at $300 million dollars, Wine Life Today has announced its intention to acquire Vivi’s Wine Journal and all its assets. The merger adds a communication vehicle for the latest in wine and marketing technologies to Wine Life Today’s growing news community and is expected to cut operating costs of the two companies by 50%. Upon hearing the news, stock in Wine Spectator dropped 34% on speculation that the combined entities are a signal of a more significant Wine 2.0 push in 2008….
OK, so I made that all up (or most of it). I figured it would garner some attention. You clicked through didn’t you?
I figure its worth $300M, so I gave Kelly $300M in Wine Life Today stock and she transferred $300M worth of control over Vivi’s to me. Granted, there were no bankers involved but I think I got a pretty good deal. 
I know that sounds crazy but if you live in Sili-Valley you don’t know how close to the truth this transaction really is. These guys all know each other and basically set valuations in the most random ways with random numbers! (see Facebook valuation)
Seriously though, after a defeat for “Best Wine Blog Graphics” last year, weeks and months of working and tooling, and teaching ourselves new skills, Kelly and I are finally proud to announce our re-imagining of Vivi’s Wine Journal. We’ve decided to combine Vivi’s with Wine Life Today and create the new “Wine Life Today Blog”. This will allow us to combine our work on WLT with our blogging efforts and to push the envelope of Wine Blog design by giving me more flexibility in programming and creativity. Wine Blogs have evolved, wine marketing has evolved, and Wine Life Today is evolving. Stay tuned to Vivi’s new blog (still lovingly dedicated to the memory of our Aunt Viviane McGuffie) for all thats new in the world of wine blogging and commentary on how technology and marketing will affect wine in the future!
Watch out, GoodGrape. I’m bringin’ my A-game this year! (Be sure to hit the front page for the full effect!)
And, of course, Enjoy the Wine Life!!!
Sep 27
2007I came across a useful tool that I’m going to implement. I surf MANY wine related websites. I wish I could write about them all and share that with you. Unfortunately, I can’t. But what I can do, now that I’ve found the tool to let me do it, is create short screencast reviews of sites I find and my impressions of them. I’m testing this out so bear with me on the first review.
Since I literally just figured this out I wanted to put my first review up. See what you think of it. Its optimized for 1024×768. I’m not totally psyched about how this came out, but I’ll improve with practice.
Overall, I’m still not completely sold on Snooth but I think it could build up to a good new tool. It may be suffering from a little bit of a “critical mass” issue in that not enough people are using the tool (yet).
Check out the video. If this works out, it was easy to do and I’ll record more of my online wine adventures.
Enjoy the wine life!
Sep 27
2007Tooling around with new tech tools as I usually do, I just found one of the more useful tools that Typepad has created a posting client for my smart phone (Nokia e61). While most bloggers either don’t have a mobile blogging device or bring their laptops with them, I have a nice little phone with a 2 Megapixel camera. It’s been great for email but no way of blogging.
Well, that changed today! With this client I can write quick notes and get them up here. This whole post is written via Nokia e61. I don’t anticipate writing long posts in the future but I couldn’t resist doing this one. Now I have an easy way of capturing my first impressions and (with this phone) including Pics!
Enjoy the Wine Life!
Aug 15
2007
Well, my blog is growing up so fast…>sniff sniff<…
First, let me apologize for the bit of a hiatus. There’s just alot going on. I have development working on Wine Life Today, working on things with our friends at WineQ, a couple of major intiatives at my day job, construction at our house, and the best news of all…we are expecting another little addition to the family! So as you can imagine, I’ve taken a brief hiatus from my normal blogging but I have a backlog of great wines to review including a wine AND recipe combo from Wolf Blass!!!
So thanks for everyone’s support, well wishes, requests for more posts, and everything else. That past three years have meant alot to me in my wine adventures 
and I owe a great deal of that to the community that supports this blog.
Keep the notes coming and as soon as life gives me a chance to take a breather I’ll be back on this microphone tasting, pontificating, and just generally yapping to all the wine lovers out there! Stay tuned!
Feb 13
2007
OK, I’ve found the functionality that each and every wine blogger in the world should add to their blog. Its called “AnswerTips” and it allows you to click any word, abosolutely ANY word on this blog and have a pop-up window tell you what the definition of that word is. Its a “widget” for TypePad blogs and a little tricky to setup for advanced templates. Not sure its available for Blogger et al but if you can figure it out it is well worth it. Here is the code that adds the functionality to my site. I don’t think its site specific so if you know how to work with well-formed XML, have at it…
If you figure it out for other platforms beyond TypePad, post about it and leave a link here so other can find out how!
Thanks AnswerTips for helping us Enjoy the Wine Life!
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck requires Flash Player 9 or better.
