Wine Life Today|Adventures and opinions on wine, technology, and marketing

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Here 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.

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• Wikipedia Gets $3 Million Sloane Foundation Grant

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As a recent Mac convert I am finding I love the native Mac apps. Turns out, you can get iChat to work on just about any network. Here’s how…

This actually isn’t too hard to do. It leverages Jabber servers with gateway addons. The only trick is that iChat doesn’t have the ability to browse/register Jabber services so you need a different Jabber client. I used Adium.
* First, in Adium register a Jabber account to this server: inflecto.org

* Once you do that then in the “Adium” –>”Preferences” –> “Accounts” highlight the newly added “inflecto.org” account (typically @inflecto.org)

* Right click on it and select “Discovery Browser”

* click the little arrow next to the “Openfire Server” word

* double-click the services you want. If you want GTalk, you’ll need to add that since iChat will only let you do 1 Jabber account (and inflecto.org counts as 1). This server has AIM, MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, ICQ, and IRC installed. As you double click the services it will ask for login info and then it will add the service.

* Once you’ve added all your services just quit Adium and fire up iChat.

* Add a new iChat account - Jabber

* Give it the “@inflecto.org” and password. use “inflecto.org” as the server name.

* Make sure to check “Use This Service” radio button to login and you’re done!

Cheers!

Thats right. I said it. Although it may not be what you’re thinking.

Can you guess what’s wrong with tasting note web sites? Exactly, none (and I mean N-O-N-E) have reached anything close to critical mass of users to make their notes useful. Why is that? Well there are too many wines every year to have multiple reviews per wine. So every wine tasting note site tries to get their hands around an unbounded number of wines and create a tasting note site that is actually useful. NONE have succeeded and even the biggest are only useful for organization purposes (CellarTracker) not for looking up wines.

One approach with promise is Snooth, but they’re actually smarter about it. Its not about tasting notes, its more about personalizing wine selections for you and if there are tasting notes to help then great. I actually like that concept. They’ll bring in a gambit of ratings and notes and attempt to normalize them and match a wine to your liking. This is (obviously) not a tasting note record keeping site but it leverages that function.

So what’s this about “Freebasing”? Well, if you haven’t heard, there is another approach to gathering data out there and they’re gaining steam. Freebase is a massive database that is completely open so that a site can use as its database as a backend. Then anyone can query this DB and get at that information or submit information and contribute to the collective. Also, tags in that information make connection automatically regardless of the original source. The best explanation of this is here, at Tim O’Rielly’s blog (the guy who originally coined “web 2.0”). Its an instance of the semantic web (what some call “web 3.0”). The advantage? Since a tasting notes are not a business but a feature, if all the sites created real business plans with tasting note functions as a part then there wouldn’t be a need to hide the notes in an isolated database. Sure, protect your user DB but submit your notes to Freebase. Gary V can go on ranting and raving with the Vayniacs, Snooth can continue making educated selections for you, WineQ could add value to their custom wine clubs. These are all sites that don’t depend on notes as the core of the business. One thing I won’t get into is this aspect (and the power of Freebase) - if Winehiker were to create an application that was a database of trails in California and some wines he experienced there, then Freebase would automagically create a query result for any other application that connects wines related to the notes Winehiker made about his travels and the wines on each of those trails with other wine notes submitted from these sites. You would start to see a world evolving of things connected to wines and trips and tastes that you’ve never imagined before…but thats a whole different post!

Anyway, Freebase allows sites like these tasting note sites to be built and while they individually create communities for whatever purpose they are all adding to Borg collective known as Freebase.

There is one other approach – creating a micro-format that makes a standard format that allows any note written out there be crawled and scanned into a DB automatically…what-ever. Thats never going to happen unless Microsoft, Apple, and every other user interface company decides they want to support MicroFormat for wine tasting notes. Chances of that happening? Pretty much Zilch…

It would be far easier for other sites that have note functionality to migrate their DB to Freebase, effectively merging all note DBs, and write database calls to the Freebase API rather than their own MySQL “Silo” of information. You think CellarTracker is cool? Imagine every note ever entered into a site on the Internet, regardless of the site, being available to Snooth or WineQ or any other site that wants it!! I’m an Alpha member of Freebase and I can attest that its difficult to explain the potential impact of this site, which brings me to the practical, marketing side of my brain – I’ve seen too many technologies that were just too far ahead and couldn’t survive until the world caught up. I hope Freebase doesn’t go that route…

Every wine note site in the world should be Freebasing!

Enjoy the Wine Life!

Wine 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!!!

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!

I thought this was interesting.  Technology is a wonderful thing, changing so quickly that anyone who predicts what will and won’t happen almost always looks like a fool. 

The caption reads:

Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a “home computer” could look like in the year 2004.  However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home.  Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems.  With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.

Can the web and social networking change the Wine industry?  It can and it will.  What this picture illustrates (and is somewhat comical at first) is that you’ve got to set the goal clearly for what happens next.  Obviously, we far exceeded expectations on this one!

For wine, the Internet will provide the personal, peer-to-peer experience that will enhance your wine life experiences, introducing you to new people, places, and wines in ways we can’t even imagine right now.  In fact, you’ll be able to sample the wine with all the senses without even being at the winery (just wanted to write something that may or may not pan out in 50 years )

Enjoy the Wine Life!

I recently received a copy of the book “1000 Best wine secrets“, a book that proclaims to contain all the information novice and experienced wine drinkers need to feel at home in any restaurant, home or vineyard.

Well, I can say that its a pretty quick read, structured literally as a list of quick blurbs about wine. I was able to consume most of it on a flight from San Jose to D.C. Its structured so that you can read sections out of order, skipping to which ever section sounds interesting.

I actually found the tips about wine, tasting, storage, etc… pretty useful, to the point, and full of very relevant information. The “Old World” wine sections (about French, Italian, etc…) were informative but re-confirmed exactly why I can’t get into those wines. Even in a quick, easily absorbed book like this, there’s no short cut to learning about Old World wines. You flat out have to read and remember a bunch of random French regions and their associated wines. Now this book did give me a picture of how that could be interesting by outlining a little bit of what to expect from each region, but there’s no way I’ll remember it without some serious study (and wine is a love and a hobby - I commend this book for trying to create a basic outline but, through no fault of its own, it falls short).

Overall, this is a good reference book that probably could’ve been broken up into multiple smaller reference books and made more money. At $12.95 USD retail, its probably worth having around to read and reference.

Enjoy the Wine Life!

Technorati : book, french wine, italian wine, review, wine, wine secret

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…

Download XML here…

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!

Get your very own “Vote for Vivi” t-shirt today and don’t forget to Vote for Vivi in the American Wine Blog Awards!

There seems to be a new wine temperature gadget about every year or so.  This on incorporates some interesting technology and actually has quite a bit of promise, though at $50 a pop its probably for the more serious wine consumer who might actually care about the exact temperature of wine.

Nuvo Vino has created an infrared wine temperature gauge.  Basically it works like those fancy doctor thermometers that you stick in your ear (or in my case my baby daughter’s ear) to see if you have a fever.  Hold the gauge about an inch away from the wine and it will tell you the temperature.  Do the same for the bottle and it will tell you the temperature of the wine inside the bottle.

Understanding the guidelines for wine temperature (here or here are some recommendations)is more important than the detail of the temperature so this is probably a bit over the top and really not necessary just kind of a jazzy, techno-tool, wine geek gadget…which is why I need one immediately .

NuvoVino – $49.99