Blind tasting night with friends

We spent Saturday evening hosting a blind wine tasting with some friends. The rules were simple...bring a somewhat pricey wine (>$75). My thinking is that a Napa cab would be the default selection brought by guest (my personal bias running rampant?). I was surprised that only two were Napa cabs. Here is how they rated, along with a link to CellarTracker (the best wine site for tracking your personal collection):

1. 2001 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Napa Valley Merlot
2. 2003 Cliff Lede Poetry Napa Valley Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon
   
3. 1997 Robert Mondavi Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
4. 2004 Tenuta Sette Ponti Oreno Tuscana IGT
5. 1994 Lyeth North Coast Cabernet Sauvignon

In the end, we were all winners as each of us had the opportunity to enjoy great wine with great food (lamb, ribs, salad, rosemary potatoes, sausage fried rice, several cheeses and a variety of desserts) with great friends. We decided to have a blind tasting every three months and to select themes around a specific varietal. We also realized mid-tasting that we should have planted a wine in the mix for fun...either something more reasonably priced or just all together different. Next time!

A thank you card from my nephew

Dear Uncle Sean,

thanks for the $100 dollars
my parents were mean
and told me to save $50
for college.
From,
David

Tasting along the Wine Road in Sonoma

We spent the weekend up in Sonoma and participated in the 9th Annual Wine and Food Affair. Of all the visits that we have made so far this year, this one had to be the most scenic. Sonoma offers many different varietals and the land is very hilly, so the contrasts and colors and forms (combined with the beautiful weather) was something to be experienced. Glad we were able to go! On Saturday, we visited:

1. Arista - The most beautiful place we visited
   
2. Hanna
3. Alexander Valley Vineyards - Bought a 2004 Syrah
   
4. White Oak - Picked up two of their 2004 Napa Valley cabs
   
5. Simi - Bought a 2003 Landslide Cab, a 2006 Late Harvest Chardonnay and a 2005 Late Harvest Zinfandel
   
6. Bella
7. Zichichi
8. Gopfrich - Picked up a 2005 Estate Cuvee
   

STIRR Founder Hacks III -Tuesday, November 13 (San Francisco)

Mighty

119 Utah Street
San Francisco, California 94103

Tuesday, November 13, 2007
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM

There's no single playbook for how to grow a startup. Come hear some of the current tricks of the startup trade from financing to hiring to managing the board to scaling up and more. Each of our presenters are bringing one of their favorite hacks to share in STIRR's short-form format.

The Presenting Founders will kick things off around 7:20pm:

• Ev Williams, Founder - Twitter / Obvious Corp
• Michael Cerda, Founder - Jangl
• Jonathan Abrams, Founder - Friendster / Socializr

Both Ev and Michael will be available to speak with the attendees after the talk. We'll also have a short Q&A this month.

Previous talks:

• FounderHacks II
• FounderHacks I

Purchase tickets here.

More details on the Facebook event page.

IFTF's 2008 Technology Research theme and agenda has been set

BLENDED REALITIES, BLENDED LIVES

Reality is up for grabs. Emerging technologies are transforming everything that constitutes our notion of “reality”—our ability to sense our surroundings, our capacity to reason, our perception of the world. Twenty years after William Gibson coined the term cyberspace as a metaphor for a place we “visit” to interact with information, the term is not only played out but on the verge of irrelevance. The wireless Web, virtual worlds, augmented realities overlaid on top of physical ones, advanced simulations, and networked knowledge promise to transform our everyday experiences into a symbiotic blend of analog and digital experiences of human, and machine. Digital information won’t feel like it exists in an alternate place that we go to but rather as a layer atop everyday life. “The Network” will finally become intertwined with the fabric of our lives. Even our minds will be augmented with the wisdom of the global brain.

In 2008, the Technology Horizons Program will examine this future of blended realities and blended lives. Our key research questions will be:

• What does it feel like to live in a blended reality?
• How do people integrate or navigate multiple realities?
• What new skills may be acquired?
• What are the challenges, pains, needs, and fears?
• What new desires are emerging?

As part of our continued research on human-futures interaction, we will take a people-centric approach. We will start with the human experience and ask questions about how we’ll navigate a future where we have multiple personas, play games to solve serious problems, and how the interaction between individuals, groups, and machines is creating new kind of knowledge.

Our research will be broken down into the hotspots and deliverables below. We’ll also conduct a separate research project on the future of manufacturing.

2008 RESEARCH TOPICS

1. Realities Are What You Make Of Them
Our personalities are becoming multiple and portable. We’ll soon be able to carry our avatars from one context to another, from conventional games to user-created worlds like Second Life and even into reality-based environments like Google Earth. We’ll be able to create imaginative 3D environments and overlay them on the real world, creating a new kind of blended reality. What will the user experience be like? How will this future of blended realities affect our psychology and sense of self?

2. The Future of "Serious" Play
The next generation of digital games wants to do more than just entertain—they are designed to investigate real-world issues, to solve real-life problems, and to inform long-term planning. Serious games over the next decade will take many forms, from personal life-management games to massively multiplayer global development games; from virtual worlds developed as collaborative scientific research platforms to immersive corporate learning environments that cultivate innovation through play. What new opportunities and dilemmas emerge as we cross the old divides between serious work and play, between reality and virtuality, and between tools for work and tools for play? We’ll examine the viability of virtual economies; the unique persuasive power of games; the challenges of representing the complexities of reality in serious game design; and the implications and stakes of new mobile and augmented reality platforms for play.

3. Emerging Markets: Stories of Lead Mobile Users
Over the next ten years, the proliferation of mobile phones in developing regions will reveal innovative usage practices that will shape future mobile experiences and industries in the rest of the world. In contexts where resources and infrastructure are limited, new kinds of lead users are the drivers of innovation. They are often rich but poorly educated farmers or impoverished migrant workers whose only connection to various resources, from family to jobs, is the mobile phone. Based on firsthand ethnographic work in India, China, Russia, and Latin America, this research endeavor will examine key drivers shaping innovation in mobile space in these regions, and forecast what innovations might diffuse globally and why.

4. Mapping Knowledge in a Networked World
Computing pioneer Douglas Engelbart forecasted in 1962 that “network augmented intelligence” will emerge at the intersection of the mind and the machine—the individual, the group, and the Web. What matters is what technology and people do together; how we use new information technologies to interact with the world’s wisdom; how faster computers allow us to identify valuable patterns in raw data; and how knowledge about our brain can enable us to better organize our thoughts and communicate ideas. In today’s augmented world, the Dewey Decimal System is making way for folksonomies and the wisdom of crowds is often more trusted than the opinion of credentialed experts. The Semantic Web, recommendation engines, the scanning of entire libraries, and natural language processing may lead to a redefinition of knowledge, a democratization of wisdom, and a reevaluation of what it means to be an expert. The Future of Knowledge Map will present a roadmap for the evolution of individual-collective-machine intelligence.

5. Manufacturing: From Massive to Lightweight
Globally, manufacturing is the engine driving an historic expansion of economic growth and innovation. But nostalgic visions of the industrial factory humming along, producing widgets describe only a tiny portion of the reality of manufacturing around the world today. On the one hand, in advanced economies, manufacturing is becoming more lightweight, more automated, more decentralized, more mobile, and more efficient. Yet in places like China and India, the world’s workshops, manufacturing is dirtier and more dangerous than ever, taking an enormous toll on human and environmental resources. We’ll take stock in these contrasting trends and develop plausible visions of how manufacturing may be remade over the next decade.

It is Giant Ass time!

One of the more humorous things about watching a Red Sox game is when a left-handed batter comes up when the Giant Glass sign is displayed. If the batter (in this case Mr. Big Papi!) is in the proper position, one can view "GIANT ASS" in the background.

When I was with my buddies at a bar back in Boston or Portsmouth, this always made us clink our bottles together and bring about laughter.

The Red Sox are again back in the American League Championship Series and on a National Stage. My question is whether or not Fox will take over that ad space and put their own up or leave the local ads there for the fans to enjoy. I hope it is the latter.

Gurgle...a site for new/expecting parents

A UK friend just announced the beta release of Gurgle. I am not in their demographic (yet), but some of you may get some goodness from this or know of people who would. I have never changed a diaper in my life and have had minimal contact with little ones (outside of short visits with my niece/nephew with friends who are parents), so having a resource like this in the future will be very helpful!

Gurgle is an online destination for expecting and new parents that combines a smart social networking engine with rich editorial material. Gurgle provides comprehensive advice and tips, and connects users with other community members at exactly the same stage as them.

Waiter, I have a Karl Marx in my soup...

While eating my soup last week, I did a doubletake. Whatcha think? Do you see Karl Marx? Here's the flickr image of it.

Pesco put this on BoingBoing, so I should explain some more...

I was out to dinner with a client in Seoul enjoying some water kimchi, when I noticed this slice of radish floating on top. I feel bad that I didn't take multiple (and close-up) pics...sorry! I ended up eating it, but in retrospect, should have pocketed it and returned to the US with it and put it up for auction. Perhaps a worthy gambling website would have bid on it...

I was in Korea last week

What a wondrous trip. Here are the pics.

Things I observed:
* Women do not smoke
* Big buildings always have a statue out front (it is the law)
* Public transportation is cheap
* Cable television programming in hotels is lacking
* Jetlag means the day starts at 5:30am (every day)...for some, this is earlier
* Vendors are NOT aggressive
* You drive on the right, but walk on the left (most of the time)
* Trashbins are next to impossible to find
* There are no old cars

A year of following all the rules in the Bible

My favorite BoingBoing post from today moved me to comment (#33). Lots of great comments!

Who else is using DOPPLR?

I am now on DOPPLR...who else is using the site?

How high can you fly?

This video is cool for a couple of reasons:

1. I used to work at Tekscan back in the '90s and Mike (the fellow explaining the sensor technology) was an old roommate of mine
2. In high school I very high vertical and fondly remember jumping over cars and hurdling all manner of things. However, the 45 pounds of mass that I've added since then have significantly curtailed my jumping abilities.
   

What do 110,078 people sound like?

I am so happy it is football season again!

"We Are...Penn State" is the greatest chant. Hear what it sounds like when 110,078 people chant it!

Vinod Khosla doesn't understand why many people purchased hybrids

While reading VentureBeat this morning, I saw this post about Vinod Khosla's opinion on hybrid buyers. His thoughts:

But hybrid electric cars won’t succeed, he said in an interview. You have to pay $5,000 more on a Prius in order to save half a ton of carbon a year, which is more than most consumers will go for, he explained. Buying hybrids “is mostly about personal guilt trips.” It’s like wealthy investors giving money to “art museums instead of to starving people” in Africa, he said.

He forgets a couple of things. For many, buying a hybrid wasn't about making them feel less guilty, it was about saving them time and money:

• Time: at the pump (less trips to the gas station) & in the HOV lane if you were fortunate to get the HOV stickers.
  
• Money: at the pump (get much more miles for your dollar) & with those HOV stickers, you get to sail right on through the carpool lane on the bridges, saving you $4 each day. Add the gas savings and the toll savings and you have at least $1500/year for a bridge commuter.
  

The HOV sticker deal is long gone (but may come back...fingers crossed), but there are many reasons why people buy what they buy. Is Toyota making money from Prius sales? Yes. Is the environment better off? Yes. Are the buyers of the Prius happy consumers? Yes.

Methinks Mr. Khosla is just trying to drum up interest in the areas that he invests.

Netflix removed Grind House from my queue

While looking at my Netflix queue, I noticed the words "Click for Update" under Availability for the movie Grind House. When I click it, I get these words:

Update on Your Queue

Grind House has been removed from your Queue. We no longer have enough copies of the DVD to satisfy customer demand. Unfortunately, we are unable to purchase more of this movie and will no longer offer it for rental.

We realize this is disappointing and want to reassure you that we remove movies from our web site only in unusual circumstances.

We apologize for the inconvenience and hope you find many other movies to enjoy at Netflix.

How can they not be able to purchase more copies? Have Tarantino and Rodriguez decided not to sell anymore? Answer: Not exactly. The reason: the movie was still in my Saved section...it hadn't even become available yet. Or maybe the Weinstein Company doesn't want the masses to see it. Anyone know the real answer?

Update...Netflix just sent me an email:

As someone who added Grindhouse, we want to clarify some changes that were made to Your Queue. Grindhouse is available for rental as two movies: Grindhouse: Planet Terror and Grindhouse: Death Proof. As a result, Grindhouse was removed from Your Queue and replaced by Grindhouse: Planet Terror and Grindhouse: Death Proof.