Nice Value Wine Find at Carlyle Grand

Last week Gabriele and I had dinner at the Carlyle Grand in Shirlington. Sort of the flagship of the American Restaurant chain here in the DC area, it’s always a solid performer. You won’t be blown away, but you’ll rarely be disappointed either. The atmosphere is upbeat and there are always crowds, which is a good sign.

A couple of Saturdays ago was no exception. There was a short wait for a table, and we looked forward to some menu items we’d had before. What we weren’t expecting was to find very nice bargain wine, and French no less!

Nothing was really jumping out at me on the wine list, and the restaurant poured a French Rhone by the glass. It was inexpensive, and I wasn’t expecting very much, especially since Gabriele usually doesn’t like the “funkiness” of French wines. But it turned out to be a great find.

The wine was a Belleruche 2007 Cotes du Rhone from M. Chapoutier. It was 50% Syrah and 50% Grenache, which suggests a wine from southern Rhone. It was a soft, easy drinking wine with a slight tannic pucker on the finish. It was more fruit forward than a typical Rhone, lots of cherry, quick off the palate and just plain enjoyable. And, it was only $25. Can’t beat that with a stick, as my Irish nana used to say.

Apparently Robert Parker is very high on M. Chapoutier, which stands for two brothers, Michel and Marc. Their family owns various plots throughout the Rhone region, and also buy grapes an wine from other growers to sell under their label (the French term for this being negociants).  Here’s a little bit of background on the family.

I’m looking forward to tasting some of wines from their vineyards. Meanwhile, their entry level Cotes du Rhone drank very well with Gabriele’s ribs and my appetizer. Something in my Hong Kong style sea bass didn’t agree with the wine at all – might have been the ginger, or the soy, I don’t know. Other than that, a nice wine experience.

Since dinner we’ve also tried the 2008 M. Chapoutier Cotes du Rhone — $12 on sale at the local Giant! This vintage is 60% Grenache 40% Syrah but very similar to the 2007. Maybe a little bit longer finish, and a tiny taste of licorice. Both are super values, and when we try some other Chapoutier Rhones I’ll be updating this post.

CD43 Stereo Upgrade for the M3

This weekend I replaced the stereo in my 1999 M3 with a more powerful head unit. In BMW parlance, I went from a C43 to a CD43 radio, the stereo unit included in many BMW models from the year 2000 0n.

A little background to start. It’s widely known that BMW sound systems are not very good, especially for a premium automotive brand. My car came with the Harmon-Kardon premium sound option back in ’99, so it wasn’t horrible.  And I’m no hardcore audiophile. But when the midrange speakers blew in my doors I replaced them with BSW speakers, and the sound improvement was noticeable.

I had read frequently on the BMW forums that the CD43 unit was superior to the C43. It offers a front loading CD, which is nice and more modern looking than the obsolete tape deck. But the real benefit is more power — according to owners who had done the swap, the CD43 could make your sound system sound much better, while still looking totally stock since it was a BMW unit. Supposedly the install was cake — take out, slide in.

Buying a brand new unit didn’t make sense — the cost would have been almost $800. Then I read about an eBay seller offering refurbished units from Europe, and (this was key) some forum members had bought from him and spoke highly of the experience. The price was $225, plus shipping. Now that made sense, and I was sold.

Predictably, it was not as simple as advertised. There must be BMW engineers in Munich scheming to make such things as complicated as possible. One example — the screw heads securing the radio units in US E36 cars are a proprietary design — not phillips head, not flat head, not allen wrench. Really, BMW? In this day and age of globalization and efficiency through standardization, you need a special screw head design for North America?

That delayed my project — I had to order a special removal tool, $17 from Bavauto. So I tackled the install this Saturday. Once I had the tool, it was easy to remove the unit. It’s weird to see a big hole in a dashboard you’ve looked at for years. The radio connection and ground were obvious, but the fuses and power were damn difficult to unplug. I was very reluctant to use too much force and break something. The heat being in the triple digits even in late afternoon didn’t help matters and added to the frustration.

Some tugging and sweating later, it finally came loose. After that is was straight-forward to plug in the new unit, and slide back in. Then I ran into some fitment issues with the new unit. It wasn’t exactly the same depth as the original, and I had to play around with the wires so the CD43 went flush. After it was installed, I used a printout the seller sent me to program the unit from Europe mode to the good old US of A.

Thankfully, I can say the effort was worth it. The radio reception is much crisper, and a lot louder. The CD sound is also improved, not as dramatically as the radio but the bass sounds in particular are better. And being a BMW unit, the illumination is an exact color match to the rest of the dashboard components.

It’s one more subtle, useful mod that helps make my E36 M3 the best car it can be.  And despite BMW’s needless complexity, I was able to enjoy DIY satisfaction.

New (to me that is) CD43 Unit

Unit out

Crap, how does this unplug?

Hmm, not EXACTLY the same

Got it!

Mobile Barcodes — Fun Phone Tech, But Where’s the Consumer Payoff?

A very big barcode made the cover of the December 09 issue

I’ve been a subscriber to Esquire for a number of years now. Yes I know — Esquire? Articles on what kind of drink to order, car to pine for and suit to buy? And at prices no working man can afford, no less?

That is often true, I’ll admit. But there is also some damn good writing in every issue. Long before General Stanley McChrystal sounded off to Rolling Stone and lost his job, Admiral William Fallon, Commander US Central Command, lost his due to an April 2008 story in Esquire. He was portrayed as not following the Bush-Cheney party line against Iran, and for that he was sacked. You can check it out here — great read.

So anyway, I’m reading Esquire and notice barcodes in some advertisements. One of my clients Neustar has just launched a new blog devoted to the topic of mobile marketing — Mobile’s Next Big Thing. 2 dimensional (2D) barcodes will be key to mobile marketing — after all we now carry phones we personalize with apps, so why can’t mobile marketing be truly personalized? It was time for me to dive in as an end user and check out the experience.

The technology worked perfectly on my iPhone, with high ease of use. The company that supplied the barcodes to Esquire is ScanLife.  I simply texted the word “scan” to address 43588, then received a message back with a direct link to a download. Enter in my iTunes password, and I get the app on my phone that turns my camera into a barcode reader. I have already been using an app called ShopSavvy, which turns your phone into a price comparison tool by reading barcodes — extremely handy.

I train my camera on the barcode next to an Etro wool blazer ($1,500?!) and then… the user experience fails. I get taken to a page on Esquire’s site, where I can peruse pictures of Etro’s Winter 2010 fashion show? As a consumer I have taken action, have chosen to interact with Etro’s (and Esquire’s) brand — and this is the benefit? No discount, no immersive experience, not even more specific, detailed information about the specific product? The technology gets an A, the consumer benefit an F.

Clearly the potential is huge for this type of mobile marketing. I’d love to connect Esquire with the mobile experts inside Neustar. As the magazine cover above demonstrates, they clearly believe in this new marketing technology. But they have to re-examine this experiment from the end user perspective, and make sure the consumer is rewarded for deeper engagement.

Perspective from the Microsoft Partner Conference

As many of you know the big tech news this week in DC was the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. Microsoft is a Strategic client, so obviously we were there amidst the thousands at the Washington Convention Center.

Strategic also launched a new blog, Microsoft Partner News, in conjunction with the conference.We did this to support our client, but also to demonstrate how nimble and tactical social media can be for clients. The site contains original content, the official conference tweet stream and the Microsoft partner stream, and multiple RSS feeds with all the announcements made during the show. If you couldn’t attend — or were too busy networking — check out the site and you won’t miss a thing.

To get an even deeper Microsoft partner perspective, I called an old friend. Rich Dorfman is Partner and Vice President, Client and Professional Services for Convergent Computing. Convergent is a boutique technology consulting and systems integrator company based in Oakland, helping businesses architect and implement their networks. The company deals primarily with Microsoft infrastructure, so Rich was an excellent guy to talk to for his take on the event.

I really appreciated him jumping off the show floor to answer a few questions yesterday:

Q: Rich, how do you describe Convergent and what the company does?

Think of us as a much smaller Deloitte, specialized by geography and technology. We help clients purchase and implement the right technology for their business needs, not technology for its own sake. We have an extremely deep bench of consultants who are among the most expert in the world working with Microsoft infrastructure.

Q: What’s your overall take on the show this year?

It was a very different show this year. In the past the focus was very product driven, what was coming out, very feature specific. This conference was far more conceptual in nature, and very focused on the cloud. That’s definitely where Microsoft is going as a company.

Q: The cloud? I’ve read that trend is bad for Microsoft in general due to its dominance of the desktop.

There are definitely big implications for the business model, no question. There is certainly some risk, but the biggest issue for Microsoft is giving the customer choice. Whatever the device, give customers the applications they know and depend upon, and deliver a rich, satisfying experience. Whether the end device is the web, a phone, an iPad client or the desktop.  As an example, I got a glimpse of a Windows 7 Phone, and it will be like nothing mobile you’ve seen from Microsoft. I think it could be out by the winter.

Q: Give me a little more specifics on the move to the cloud, if you can.

The vision is all about giving companies options for the move — full, partial or none. You can of course continue to host your own software, applications and data. But if you want your applications from the cloud, the entire Office suite will be available that way in the next release. If you want to move a little, a lot or all your development or infrastructure to the cloud, there is the Microsoft Azure platform. And Azure will be coming out as an appliance soon, if enterprises want to purchase and manage it themselves.

Q: This is interesting stuff — I think many have the view that Microsoft is playing catch up in some of these areas.

Microsoft is confident the entire portfolio of products remains very strong, and can win. I think in specific areas, that perception may have been true in the past. For example, two years ago I’d say VMware may have been significantly better than Microsoft at virtualization, but the gap has been closed. In SaaS application, Google may be a better fit for customers, for example GMail. But for business Microsoft Outlook and Exchange offer greater utility, and no product enables collaboration like SharePoint.

Then, he had to hop. Were you at the show? If so, drop a comment with your take.

Good Juice Update — July

I hope everyone’s summer is in full swing. Here are suggestions for some good juice at decent prices to enjoy this summer.

First off, the search for a good value, good tasting Bordeaux continues. At times I feel a little like Don Quixote on this quest, but recently there was an encouraging find.

I enjoyed the 2005 Bad Boy Bordeaux recently. Robert Parker was very complimentary of this wine by Jean-Luc Thunevin, one of the leaders of the so-called “garagistes” movement in Bordeaux. “Garage” wines are supposed to be less tannic and more immediately drinkable than traditional Bordeauxs, and this one was pretty good. The wine is 95% Merlot and 5% Cabernet Franc. It had a deep color and powerful bouquet out of the bottle. It had a silky texture, tasted smoky on the palate and had a lot of blueberry and currant fruit. It was definitely livelier and less tart than the typical Bordeaux. I can’t say my search is finished, but this was a big improvement. It retails for $25 at Whole Foods.

A few weeks ago Total Wine had a very fun event that was a good wine experience for us and no doubt a nice marketing day for them. The Landmark Alexandria store held a World Tour event, which consisted of multiple producers from around the world offering tasting stations. Two of them stood out for us — a father daughter team behind Matariki Wines from New Zealand, and a cooperative of independent producers from the Languedoc region of France called Val d’Orbieu.

We liked the Matariki 2005 Quintology, sort of a New Zealand Bordeaux  blend with a couple of extra varietals thrown in. It’s 41% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Malbec, 10% Cab Franc and 7% Syrah. It’s deep purple in color with a nice, velvety feel on the tongue. Lots of black fruit flavor, mild tannins and a quick finish. Very smooth wine and not as big or jumbled as the collection of grapes might suggest. We paid $20 at Total for the bottle.

From Val d’Orbieu we enjoyed the 2007 Cuvee Mythique, a Languedoc GSM containing Syrah, Mourvedre, Grenache and Carignan. This wine starts with an alcoholic nose but is delicious and easy drinking.  There was a little bit of spice and a mildly tart finish. I think that boysenberry and plum were the dominant fruit flavors. A nice wine and a tremendous value at $13 from Total.

After enjoying their 2006 Cabernet so much, Gabriele and I returned to Turnbull Estates for their 2007 Old Bull. Wow, this is a big, tasty wine. It’s another long list of varietals — mostly Merlot and Cab Sauvignon, with smaller amounts of Cab Franc, Syrah, Tempranillo and Malbec. It was totally delicious, with a big jammy aroma that doesn’t lie. Blackberries dominate, with some cassis and pepper as well. The wine is medium bodied and while very rich tasting it’s not heavy. Based on Internet searching it sounds like we overpaid a bit at $27, and the wine was still a great value.

Finally, in honor of their World Cup victory let’s close with a Spanish star. I’ve written previously about the Lan Rioja Reserva, and it’s a very nice Rioja. But the Gran Reserva is even better, and a very different tasting wine. Extra time in oak produces a Rioja that is a lot smoother and with a more complex interplay of flavors. It’s still light bodied and has the trademark “dustiness” of a Rioja, with nice strawberry and blueberry fruit. And it’s only a few bucks more than the Reserva — we paid $22 at Whole Foods.

We brought two bottles to the Lobster Luau at the Donaldson Run Rec Center in Arlington. We went as guests of our friends David and Ingrid Matuszewski, and had a blast at the obviously popular event  — there must have been 400 people there. It was the perfect July 4 event, one week later.

Whatever you’re doing this summer, one of these wines can make the time more enjoyable. What have you found? Drop me a comment and let me know.

Measuring Cloud Performance — New Bitcurrent/Webmetrics Report

Hope everyone had a nice Fourth of July. Working closely with clients on very interesting projects is one of the best parts of my job in technology PR. Most of the time, the knowledge I gain is proprietary. But occasionally I get to share it, and today is one of those times.

Recently Bitcurrent conducted a cloud performance test commissioned by my client Webmetrics, a business unit of Neustar. Bitcurrent describes itself as part blog, part analyst firm and part resource site for the web community. The research project was led by Alistair Croll, a well-known name in the space and program chair for the Cloud Connect conference.

You can’t read a technology story today without the “cloud” being mentioned. But there is precious little reputable, empirical research by third parties to help customers understand the term, and to help determine which company they should go with for cloud services.

Bitcurrent has produced a fascinating report, tracking the cloud performance of the leading providers in a number of ways. The full 50+ page report is only available via registration off the Webmetrics web site, but I’d be happy to send an abridged version to anyone who’d like to see it. Just drop a comment here, send me an email or ping me on Twitter — @cparente.

Here is some background on the report. Five companies were analyzed:

1. Salesforce.com
2. Google App Engine
3. Terremark vCloud
4. Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2)
5. Rackspace Rackspace Cloud

Four different performance metrics were isolated:

• A simple web request for a small, static object — this tested responsiveness
• A request for a large, 2 Megabyte object — this tested network throughput
• A request that triggered one million mathematically intensive calculations — this tested computing power
• A request that triggered a search of 500,000 rows in a database for a string — this tested the back-end I/O (input/output)

I spoke at some length with Alistair about the report. He was jazzed about the report and said no one had ever measured the performance of cloud computing in this way. In particular, he stressed how the report uses histograms to illustrate the performance of each company. Histograms are a kind of graphical display that allowed for the display of the performance of all five companies for a specific request on a single graph. It’s as close as you can get to a distinct “fingerprint” for cloud performance:

Latency for delivery of 2 MB GIF

Alistair also had very nice words for Webmetrics underwriting the project and then staying completely hands off. This is from his blog:

At Bitcurrent, we try to remain nonpartisan. We want to contribute to the industry’s growth and understanding. So we were thrilled at Webmetrics/Neustar’s approach here: they financed the research into cloud performance, and let us use their monitoring tool to collect the data from our agents. They were supportive, and enthusiastic, but exercised no editorial control whatsoever over the content of the report. This kind of altruistic, good-for-the-market contribution is, in our opinion, the best kind of marketing, and we commend them for adopting it.

As I like to say, great work for great clients. If you’re currently evaluating how the cloud can help your business, this could be valuable information.  Ping me for a copy if interested.

New Fan Switch Tackles 530 Air Conditioning Issue

This weekend I tackled an irritating issue with my BMW 530i. I had a problem with the air conditioning, and the recent heat wave pushed this problem into the urgent quadrant. Summer time in DC, plus my wife complaining about it meant I could no longer use the time-tested technique of ignoring the problem.

The A/C would cut out when the car was stopped in traffic. The air flow didn’t change, that stayed constant. But there was no frosty air at all, the A/C factor disappeared until the car started moving again.  Pretty uncomfortable in commute traffic, to say the least. So I jumped into the forums for some research.

Turns out there is a switch that controls the auxiliary fan. The fan is supposed to come on when the car is stopped, to help cool the A/C condenser. If the condenser gets too hot, it shuts itself off. Based on my car’s symptoms, that sounded like what was happening. The entire fan could have been defective, but there was a chance just the switch was out.

So I ordered the switch for less than $20 online and installed the switch, which was very accessible in the engine bay. And for once, I got the BMW best-case scenario! It wasn’t the entire fan assembly, it was just the switch. I’ve now got cool air again at a dead stop, although I’ll probably also have the A/C system recharged before the end of the summer to get it back to 100% power.

Note to fellow DIYers — If you need to make this replacement, make sure the car is cool or you’ll lose some coolant when you remove the switch.

While I was at it I also addressed a musty A/C smell that was starting to occur, a common problem with BMWs due to moisture in the system. Thankfully, I don’t have as bad a problem as described here, or (hopefully) need as involved a remedy.  I sprayed a can of Liqui Moly Klima Fresh in the car, and it seems to have done the trick so far.

All in  all, another small victory in the post-warranty BMW ownership experience!

Faulty Switch

Replacement

The Cloud — How Well Do You Understand Tech’s Biggest Buzzword?

One of my jobs as a technology PR consultant is to stay current with industry trends, as I’ve written about previously here. No trend is bigger right now than cloud computing, which Gartner pegs as a $150 billion market by 2014. However, the term “cloud” is rapidly becoming like the term “2.0″ — meaning whatever the speaker wants it to mean. So here’s a quick primer.

There are three main types of cloud computing:

• Software as a Service (SaaS) — examples Salesforce.com, Google Docs and Twitter
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) — examples Force.com, Microsoft Azure and Google App Engine
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) — examples Amazon Web Services, Rackspace and GoGrid

To over-simplify just a bit, if you’re a consumer you care most about SaaS. If you’re a developer you care about PaaS. And if your company is looking to move to virtual servers, you care about IaaS. So from a business perspective, a lot of hype around the Cloud is focused on IaaS. Here’s how that market has evolved:

• Began as simple collocation – still very important
• Managed Hosting — getting closer to IaaS, but involves dedicated servers, usually long-term contracts and more expense
• IaaS — possible today due to advances in virtualization, multi-tenant, economical and flexible, some providers can customize solutions

A great way to stay current on big trends is to track the popular conferences that form around them. As I write the GigaOm Structure 2010 show is going on in San Francisco, now in its third year and approaching must attend status for providers in the cloud space. Om Malik has a parade of big names hitting the stage and sharing their views on where the market is going. And as always, a lot of companies like to release information just prior to shows.

Here’s a totally subjective list of the big stuff so far:

• EMC’s Harel Kodesh talks about the future of cloud storage
• VMware’s Paul Maritz calls the cloud the new hardware
• Amazon’s Werner Vogels (now that’s a great name for a CTO) is happy the industry is finished talking cloud, and is doing cloud
• Cloud Harmony published a cloud provider performance test with some surprising winners
• Here’s the live stream to the show for more

Obviously this post just covers the basics, but I hope it’s helpful for those (like me) who are neither engineers nor sysadmins. It’s a confusing market right now, and having the framework down first made it easier for me to comprehend. If you can devote a bit more time than this post requires, Lenny Rachitsky has a great slide presentation on his blog Transparent Uptime.

Now let me hit save, and my blog post will be published and hosted… courtesy of Amazon’s cloud!

Tallula Goes Haute Cuisine — And Is The Poorer For It

Gabriele and I recently went for dinner at Tallula for the first time in a while. As readers of this blog know, we’re big fans of the restaurants in the Neighborhood Restaurant Group. Unfortunately, things had changed since we last ate at Tallula.

I apparently was the last person in the DC area to realize that the wine shop next store had closed down. The restaurant is still very wine-centric, but no more good bottles for only $10-15 over their retail price, like at sister restaurant Evening Star in Del Ray. This was one of the big draws of Tallula for me, and a concept I wish more restaurants adopted. Now Tallula has gone in the opposite direction, and the wine list was full of depressingly typical restaurant prices that were 2x and even 3x retail.

Our waiter sent a wine steward over when we said we were interested in a bottle, and she seemed very knowledgeable. We were ordering fish but wanted a red wine, and we told her we often really like GSMs. She suggested we try a Spanish blend, the Mas Estela Quindals 2006.

The wine was 90% Grenache, 5% Syrah and 5% Carignan. It was light bodied, with a smoky flavor to it. Blueberry was the fruit that dominated for us, with a strong finish that had a spicy “zing” to it. In fact the finish led to a split decision between me and Gabriele on the wine. I thought the finish was too strong and distracting, while she enjoyed it. Based on Internet mentions looks to retail for around $25.

Everything we ordered was good, and the service was good as well. The main issue was the very small portion sizes. Gabriele’s tuna tartare was excellent, but not much bigger than an amuse-bouche. Her Brazino was flavorful but also small, and it had a lot of bones. My halibut was advertised as a bouillabaise, but came with a small amount of broth at the bottom of the plate and a piece of fish about 3 inches by 2 inches. This was surrounded by two clams, three mussels and four tiny potato pieces. It was delicious, but less than half the size it should have been.

It’s a bummer writing this, because the vibe of the restaurant, the service and the flavor of the food were all strong. But it hurts to leave a restaurant hungry after spending a good bit of money for a nice meal. Tallula today is just not a good value, and very different from its NRG cousin establishments. For a better experience I’d suggest you stick to the Eat Bar next door.

TANDBERG’s Break Down the Walls Wins Best Corporate Blog

I’ve written previously in this blog about the success of TANDBERG’s Break Down the Walls social media portal. Tuesday night that success was officially recognized as Break Down the Walls took the prize for best corporate blog at the inaugural Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) social media awards.

TANDBERG wasn’t the only winning Strategic Communications Group client. Neustar took home the award for best use of viral videos. Full disclosure alert — while I consult on social media tactics with a number of business units inside Neustar, the viral video campaign was executed by the agency Apollo Bravo.

Me, Brad Beckstrom of Apollo, Stephanie Klaiber and Jim Leach of Neustar

Some of the other winners underscored the overall strength of the Government 2.0 scene here in Washington. Other winners last night:

• Best use of Facebook — State Department
• Best use of LinkedIn — Army Contracting Command
• Social media campaign — Arlington County

Our client at TANDBERG Meredith Lawrence could not have been more gracious to Strategic when accepting the award. In fact, she insisted I take the stage with her. This doesn’t happen too often anymore. I had my time on the corporate spokesman side of things. My role as a PR consultant is to make the client the star, not garner attention for myself.

Plus, when you practice b2b and b2g PR your successes are often private. You know you’ve accomplished the project goals, and so does the client. But the success isn’t usually public knowledge, or trumpeted in Bisnow’s Fed Tech.

So it was much appreciated when Meredith credited the Strategic team for making Break Down the Walls so successful. Great work for great clients, as we like to say at Strategic.

Meredith accepting the award

There are a lot of talented communicators in the DC area, and a lot of good firms. The competition for business is fierce. As my colleague and partner Marc Hausman likes to quip, “Don’t expect a lot of thank yous in this business.”  Which makes getting one all the more special.

Me and Meredith with the prize