A New Wine — and a New Ride

This is a combination Wine and Wheels post. Gabriele got a new (to us, anyway) car, and in celebrating we discovered a fantastic Zinfandel.

First the car. There was only one thing wrong with the white Murano we purchased last year – the former owner had been a smoker. Despite some kind of treatment the dealer had given the car, it still smelled on hotter days. So with summer here, Gabriele was thinking about a new vehicle. Last week we went to the CarMax at WoodBridge looking for another Murano.

There was no Murano that fit the bill, and I suggested she test drive the FX35. It’s probably the sportiest SUV this side of a Porsche Cayenne, built on the same platform as Infiniti’s G35 sports sedan and coupe. She loved the power, features and handling, and just like that the FX was our new target vehicle.

CarMax made the experience very easy by giving us a great quote on our Murano. From there, is was just finding the right used FX, and our salesman Mazen had two candidates on the lot this Saturday for us to check out. A beautiful 2005 Grey/Silver with tan interior and only 19K miles was the winner, and we drove her home feeling good about the transaction.

We drove our new vehicle to Del Ray that night for dinner at Bombay Curry Company, one of our favorite Indian restaurants. (I recommend the Saag Goosh.) Mount Vernon Avenue was hopping with people and activity, it’s just incredible how that area has changed since I lived there in the mid-1990s.

The evening was just beautiful, and after dinner we stopped in Cheestique for some, you guessed it, cheese and wine. They have a few outside tables along the avenue and we snagged one of them. We actually found a blue cheese Gabriele likes, Cambozola, a cow-based cheese from Grermany. But the find of the night was the 2007 Hart’s Desire Zinfandel.

A glass was $16, and I asked the waitress if it was worth it. She confidently said yes, and brought me out a small taste. The wine was unlike any other Zinfandel I’ve had. It was very rich, almost chocolately and a bit creamy. It had none of the pepper and spice a lot of Zins have. It had a very unusual aroma — this will sound very weird, but it reminded me of tiki torch fuel. (Gabriele backed me up on this.) That sounds awful, but it wasn’t. The smell was there but not overpowering. The wine was fantastic with the cheese, and I’d recommend it highly.

All in all, a very productive summertime Saturday!

Making DNS More Secure — One ISP at a Time

Last July I wrote about a serious security flaw in the domain name system (DNS). It was discovered by researcher Dan Kaminsky and got a lot of coverage: It’s Tuesday — Must be Time to Fix DNS

There was two parts to the DNS vulnerability that quickly became known as the Kaminsky flaw. One was related to poor port number randomization, making it easier for criminal elements to hijack DNS queries and redirect them to fraudulent sites. That problem could be addressed with a software patch, and most of the coverage last year focused on the concerted efforts made by companies like Microsoft, Sun, Cisco and many others to distribute the patches.

But there was another part to the flaw that could not be patched, since it was fundamental to the DNS protocol itself. Internet consumers are still at risk of being redirected through something called cache poisoning, which fools a DNS server into thinking a fraudulent site is authentic. Until recently there was little public acknowledgement of this happening, because most companies are loathe to discuss security breaches.

But in April there was a major breach of a Brazilian IPS Virtua and one of its big customers, the Brazilian back Bradesco. Here’s coverage of the incident from the The Register.

Last week my client NeuStar announced Cache Defender, a way for ISPs to protect their customers from this fundamental Internet vulnerability. ISPs can deploy this solution to create a secure DNS link between their customers and the domains NeuStar is authoritative for, including some of the largest Internet brands such as Amazon, Advertising.com, Oracle and Zappos. Cache Defender is designed to be an interim solution until DNSSEC, a more secure version of DNS can be implemented by the global Internet community.

Here’s some coverage of the announcement:

Network World

Telephony

Venture Beat

CIO

Dark Reading

I’ve worked on DNS issues previously in my career, so this news was very exciting and fun to promote. If you’d like to know more, check out a discussion going on over at CircleID, a top online forum for Internet infrastructure discussions. Not surprisingly, some negative comments about Cache Defender are coming from NeuStar competitors. But the company already has one announced ISP deployment, with more in the works.

DNSSEC is no doubt the definitive answer, but probably won’t be widely deployed until 2011 for a number of technical and political reasons. Until then, Cache Defender is an excellent way for ISPs to show they are doing all they can to protect their customers.

Promote it, and they will come

As I wrote about recently, my firm Strategic Communications Group has helped a lot of clients implement their social media strategies. Many times, this includes the launch of a company blog. But for a blog to contribute to the business goals of the company, it needs to build up traffic fairly rapidly. “Build it and they will come” is not a workable strategy.

You need to promote your new blog in the right places to get the right kind of readership. This kind of promotion can’t be automated — it has to be done by hand, and needs to understand the norms and interests of the online communities to be successful.

Where are these right places? Many of them have already been identified before the blog has launched. For every client Strategic regularly identifies communities of interest around the product or service the client provides — LinkedIn, Facebook, specialized Ning communities. So those are natural areas that will be interested in a blog discussing their particular niche.

Social bookmarking sites are also effective for promoting blog content. Blog, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz and StumbleUpon are great ways to republish content and expose it to large numbers of potential visitors. Provided the content is appropriate, Twitter can be a potent way to promote new blog content. And by using the site www.bit.ly, you can track the number of clicks on your tweet. Depending on the number of followers and factors like retweets, large numbers of visitors can be delivered via the Twitter channel.

Good blog content can also be repurposed on user generated sites in publications that serve the client’s target audience. For example, Business Week and CIO Magazine have online communities that accept quality user generated content. Editing the blog content for these audiences and promoting the existence of the company blog can be very effective for traffic generation.

It’s tempting to celebrate when a company blog is launched. But the launch is the beginning of a new phase of the campaign, not a conclusion.

Pizzeria Paradiso Still Just That

Pizzeria Paradiso has been a favorite of mine for many years. But I haven’t written about it until now, which just isn’t right. The restaurant has consistently delivered for years, and I’m giving it its due tonight.  Maybe the news the restaurant is moving a few doors down P Street to a larger space was the catalyst I needed.  I will miss the old location a bit though:

http://www.eatyourpizza.com/

It’s so far above average pizza a new term should be coined. Everything else is high quality as well. Gabriele and I like the panzanella (seasoned diced vegetables) over bread or salad as an appetizer. For us the two best pizzas are the Atomica and the Bosco. The Atomica is tomato, black olive, salami, pepper flakes and mozzarella. The Bosco is tomato, mushroom, spinach, red onion and mozzarella, and then Gabe adds pepperoni. Absolutely fantastic.

We tend to drink Barberas when we go to PP, rather than Chianti. We’ve ordered the 2006 Michele Chiarlo Barbera d’Asti in the past. It’s a good Barbera, with a light body and very dry and tart. It’s a bit sharp and is definitely a food wine. PP sells it for $31, and I think it retails for around $15.

Recently we ordered another Barbera, and it was a clearly better wine. The 2005 Coppo Barbera d’Asti Camp du Rouss was a very enjoyable bottle. It had medium body and a deep aroma. There was very nice fruit with a taste of cherries and a certain smokiness. It was a little pricey at $47 but worth it, I think the retail is around $18-19.

The only down sides are finding a place to park, and long lines at times. But maybe the new, larger location will help with the latter. If you haven’t tried DC’s best pizza, get there soon.

Quality Blogging — It Aint Easy

At my firm Strategic Communications Group more and more of our client work is in the social media arena. Usually a piece of the strategy involves helping the client launch a company blog. This can be a very valuable tool for thought leadership, spurring conversation and awareness and eventually for producing leads that support revenue generation. My colleague and Strategic founder Marc Hausman wrote recently about what he calls the three stages of social media maturation here: http://tinyurl.com/cmg4xf

Over the past 12-18 months we’ve stood up blogs for clients such as BT, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Inmarsat and GovDelivery. These implementations have led to a short list of best practices and issues to address prior to launch. The technology platform is the simple part. There are more fundamental questions to answer before launching a corporate blog — you can’t just  “throw it up” and hope for the best.

Here are the issues most of our clients have grappled with (successfully) as they launched their corporate blogs.

• Are you willing to take a stance? Many companies tend to be very careful with public statements, which is often a smart course. But middle of the road, consensus driven content doesn’t attract a strong readership. A company needs to be ready to take a clear position and welcome differing opinions.
• Response time needs to be swift. Responding to breaking news can be a very productive source of timely blog content. But if the marketing content must track down a subject matter expert, who then has to get his or her comment cleared, that’s not going to happen fast enough. Companies need to designate approved commentators, and they need to be accessible.
• Is everyone internally on the same page? Sometimes ownership of the corporate blog becomes a bone of contention between the IT department and the marketing/communications staff. Lines of responsibility need to be clear and agreed to prior to launch.
• Reasonable and clear metrics of success.  These can vary greatly depending on the nature of the content and the audiences targeted. Consistent growth in traffic is usually the best indicator. Sometimes clients focus on the  number of comments, which are harder to garner due to the increased effort required of readers.
• Finally, respect the time investment. At Strategic we have weekly calls with clients totally devoted the blog editorial calendar, and direct access the senior executive contributors as needed. If a company isn’t ready to dedicate the time and access required for quality content, they should reconsider launching a blog.

Here’s an interesting graphic courtesy of Matt Dickman at Technomarketer that illustrates some of these points well:

Blog Decision Tree

As communication professionals it is our responsibility to bring these issues to our clients early on and make sure they are successfully addressed. Companies that truly make the culture shift consider themselves as publishers, and bring that sort of serious consideration to their content.

With the decline of the technology trade media, quality corporate blogs can fill an important vacancy in technology coverage and become a trusted source of information in their specific market.

Got a story about a great company blog, or want to add to the list above? Please drop a comment or contact me directly.

Meeting the Local Tech Press

This Thursday I attended a meet the media event put on by BusinessWire in Tysons Corner. These events bring together local reporters and editors and give them a chance to share their view of trends, how they like to be contacted, and the kind of stories they are looking to cover. While these discussions and questions from the audience can be interesting, the biggest draw is to meet these folks in person and build a solid relationship with them.

BusinessWire pulled together a good panel of local technology media:

• Paul Sherman, Potomac Tech Wire
• Gautham Nagesh, Government Executive
• Mark Kellner, freelance columnist for Washington Times
• David Hubler, Washington Technology
• Darlene Darcy, Washington Business Journal

Some of the points made reconfirmed what every PR person should know already. Kellner stressed how PR people need to read the publications they pitch, understand the market and the readership, and be persistent. Sherman reminded the audience not to send attachments, paste the release or other information into the body of an email. Nagesh recommended that you make your subject matter experts very available for technology background briefings; this will lead to him thinking of them often and eventually to story coverage. Email is the best way to reach most of them, not just because they are usually out of the office but because everyone hates listening to voicemail, which was pronounced “dead.”

The entire panel stressed how PR people need to do a better job of battling the “inhouse” perspective when crafting press releases. Hubler in particular stressed how he reads press releases full of jargon and terms that no doubt have great meaning for a company’s internal audiences, yet can’t be understood by external parties. Simple, declarative sentences that explain why the announcement is important to a broader audience are too often missing.

There were some interesting points made about the Obama Administration’s commitment to transparency. Nagesh admitted no one knew exactly what that meant, and the promised ability to review legislation before enactment has not materialized. Sherman pointed out that to some extent the Administration is looking to go around the press to communicate directly to involved citizens, using the example of the Treasury Department putting out fact sheets and Q&A’s very quickly.

The use of social media by the panel members was mixed. Hubler said flat out he doesn’t read or use Twitter. Sherman reviews Twitter but would never run with something without getting further confirmation. Darcy shared with the audience a number of Twitter streams put out by the WBJ and their Facebook Page to help give a feel for the kind of stories they to publish. Nagesh sounded like the most fully immersed, saying he gets story ideas from blogs and Twitter, and in fact put out an inquiry over Twitter recently asking for story ideas and got one back almost immediately.

One of the questions from the audience dealt with the age old question of the exclusive. Every reporter likes getting one, and going the exclusive route does increase the chances of a story. But as the panel admitted, few if any other publications will run with the story, meaning you’re putting all your eggs in one basket. Hubler pointed out you shouldn’t simply go for the outlet with the highest readership, in his example the Washington Post.

I asked the panel if a middle course might be offering news under embargo to a number of publications. That way they have it early and if they choose to cover they will be timely, but no guarantee of exclusive. They all said they’d be open to that approach. I call this an “open embargo” — hardly a new concept but maybe a new term.

All in all it was an event that worked for all participants. PR professionals and media learned how best to work together and BusinessWire got some good visibility. Maybe I’ll see you at the next one.

A Positive Car Insurance Experience

Last month driving home from Silver Spring on a Friday night I was side-swiped by some guy in a minivan. The hit wasn’t major, he gave me a glancing blow as he cut me off in traffic. But it looked horrible, with damage and scratches down the back two thirds of the driver side. I was really pissed off, but stayed cool and exchanged insurance information.

Besides the damage, the other reason I was bummed was the deductible I carried on the 530. I figured even though it was not my fault I would be out that money before my insurance company State Farm covered anything. Plus the time wasted having them inspect, etc. A couple of friends suggested that I report the incident happened while the car was parked, so it could be covered by comprehensive. No way I was going down that road, and I wasn’t interested in the guy giving me money directly either, which his insurance broker offered the following Monday morning.

Then State Farm told me I could go through Allstate if I chose to, the insurance company of the other driver. They would cover the whole amount if they accepted liability. I figured, what are the chances he’d admit fault to his insurance company? I don’t know exactly what happened, but I gave my statement and a couple of days later Allstate told me they would cover, including rental car!

Initially they they wanted me to go to one of their inspection centers, none of which were close by. I wanted to go to Professional Auto Body in Alexandria, recommended by my mechanic. Their price apparently was reasonable enough for Allstate to accept when I faxed the estimate over.

They did a great job, and finished a day ahead of schedule. Definitely give them a call if you’re local and ever need body work done.

Check it out below. A happy ending dealing with car insurance — it can happen!

Before:

After:

Vacation Wine Finds

Last week Gabriele and I enjoyed a get away from the daily hustle and bustle. We rented a well appointed cabin in the Shenandoah valley and brought our own supplies, including of course some wine. We also visited two Virginia vineyards, Rappahannock Cellars and Fox Meadow winery.

The big winner of what we brought was a delicious Adler Fels 2007 Pinot Noir. A staff member at Total Wine in Alexandria has recommended it, and we’re glad she did. It was smooth and very tasty, with a slightly earthy aroma but none of the funkiness of some burgundies. It had strong but balanced fruit and lingered pleasantly on the palate. The wine was also an excellent value for $20.

We were less impressed with a 2005 Titus Amphora. We had really enjoyed a Titus cabernet and decided to give this blend a try, with 48% cabernet, 45% merlot and 7% cabernet franc. The wine had a rich bouquet, but too much Merlot in the taste and finish for me. Gabriele likes Merlot a lot more, but she didn’t like the finish either, said she tasted first the creaminess of Merlot and then a cabernet aftertaste that didn’t mesh. Not a favorite of either of us and not a good value at $30.

When we visited Rappahannock Cellars the guy who gave us a tasting, Nick was really welcoming and knowledgeable. He was happy to give us a red only tasting, but we didn’t have anything that really impressed us. We had a Bordeaux style Claret blend, a 2006 Cabernet Franc and a 2006 Meritage made up of cabernet, cabernet franc and petit verdot. The Meritage was the best of the three, but not worth $29.

We really wanted to buy something, and luckily Nick also let us try a dessert wine, a 2007 Vidal Blanc. It was sweet but not cloying, a lot of peach and apricot with a clean finish. Gabriele likes dessert wines, so we picked up a bottle for $18.50.

Tamara welcomed us to Fox Meadow and we had the place to ourselves — a benefit no doubt of visiting on a Tuesday. She poured us a number of 2006 reds, some interesting but none really impressive. Two were cabernet francs and very different, one very light and almost pinot-ish, the other more traditionally spicy. The best wine was the Fox Meadows Vineyards Le Renard Rouge, a 60% merlot, 40% cabernet franc blend. It had a subtle, interesting aroma and taste but wasn’t a great value at $30.

After getting back home, we had a very good experience at the french restaurant Bastille. We both ordered the four course tasting menu, but wanted a bottle of wine rather than the assigned glasses by course. Our waiter was very familiar with the wine list and after I couldn’t find a Rhone wine that sounded right, he offered us a Bordeaux that had been taken off the wine list. He recommended it and offered a discount off the usual price. Sold!

It was a Chateau Mongravey 2006 Margaux. The wine was light, soft and flavorful, 55% cabernet, 35% merlot, 5% cabernet franc and 5% petit verdot. It was a very good food wine, just right with each course for us. Special mentions go to the beet salad with a delicious light, whipped blue cheese and the grilled branzino filet.

We’ll be back out to the Shenandoah again, and will plan on hitting more of the local Virginia wineries. And I recommend Bastille the next time you’re wanting French cuisine.

Combining to Confront Conficker

Microsoft reached back to the days of the Old West last Thursday to battle an online worm that has infected millions of computer worldwide. It put out a bounty and assembled a “posse” to catch the bad guys.

Microsoft announced a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the author(s) of the Conficker worm, also known as Downadup. The worm first appeared late last year and has multiple ways to infect machines running Windows. Estimates range as high as 12 million computers infected, and the infections have the potential of creating a gigantic “botnet” out of those machines. This could be used for distribution of malware, spam or to launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. A patch was released by Microsoft in October, but the worm has continued to spread rapidly.

The company also announced a large group of firms working together to combat Conficker. The group is made up of leading security firms, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), registries and leading operators of the Domain Name System (DNS). Microsoft’s announcement: http://tinyurl.com/am4xxg

Here’s a roundup of coverage:

Computerworld — http://tinyurl.com/bm2tok

PC World — http://tinyurl.com/bxutsa

Internetnews.com — http://tinyurl.com/bmwv84

InformationWeek — http://tinyurl.com/bg4efg

Washington Post — http://tinyurl.com/apzkjg

The posse was created to head the worm off at the pass, so to speak. The worm seeks to update itself using seemingly random lists of domain names it checks to receive new code. The algorithm used to generate those domains has been cracked by Finnish cyber security firm F-Secure. Now the companies can pre-register the domain names, preventing the worm from updating itself. And computers infected with the worm can be identified when they check in. This contains the growth of the virus, although it does not eradicate it.

Here’s a detailed description from Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks: http://tinyurl.com/c7vyu3

This is an encouraging example of industry working together to combat a common threat — much like the coordination around the DNS flaw identified by Dan Kaminsky in July of last year. Hopefully this group can remain organized in some form and continue to fight the increasingly sophisticated attacks looking to exploit the distributed nature of Internet infrastructure.

UPDATE – new variant of the worm released by the bad guys, Network World:

http://tinyurl.com/bfy7fb

Recession Fighting Reds

The economic news continues to be bleak, and as a result many people are naturally watching expenses. In times like these, wine lovers are less inclined to pay big money for a wine based only on a brand name, a waiter’s recommendation or a “staff favorite” card in the store aisle.

I’ve enjoyed some enjoyable red wines in the past few weeks that also were great values.   Here are some candidates for pleasing both the palate and the purse strings.

Domain Alfred “DA Red” 2005, $16 retail.

Edna Valley in central California, this wine is mostly Pinot with some Grenache and Syrah as well. Fragrant on opening, DA Red has strong fruit and a medium body with makes it bolder than lighter Pinots.

Merryvale Starmont 2005, $19 retail.

This is just a very good Napa Cabernet, with some limited amounts of other varietals mixed in, primarily Merlot, with a little Petit Verdot, Syrah and Cabernet Franc. Big and strong like a Californian should be, with a refined long finish.

Murphy Goode “Wildcard” 2003 Claret, $20 retail.

Located in Sonoma’s Alexander Valley, this wine carries the old British term for Bordeaux, Claret. 55% Cabernet, 35% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. 100% enjoyable, with strong blackberry and vanilla flavor with a light to medium body.

St. Francis Red, 2004 $13 retail.

Quite a mixture of Merlot, Cabernet, Cabernet Franc and Zinfandel. Rich aroma leads to a medium bodied wine with easy fruit and a clean finish. We’ve had both the 04 and the 05, both excellent bargains.

Corta all Flora Guiggiolo Toscana 2007, $11 retail.

Sangiovese wine from Tuscany although the bottle uses the local varietal term Prugnolo Gentile. Strong earthy nose is deceptive, leads to a light flavorful wine with more substance and finish than the typical Chianti. Try it with almost any kind of food and with friends who don’t think they like Chianti.

Gougueheim Malbec 2007, $9 retail.

Any finally the absolute steal of the bunch. A Malbec from the Mendoza region of Argentina, this wine is very simple but satisfying. It gives strong fruit with a body light but not too thin, nice on the palate but quick tart finish. Really hard not too enjoy at the price point.

All prices shown are local ones I’ve seen. Give one a try soon and let me know if you agree — or disagree!