A View into Wine Flavors

Here's an innovative display, illustrating taste for wines. I've long been curious with challenges like this (originally challenging myself to come up with a *useful* description method for beads).

I found comparing Riesling to Sauvignon Blanc (and seeing the added stress on "herb") enlightening (while "crisp" is the same).

The author writes,

What is the relationship between wine varieties and flavor components? This visualization attempts to show the strength of these relationships. I culled descriptive flavor words from over 5,000 published wine tasting notes written between 1995-2000 in a major Australian wine magazine.

Cheat Sheets (it's a help thing)

In Google's RSS reader, there are shortcuts. It's a quintessential AJAX application, like most humans really don't understand: a webpage UI for a full application. (Don't let the simplicity of the page fool you, there's a lot you can do here.)
Quick keys, like Windows users (may) love, aren't usually options in a browser, but they are in the Google Reader - and more than you'd expect.
Enter the paper taped to the wall... a table of quick key reminders.
But they've gone one step farther: the "?" is a quick key for a shadow-box cheat sheet. Shadow boxes are ~50% transparent so you don't forget what you were doing, but show you want you need. In this case, the font is large and there's a scroll bar.
This is what every web site should have - quick keys, a cheat sheet, and a universal "?" to show it in any context.
To be clear, this would do three things:

1. Provides help
2. Provides at-a-glance awareness of possibly useful advanced features (ferrying newbies to guruhood unsuspectingly)
3. Perhaps most interesting... forces product managers and designers to consider what a jet-pack, fully-empowered experience on their site might actually mean...

All worthwhile as a norm.

The Talkies (video-enhanced sites)

I've been watching as more and more sites use video to introduce, explain, or generally teach users the value they offer. I don't mean tutorials per se (like Mog's tours), but optional homepage embellishments, etc, that tastefully tell the story. (As opposed to this.)
I just came across perhaps my new favorite example of the concept: Google positioning this video on a standard map page. They linked to it from a post on "getting around in your neighborhood." I'm guessing a lot of Google map users are still unaware of the "re-routing (drag route)" or "directions by walking" features.
In the last 18 months I've found myself pitching the power of on-site videos like these. But it wasn't until now I see the comparison to when film gained sound. I think the level of engagement we users experience takes a significant step forward.

Engaging Marketing Email Award (i.e., hard to delete)

I was clearing out my old Yahoo inbox, marveling at the things I subscribed to 3 years ago. After a while I realized I had been reading this newsletter from Powell's Books of Portland, OR. Stepping back, scrolling up and down, you have to marvel at how rich, interesting, and beautiful they've made it. Really nice work. The email looks exactly like the web page, even in my Yahoo browser.
And such a quirky, fun, piece at the very end about the store cat.

The Google Doc, Form

Don't know what I was doing in February to miss the addition of Forms to Google Docs, but I stumbled onto it tonight and wow. I can't wait to use this.

Super intuitive, as you'd expect. I'm sure it won't work on my iPhone, but I'll forgive them that. I created this 3-question form in about 3 minutes.

You can see it here on the Google server, but I've embedded it below, too. (Yes, of course, embedded.)

You can also email the quiz, then watch their input grow on a web page (with nifty graphs). What better way to gather lunch requests?

Grand Central (of nothing new, unfortunately)

I got a voice mail this afternoon through my web-based GrandCentral account - as both a forwarded call to my cell with options to accept and record the call, or forward to voice mail. Anyone remember Grand Central? Google acquired them on July 4, 2007 for rumored $50M.

Apparently, nothing has happened with them since? That's a pity. Google immediately stopped giving out new accounts, so unless you had one ... uh, over a year ago, you're still outta luck.

That's a shame. This really seemed like the future of the phone.

Go China Go! (or, Wesley Chan, I mean)

I stopped blogging recently, falling victim to the Twitteritis that has plagued the (non-micro) blogosphere. That is, microblogging--the satisfaction of crafting zen-like, haiku-like, Internet posts to my, eh... 88 subscribers--ruined my appetite to craft anything longer.

But tonight I got an email from a dot-com that just deserves the full treatment. Kudos, that is.

There's an International component: they're Chinese.

Yes, as the Olympics unfold, TIVO's on hold and I'm blogging about a Chinese dot-com, distracted by virtual customer service. Guess I'm just a persona at heart (knuck, knuck).

So, I bought a bike mount to hold the random GPS devices I'm working with in my current gig. I found it on the web - it holds basically anything (a contraption of various screw vices with foam pads). But I ended up ordering it FOR NINE DOLLARS from a completely fly-by-night-looking website. I'm old enough to remember clearly fearing giving my credit card to just any website. This site reminded me of exactly those days as I caved and thought to myself: "Well, my anti-identity theft tools are in place... I think."

So just today I commented to a friend at work, something about ordering it a few weeks ago... but from a Chinese website (rolled my eyes). "We'll see what happens."

I received this email tonight.

It reminds me so much of a true small business--of my father's wholesale flower shop, that we launched from our garage when I was in the 2nd grade. I actually stood in the driveway and welcomed people (real, actual, professional florists... wow) as they parked and walked up to our house. It was a big deal.

Man, is this email over the top or what?

From: "info.usa@virtualvillage.com"

Date: August 13, 2008 7:04:27 PM MDT

To: justapersona...

Subject: Virtual Village Notice - item 72476736 : arriving soon

Dear Andy,

Further to your purchase from Virtual Village I just wanted to thank you for your order.

It was shipped by airmail on Aug 3 2008 7:00AM and though we can’t control the post, shipping usually takes 14 to 21 days so your parcel should arrive soon! (If you chose FedEx it should have arrived by now).

I’d also like to introduce myself; I’m Wesley, your account manager and you can contact me at WChan@virtualvillage.com.

I’d love you to visit us again and to try and tempt you I’ve set up a promo on our website! Visit www.virtualvillage.com, choose an item and enter M3Q4F3X7Y when checking out for 25% off any product!

The promo runs until the end of this month so don’t hang about!

Kind regards

Wesley Chan

Your Personal Account Manager

Virtual Village USA

Please tell us if there’s a problem you need solving BEFORE you leave feedback. We’ve 2 goals: to ensure YOU’RE 100% satisfied and that WE get great feedback. If you have any issues, contact gethelp@virtualvillage.com and we promise to treat your request as TOP PRIORITY

-----

This email was sent using ChannelAdvisor marketplace management software.

Visit us at http://www.channeladvisor.com

Forget olympic high diving.

This little email, from this little company, suddenly makes me a fan. This is what business was supposed to be. This is what dot-coms were meant to be.

14-21 days? Are you kidding? I'm leaving the olympics on hold. I'm emailing Wesley to see if I can help out. Surely we can do better on the shipping.