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i am not a food blogger

2009-11-04T12:20:24-08:00

But I'm a blogger who likes food. And this week I had three dishes at three restaurants in New York that are worth mentioning.

The filetti pizza at Motorino Pizza in the East Village. People in SF's East Bay (including me!) love to talk about how great the pizza is there (and it is!) but the filetti at Motorino's on Monday night was delicious. (Of course the food geeks at the table told me that the guy that used to be there (Anthony Mangieri -- who appears to be more than a little obsessive about pizza) is coming to San Francisco. Which is good.)
The breakfast potatoes at Markt in the Flatiron district. I had these on my last trip, and had forgotten about them. But when my eggs, potatoes and toast arrived this morning, I remembered. Delicious, with the right amount of peppers and onions layered on top.
The tagliatelle with meat sauce at Il Bastardo, again in the flatiron district. Il Bastardo is one of those places you'd probably walk right by, especially if you're a real food blogger. And the place itself is one of those cavernous places that probably had its back room rented out more often than not in the go go days, and is open until 4 am for the clubbers, but their taglietelle was great. The pasta was perfectly cooked, with a generous helping of just-sweet-enough meat sauce. Paired with an unknown sangiovese, it hit the spot.

There you go! Now I'm a food blogger.

the last days of gourmet

2009-11-03T13:32:32-08:00

Kevin DeMaria posted a photo essay of the last days of Gourmet Magazine.

So good. (via)

developing the ambient array

2009-11-03T07:27:35-08:00

Do you love cities? And architecture? And computers? And vague phrases like "ambient arrays" and "biophysical mesh networks" and "knowable material"? Do you dress primarily in black? Then chances are you could probably use Molly Steenson's new Urban Informatics Speech Title Generator to help you brainstorm your next talk at that great conference where other lovers of biophysical mesh networks will gather.

Favorites of mine:

Discussing the Playful Map
Activating the Physical Thing
Developing the Ambient Array

no one suggested twenty-ought-ten?

2009-11-03T06:53:36-08:00

Big news in the Times today about how car companies are choosing to pronounce "2010" in ads for new models. (Shortcut: they're going for "two thousand ten" over "twenty ten".) Here's Jon Pearce, group creative director at Team One, the agency for Lexus:

"Twenty ten feels a little slick, a little self-consciously futuristic. ... There's nothing worse than trying to position -- or reposition, for that matter -- yourself with forced lingo."

Because car companies have never used slick, self-consciously futuristic or forced lingo before. So why start now.

isthebaybridgeopen.com recap

2009-11-02T17:08:29-08:00

Last Tuesday night, after Caltrans closed the Bay Bridge for repairs, I set up a single serving site: isthebaybridgeopen.com, and then proceeded to pimp it lightly here and on Twitter.

Just because I find this kind of stuff interesting, here's a quick summary of visitor traffic and activity. The data here is from Tuesday night through "now" (or whatever Google Analytics defines as "now"):

2,756 visits / 3,285 pageviews
45 comments, or 1 comment for every 73 pageviews
48 tweets, or 1 tweet for every 68 pageviews
This was a local story, so the vast majority of the visits were from California
45% of visits were direct, 55% were clicks from referring sites

And the top ten referring sites were...

Facebook
Twitter
SFist
Google
Planet.mozilla.org
Baybridgeblog.org
mobile.SFist.com
oduinn.com
sippey.com (hey, that's me!)
bayarearidersforum.com

Obviously this wasn't a huge viral hit. But it was a fun little $15 / 15 minute project. And in case you hadn't heard, the Bay Bridge is now open.

gaze up at the weirdness

2009-10-30T16:29:39-07:00

Rich Juzwiak on Michael Jackson.

He was the kind of man who thought audiences would be "nourished" by the reinsertion of eight bars of "The Way You Make Me Feel" into its live arrangement, the kind of man who considered "love is important," to be an "important" message to convey in his show, the kind of man who would wear a blazer with cartoonishly pointed shoulders over a T-shirt depicting an iced-out Popeye. It was a man so mired in weirdness, he had no idea how weird he was (I'll never forget the astonished way he asked Martin Bashir, "You don't climb trees?!?"). Except now, instead of rolling our eyes at that weirdness, we gaze up at it and sigh. It took a lot for us to come around, but I'm glad we did.

lehman's collection up for auction

2009-10-30T14:16:39-07:00

Lehman Brothers had one hell of an art collection. It's up for auction at Freeman's in Philadelphia. You know you've always wanted an Ed Ruscha tainted with the stench of economic collapse...and now it can be yours.

the broken bridge

2009-10-29T14:24:13-07:00

Tony Alfrey dissects what's happening on the Bridge.

So consider this for just a second: the tool that they installed was not "strong enough" to handle the total load (traffic, roadbed, wind), yet this cracked Eyebar has been hanging up there for long enough to get nice and rusty, with this big crack that wiggles back and forth as the wind blows, as the traffic crosses the bridge and as the bridge expands and contracts as the bridge heats and cools. Don't you feel better now as you drive across the bridge (maybe one day soon)?

Via @case and isthebaybridgeopen.com.

cables down

2009-10-28T12:29:13-07:00

This is an amazing photo.

Taken by Joe Marshall and posted to TwitPic with the tweet...

Wtf is happening to the Bay Bridge? Looks like part of it fell off and hit some cars. Blocking 2 lanes wowow

onward!

2009-10-28T11:46:43-07:00

Letters of Note publishes the stock rejection letter from Zyzzyva's Howard Junker.

The important thing is this: Do not be discouraged by this or any other momentary setback. The road is long; the struggle must go on.

after finishing his smiley oatmeal, the governor sends letters like this.

2009-10-28T10:02:40-07:00

via sfist.com

Read the first letter of every line.

the most interesting man in the world

2009-10-28T09:16:57-07:00

Celebrating the career of Mexico’s only typographer/luchador. El Vetica, also known as El Kernudo, fought out of the small town of San Serif. He held the Mexican Inter-Continental belt for an unprecedented 7 years, from 1977–84. He also starred in several telenovelas, most notably Las Esposas do Luchador and El Santo e Super Amigos.

via store.muledesign.com

editorial merchandising or competitive shopping?

2009-10-27T23:39:27-07:00

GSI Commerce is buying Rue La La (competitor of competitive shopping site Gilt.com) for $350 mm. Here's the money quote, so to speak, from Michael Rubin, CEO of GSI.

“What you are getting is completely addicted customers,” he said. “It’s completely viral. There are virtually no marketing costs in this business.”

And this from Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor:

“The nice thing about the deal sites is their selection complexity goes way down. That allows them to focus on picking sales very closely and driving values for customers interested in those deals.”

OK, maybe it's not competitive shopping. Maybe it's editorial merchandising. Or both? Either way, it's worth watching...

whoa.

2009-10-27T23:21:01-07:00

While I'm a fan of Google Chrome (please, a stable 1.0 version for the Mac, please), the browser themes aren't for me. But go watch this short promo video on YouTube for Chrome Artist Themes and watch what happens. Slick. (via)

no, really. is it open?

2009-10-27T22:40:44-07:00

Is the Bay Bridge open? is a single-serving-site I put up tonight. Please note that you should not rely on this site for actual information about the state of the Bay Bridge.

Also, has anyone else noticed the irony in the fact that the first name of the Bay Bridge spokesperson is Bart?

competitive shopping

2009-10-21T18:19:48-07:00

A friend was telling me about Gilt.com today, and its version of "entertainment shopping." Every day Gilt offers up a limited set of curated fashion inventory at deeply discounted prices. They kick off the sale at 12 noon eastern / 9 a.m. pacific with a rush of traffic...and here's the kicker: if you put an item in your cart you only have 10 minutes to complete the transaction, otherwise it gets removed and becomes available for someone else.

It's like Filene's Basement for the web.

I'd love this to become even more competitive. How about this scenario: You find an item you like, but it's already been placed into someone else's cart. You then have the opportunity to challenge them for the right to purchase it. In Gilt's case, that challenge could be in the form of a fast-paced fashion quiz, where you have to correctly identify the designers of a certain set of pieces (perhaps from that day's set of available inventory). You wouldn't want to scare off newbies, so you'd need to have the right incentives to play, including discounts on future purchases if you lose, a limited number of "deny this challenge" (get out of jail free) chits, etc.

Ebay of course pioneered ecommerce as entertainment; but sites like Swoopo and Gilt are the next rev of "entertainment shopping," and I'd love to see more competitive game mechanics integrated (beyond the auction, that is) into niche e-commerce sites.

Thought experiment: how could sellers use the Zynga gaming platform to merchandise their inventory?

sometimes i love fakesteve

2009-10-21T13:34:10-07:00

Fake Steve tees off on John Dvorak...

I know you're on Leo Laporte's podcast, and you have some kind of Internet TV show, and you go on there and reminisce about the time at Comdex when Ken Olsen and Rod Canion got prank-called by Philippe Kahn, and Jim Manzi had to step in and stop the fight, and when he ducked Mitch Kapor got socked in the nose! Or that time Jim Seymour had a tray of appetizers delivered to his hot tub at the Alexis Park, and Bob Metcalfe was like, Dude, you need to cut back on the snacks! Hoo boy!

It's useful having Lyons playing the role of Fake Steve, if only for the ability to pull out Jim Manzi references.

disclosures

2009-10-21T13:27:11-07:00

Jason Kottke turns his 20x200 congratulatory blog post into a comment on the new FTC blogging disclosure policies.

I may have unwittingly posed for photos next to 20x200 artwork hanging in my residence or in the residences of others, giving the impression that I am endorsing said artwork. Apologies.

missed opportunity

2009-10-19T18:28:08-07:00

One quick note on the DroidDoes campaign: the whole site is built in Flash, which makes it completely unreadable on the iPhone. This fact may be some cute inside baseball play on the "iDon't" theme, but as a marketing tactic it's absolutely boneheaded. Dear Verizon: your campaign is a meme. You want it to spread. To people with iPhones.

infinite loop

2009-10-19T12:50:29-07:00

Rich Juzwiak is back doing only what he can do to America's Next Top Model.

It's sad to watch someone suffering...which is obviously why I decided to make an image file looping it infinitely. Enjoy the sadness, suckers!

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until you're blue in the face from telling me to shut up: even if you don't watch the show (especially if you don't watch the show) you should be reading fourfour.