Open The Dialogue

This afternoon, I caught this article that the Arizona Republic had picked up from the WSJ about online wine purchases. The point of the article was more to let people know about what some random online purchase experiences were like than it was to help people figure out how to buy wine online. That being said, I think there are a few things that are on the cusp of being super helpful for people who not only need some help doing that “online shopping for things I’d like to see in person” thing, one of them being Cork’d, the other being Bottlenotes. Maybe they aren’t the coup de grâce that will herald yet another big change in how business is done, but I’d say if 5-10% of the wine marketplace is going to be online (and probably more, quickly) then how people go about their business when it comes to finding wines they enjoy and wineries that cater to the online shopper is going to be just as big of a business.

While Bottlenotes is aspiring to be the “Netflix of wine,” as BusinessWeek Online’s Justin Hibbard had to say recently, Cork’d is taking the review wines, invite your friends, and conquer approach. They’re both very different, with a much more ingrained winery sales listing in the former, and a bigger “Web 2.0″ approach for the latter. One is big on getting you involved in order ing through a wine club, something many offliners are familiar with, the other is looking to get people to use tagging, reviews, and linking up to “Drinking Buddies” (I’m tombiro on the system if you’re interested) in order to get recommendations for users.

As someone who appreciates wine and enjoys trying things recommended by friends and others, I think that both of these services have something to offer. Bottlenotes has a bit more commercial appeal, and therefore has much more of a direct sales model in order to make money, while Cork’d is working with two inaugural sponsors, Uncrate and A List Apart, to get the business going. While not direct competitors, both are attempting to fill a gap that wineries might not be savvy enough to do on their own. Their usership won’t be totally mutually exclusive, as both have advantages that people may want to take part in, but I’m banking that both will definitely play a major role in how online wine shopping grows in the next few years.

A few weeks ago, I spoke with PR Week’s Keith O’Brien about tagging and social search for an article that showed up in the January 23 edition of the magazine, “Marketers: Start your search engines.” During our conversation, we spoke about a variety of topics, and a few quotes of mine ended up in the piece (believe me, this isn’t an ego-driven post). However, one of the things we discussed more that wasn’t included was what the inclusion of tagging in the enterprise would be. One example cropped up a bit ago, with the use of the Outlook Tasks feature in the popular email software by way of tagging.

This afternoon, a little birdie dropped something else I hadn’t seen before in my inbox, and it’s something pretty cool when it comes to tagging and social bookmarking. Take a look at this press release from PR Newswire, and see if you notice anything new and interesting. Then, see what’s after the jump.

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Over at Lifehacker, they’re pointing out a really cool way to use basic tagging concepts within the enterprise. Right now, tagging and folksonomy as a whole isn’t exactly the most popular thing within businesses and professional organization, but that’s just because the jacket doesn’t fit yet across the board. And it most certainly isn’t stopping people from trying to figure out what size it needs to be.

Heading over to Michael Sippey’s site, he’s got an .oft file for download, but he’s not explaining so much how to use it. I gave this a whirl this morning, and think it’s actually pretty slick – so here’s a short rundown on how to import this form for your use within Outlook.

First off, make sure that you’ve got all the necessary Outlook / Microsoft updates that you should. It’s not so smart to go using random forms and other Office / Outlook files without the proper security and virus scanning, so make sure you have all that down pat. (No offense, Mike!) As with anything else software or Microsoft-related, be aware that you’re adding a new form that might not react so well with your particular install, so don’t take any steps you’re not comfortable with. Enough with the disclaimers, let’s get down to brass tacks.

First off, scan and save that .oft file from Sippey’s blog. The way to figure out where it should go is to open up Outlook’s tasks function, and go to Tools > Forms > Choose Form. When you get the dialog box, go to “User Templates in File System.” (as seen below)

After choosing that option, the directory on your computer where your new task template should be placed will be shown – save the file there.

Now you’ve got the file on your computer, but how to use it? If you don’t want to have to go through the “Choose Form” option every single time you want the taggable tasks, you can easily add a button to your menu. Right click anywhere on the menu that contains the “New,” print, and “Find” options, and click “Customize.” On the following menu (seen below), drag and drop the “Task” option somewhere on your menu bar above, perhaps off to the right side.

Before closing the “Customize” menu, right click on the new “Task” option, and select “Change Button Image.” Select something you like, then go to where it says “Task” and edit that text. I’ve called mine “TagTask.” Finally, right click again and go to the last option in the menu, “Edit Hyperlink,” and choose “Open.” This should open up a dialog box that will allow you to browse to the file you previously saved on your computer. Select the file, then click “OK.” Click on your “TagTask” button, or whatever you’ve called it. You should see a form like the one below:

Enter a task – you’ll notice that this form doesn’t contain any other variables, such as Due Date, or Outlook’s pre-set categories. If you edit the form, you’ll find you can add pretty much anything you want, but not all users will have the desire (or time) to do so. This is a basic way to use tagging within the enterprise, and perhaps a first step in a taggable way for more people to categorize email folders. Much like many people have been pulled into the cult of Gmail, people may begin to tag things across the board – or at least want to.

You’ll notice I’ve tagged my latest Task, “Press my Easy Button,” with the tags ’staples’ ‘press’ ‘easybutton’ and ‘meredithtopalanchik’ – if these seem basic to you, then there’s a reason for it. The point of tagging is that you’re not limited or worried about putting things in the wrong “place.” I can tag it 50 ways under the Sun, so anytime I’m looking for anything related to the tags I gave it, this task will come up. I don’t have to overthink which email folder I’m going to put it in to find it most commonly – it’s just “out there,” and the tags lead me back to it. Advanced Find is a great function, but tagging allows me a little more freeform than I’d have otherwise.

If you’ve got questions, feel free to contact me via email, tbiro (at) mww.com, or via AIM/Yahoo! IM at “themediadrop” – otherwise, Cheers!

As usual, I’m hesitant to tag too many things as “Web 2.0,” but here I’m going to do so. Last night, I received an invite from a friend for Newsvine, a new news service that’s currently in private beta. The Web 2.0-ishness of it is that you can literally have your own “column,” (mine is tombiro.newsvine.com) where you can write about anything that you consider newsworthy – and so can anyone else. When combined with a slew of other features (detailed below and in the forthcoming links), I’d have to say that this is one of the cooler things I’ve seen of late. The man behind the project (assuredly with others) is Mike Davidson, formerly of ESPN.com.

Back in November, Davidson announced Newsvine, calling it “Just like your favorite news site, only smarter.” It’s got a combination of Associated Press and independently published stories – and within any story, you can “vote” for it to make it more popular, like Digg, and you can comment on any story, like most blogs. Additionally, you can “report” links to the appropriate authority for delisting, if necessary. One thing that I *really* think is awesome is the bookmarklet-like “Seed Newsline” feature, which allows you to just click once and submit something to Newsvine for others to see – a great timesaver, and super helpful for those of us who are either a) regularly publishing elsewhere and don’t always have time to publish more content here, but want to contribute or b) are better at filtering and can point people to a ton of great stuff.

Obviously I can’t explain it all, and you really have to see it to believe it. However, Anthony Casey has a great runthrough over at his blog, Escape Crate. I advise you to check it out and see what you think.

Lots more here at Technorati.

Well, it’s pretty clear that Yahoo! is going to continue grabbing new media tools that are gaining ground and showing promise, with the company’s latest acquisition being del.icio.us. For those of you not familiar with del.icio.us, it’s a piece of social software that allows people (anyone, really) to post a link to a site, blog post, video, or whatever, and “tag” it – that is to say, place a category or group of categories around it – so that others can then visit after looking through the site or keeping an eye on the tags that interest them. While it might seem a little overwhelming at first to try and figure out, the best thing you can do is just try it out. Click on a few “tags,” and see what you get.

I think some are skeptical of moves like this, as they have concerns that big companies don’t care about why a service got so popular within its user base and are only looking for eyeballs, but except for the Flickr username issue, which raised some eyebrows at first, Yahoo! has done pretty well so far with its acquisitions. Also, Steve Rubel posted an excerpt of a short chat he had with del.icio.us guy Josh Schacter about the announcement.