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Whining about Wine I was flipping through the Saturday New York Times and was intrigued by a full page ad from Wine Spectator that screamed FREE ACCESS in massive type. The pitch is to provide visitors to the website with free access until October 1st. The offer provides access to 200,000 wine ratings and tastings as well as access to newsletters and other content. In mousetype the limitations are barely visible to point out that "Free Access does not include use of site personalization tools or the ability to post comments on our Editors' Blogs". All in all a pretty standard online publishing offer of giving some content away for free in the hopes that you will become a subscriber. I clicked through on the link and not surprisingly was confronted with an email capture box with another bit of fine print. This one disclosed that "By entering your e-mail address in the field above, you give WineSpectator .com permission to send occasional e-mails regarding promotiona...

SIIA in Paris II While in Paris I was able to spend the better part of a Sunday wandering around the Louvre . I paid for one of those dorky headsets with an oversized Palm Pilot-like device swinging around my neck. Some of the content on the device was quite good -- the Masterpieces of the Louvre tour took you around to three of the museums signature pieces like the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. That tour provided step by step instructions on how to maneuver around the museum and through the crowds. I was pretty impressed at this point and thought that Korean Air had scored a great coup by locking up the sponsorship of these devices for 1 million euros. Imagine my disappointment when I found that the other tours were lacking in that level of detail. They only provided crude maps to direct you to the next piece of art. In some cases the art had been moved! It seemed that the museum had put all their effort into their A-List products and had skimpe...

SIIA in Paris I Early this summer I was invited to speak at GFII’s “Summer School “ program in Paris. The GFII is sort of the French equivalent of the SIIA. I was told I’d be the only English speaker so I thought it made sense to try out Rosetta Stone to pick up some language skills. I was impressed first by their pricing model as it had a perfect option for me – a three month software as a service model. For my $150 I could use all three levels of the product. This was a much better deal than buying the $495 version of CD-ROMS. Although I did not make it as far as I would have liked in the program, it was impressive software that tracked my progress and presented the material in a pretty intuitive interface. But there were a few drawbacks and limitations that could have increased the utility of the product: Profiling & Market Segmentation – Although I signed up as an individual, I think they should have asked if if my use was going to be primarily business or leisure. Thi...