Sunset Waves

I painted this for my room in London and now it sits in Adam's kitchen horizontally.  I never would think that you could hold together canvas boards with binder clips, but it works!

Groupon Craze

Why shouldn't I jump on the Groupon craze?
I have to admit I am not an everyday user of Groupon, but I do have friends that have found very attractive deals by using these types of sites.  My concern is that when someone purchases the deal, the vendor might not have the capacity to accommodate the item or service that one has purchased.  I find myself asking the question, "So if I get a dinner deal will the restaurant be booked up for the next month?".  I'd also like to know how many people purchase deals and do not get the chance to redeem the coupon.  Ultimately the Groupon idea trains consumers to only purchase something at a discount.
Well I get a crazy discount, so why not?
On the positive side Groupon lets new consumers try a product or service with less risk.  According to their website, "Groupon negotiates huge discounts—usually 50-90% off—with popular businesses. We send the deals to thousands of subscribers in our free daily email, and we send the businesses a ton of new customers. That's the Groupon magic."  Overall the Groupon platform fits within my mantra, 'using technology to improve everyday life'.
It must be a good if Google's willing to pay for it...
The idea is so simple, yet seems to work very well.  Did Groupon really turn down a $6 billion dollar offer from Google?  I mean that is insane.  How could Groupon be valued at $6 billion?  Read TIERNAN RAY's article here about this debate.
What are my thoughts?  
If you have a lot of free time on your hands Groupon makes sense.  But what about those time poor individuals who don't want to be spammed every day?  Can we make a better or smarter Groupon using something like Peer (what they call using collective intelligence)?  I asked my friend Jane if she could forward the good deals to me and she gave me two thumbs down!  It might be nice to know what deals my friends have purchased since I'd be more likely to look at them.  I'll join the bandwagon eventually, but for now I'm just an observer.

Chocolate Hazelnut Fudge

So the Food Network has hit the UK on Sky and Freesat. Adam and I were watching Nigella Lawson who made a Chocolate Pistachio Fudge. That recipe can be found on the BBC website here. We adapted the recipe and it actually works pretty well.

Ingredients

• 400g dark chocolate, chopped (2 big bars)
• 1 can condensed milk light (we used the light version since Adam is into cutting calories)
• 2 knobs of butter
• 1/2 cup crushed hazelnuts
• pinch of salt

Directions

1. Place the chopped chocolate, condensed milk, butter and salt into a heavy-based pan over a low heat and stir until melted and well combined.
2. Chop hazelnuts in a food processor or place the nuts into a freezer bag and crush them until broken up.
3. Add the nuts to the melted chocolate mixture and stir well.
4. Pour the mixture into a 9x9 in square tray lined with aluminum foil.
5. Let the fudge cool, then refrigerate for about 2-3 hours.
6. Cut into small pieces and serve!
7. Once cut, the fudge can be kept in the freezer - there's no need to thaw, just eat straight away.

Project foodNOW

foodNOW is an idea born out of my love for food and technology.  It is a mobile phone application idea that allows people to enter a restaurant that they enjoy and then foodNOW would respond by outputting restaurant suggestions that are similar. Users would also be able to provide feedback on approval or disapproval of restaurant suggestions, which the foodNOW application would then take into account for future selections. foodNOW is predictive and interactive.

Let’s take New York City as an example, even though this mobile phone application could be applied to any city. Imagine going to your favorite restaurant only to find that there is an hour wait. What are you to do now that you aren’t in front of your computer and don’t have Menupages or Citysearch at your finger tips? The answer is foodNOW.

Let’s say the restaurant that you are trying to go to is Coffee Shop in Union Sq so you type this into foodNOW. It will quickly scan its entire database of restaurants to find a restaurant with similarities to your choice. Taking into consideration proximity to your current location, foodNOW returns Cafeteria and outputs the restaurant’s address, opening hours, telephone number and website information. foodNOW understands that if you like Coffee Shop you will most likely enjoy Cafeteria (which is just around the corner). You now instantaneously have the information to call Cafeteria and make a reservation or most likely, find out how long the wait is there. If the restaurant is not quite right you can tell it so next time its predictions will get better for you.

Storyboard pictures of the PowerPoint presentation are below:

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www.wolframalpha.com

Jane came across a very interesting website today. Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. So if I type in my name, Michelle, the website returns some statistics surrounding my name. Apparently, the most common age for my name, Michelle, is 41. This is an interesting attempt towards universal knowledge sharing. Let's see how this type of site compares to hunch.com or facebook's questions feature.

OpenTable Mobile App

Seems like OpenTable has a heavily used mobile phone app. 5 million diners were seated via a mobile phone app. Here we have another good example of technology improving everyday life!

Read the press release on OpenTable's website.

Personalized Beach Bag

I was searching for a thank you present for Adam's mom and couldn't find her the perfect beach bag so I decided buy a white purse and then to paint one myself!

The Front of the Bag


The Back of the Bag

Web of Mouth 2.0, an Exploration of Trust through Online Restaurant “Guidebook” Communities

This dissertation was submitted to the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2010, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MSc in Media and Communications.

If you would like to read the 12,000 research paper in its entirety please get in touch with me!

Abstract
This is a study of online food and restaurant recommendation websites and how we come to use or not use them in our decision making process. By employing a media studies audience uses and gratification approach combined with a marketing research word of mouth perspective this body of research seeks to understand the motivations, behaviors and consequences of use surrounding online restaurant recommendation websites and the pivotal role of trust in their feedback mechanisms. This paper provides insights into how the internet is influencing trust habits and examines whether or not electronic word of mouth is successful in the context of online food and restaurant recommendation websites such as Yelp, Chowhound, OpenTable, MenuPages, and New York Magazine. It studies why opinion seekers are willing to accept online customer reviews by asking: why do people trust (or distrust)online restaurant recommendations? Through a combination of 21 short surveys and interviews I discovered that respondents generally trust the electronic word of mouth for restaurant recommendations. There are certain attributes and cues that signal which online restaurant recommendations are most useful. How well a review is written has the most impact on credibility and usefulness for respondents; interviewees also use comprehensiveness as an indicator of trustworthiness. Within our sample, attribute centric electronic word of mouth restaurant recommendations were considered the most beneficial. Results also indicate the formation of a new kind of parasocial trust. Furthermore, the traditional word of mouth is moving online as demonstrated by the appropriation of guidebook communities into our respondents’ restaurant decision making processes.

Cathy & Michelle's Cornbread Recipe

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 (15 ounce) can cream-style corn
• 1/2 (4 ounce) can chopped jalapeno peppers, drained
• 1/2 cup shredded Gruyere cheese
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup yellow cornmeal
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9x9 inch baking dish.
2. In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time. Blend in cream corn, jalapeno peppers and Gruyere cheese.
3. Add flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt into the wet mixture and stir until smooth. Pour batter into prepared baking dish.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of the pan comes out clean.

hunch.com

So hunch.com "was started by clever folks who were exploring how machine learning could be used to guide practical, smart, and highly-customized recommendations."

This proves that that foodNOW was a good idea and still is a good idea...

Hunch gives customized recommendations and gets smarter the more you use it. This is internet social capital at its best!

Good job guys and keep the recommendations coming...

Lambrusco "Bocciolo", Ermete

I love this one too! The sparkling bubbles leave your lips a crimson red, x...

This is a sparkling red wine made from Lambrusco grapes. It is deep crimson in color, lightly sparkling, and lightly sweet on the palate with red raspberry flavors.

Vinho Verde, "Gazela", Sogrape

Even at $3.99 a bottle it is still perfect on the pallet! One of my favorites for summer outdoors drinking.

Gazela is a light, crisp and fruity Vinho Verde from the Minho region in northwest Portugal.

***Update***
I went to the store the other day and now it costs $4.99 a bottle!  A $1.00 increase with in two years?  I think that is that is food inflation at its best!

Solms-Astor - Cape Jazz Shiraz

This wine sounds delicious. You know that I am a sucker for anything bubbly! Too bad we didn't go to this winery during our South Africa visit in 2010.

Cape Jazz Shiraz is a Pétillant red wine shiraz. To our knowledge, this is the first “Lambrusco” style wine to be made in the Cape: sweetish, low in alcohol, with celebratory fizz.

Taking Passion into My Own Hands

This personal statement provides an understanding of my background and creative aspirations.

Please read here if you are curious: http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BwVCIDhsXum3ZDU3OTQ0OGUtZWIxYS00NjE1LTlmN2ItMzM5OTljYTMwN2Y3&hl=en