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