Two Percent Nation

Awesome new mug for my desk

I happened to be in an Urban Outfitters today for the first time in about a decade and came across this awesome coffee cup that I picked up. It's called "I am not a paper cup..." and it's made by Decor Craft Inc. It looks just like a white Starbucks cup with lid (probably venti size) except the cup is made of porcelain and the lid is silicone. It has a two layers of porcelain to keep hot hot and cold cold. It sells for about $20 at Amazon.com. Can't wait to try it out tomorrow.

ConsumerSearch featured on BusinessWeek TV

Our Editor in Chief, Chris Frietchen, was interviewed by Jill Bennett (who I used to watch all the time on NY1) for a piece on BusinessWeek TV.  I thought it came out well so I'm embedding it here:

Vindigo shutting down?

According to Silicon Alley Insider, Vindigo, one of the pioneers in mobile content publishing and advertising, is shutting down.  

Vindigo is most well-known for its breakthrough mobile city guide application, originally created for the Palm operating system and then rolled out for Windows Mobile and feature phone operating systems (Java, BREW). Founded by Jason Devitt (now heading up Skydeck) the company transformed itself from a developer of proprietary content applications to a mobile publishing shop creating highly successful mobile apps for big brands such as MapQuest and The New York Times.  The company was also an early leader in mobile advertising selling ads as far back as their original Vindigo Palm app.  In 2004 Vindigo was acquired by For-Side, a Japanese mobile content provider.  Since then it's existence has been tumultous, renaming itself Zingy and then returning to the name Vindigo last year.  My take is that the company hit it fairly big with ringtones and wallpapers and never fully recovered when the bottom fell out of that business.

Through the years I've come to know a lot of great people over at Vindigo some of whom have moved on (Carrie, Ludo, Kevin) and others who are still there (Scott, Russell).  For those still there I wish them the best at this difficult time.

Mapping Mister Softee in NYC

I've been playing with Google's My Maps service since it launched last year.  Mostly I've used it for personal maps such as travel itineraries or things like that.  I recently decided I wanted to create a public map to share in Google's directory and see whether I could get others to collaborate.  The arrival of summer in New York City has brought with it the familiar Mister Softee ice cream trucks.  So I've created a Mister Softee NYC map and started it with two of the locations I know of (in Manhattan trucks usually park at the same intersections).  Now I'm hoping to rally the soft-serve loving residents of New York to help me complete the map. If you want to contribute click the View Larger Map link below.

View Larger Map

Effective Outdoor Advertising

Diego & Dora @ Children's Museum
Originally uploaded by DanEntin

I'm a big believer in the power of outdoor advertising, especially in urban areas. This is a picture of an ad for a Diego and Dora exhibit at the Children's Museum of Manhattan that can be found on NYC telephone booths around the city right now. To prove my point about effectiveness, when I first saw this ad a month or so ago I mentioned the exhibit to a number of friends in the area who also have young children. No fewer than three people mentioned that they had also seen these ads.

NY Times on Edgewater Square project

Last Wednesday, the New York Times published an article about the Edgewater Square development project in the New Jersey town where I currently live ("Shops Claim a Once-Gritty Waterfront"). The article discusses the other major retail shopping centers in Edgewater so I thought it would be useful to create a map indicating where these centers are in town and in relation to each other.

The article focuses on the positive aspects of the growth of Edgewater in the last 10 years and how it has created a market for new and upscale retail shopping areas.  An entirely separate article could be written about the explosion in residential development that has been seen over that time with even greater intensity in the last 5 years. Numerous condominiums were still being completed as the bottom of the real estate market fell out. It will be interesting to see how once these are completed if there will be empty units. If so this could put further downward pressure on the local housing market.

The main downside of both the retail and residential surge is traffic. Edgewater has just one thoroughfare, River Road, along which all condos and shopping centers lie. On Saturdays the traffic is already painful. There's little that can be done to alleviate this as Edgewater and River Rd are bound tightly by the Palisade cliffs and the Hudson River. I shudder to think what the Edgewater Square will do to worsen traffic.

Though it clearly focused only on the positive, I was glad to see such a nice piece about where I live in the Times. Not all my neighbors agree, as you can read in the local online message board, 07020.com. It has this thread about the article, where there is some frustration about the exclusion of the "costs of development" in the article.

Is OpenTable working on its own review database?

Last Saturday night, my wife and I had the (increasingly rare) opportunity to go out for a nice dinner and we stayed fairly local choosing Frank's Waterside in North Bergen, NJ.  Having made this and many other dinner reservations through OpenTable, I was surprised to get an email from them two days later entitled, "How was Frank's Waterside?".  I'd never received a follow-up email like this and when I clicked on the link in the email I was taken to this "feedback form":

The stated purpose of the form is to "create Top 10 Lists for the OpenTable website and to provide feedback to restaurants." I find this to be a very interesting move on OpenTable's part and I have to wonder if they have grander ambitions than they let on.  OpenTable is in an incredibly unique and desirable position when it comes to restaurant reviews: they actually know where and when you ate.

Currently OpenTable links out to its partner websites (e.g. Zagat, Citysearch, Time Out) for reviews for its restaurants. I could see OpenTable replacing these review links or giving priority to its own reviews once they have critical mass. It seems like they're in the early stages of this program - I only found one other blogger who mentioned getting a similar email and it was also in the last few weeks.

Update (4/14/08): This post is an edited version of the original published on April 4, 2008.

From Z to A

After nearly 4 years as the lead interactive Product Manager and the head of mobile I left my position with Zagat Survey last month to join About.com. I'm extremely proud of what I accomplished with my colleagues and partners during my tenure. ZAGAT.com has evolved from merely an HTML rendering of the printed guide to a beautifully designed rich internet application. And the launch of ZAGAT.mobi has been a huge success culminating for me with the inclusion in an iPhone commercial in my last weeks with the company. 

Some people have asked me whether I left because of the imminent sale of the company. This wasn't really a factor for me. I actually think it will be good for the company and (most) employees. I hope that they find a partner or acquiror who has demonstrated superior success in digital media and who can use that expertise, and a greater stomach for the necessary investment, to further extract the digital potential of Zagat. There's a lot more room for growth. My leaving was really about finding new opportunities and challenges with more space to grow.

In joining About.com I'm taking on the role of Director of Product Management for ConsumerSearch.com, a product review site that About.com and the New York Times Company acquired last May. The model is that we use writers and editors to write comparison reports and make product recommendations using the best editorial and user review sources on the web. Think Consumer Reports meets Metacritic meets About.com. I really believe in the model because despite the vast troves of information that the Web 2.0 and user-generated content movements have created, people, now more than ever, need filters (see Newsweek's recent "Revenge of the Experts"). In many ways this is the same principle at the core of the Zagat methodology.

What attracted me most to this position was that The New York Times Company has committed to investing significantly in ConsumerSearch.com this year and I will be leading the efforts to relaunch the brand and redesign the site. I'm already neck-deep and extremely excited. 

Though my professional life no longer involves restaurants or mobile content, you'll likely still hear from me on those topics as they're both still a big part of my personal life. We'll see what new topics my new role brings out.

Onward and upward ...

New iPhone commercial featuring Zagat

Last night Apple introduced a new iPhone commercial called "The Great Thing", the third new iPhone commercial this week. The premise is how having access to the internet "in your pocket" can help you on a ski vacation - view the trail map, find a restaurant and book a later flight home.

To "find a good place to eat in town" the ad features ZAGAT.mobi, which I spent much of the last year creating and promoting, which is an absolute thrill. Quite a bit has been written about the impact of the iPhone on mobile web usage and I can confirm its impact on Zagat.  So far this month iPhone is far and away the most common handset used to access ZAGAT.mobi - four times greater than the next most common handset (the BlackBerry 8830). Long live the iPhone.

Mo Rocca Spends 5 Minutes with the Zagats (Uncut)

LX.TV (recently acquired by NBC) creates lifestyle video content in NYC and LA.  They have a "5 Minutes With ..." interview segment that they do and they use Mo Rocca (of Comedy Central fame) as the talent.  This is the uncut version of his interview with Tim and Nina Zagat which is pretty funny.