I’ve been thinking more about the future of the web, and I’m convinced what’s coming is not just another phase or version, but finally the real deal. Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 are going to be looked back on as alpha and beta versions of the real Web which is finally upon us. Techies refer to it as the semantic web, which is going to be a big part of it, but ultimately it’s going to come down to making money for businesses. Every enterprise out there is finally understanding the importance of engaging the online medium and utilizing the communities and tools built over the past decade that have captured the attention and time of the consumer. There’s a really cool site I’ve found that’s seeming to capitalize on this opportunity… fittingly enough it’s called Local.com

Local combines the worlds of the big local sites out there, namely Citysearch.com, Yelp.com, Superpages.com, Yellowpages.com, all of which Local.com is partnered with. It’s essentially a 1 stop shop for finding local businesses and services.

The Local.com experience is incredible. It acts like a local yellowpages, and yet so much more. It automatically picks up what city you’re in based on your IP address and then generates a list of local restaurants, local reviews, local coupons, local favorites, and even local traffic and local weather. I find it to be incredibly valuable, especially for anyone moving to a new city. The local search feature is awesome too, as it brings up a list of nearby brick and mortar businesses. I typed in ‘groceries’ and got a great list of small hole in the wall grocers in my area.

This stuff is fascinating to me because it’s paving the way for a real business model on the Internet. With local businesses beginning to build a web presence, new web services will be able to track all consumer purchases, not just those made online, and evolve the Internet from the CPC (cost per click) model Google pioneered to a CPA (cost per affiliate) model in which web services monetize by taking a cut off consumer purchases. To make this work, however, local businesses are going to have to integrate their system in with a player like Local.com so that consumers can easily generate coupons and redeemable points. When this occurs, coupled with the proliferation of mobile technologies, the process will be seamless. You’ll find discounts in real time on your phone as you walk around through whatever web service you use. Then’ll you show up at the store, pick out what you want, and validate at the checkout counter with your iPhone… and boom you get your discount that easy.

Portals like Local.com, as well as the obvious Google, Ebay, Amazon, soon to be Facebook Marketplace, and the one everybody is ecstatic about… Twitter (check out CheapTweet and TwtQpon… wow!), is what will pull local businesses into the mix, incentivizing them to offer deals, because they know it’ll result in more long-term converting customers. And the more local businesses interact and engage with the community, the more popular they will become and the more feedback they’ll gain on bettering they’re products. And consumers who engage will win big by finding discounts and deals constantly.

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This is an update to a post I wrote last year after first discovering Zemanta, a blog tool/firefox add-on that makes intelligent real time contextual recommendations based on the content you’re writing. These recommendations come in the form of pictures, links, tags, and related articles. I’ve been using it for about 8 months now, and have to say, it’s probably the most useful Firefox add-on, let alone web tool in general, that I’ve found. The pictures and link recommendations are becoming more relevant over time, showing the creators’ legit semantic engine skillz, and the tag generation is a priceless feature for annotating posts with meta information. They’ve recently enhanced the magic by integrating the tool into Gmail and Yahoo mail!

This is very exciting because now I can add great media content to my emails, making them more interactive and engaging. It blows me away how the tool so seamlessly integrates with different platform user interfaces. I still don’t quite understand how they make it work. I’ve tried all the top Firefox add-ons, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and Firebug being a few other winners, but those are just buttons or toolbars on top of the browser, whereas the Zemanta app exists dynamically within the actual webpage. These guys are doing something very special and I’m excited to see where they take it. Still waiting on them to hook it up with affiliate links!

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The wikis and search results were great. Here’s the ‘Gifts for All Budgets‘ wiki for Christmas presents. I love the organization and how it breaks it down for you to easily navigate and find what you’re looking for. We love our lighting here at GrapeThinking so I made my way over to the ‘Indoor Light Fixtures‘ wiki. I clicked ceiling fixtures, and it took me to a page with 1000s of different products it found. I loved the 3 filter tools: a scroll bar for price, a drop down for brand, and a color spectrum. The AJAX functionality was amazing in how it immediately updated the search results when a change was made in one of the tools. This was a huge helper in finding what I was looking for in the sea of products it churned up.

Another really cool thing is when you hover your mouse over the ‘See All Stores’ button, it automatically pops up 5 online stores and the price. You click the store price and it takes you right to the item on that store’s page, ready to buy. ShopWiki has the chance to develop a very healthy affiliate model if they succeed at gaining traffic and users.

Here are a few sustainable wikis/searches I found useful:

Green Guide

Organic wine

Energy Star Rated

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One pairing I’ve never had that I’m excited to try is wine andchristmas cookies. A nice cab with a spicy ginger cookie or a chilled riesling with an iced sugar snap. Definitely would serve as a nice treat. Here’s a cool site that gives great christmas cookie recipes. Mom’s Who Think… you gotta love it. You’ll find every imaginable cookie recipe under the sun. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to pair different wines with different types of cookies instead of just having the boring ‘dessert wine’ category.

If you have a moment go through the recipes and make some cookies for your family this holiday season. I think I’m going to try out the German Chocolate Bars and pair it with a Dornfelder, an obscure but popular red grape from Germany. Looking for that inspiration to develop our own portfolio of delectable delicious Tastevine elixirs.

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This article was written by Joseph Ho of uShip.com, an online marketplace for moving companies.

Moving wine bottles can be quite a daunting task. Imagine unpacking in your new home and realizing your most prized bottle has been cracked and is leaking on your other possessions.  Read on for a step-by-step guide to prevent damage to your wine during a move.

1. Use a box with dividers. You can purchase boxes with dividers specifically designed for wine and liquor bottles from moving companies. An alternative is getting similar boxes for free from wineries, liquor stores, restaurants, or supermarkets. Stick to using smaller boxes for ease of transport. Multiple wine bottles in a box can be heavy and hard to handle, an undesirable combination for fragile items.
2. Reinforce the bottom of the box with extra tape. The last thing you want is for all the bottles in the box to fall out the bottom of the box while it is being carried.
3. Make sure the bottles are tightly corked.  A good preventive measure to avoid the loosening of corks in transport is to secure the corks using wire cork cages, especially for sparkling wines.
4. Wrap the bottles with paper or bubble wrap. Start at a corner of the paper and wrap the bottle diagonally on the sheet, folding in the excess paper on the sides as you roll the bottle. When done rolling, wrap the exterior of the bundle with shipping tape to secure the wrapping and any loose ends.
5. Place the wrapped bottles in the dividers, and fill in the empty space with packing peanuts or crumpled newspaper.
6. Seal the top of the box with a generous amount of tape.
7. Clearly label the box as fragile to prevent damage.
8. During transport, make an effort to keep the temperature of the bottles as low as possible. Many moving companies offer climate controlled moving vans.  Ideally, the wine should be kept at 55°F to prevent damage, but this may be impractical. You may want to carry more expensive bottles in an ice chest with dry ice.

There is no feeling quite like opening a nice bottle of wine after moving into your new home. By exercising caution and following these steps, you will surely transport your wine collection successfully.

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We are making some updates to Grape Thinking to make this site better for everyone. We ask that you please be patient and understanding if you experience any delays, or if any of the navigation tabs start pointing you to the infamous 404. We will do our best to make the site change as smooth and seamless as possible, and if all goes as planned, you’ll just wake up to discover GT’s had a makeover.

Thanks everyone… we appreciate every one of our readers that help to make this site possible!

Part 1 – The Pinotage Buzz
by
Peter F May

Kanonkop Estate’s 2004 Pinotage is causing an online buzz. Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV opened a bottle in his vidcast (Episode 218) on South African wines. He was so impressed that he featured four bottles of it in the following episode to experience the differences that opening times and decanting made.

He first tasted the bottle he’d opened 24 hours earlier which he used in the previous vidcast. Then he compared two Kanonkop 2004′s that he had opened 5 hours previously; one had been decanted while the other had been left in the bottle. The fourth was opened on camera and tasted immediately.

Gary said “I like this wine, beautiful red cabbage profile, oil & vinegar & olives. Bananas are jumping, (I Iove bananas), structured like Bordeaux, terroir driven, this is essential class Pinotage. Comes from granite soil, you’re getting some of this. It’s really polished, but young, need another three years. Now getting dark liquorice flavour, gets olive & smoky on finish. I highly recommend it, I’m giving it 91 points. If you like extremely well polished and intriguing wines, seek this bottle out.”

The word ‘estate’ has a legal meaning in South Africa; it tells us this wine was made from grapes grown only in vineyards owned by and surrounding the winery. That it was made, matured and bottled in the winery.

Kanonkop is a well respected winery on the road to Paarl, just north of Stellenbosch. From the road its vineyards stretching back to a clump of trees in which is the winery. Behind and to the sides of the winery are low hills covered in vines. At the entrance is a cannon. For the name Kanonkop means Cannon Hill and refers to guns placed on hills in olden times that were fired when ships were seen along the coast to alert farmers to load up their wagons with produce to take to the harbour. Sailing ships travelling down around the southern tip of Africa would stop at the harbour to take on fresh meat, fruit, vegetables and water. And wine. The reason the Cape was settled in the mid 1600s was to provision ships and wine was first made there in 1659 because it was known that wine prevented scurvy among sailors.

Kanonkop Estate was established in 1910 and now is considered one of the ‘first growths’ of South Africa. It makes only red wines, and just four of them. A flagship Cabernet dominated Bordeaux blend named ‘Paul Sauer’ after the second owner, a 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, a 100% Pinotage and a second label named Kadette which is a varying blend of Pinotage, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Up till 1973 Kanonkop, as with most other vineyards, sold its grape to co-operatives. Since first making its own wines 35 years ago there have been only four winemakers, owner Jannie Krige, Jan “Boland” Coetzee (now owner of Vriesenhof Winery), Beyers Truter (now owner of Beyerskloof) and since 2002 Abrie Beeslaw.

Peter F May is the founder of The Pinotage Club – www.pinotage.org – an international cyber-based fan club for wines made from the Pinotage variety. Peter was awarded Honorary Membership of the producers Pinotage Association in 2004 and was a judge at the annual Pinotage Top 10 Competition in 2004 and 2005. Peter is a wine writer, educator and author. His book ‘Marilyn Merlot and the Naked Grape – odd wines from around the world‘ was published in summer 2006.

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