Wannabe Wino

Into the blogging pool that is. I'd like to extend a warm welcome to the newest winery blog, coming from one of my favorite Sonoma area wineries, Michel Schlumberger. They just started blogging 4 days ago, so they are new to the scene. A big congrats for taking the leap into the blogging world. You can check out their new blog, Benchland Blog, which I've also added to my winery blogroll.

To me, it's a great thing for wineries to blog. Personal communication, on a routine basis, allows me to feel like I'm a part of what is going on at that winery, even when I'm 3000 miles away. Reading about events, and what's happening to the grapes, and all the jazz makes me feel connected to the process and more vested in that winery's products. I'm happy to see more wineries joining the blogging community. (Especially a winery I really enjoy!)

Welcome Michel Schlumberger!

PS-If you are attending the Wine Bloggers' Conference this fall, Michel Schlumberger is one of the options on Zephyr Adventures' vineyard hikes. I'd suggest joining that one if you haven't yet had the pleasure of visiting Michel Schlumberger and tasting the wines. You can also pick up the 2007 Pinot Blanc as it's included in the bloggerpack I created for Domaine547!

PPS-Picture taken on my visit to Michel Schlumberger in April 2007. I returned for another taste of their wines this past March.

A habit left over from my days of living in the Manhattan area is that I read the NY Times and the NY Post every day. When working in NYC, I would pick up the Post on my way to the subway and then the Times right outside Grand Central as I walked into work. I wouldn't say it was before the time of blogs, but to be honest, it was before I knew what a blog was. In addition to reading both of those papers online, I keep up with the Washington Post and the LA Times regularly, sometimes USA Today, and ocassionally others as well.

Today I ran across this article in the NY Times. 24-Hour Newspaper People. Following up on the article I posted last week from the Washington Post, I am again struck by the amount of attention traditional news outlets are paying to blogs.

The idea of this article is that it has become fairly common for newspaper journalists to run blogs. The author of the article has a blog hosted by the NY Times and he talks about it as if it were his child or his pet. How much attention it needs, how quickly it can draw him in and how the hours disappear when he is working on it. He makes an interesting point about the relationships he has developed through having his blog and that in some way he considers his frequent commentators his friends of a sort. It seems as if the feedback he gets through the blog is both a blessing and a curse. He takes is as a measure of how well "they" like him now.

Which brings me back to my original point. Is a blog a replacement for a traditional print newspaper? Major newspapers all over the country have reporters who also run blogs for them. It allows for instantaneous and unfiltered (well, to an extent) commentary on an article, the author's choice of subject and his treatment of that subject. Today's article even offers an example of a magazine editor, of Business 2.0, who has offered bonuses to his writers to run blogs, with bonuses based on the number of readers. With a traditional print paper or magazine, there was really no meaningful way to track the popularity of an individual writer's particular article, except perhaps by letters to the editor. And in my thought process, those who would take the time to write a letter to an editor is a pretty self-selecting group. Whereas it seems that leaving a comment on a blog is much easier, and at least in my case, infinetly more frequent than the composition of a letter to the editor.

What role will a traditional print newspaper play in the future? I know I personally haven't had a subscription to a paper in at least 8 years, though I did pick up the Times and the Post every day for a period of 6 months 6 years ago.

I am trying my hardest to add those lovely RSS feed and Toast This! features to my blog. And I cannot, for the life of me, get it to work.

I signed the blog up over at Feedburner. Sweet, I can do that much. Then I attempted to put the RSS feed button in the sidebar with my "about me" and all that jazz. No dice. I could get it to show up at the bottom of the blog, but how useless. So I gave up.

Then, I figured, okay, well, I'll go ahead and give the Toast This! Feature a try, as it seemed easier. Wow, I must be really dumb. I followed all the instructions. I activated the Feedflare features, added the button for Toast This!, clicked for both site and feed, saved, and even managed to find the correct place in my html template to insert the generated code. And, still, it is not showing up.

I'll straight up admit that I am an html/computer science challenged idiot. Can anyone help me or tell me what I am doing wrong? Did I miss something, like an initial bit of code I needed to have before I could get the Feedflare codes to work?

:(

Edited to add: Apparently I managed to get the Toast and Digg features to work. In the interest of not deleting this post and because I still can't get the RSS Feed to work, I'll leave it up.

And didn't even realize it. Cool. Not bad for a little over 2 months of having this blog. Or disturbing because I have that much time on my hands and we drink that much wine. Oh well, whatever, I'm having a lot of fun with this, so what does it matter? I can think of much poorer ways to spend my time :)

Happy drinking!

Today's Washington Post had a fairly long article about turning a profit while writing a blog. Product Reviews and Links Turn Pages into Profit.

The jist of the article describes several advertising services that connect with blogs and pay them either per click on a link or an image or pay them for a mention/review of their product. It claims that there are currently 63.2 million blogs out there with 175,000 new ones a day and suggests that there is potential to see a closer relationship between bloggers and advertisers in the future. One source estimates that there are several hundred bloggers who make their living running blogs.

An interesting point made in the article is that some of the new firms are requiring that bloggers disclose that they are being paid when they plug an item. I wonder if the same holds true for companies that provide products to bloggers, especially in the electronics industry where I've seen articles about companies distributing a new product to bloggers for review?

I know that I've seen many wine blogs that disclose they received a sample from a winery and I think that's a good thing. I don't know how or if getting something for free would influence your decision, but I do appreciate the transparency when reading the review.

The article is an interesting read, and I think the recognition of blogs in the mainstream media as a good advertising tool speaks to the acceptance of blogs as a legitimate source of consumer information.

I've had several friends and family members comment to me that I post quite frequently on my blog. It doesn't sound like they are criticizing me, but it made me stop and think. A good balance has to exist between posting so much on a blog that content gets lost in a constant flow of new posts and posting so little that you have lost the interest of your audience.

Personally, I have trouble remaining focused on anything if the content isn't frequently new. I get bored fairly easily and so when I see blogs that haven't updated in a month or only update every few weeks, I tend to not return to those, even though the content may be great when they do update. Perhaps, as has been suggested by several people I know, I just have adult ADD. Or, I'll go with my more logical explanation, which is that my attention span got shot to hell this summer when studying for the bar. I simply have no patience for anything that moves slowly anymore.

I also get really disappointed when a blog pops up as having new content and then it turns out that it doesn't. And I'm frustrated that since my blog was listed as down yesterday, it hasn't been caught again as updated, despite the fact that I've made a few decent sized posts. I think I'm crabby today and should just go back to bed.

So the question remains, what is a good frequency with which to update a blog?

While perusing the New York Times one morning back in the days when my job didn't know what to do with me, and I was reading upwards of nine papers a day online, I clicked on a link for Eric Asimov's The Pour. It was the beginning of the end, so to speak. From there, I noticed a column of links to other wine blogs and found, in particular, Alder's Vinography. I was now officially hooked. A browser is always open to the Wine Blog Watch, which I refresh constantly in hopes of more updates being posted.

I've been really impressed over the past months with the community and dedication that exists not only amoung wine bloggers, as evidenced by the monthly Wine Blogging Wednesday started by Lenn over at Lenndevours, which has been going on for over 2 years, but also by the generosity and compassion of the whole food and wine blogging community. It only takes one glance at the current total (almost $50,000!) for Menu For Hope to see the impact this community has.

So, thanks to all, and really, I do mean all, I read every blog (well, those in English and Spanish anyway) that pops up on Wine Blog Watch, for providing hours of entertainment, advice and commentary.