October 2010 - Mel Carson

28th Oct 2010

Ellen in Xbox Kinect Give Away

Just published a post from Mark Kroese on the Ellen Xbox Kinect Giveaway

Mark runs the advertising on Xbox and I interviewed him at Advertising Week last month about the 4th November launch.

To see what kind of opportunities are available, and how effective and relevant advertising might work on a platform like Kinect, take a look at Mark Young’s Kinectimals demo at AdWeek which has had several thousand views on YT.

28th Oct 2010

Review: Morimoto Japanese Restaurant in Napa

It’s not often I eat the perfect meal at a restaurant.

Ask my wife and she’ll recount stories of me sending food back for being cold, getting shirty with waiters for not laughing at my jokes, and just general glumness – especially in the UK – at the flippin’ prices of mediocre dishes that are far from memorable.

Okay, so the 2nd story was a joke, but Morimoto in the California wine country town of Napa isn’t!

Ashley had booked the table a few weeks before – you have to as they are generally jam packed every night – and we sat in the corner with a great view of the whole, light and cavernous room.

To be honest, on 1st passing the door, it looked like no one was eating there as they have a couple of tables in the window, but once inside you hear the cacophony of conversations and satisfied stomachs as you’re lead through to the main part of the eatery.

I went for sake, which was delivered in a jug on a decorated bed of ice – nice touch – and Ashley stuck to beer.

We shared a soft shell crab roll – big, crispy, divine and perfect for 2.

Ashers was then delivered the biggest bit of braised black cod we’ve ever seen. It was cooked to perfection in a soy reduction and well worth the $23.

I plumped for “ishi yaki buri bop” to test my palate as well as the service, as it’s yellow tail cooked in a stone bowl with rice and veg at your table. The server said the bowl was heated to 400 degrees (!) so I couldn’t lick it clean if I had wanted to………..and I did. It was an awesome eating experience – great tasting and professionally prepared and delivered. It came with a secret sauce which added some intrigue to the mix.

Following up the rear was some chocolate ice cream sandwich concoction, perfect for sharing and just enough without getting sickly post some delicate flavours preceding it.

Topping it off with a slug of Glenmorangie “Lasanta” – which I had to show our server how to drink (with an equal measure of water at room temperature) as it was in danger of being ruined “on the rocks” – the bill came to less than $150 including tip!

The service was so good that when I asked for recommendations for foody blogs in the US, our waitress came back with them all written down!

Here they are: SF Eater – David Lebovitz – Chez Pim

We’ll be tucking into them with the same gusto we tucked into our meal at Morimoto.

I seriously don’t wax this lyrical about places we eat at, but this was one worth every penny. Better than Zuma in London which is twice the price!

Can’t wait to visit their sister place in NY very soon…

PS: Just discovered the owner Chef Morimoto on Twitter

26th Oct 2010

Grape Picking and Crushing for Making Wine in Napa

Just back from a fabulous birthday trip to the Napa Valley in California.

More of what we ate and drank in later posts, but I wanted to show you some photos of why October is the best time to travel there.

October is harvest time for the grapes, and there’s plenty to see before your start stumbling in and out of the wineries.

Here are some snaps – kicking myself for not having my video camera on me – of the picking and crushing process…….

Grapes, ripe and juicy and about to be picked!

Pickers start making their way down the vines – in all weathers

Paid by the weight of their quarry, they move very fast until they’ve filled a basket

The grapes are then loaded onto pallets and towed by tractor to the winery

Stacked and awaiting crushing!

They’re then helped into a massive machine and sorted – no feet in sight!

The stalks are then removed by the machine….

….and the grapes fall down a crusher while the stalks….

…..end up being recycled as compost

As someone who’s drunk a LOT of wine in my life, it was real joy to see the actual picking/crushing process in action.

Now I know the work that goes into preparing the grapes, I’ll try not to drink the end result quite so quickly in future!

17th Oct 2010

Review: Howard Jones in Concert at Epcot Orlando

Howard Jones

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As part of their International Food and Wine Festival, those folks from Disney hosted Howard Jones in concert at the Epcot Center last night.

Through a bizarre set of connections, all to do with social media, I got wind he was playing. As I was in Orlando for the ANA Masters of Marketing and a HUGE fan, I duly coughed up the $80 odd entrance fee, bought a bud and plonked myself near the front of their outside theatre.

Howard would play three sets of 30 minutes between 5.15pm (I thought that’s when pop stars got out of bed!) and 7.45pm.

On Twitter he had promised “Hits Baby, Hits!” and we weren’t disappointed.

My earliest memory of his music was at school. Way back in 1984, albums like Human Lib and then Dream into Action were the ones that got the most scratches because they were played so much on our common room record player – yes I can remember vinyl!

I guess his popularity was about the great songs, the fact he was solo with banks of synths and drum machines to accompany him which all us boys (I’d have been about 12 then!) found super-cool, but for me it was his vulnerability and positivity that shined through.

He obviously thought about what he was writing, wrote from personal experience and didn’t particularly care who thought he was cool or not. It was all about the music!

He was an ordinary guy from High Wycombe who wrote about life and love in a more approachable way than many of the songwriters of his generation.

After the second set I overheard a guy telling a friend he’d left his wife in the mid-80s and went back to her after listening to one of Howard’s songs…..and they’re still married.

Coupling those lyrics with great melodies made those two albums sell millions and helped make him an international star.

Everyone I asked in the US knew who he was!

Anyway the gigs obviously took a bit of time to get going, in that the 1st was in the early evening and the crowd hadn’t quite warmed up.

Kicking off with Pearl in the Shell, a heart-stopping moment came at the start of the second song when his pedals malfunctioned. A low battery was blamed and Howard laughed it off as a techy was getting fixed saying, “I’ve been beset with technological problems the whole of my career!”

But that’s the thing, he didn’t have a paddy, got it fixed and carried on, winning over the crowd even more as he stormed through the night with hit after hit – No One is to Blame, Everlasting Love, Conditioning, Like to Get to Know You Well, What is Love, Things Can Only Get Better and New Song.

Guessing there’d be some die-hards in the audience that’d come to all three sets – we had to leave the theatre and queue up again to get in! – he mixed up the running order and had new surprises in each one.

With a back catalogue like his, 30 minutes isn’t really enough to do history justice and the glaring omission was by far my favourite song – Hide and Seek – the song he sang at Live Aid.

Guess I’ll have to wait until 6th of November when he’s performing Human Lib and Dream into Action in their entirety at London’s O2.

It’s set to be a very special night, and if anyone’s in any doubt whether he’s up to the job, last night’s note/pitch perfect performance showed HoJo’s got it more than ever!

X-Factor wannabes – if Howard Jones ever learns how to bottle his talent, you’d better be first in line when he sets up his stall, or come on the 6th, soak it all up, listen and learn!

Enjoy the slideshow above!

16th Oct 2010

Social Media Insight with Mari Luangrath at SES NYC

Recorded it a few months ago at SES New York.

Mari from Foiled Cupcakes is a brilliant speaker. With me she talks about her company’s successes and shares some social media tactics that could well help you!

13th Oct 2010

Stephen Fry at the Microsoft UK Windows Phone Launch in London

Includes the bit at the start we he said he wasn’t getting paid!

Smile

Check out this link for all the UK Windows Phones

13th Oct 2010

New Windows Phone TV Ads from Microsoft plus Stephen Fry

New from the US, these Windows Phone ads really sum up how my wife feels about me and my device.

Here’s hoping I can start living my life again…..

BTW – I was at the launch of the phone 7 on Monday.

As Ashley Highfield said on stage, it was “high risk” having Stephen Fry show up, but it seems to have done wonders to draw attention to the wider smartphone/tech ecosystem, especially as Stephen’s all about “biodiversity” in the technology space.

Listen to this excellent Guardian Tech podcast from the event by Jemima Kiss and Charles Arthur

And he most definitely didn’t get paid!!!

Here’s a link to my photos from the front row of the Windows Phone Launch and my fave below: