mip's scan

Thumbs Up For Grocery Gateway

I know that Grocery Gateway is nothing new.  You might be asking yourself, "Is it possible that mip had never heard or used Grocery Gateway before?"  In fact I have used Grocery Gateway in the past.  Back in 2003 to be exact.  That was before I was blogging.  Then when I moved up to sunny Sauble Beach, we weren't able to use Grocery Gateway, not that we would have, with the grocery store being within walking distance. 

Since we'd moved back to the GTA it never dawned on me to go back and use Grocery Gateway.  Then last week, as it got crazy busy in the mip household, and the weather was on and off, raining, freezing rain, snowing, raining, and Mrs. mip was trying to plan when she would go grocery shopping I said: "Hey, what about Grocery Gateway?"  I was curious.  I went back to their site and tried the login id and password we had.  It worked.  Upon logging in, I could still see the historical "shopping cart" from my last order from 2003.  We made some changes to the shipping address (pleasantly surprised that they deliver up into our remote area of Caledon) and my wife was off browsing the virtual isles. 

Click. Click.  Order was placed and scheduled and the next day delivered. 

It was as we were putting groceries away, when I said "What a great service." that I thought about blogging about Grocery Gateway.  It isn't breaking tech news....but that isn't what mip's scan is about right?  Right!  It's about talking about tech and tech enabled services that work.

Thumbs up for Grocery Gateway. 
It's nice to be back.

Demonstrating the Tassimo Coffee Maker

Remember back in one of my podcasts at the start of September I told you about a new coffee machine that I'd purchased?  Well I'd promised a video post on it and finally, I create a little clip for you to view.  The way this machine picks up the info from the barcode on the T-Discs is fantastic.
Enjoy!

Technology Meets Advertising

I'm going to have to ride a Toronto subway just to find one of these new advertisements.  What has BBDO done? 

BBDO created a subway poster that has a fully functional headphone jack imbedded in it, which plays samples of various exclusive tracks available at pepsiaccess.ca. There are close to 100 posters playing 12 different tracks running in Toronto and Vancouver from now until the end of summer.

Every Pepsi comes with a PIN, which can be redeemed for access to ultra-exclusive music, concerts, events, etc. at pepsiaccess.ca. This poster plays a 30 second track sample of “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley. After an announcer says: “That was a taste of an exclusive track from Gnarls Barkley. Check out pepsiaccess.ca for more.”

I think this is a really innovative use of technology.  It recognizes and leverages the technology that so many people are carrying - music players.  I can't wait to see more of this kind of thing. Wait till a company like BBDO discovers Bluetooth?  Imagine how cool it would be to send a 30 second track to your cellphone?

As for the music-enabled-poster, I wonder how many people will try it?  There'd be no technical reason not to try it, although people might feel silly unplugging their headphones and sticking them into the poster's jack.  As for me, if I find one in and about Toronto, I'll take a pic and let you know what I thought of the experience.  I'm sure my iPod will forgive me a 30 second indulgence.

Now You're Cooking....With Google?

I love food.  I'm Italian, so of course I do.  Food is right up there for me...like...like...technology. 

So what's better than the blending of the two, right?  Google Base  was something Google had launched some time ago.  To recap what it is....

Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content that we'll host and make searchable online. You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle, Google Base and Google Local.

In truth this hasn't been a service I've used too often.  Not sure why, just haven't.  But my wife was looking up a particular recipe for a Pecan Butter Tart and when I commented over dinner how good it was she said, "I found the recipe on Google Base."

"Google," I said in a corrective tone.
"Uh...no Google Base, guess that's Google right."

I was intrigued.  So I had her show me where she got it.  Sure enough, they have a recipe index built in Google Base.  I was curious and muttered to myself, "How is this different than looking for pecan butter tart using Google search?"

My wife pointed to the pre-built ways of refining your search, things like drop down menus that let you pick the main ingredient or type of cuisine. You can also add refining criteria like Cooking Time that then gives you an additional drop down menu to specify cooking time.  I liked what I saw because it further empowers us to effectively search.  Sure I could type "pecan butter tart" into Google, but when I do I get a lot of unrelated stuff and no easy way to refine the search from a food/recipe-centric point of view.  That's when the strength of Google Base hit me.  It'll be interesting to see the other types of topic-centric-search frameworks that get developed in this interesting tool.

Bon Appetitto!