After a short hiatus from the previous site, CannonWines.com has returned. I wasn’t a fan of how the old site was used, so I started from scratch. Previously, the site had to be updated manually by editing javascript to change the menu system, which only allowed you to browse the portfolio by loading huge PDFs through text links. There wasn’t anybody on staff to do that before I got there, nor would there be if I were on vacation or got hit by a truck (knock on wood), so the site needed a method for previewing all wines in the portfolio that could be updated on the fly by anyone. Sounds like a need for a Content Management System (CMS).

So I designed a new front-end UI that shows a brief, the bottle, the data, the accolades, the tasting notes and download links for resources on every wine, including tech sheets, shelf-talkers, brochures, hi-res bottle shots and hi-res labels:

Then I asked a few buddies to build a custom CMS to manage it all. They built it over a few weekends in CakePHP, which makes updating the site as easy as logging in and filling out a short form. All of the portfolio info is stored in the site’s MySQL database, from which we can pull data for almost anything. More on that after the jump. Read more »

Less than two weeks ago, I was here in San Francisco presenting a few proposals to Cannon Wines Limited, a wine importer and marketer.  Today I’m back in the office as the new Marketing Director, charged with promoting their popular labels and building some of their newest brands from the ground up. Along with producing and distributing marketing materials for sales managers all over the US market, I’ll also be revolutionizing the way Cannon does business, by streamlining many of its internal operations with web tools and bringing most of its materials online for easier access and distribution. Expect a complete redesign of www.cannonwines.com to drive those efforts in the coming months.

I’ll also be executing the freshly minted marketing agenda for Naked Earth, a collection of blends made with organically grown grapes.  First on the agenda will be an update of the Naked Earth brand site, followed by a few exciting events.  Join the Naked Earth Facebook group to receive RSVPs as those develop.

First order of business though: finding a place to live.  Homelessness is stressful.

So I was in San Francisco while this was heating up, and ironically disconnected for a couple days while on business, but I caught the ending in full tonight.  Here’s the back story: at some point, Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) declared it his mission to be the first Twitter user to have 1 million followers.  The closest user to that goal at the time was CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk).  Sadly, also in the running was Britney Spears, who doesn’t even post her own content, but let’s not get into that.

Kutcher challenged CNN to beat him to a million followers, and raised the stakes with a wager that, if he becomes the first, he’ll donate $100,000 to Malaria No More, which aims to eradicate the disease from the African content using a distribution system for prevention. Well CNN accepted the challenge, and broadcast its effort on live TV, with follower counters and all.  Not to be outdone by traditional media, tonight Ashton Kutcher broadcast his own live play-by-play on his UStream account.

The race continued into the night, and victory was finally taken by Kutcher at around 11:20 PM, no doubt with help from his wife Demi Moore (@mrskutcher) and all of the tech industry’s elites.  The 1 millionth follower may have been Australian, as the continent was just waking up as it happened.

Kutcher then thanked all of the tech start-ups involved, from Kevin Rose at Digg, to the guys at Qik, to his publicist, the charity, etc.  Evan Williams and others congratulated him.  Then Kutcher watched CNN’s live concession to him on TV, and responded with this:

A toast to Ted Turner – you are a pioneer in media, in creating CNN and creating your entire network and your conglomerate… you had the foresight to see that digital media was going to be the future, even before all of us believed it.  And for that, you deserve to be congratulated.  And also, you deserve to be ding dong ditched, because at the end of the day, the old guard has passed and the new guard is here.

If Ashton Kutcher is the new guard of media, I don’t want to be inside those gates.  Yikes. Clearly Kevin Rose has created a monster.  Kutcher then goes on with generic declarations on democratizing media, blah blah blah… regurgitating lines he heard in pitch meetings, no doubt.  See it in the video.

Personally I find celebrity news trite, annoying, and hugely distracting from the real news Americans should be watching and analyzing.  So I wasn’t all that interested in documenting the occasion, but as it is my communication style of choice, I recorded the historical social networking/media moment and the thank-you speech following, as you’ll see above.

[UPDATE] CNN has posted a response to the results:

First of all, kudos to Ashton and all those in the @aplusk camp. Now more than ever, the consumer is in the driver’s seat and we couldn’t be more gratified than to be part of this historic social media milestone. We’d like to thank every one of our followers for helping CNN reach the one million mark, and we are delighted to raise our donation to 10,000 bed nets for World Malaria Day in recognition of them.

Historic? Really? Seems more like a popularity contest to me – no substance.

Whenever I come across a news story that sounds both ridiculously futuristic and unbelievable, I post a tweet with the #futureisnow hashtag. Here’s a recap of recent tweets:

andrewmackenzie: #futureisnow Israel using unmanned, 60-ton bulldozer drones to clear roads of land mines and other explosives. http://is.gd/pSOJ

andrewmackenzie: #futureisnow Production on the Chevy Volt set to begin on June 1, 2009. http://is.gd/pjnx

andrewmackenzie: #futureisnow RT @gavinpurcell: I have a Kindle 2 and it is awesome. Physical books = another piece of the old world I can do mostly without.

andrewmackenzie: #futureisnow New MMCC barcodes will transmit audio, video, text and games. I’m totally getting a tattoo of one. http://is.gd/nzsa

andrewmackenzie: #futureisnow Pentagon inks deal on portable milli-wave raygun tech. http://is.gd/nq74

andrewmackenzie: #futureisnow The United States has shot down its first enemy unmanned drone aircraft, controlled by Iran http://bit.ly/152yjf

andrewmackenzie: #futureisnow Pattie Maes presents the Sixth Sense wearable computer by the MIT Media Lab at TED 2009. http://bit.ly/LiOPj

andrewmackenzie: #futureisnow Jerry loses a finger in a motorcycle accident, so he gets a prosthetic finger – with a 2 GB USB drive. http://bit.ly/T7a6X

andrewmackenzie: #futureisnow @kevinrose does a speed test from Virgin America’s in-flight wi-fi from SFO to NYC (while streaming): http://twitpic.com/1zcmw

andrewmackenzie: #futureisnow Robot Overload Appreciation: the US has deployed 17,300 drones in the Middle East, just in the past 5 years?! http://is.gd/hSnN

andrewmackenzie: #futureisnow Berkeley Bionics partners with Lockheed to produce their awaited HULC high-endurance exoskeleton for soldiers http://is.gd/laKQ

Current assessment of the future: frightening.

Ars Technica is reporting that Time Warner Cable is expanding its tiered, bandwidth-capped internet service to more cities, following trials in Beaumont, Texas. The trial allowed 40 GB per month traffic caps to residents of Beaumont for $55, and charged $1 per gigabyte of excess traffic. The new plan will expand to Austin, San Antonio, Rochester (NY), and Greensboro (NC) this year, with tiers of service ranging from 5 GB to 50 GB/month at prices ranging from $30-$55/month. Time Warner claims these plans are part of an effort to curb “infrastructure costs.”

Ars Technica was extremely skeptical. Cable internet is provided by existing cable lines (and expanding fiber lines) and is cheap to upgrade with replacement DOCSIS gear. And it’s only getting cheaper to maintain every year. So where is all of the supposed cost burden coming from? Sounds like they don’t have any – they just need a new expandable profit model.

“We need a viable model to be able to support the infrastructure of the broadband business. We made a mistake early on by not defining our business based on the consumption dimension” says TWC CEO Glenn Britt, to Business Week. Read the whole Ars Technica article here.

This news is becoming common. Comcast’s relatively generous 250GB bandwidth caps are already in place, and other ISPs are considering it. So, in other words, the country’s internet infrastructure is moving backwards. This will be a huge limitation for individuals and businesses alike – it was one of the biggest questions about the emerging OnLive gaming tech I posted on last week. How are bandwidth-hungry sites like Hulu.com and CNN Video supposed to expand their traffic when everybody’s too afraid of surpassing their caps?

The answer: tiered internet. If ISPs can reverse their offerings on bandwidth today, what’s to stop them from forcing content providers into exclusive partnerships tomorrow? What if they charged Hulu.com, or you, the end user, a fee to include their site in your service without counting towards your cap? Soon enough we’ll basically be charged for visiting any sites not under content provider fee structures. Mark my words on it. It’s gonna suck.

So far, Cox Cable here in Vegas doesn’t have a cap – knock on wood – but I’ve started tracking my bandwidth already for just such an occasion. LifeHacker has a nice article on how to do so – I’ve started using SurplusMeter for my Mac today. We’ll see where I’m at after 30 days of Hulu-watching, podcast-downloading, radio-streaming fun.

My MacBook Pro is on all the time, running a variety of net-dependent apps:
• Adium and Skype handle my IM services.
• TweetDeck updates my Twitter feed along with 3 or 4 auto-updating searches.
• I’m streaming the KEXP feed over iTunes right now.
• iTunes also updates any of the 18 podcasts I’m subscribed to – some monthly, some weekly, some daily.
• I watch most of my TV on ABC.com and Hulu.com.
• I get most of my music from free KEXP songs of the day, and Music that Matters podcasts.
• Evernote syncs my notes when it’s open.
• I regularly download huge texture files and photo resources for work, and receive ridiculously large files like PowerPoint presentations for reference and official high-res product shots.
• Worse of all, I’m an info-junkie – Firefox has 8 tabs open right now for random crap from tech news to wiki entries on Middle Eastern politics.

So I think if I ever have to use a capped service, I’ll be screwed well within 30 days. The bandwidth meter test begins now.