Yesterday, I got just such an invitation from one of my favorite institutions, WBUR-FM, an NPR station that is more or less permanently tuned on my home and car radios. The good people of WBUR have had the foresight to invest in new media initiatives, including the excellent blog, The ConverStation, ably helmed by Ken George, to which I referred earlier.

Ken invited local bloggers and social media types through facebook, twitter, and maybe even personal invitations, and despite biblical weather, about 15-20 people showed up for a tour of the station, networking, chatting and eventually, eating and drinking. See the WBUR socials flickr group for some not very incriminating photos.

What the heck is that, you ask? It’s a beautiful wooden sound baffle, on the wall of the engineering room next to one of the air studios at BUR. Reminds me of old type-sorting cases. I totally want one. You can see it with more context in the background of some of the flickr pics. Each box is few inches across and has a different depth, turning it into an acoustic black hole, especially at the lower frequencies. Bass checks in, but it doesn’t check out.

Unfortunately, this might be a metaphor for the future of public radio in a digital, on-demand world. Here are some thoughts from the free-wheeling discussion after the tour. I’m sure a lot more was batted around at the bar after, but I had to cut out early for dinner.

Everybody agreed that we all love NPR programming, and eveybody agreed that we all hate pledge time. Some even hate underwriting announcements, and they’re about as painless as ads can be. I learned that NPR underwriting messages cannot include any call to action or any mention of competition or offers. Sadly, this helps confirm why as a marketer, I consider underwriting to be a donation that makes the executives feel good, not a marketing program that drives business.

So what does a roomful of smart social media types say about this? Some suggested that they’d be happy to pay for an ad-free (no underwriting, no pledge driving) audio stream or podcast on a subscription basis. I’ll leave the logistics of pay per podcast - and what to put in the stream gaps left by excluding the pledge drives - to the techies. This hints at the basic problem the old commercial (or pledge) system has: you can’t fast-forward TV or radio, but you sure can fast-forward a podcast. Actually, with TiVo and the like, you can fast-forward TV, and I think there’s something similar for radio.

The next idea that circulated was wondering if people would pay for individual programs by subscription, or individual episodes on demand. This led to discussion of whether public radio looks at how much pledge money comes in from different shows (they do) and whether the pledge-per-show model might let some shows float themselves and others that can’t pay their bills just dry up and die.

I opined that the very premise of public radio was that some kinds of programming could not support themselves in the market, but had such redeeming qualities that it was in the national interest to subsidize them. The elitist and paternalistic nature of public radio is at odds with the both tough-love capitalism and the populism (Diggocracy?) of the internets. Ouch. I guess we really are all batch of quiche-eating prius drivers.

I bet that lots of public radio shows could be commercially viable: Car Talk, Prairie Home Companion, and even This American Life come to mind. (Not all examples are WBUR shows, and NPR syndication is a bit piece of the puzzle here that I’m going to skip for brevity) But what about the stuff that they are essentially subsidizing, Con Salsa, RadioLab, and most of the news? On the one hand, the low, low price of internet distribution could put some of those shows back in the black if they could avoid sharing the big fixed costs of terrestrial radio production and distribution. But on the other hand, dropping those shows from the air would likely make them even even less able to raise money, especially if the station cut them off from a share of the pledge pie.

I’m usually all about free marketeering, but for the small slice of my taxes that goes to support cultural stuff, I’m pretty happy to subsidize and then to pay again on top of that. I hope Ken and the WBUR crew can find their way in this brave new world.

Speaking of free and not so free markets, if you have any disposable income left after tithing to public radio, you might look into the latest in expensive wooden radios, the Tivoli Audio NetWorks internet radio, available in cherry, walnut and wenge, pictured below. (Wikipedia says its endangered, Tivoli says sustainably harvested, go figure)

You may recall that I have a thing for wooden radios, and I periodically check in on what’s new in tree-based audio products. I’ve been critical of Tivoli for getting things painfully almost right in the past, and I think this is another one of those. But the release to market of a $600 internet-only (FM radio costs you an additional $50) audio device has got to mean something to the discussion above. Tivoli is pitching hard on the angle that you don’t need a computer to use this thing to listen to hundreds of radio stations from all around the world, you just need an internet connection. If there’s a place where lots of people have high-speed internet but no computer, I must have missed it. Maybe they just mean you could put this radio in a room where you don’t have a computer, like your bathroom. If you need a $600 internet radio in your bathroom, you need more fiber in your diet.

I haven’t seen or heard or touched this device, but I’m going to tell you what I think anyway since I’ve seen and heard and touched many other Tivoli products.

It’s gorgeous - from the waist down. The geometry of the box and the speaker and their colors and materials look great. I love the wenge especially. I recognize that it probably needs a digital display, but couldn’t they come up with something less ugly? I would think that a color screen wouldn’t be hard to pull off at this price point. And maybe you don’t need those two rivets on the display frame? Ick. The credit-card remote looks like it has those awful blister buttons, too. There’s a button or knob on the top of the unit that might - just might - approach the joy of the geared-down knob on the Model One, but sadly, I doubt it.

It’s expensive - I’ve mentioned this a few times and I’m still a bit in shock. For $600 you get a mono internet radio. Other internet radios cost half that. If you already have a computer, you can get speakers for even less. And you have to add $50 more for FM and another $100 for a second speaker for stereo sound. I can’t tell if the second speaker is connected by cable or wireless. Conspicuously absent, an ipod dock. Clearly, this is a premium product, so I say, just take the whole kaboodle up to $800 or $1000 and don’t nickel and dime your premium customers.

It probably sounds great - I really don’t know, but the reviewers seem to like it, and it has some spiffy buffering technology that might reduce the chop of a lousy internet stream. The wooden case bodes well, too.

It’ll be interesting to see how this product goes for Tivoli. If they’re right, there are some people willing to pony up big bucks to get good looks and good sound with internet radio. If they’re wrong, the XM-Sirius monster might eat their lunch, or the internet radio generation will just pass them by. That would be a shame, I think the world needs more and better wooden cases for its electronics.

Andala coffee house is at 286 Franklin Street in Central Square, Cambridge, just a block from scenic Cronin Park and within view of limeduck world headquarters. They offer the usual cafe stuff, some fresh-squeezed juices and some Arabic-accented specials such as msabaha and zeit u zaatar. They have no website that I can find, and are generally open until 11pm, which is pretty late for this town. Plus, you can suck on a shisha pipe (outside only) while your laptop sucks down free wifi. Service? Not so hot. But I keep coming back for the hummus plate.

About 20% of the 80+ yelpers who reviewed Andala mentioned the hummus, almost all positively.

It’s $7.95 and comes with a highly random selection of vegetables (I’ve had carrots and cucumbers most of the time, red and green bell peppers often, celery and onions on occasion, almost always olives, and this time, a big fat chili pepper) and some warm pita.

The hummus itself is always a little different, which makes me sure its house-made. Some days its very green, some days less so, but there’s always plenty of olive oil and paprika on it. The texture is not so smooth to as to remind you of store-extruded versions, but not too gritty or chunky either. I have to carefully monitor my pita usage so there’s enough left to mop up the dregs, but none left over. The portion is satisfying and you feel reasonably virtuous for having a vegetarian meal.

I usually get an espresso or some sparkling water, sometimes both. This time, instead of the usual Perrier or Pellegrino, I got a can of Market Basket Seltzer which says on the can, “made with sparkling water.” For some odd reason, that made me smile.

So go to Andala for the hummus and stay for the wifi, or vice versa. You won’t regret it.

I wonder if it’s littering to leave cleaning supplies on the subway?

Don’t get me wrong. Podcamp was a fantastic weekend. Excellent networking, fun people, a great, open collaborative and supportive atmosphere, free parking, free wifi, quality presentations and presenters. Kudos to the organizers and sponsors and attendees. I am seriously looking forward to future podcamps. But…

The Schlitz was good. The Schlitz was cheap, sometimes even free. We drank a lot of it and caught a pretty good buzz. We made lots of cool new friends under its lubricating influence. But now what?

There’s growing evidence that we have a social media bubble. Heck, it made the cover of the MIT Tech review. When your cool online New Way To Be gets called bubbly by the Tech Review - in print, no less - it’s time to ask yourself the tough questions. People are building businesses around Twitter, but Twitter doesn’t have its own revenue model yet.

I’m no retrograder here, I don’t question that most examples of most forms of marketing have been sucking the fumes from their empty Schlitz cans for ages. Even the cuddly darlings of search marketing are overbid to absurdity. So my point is not to hide and hate and fear the social media revolution and try to return to simpler times, but to ask, is there really any there there? And if not, how can we make some?

If I could answer that, I wouldn’t be blogging from a Starbucks, I’ll tell you that. So instead of answers, here are five more questions and issues prodded by podcamp and the discussions I had there.

1. Personal branding, privacy and publicity

During CC Chapman’s packed session, “building your brand through passion and community,” the discussion quickly turned to online privacy, widely described as illusory. A wise audience member piped up, “Most of us are here to get known, not to get unknown.” Amen, brother. As long as you have some idea of what you’re getting into, you can make smart choices. For most folks, being stalked is not that likely because they’re just not that famous.

Another podcamper was a little too quick to confide in me that the #1 google result for her name was about her “boobies.” I don’t think she helped her case by removing the photo, which was apparently not nearly as scandalous as the text left behind suggested. If you clicked that link, you deserve to be Rickrolled, but that’s the best I could do. If you want to work in online PR, you’ve got to be able to use the online chatter about your bits to your advantage. Don’t apologize if you haven’t actually done anything wrong, it makes you look twice as guilty.

The conference was packed with digital recording devices and people wearing nametags. Not a recipe for stealth if you told your spouse that you were somewhere else that weekend. Some photographers asked permission and some didn’t. Lots of good questions there about who owns those images and sounds. If you took my picture - probably because you thought my shirt was the coolest or dumbest one you saw all day - please tag it “limeduck” that’s all my personal brand asks.

2. Pecha Kucha vs Battledecks

These two items were on the agenda a couple of times, but I never managed to catch up with them. I’m not even really sure they happened at all. But they make an instructive pair.

Pecha Kucha is a poetry-slam style event where you bring a 20-slide presentation which is advanced every 20 seconds automatically. You present to it and get rated by the crowd.

Battledecks is PPT-backed improv. You go on stage and present a set of slides you’ve never seen before.

Hyper-prepared presentation, or surrealist improvisation - which would you rather do, and which should be a required part of business education?

3. What’s up with Moo cards?

Heck, what’s up with business cards of any kind in this digital age? I’ll rant later about what I think of Moo minicards. More broadly, what goes on a business card and what doesn’t? Website, blog, facebook, myspace, email address, twitter handle, skype name, phone number, latitude and longitude, t-shirt size, maybe even something about what you do? I just wrote @limeduck on some nice cardstock or Japanese paper.

4. Two takes on TangySlice

Speaking of social media overload, I told some people about my friend TangySlice and his “quest for social media greatness” wherein he intends to sign up for 100 social sites in 30 days. He’s almost there, and I think he will achieve his goal, but check out this gamut of reactions:

• [blink] [blink] Why?
• Well, if he wants to waste his time, better him than me.
• A hundred sites? Bah, I have at least 150 already!

Which type are you? Which type was more common at podcamp? Discuss. Then donate to TangySlice’s fundraising page. You can donate a dollar per site in your social media portfolio. It’s for a good cause.

5. Fuck the skeptics

There’s a real risk of groupthink at these events. Where were the doubters and curmudgeons? The people who showed a slide titled “what the f**k is social media” didn’t go too far enough, and when I asked them about the doubters, they said “fuck the skeptics!” To be fair, they were kidding, but I still want more and better dissent. It keeps us thinking. It keeps us honest.

Quack you later.

You can see failduck in action by going to http://www.limeduck.com/this-page-doesn’t-exist. Yes, I know. That’s not exactly what I’d call “action” either.  Yes, I need better duck clip-art, too.

I would invite other ducky bloggers to use this if they so desire, but I think I’m on thin enough intellectual property ice here as it is.

Fit the First: WIG 18

Webinnovatorsgroup boston (as their typography has it) has the tagline “Promoting Boston’s Web and Mobile Innovation Community.” Their 18th shindig was Tuesday night at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge. It was a large (800 people) networking event with three short pitches and a handful of tabletop exhibits.

It was also the first live event where somebody recognized me as limeduck from my nametag. Scary.

I won’t spend a lot of time picking at the business models or technology of the three pitches, but I will say that the presentation slots were blessedly brief and not all that well-prepared. The crowd was great, however, bellowing out “how are you going to make money?” after each one.

Zeer: Consumer reviews for healthy eating. They won the audience choice award so they must be doing something right, and I do love me a food-related social network. But they do have that annoying way of enforcing first and last name in users. What if Cher wants to join?

Webnotes: Create and manage online annotations. Impressive functionality, but the demo crashed when 500 iphoners in the room tried to follow along. Next time, have a nice whale graphic ready.

Totspot: A place for parents to publish a page about their kids. Two young guys in company t-shirts under blazers kick off the pitch by saying that they’re not parents. If I was their VC, I’d have them grounded.

After the event, I was lucky enough to join a table of the cream of the twitterati at Helmand, one of my favorite places in town. Best Afghan restaurant in Boston sounds like faint praise but this place is special. We enjoyed several plates of delicious pumpkin kaddo and other morsels and pretty much closed the place down.

Fit the Second: Full moon over Scampo; MIA at DeCordova

Thursday, I foolishly accepted a dinner invite with some good people at work, having somehow completely forgotten about the DeCordova Museum’s roofdeck party. I hear the event was fantastic and the view was beautiful. And that somebody there was looking for limeduck. Scary. Since I’ve stopped driving to work, the DeCordova has felt very far away. Must make a visit soon.

Meanwhile, back in Boston, at the bar Clink (it’s a pun, get it?) in the Liberty Hotel, I noticed that Grgich Hills Fume Blanc was on the wine list for $75. Eek. I paid $45 at Casablanca, and a bunch less than that at Sabur. We had some different and delicious wines, but I was glad this one was on the company. We had a pleasant dinner outdoors at Scampo in the same hotel.

From left, risotto with fava beans, fresh mozzarella with carpaccio and smoked sea salt, and gnocchi with swiss chard. All very tasty and well prepared but not quite up to the hype of the setting. The Liberty seems to have become The Place to be seen. As we left, there was some kind of fashion shoot taking place at the valet parking stand. That seems a sign of something just a bit too very very.

On the way home, I spied the thunder moon attended by Jupiter.

Fit the Third: if a tree falls in Cambridge…

As you might have noticed, I’ve been doing some fundraising for the American Heart Association using my birthday as a rallying point.  Last night the fundraising hit double my initial goal, and about 25 of the donors joined me at Sabur for small plates and wine.  I was very pleased with the turnout and amazed at the fundraising total.  Sabur’s team came through with great dishes - cheese burek, potato celery root cakes and balkan sausages were among the favorites - and even managed to get me a good deal on half a case of Grgich.  A grand time was had by all, and I’m very grateful to everybody who came out and donated.  The fundraising goes on, and I’m sure the dining and drinking will resume at some point.

Then the police called.

“Hello, this is the Cambridge police, we’re calling about your vehicle…”  Last time I got a call like that, I was in Hong Kong and somebody had made off with my 18″ TRD wheels, and the police wanted me to move my wheel-less car before they towed it.  Tonight they were calling to tell me that a tree had fallen on my car.

Then they asked me to hold on, had along discussion among themselves, and decided that in fact the tree had fallen on a neighboring car, but that I needed to come down right away to see if there was any damage to my car.  I didn’t really see the urgency in that, so I got back to the party.  When I finally got home, this is what I found.

A large piece of the huge ivy-covered tree had some off and apparently done some damage to whoever was parked behind me, but there wasn’t a (new) scratch on the juice box.  Just lots of pollen, sap and bird poo.

All’s well that ends well.  Off to Podcamp.

Like so many of my favorite baked things, babka comes from Ashkenaz.  Wikipedia cites “Eastern European” origins, Russian etymology (Babka = бабка = grandmother), and savory variants from Belarus and Lithuania.  But none of those technicalities really get to the soul of the babka.

We all know that Jerry and Elaine spend a good portion of The Dinner Party seeking, discussing, dissecting and obsessing about babka. (I edited the spelling from “bobka” in the amateur transcription linked here) That’s a start.

JERRY: That’s the last Babka. They got the last Babka.

ELAINE: I know. They’re going in first with the last Babka.

JERRY: That was our Babka.

ELAINE: You can’t beat a Babka.

JERRY: We should have had that Babka.

My particular prize was a Green’s chocolate babka, private labeled for Zabars.  It’s a little flaky but mostly gooey, disturbingly heavy, and oddly parve.  A seemingly similar article can be found at Delancey Desserts.

A little poking around led to a recipe from of all people, Martha Stewart, which including milk, butter and cream, so definitely not that close to Green’s, but which does reveal the basic chemistry of the babka:

• 1 1/2 cups warm milk, 110 degrees
• 2 (1/4 ounce each) packages active dry yeast
• 1 3/4 cups plus a pinch of sugar
• 3 whole large eggs, room temperature
• 2 large egg yolks, room temperature
• 6 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 3/4 cups (3 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces, room temperature, plus more for bowl and loaf pans
• 2 1/4 pounds semisweet chocolate, very finely chopped
• 2 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon heavy cream

This makes three loaves, but we’re still talking 3/4 of a pound of chocolate per loaf, similar to a full bag of chocolate chips.  That’s got to have something to do with it.  Another variant from Su Good Sweets is Nutella Babka, which seems to mix in about 1/3 nutella with the chocolate.

Green’s babka is kosher, and depends on oil (palm, I hear) for fatty goodness, but that renders it parve, and allows it to be served more flexibly in kosher households.  A definite benefit for some that might impede the flavor for others.  I’ve never felt compelled to complain when my babka answers to a higher authority.

Should you find yourself in posession of a babka, be sure to warm it slightly before serving to bring the chocolate to the necessary state of gooeyness.

I should probably quit while I’m ahead, but I found a couple more babka notes that I must impart.  We’ve dwelled on chocolate babka so far, and while I won’t even mention the usual secondary or “lesser” babka variant, it appears that there are savory dishes also called babka.

Again, via wikipedia, there is the savory dish from Belarus and Lithuania: “It is made from grated potatoes, egg, onions, and smoked bacon. It is baked in a crock, and often served with a sauce of sour cream and pork flitch. Depending on recipe and cooking method it may be either a flaky potato pie, or a heavy potato pudding.”  Sounds delicious in its own right, but seems pretty far off from the sweet stuff, and awfully distant from anything kosher, too.

From Aloyada, we also have a Ukrainian fish babka, described as “…souffle-like. Which meant that when baked, it rose almost as much as a conventional souffle– but stayed puffed up and impressive. The egg yolks, milk, fried onion, bits of bread and stiff egg white give it a lovely light and very tasty texture; an aerated clear yellow omlette-style base in which the embedded pieces of fish and herbs (nutmeg and dill or tarragon) are delicious, subtle and moist.”  Also interesting, and maybe a little more likely to be related to the chocolate babka of ashkenaz.

Enticing as the savory options are, there will always be just one true babka for me, and unless I freeze some of it now, it’s not going to last till my next trip to New York.

I have to wonder if the people who installed the plywood illustrated it, or if it was some passing artist.  Either way, I love New York.

1. friendfeed - As Tangyslice would say, YAA (Yet Another Aggregator); I would call it YANVAA (Yet Another No-Value-Added Aggregator)
2. Get Satisfaction - “People Powered Customer Service for Absolutely Everything” - watch this one, there could be something here. I like power to the people.
3. going.com - People I might run into and places I might go. Mash this up with something geocoded and mobile and maybe we’ll talk.
4. grono.net - “one of the biggest web communities in Poland” - the English version is incompletely translated so I ended up saying I was in Białystok. Go figure.
5. HelloTxt - One of several sites (see also Ping.FM and their oh-so-exclusive beta) that exist only to push your drivel into deeper crevices of the internet.
6. hi5 -Maybe wants to be facebook when it grows up, but happy to sell ads till then. *yawn*
7. identi.ca -I have to go to Canada and declare all my microdrivel under creative commons? Why?
8. istockphoto - If a stock photo site wants to become a social media site, don’t you think they should let you upload your own avatar picture and resize it for you?
9. Kiva - Another really good site that’s adding social media for no particular reason. The important connection here is between lenders and borrowers, isn’t it?
10. kwippy - Why? Why??
11. Last.FM - Maybe if it were Last.DK I would be as excited by this as Tangy is. Give me my geek-fan podcasts any day.
12. MyBlogLog - YAA. Probably YANVAA, but I can’t figure out all the bells and whistles.
13. Netvibes - OK, it’s nicer than my google hompage. But my google homepage is my google homepage.
14. newsvine - Oddly, I’ve been a member of this site for a long time. I don’t remember signing up, or why.
15. Profilactic - YAA supporting 186 sites. One Hundred and Eighty Six.
16. Socialthing! - YANVAA! But at least the little mascot critter has cute googly eyes, not a bone where its head should be.
17. soup.io - YANVAA.io
18. trig -”A community for creative people with images, blogs, music, trends, etc. Yeah, we could say all that. But what we really imagine is a place where people like their music loud, their opinions edgy and their life brave.” Keep imagining. The loud edgy people are on myspace.
19. wis.dm - The site that asks, “can you live without Starbucks?” I’m not sure but I bet I can live without wis.dm.
20. YouTube - You can tune into the limeduck channel. Don’t you feel special?

See the first 29 networks in my catalog here.

I’ve owned and used a variety of cameras over the years, most of them 35mm or digital, with occasional use of other film formats and polaroids. I’ve never used a Lomo or a Hassleblad. Each format has its own particular aspect ratio: 35mm is approximately 3:2 (1.5:1) and most digital cameras (including cellphone cams) are around 4:3 (1.33:1) like televisions and computer monitors used to be before the current craze for various forms of widescreen, mostly around 16:9 (1.78:1), closer to the 2:1 and more seen in some classic movies via cinemascope and related processes.

I’m not quite sure when I started cropping both digital photos and scans to square, but the first one on this blog looks to be from February 24, 2007 with a rectangular pic just a few days earlier on the 19th . Both are scans from 35mm film (Tri-X) shot with my trusty Ricoh GR-1.

When I used to make actual photographic prints in the darkroom from negatives, I was very particular about using the full frame. It’s a photo-geek thing, all about authenticity, since you’re printing everything you shot. There are several reasons why this logic is crap and all photographs are lies, but I won’t go into that here. I will say here that cropping to square from a rectangular shot is sometimes tough, since when you compose through the viewfinder (or screen) you’re seeing what you’re seeing, and leaving out what you’re leaving out.

I got to like the square thing, and it became a bit of distinguishing mark for the blog. Eventually, I was happy to discover a flickr group called squareFormat - with over 10,000 members and 180,000 photos as of this writing. The group rules are wonderful:

Alain Astruc (a group admin) says:
09 Apr 08 - THE THREE LEVELS OF SQUARENESS: ONLY SQUARE PHOTOS!

1/ SQUARE
Square photos taken with a square format camera.
• 6×6 square format rolleiflex, hasselblad etc.

2/ SQUARISH
Almost square photos or square photos taken with a non-square format camera
• 600 type polaroids, cropped 35mm or digital, etc.

3/ META SQUARE
Scans or compositions containing square photos.
• Polaroids scanned with the frame, dyptichs, mosaics of square photos etc…

On one of this group’s message boards, after lots of posts about $15k digital cameras and the merits of using different kinds of tape to mask a camera’s viewfinder, I read about a digital camera that had a square format shooting mode. Even better, the camera was the new digital version the Ricoh GR-1, appropriately named the Ricoh GR Digital II. This means I could compose square photos in the viewfinder and “print” them later without cropping and graduate from Squarish to Square in Alain’s hierarchy. I had to have one.

And a couple of months ago, I got one. It’s really really great, and not only because it shoots square. Sharp fast lens, good color, takes standard AAA batteries in a pinch, standard tripod mount, lots of manual control plus full auto, convenient size, RAW shooting, good no-nonsense mini-USB cable connection, interval shooting mode, level(!), unobtrusive size and color. I miss the lack of viewfinder and wish the lens were a little wider, but that’s about it. There’s no food mode or whiteboard mode, but I can work around that. At 10 megapixels, I find there’s plenty of information to work with when I do choose to crop or print. Of course, if you choose square shooting mode, you get only about 7 of those 10 megapixels. I can live with that.

If you want to own a piece of limeduck history, bid on my soon to be former digital camera, a Kodak V570 dual-lens. This is also a fantastic pocket digital camera, but a little dated with only 5 megapixels. It has two lenses, a very wide prime and a 5x zoom. Mention this blog and I’ll upgrade that 1GB SD card to 2. I don’t use it as much, but I’m not ready to give up my film Ricoh.

Where do you even begin to determine what wine goes best with fried chicken? (For the record, we decided by fiat that Popeyes is the best fried chicken commercially available, thus avoiding a much more complex and arduous tasting process.) The guys working in liquor stores had vague answers, sometimes recommending beer instead or subtly suggesting the whole project was insane. The internets, usually a font of complete (and completely unreliable) information, came up on the short side, with just one helpful review from wine review online. The twitterati came through with some ideas, @gracepiper suggesting, “I’d go for a crisp acidic white to cut through the fat,” and @popeyeschicken shilling ,”Cakebread Chardonnay goes great with mild! A South African Shiraz really works well with the spicy. Bon-appe-fide!” @garyvee was silent on the matter, claiming to be on a plane en route to Bordeaux. What-ever. Searching on cork’d was similarly unhelpful. I can’t help thinking the info is in there, but somehow trapped behind a lousy search system

I picked up five wines, some from recommendations, some from guesswork, and bagged them in random order. Here are the notes, in the order tasted with white meat or dark, but remember that nobody knew what they were tasting at the time.

#1: Vernaccia di San Gimignano Tenuta le Calcinaie 2007
We were crushed when the bag came off. We really like Vernaccia. We love Tuscany. And it’s DOCG and biodynamic, too! But this one was just blah. Maybe too young, maybe not quite cold enough, it just wasn’t crisp or bright enough for Popeyes salty crispy gamy greasy goodness. The fact that it had a slight nose of grass was ironic, since that’s where much of it ended up. A bummer at $16.

#2: La Vieille Ferme Cotes du Luberon 2007
Generally acknowledged to be superior to #1, this Rhone white called “the old farm” had a not one but two chickens on the label but still didn’t cut the grease enough to make it a happy match. There was some evidence of oak amongst the generally fruity flavors, but we were wishing for more crispness. Not too shabby for $9 but save it for more delicately prepared chickens.

#3: Casal Garcia Vinho Verde (NV)
One guest identified this one immediately, citing the slight fizz and bright citrusy nature. We agreed at once that the necessary acid was present to put up with popeyes grease and salt. Some even opined that this wine might have applications outside the fried chicken world. Grapefruit, lime, and slight mineral notes made some wonder if this was a Sauvignon Blanc. Halfway through the flight, this Portuguese $5 bottle was in the lead.

#4: Oyster Bay 2007 Sauvignon Blanc
I think if the wines were known in advance, the smart money would have been on this Marlborough NZ white. And maybe if it didn’t have to follow the Portuguese it would have fared better. A typical (which is very good) but unexceptional example of its kind, Oyster Bay delivered a dry and fruity experience that was firmly ok with the chicken, especially the white meat. A solid performer at $12.

#5: Cakebread Cellars 2005 Chardonnay
It was obvious from the first sip that this wine was not like the others. “Napa chardonnay!” some cried. “It’s like licking a barrel” said others. Oak, vanilla, butter and all the hallmarks of a mature California Chardonnay were nicely balanced. Even guests who were disgusted at the very idea of tasting wine with fried chicken grudgingly sampled this one. It was Popeyes own recommendation, but did it match up with the chicken? The majority said no, not so much, the buttery nature didn’t jibe with the fried chicken. A few dissenters preferred it, though. At $46, you’d better be sure.

At least for this round, we declare Casal Garcia Vinho Verde Branco the best wine partner for Popeyes mild fried chicken. There’s plenty of room at our summer table for humble tasty treats.

So, what have we learned here? Well, first and foremost, we learned that further testing will be necessary. Without even expanding our research to spicy chicken or red or rose wines, we notably omitted Champagne, Pinot Grigio, and Gruner Veltliner, three very likely candidates for good fried chicken matches.

We also learned that price and conventional measures of wine quality don’t always mean as much as they’re cracked up to, especially when making non-traditional pairings. In terms of all the various advice we received, I have to hand it to @gracepiper of Fearless Cooking for being most prescient even without recommending a particular wine.

Humble thanks also to the Josephine ave crew for putting up with this affront to their gourmet sensibilities. Several more blog posts could - and should - be written to celebrate the lamb burgers, hummus, smoked chicken salad, trifle and cupcakes and other amazing treats on offer.

It’s dangerous business to compare a purchased scone, even one from a neighborhood bakery, to one made pretty much on demand by a friend. But since some of you might not be lucky enough to have such a friend, I offer these observations on The Biscuit’s scone.

There’s lots of cheese.  This is a good thing.  You can even see some rivers of molten cheese oozing out of the scone on the right.  On the other hand, there’s no bacon.  A split decision, but vegetarians win.  Take note, A, J and L.

The shape of these scones is blobular, not the more traditional scone wedge.  No real opinion on that, but at $2 a pop, I’m happy to report that they are good-sized without being unpleasantly huge.

They are moist, perhaps moister than I’d expect from a scone.  Perhaps there’s extra egg in the mix, resulting in a shiny exterior and a generally brioche-y demeanor.  Not a bad thing at all, just not quite the same as other scones I’ve seen and sampled.

I’m happy there’s at least one more savory scone out there, and I recommend you check them out.

You’ve never been to Cronin Park? I guess I’m not that surprised. It turns out that Cronin Park wasn’t even on Google maps until I added it. Brightkite doesn’t know where it is. Cambridge’s department of Public Works doesn’t list it on their parks page either. Why does Cronin Park get such short shrift?

Perhaps it’s because Cronin Park isn’t much bigger than a small house or large apartment. I count three trees in Cronin Park. There are no benches in Cronin Park, and no water fountains. You can’t let your dog run off-leash in Cronin Park. I suppose you could lie on the grass, but probably only in a long row, not side-by side. I’m pretty sure that if I set up a picnic in Cronin Park, I’d be asked to move along.

I often park next to Cronin Park, but seldom take the time to appreciate it. You can see my car in this satellite pic, not so far from where it’s really parked right this moment.

So what’s so great about Cronin Park? Honestly, not too much, but it’s there and it has a name, and James P. Cronin was somebody’s son, maybe somebody’s father too. It seems a shame that his park is a glorified traffic island. Even the meager bench or two that it could hold would transform Cronin Park into a place worthy of being mapped, a place where you might contrive to meet or hang out. And that, for my tax dollars, would be a better use of the space.

Back In 2004, I took a summer vacation to Italy and Croatia. Two weeks of incredible eating and drinking. Towards the end of the trip, I was in Split, from where I took a ferry trip to several Dalmatian islands, including Vis, which was billed as, “vineyard island Vis.” How cool an idea is that? On Vis, I tasted several local wines with names I could neither pronounce or remember, which is a shame. Back in Split, I popped into a wine shop to find something to bring back. The shopkeeper pointed me towards a bottle of Grgić Pošip 2002 with the instruction that it was good with fish. It was from Korčula, an island I did not visit, but it was dry and delicious. With fish.

Flash forward a couple of years, and I’m in San Francisco on business. Which of course means I’m dragging my hapless but not unwilling colleague to Napa for an afternoon. We visited a handful of wineries, large and small, and then happened upon Grgich Hills. Could it be the same as Grgić? How could it be, but on the other hand, how could it not? (I didn’t notice it then, but the red and white checkered shield of Croatia is on the Grgich HIlls label) They didn’t have any Pošip, but my colleague brought back some of their famous Chardonnay. It turns out that the two winemakers are connected, but not in the way I would have guessed.

The Grgic(h) story starts in Croatia (Yugoslavia, actually), with Miljenko Grgich born into a winemaking family and fleeing communism in the ’50s for West Germany, Canada and then California. Later known as Mike, Grgich worked with several illustrious California winemakers and eventually partnered with Austin Hills to form Grgich Hills Cellar in 1977. It’s not a place, it’s two names. The story returns to Croatia only in 1996 when Mike goes back to set up Grgić Vina to combine local Croatian grapes (which Mike has proven are the ancestors of modern California Zinfandel) and high-tech techniques learned in Napa. You can read the full story at the Grgich Hills Estate web site, it’s quite a capsule history of California Chardonnay.

I still don’t know much about the spelling disparity or where to get more Grgić Pošip, but I’m happy to be reconnected with the Grgich family, and will definitely be stocking more Grgich Fume Blanc if I can get my hands on it.

Why don’t I just take one of those papers from the box or the people handing them out? Well, that’s where it gets complicated. I don’t want to take a paper because I know I’m going to use it only ever so briefly and then I’ll feel responsible for either leaving it behind - arguably littering - or recycling it right away - which seems wasteful. Throwing it in the trash or using it in some art project don’t even make the list.

The free paper publishers know that litter is a big issue - they are banned for distributing on MBTA property and made a donation of hundreds of recycling bins (bags, really) to try and appease the transit people. So back to my eco-neurotic quandary: Is it littering to leave a newspaper on the subway so that others might read it, and does it make a difference if you originally picked up that paper or just found it on the seat?

If lots of people regularly left free papers on the seats, maybe some people would stop taking papers and the total amount of paper would go down. But if nobody ever took those papers off the train, there would be an awful lot of litter at the end of the day. Like a car that loses value when you drive it off the lot, a daily newspaper gets worthless fast.

I’m sure the law is clear: leaving stuff on the T, even nice clean stuff, even leaving it on the seat, is still littering. I’d also say that once you pick something up, you’re responsible for it, so leaving found stuff is littering again. But I still recoil at the waste of reading matter. Like many people (of the Book) I have a hard time throwing away or defacing books.

So here’s my wacky utopian proposal for the morning commute and reading time:

• If you were born on an even numbered day, you take papers on even numbered days, odd birthdays, odd paper days, and you leave those papers on the seat when you get off the train
• If its not your odd/even day, you pick up a left paper and are responsible for taking it off the train and recycling it
• After the main morning commute time, say 9:30am, alternate rules are off and any everybody is responsible for taking papers off the train

If everybody did this, we’d use only half as much paper for disposable free morning reading.  Fat chance of that.  The free paper people certainly don’t want to cut their circulation in half, and typical Americans aren’ t going to be interested in second-hand papers.

So until everybody switches to a more ecologically sound morning read, I will continue to be quietly grateful for minor littering, and will do my best to take my found paper with me on both odd and even days.

We had already had a preliminary meeting with each candidate agency, generally meeting a principal and a lead member of our team to be. So my idea was to ask each PR agency to send us the full actual team that would be working on our account, and to leave the principal behind. Tangy talked me out of the last bit at least in part because he thought the firms would just tell us to get lost. He might well have been right, but what happened instead was actually more revealing than meeting the team alone would have been.

We told each agency that we wanted to meet the full team and wanted the principal to keep her mouth shut as much as possible. After all, we had already heard the big pitch from the head honchos. We know that we won’t get that much time from the top dog and most of the daily work will be done by the mid-level and junior folks. We wanted to meet those people and hear what they have to say.

As it turns out, what we got to see was to what extent the principal really trusted the team in front of a client, or even more frighteningly, a prospective client. We threw out questions to individuals and to the group and watched when principals interrupted or corrected the junior people and when they let them speak. One principal spent much of the meeting talking about how she would be doing lots and lots of work for us and by implication calling her team amateurs. Not cool.

I suppose it might have been more traumatic for the junior people to get put on the spot by a client in front of the boss than for the boss to let them talk, but some of those junior people are going to run their own agencies some day, why not give them a shot now? Maybe someday I’ll be able to say that I believed in them back when they were just associates.

…and if I’m not mistaken, a Murphy Bed! A what, you ask? Wikipedia explains it all:

A Murphy Bed or Wallbed is a bed that flips up at the head end for storage inside a closet. … William L. Murphy applied for a patent for the Murphy bed on April 1, 1916 and was granted Design Patent D49,273 on June 27, 1916. Murphy started the Murphy Wall Bed Company and began production in San Francisco. In January 1990, the company changed its name to the “Murphy Bed Co. Inc.”

As you may know, I have a pretty small apartment, so this sort of gizmo appeals to me. And ya gotta love a patented bed. Especially one with built-in comedy value. Again, from Wikipedia. And I’m pretty sure there’s a good Murphy bed accident in one of the Pink Panther movies, too.

These beds make appearances in movies as they lend themselves to slapstick humor in which people are trapped when the bed folds into the upright position, carrying the person on the bed inside. For example, in Stanley Kramer’s famous comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the smarmy Otto Meyer (Phil Silvers) gets thrown from the fire truck ladder, through a window and onto a Murphy bed, which prompty retracts into the wall. In Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie, a hotel’s neon sign advertises “Murphy Beds — Charming to the Unsophisticated”. Modern murphy beds utilize a counterbalance system making it near impossible to get trapped.

I was kinda looking forward to getting trapped in there. It’s a killer excuse for being late to work. But the Murphy bed story gets better, there’s trademark abandonment, the downside of too successful a brand name:

In 1989, an appellate court held that the term “Murphy bed” is no longer entitled to trademark cover because a substantial majority of the public perceive the term as a generic term for a bed that folds into a wall rather than the specific model made by the Murphy Bed Co.

So what is this store called and what’s the deal with the Murphy bed in the window? Well, I searched around and found not one but three websites for this shop. I’ll share one called Closet Solutions, which now that I type it, is actually visible in the photo above. Duh. Will have to check this place out sometime when they’re open.

That said, I took up Tangy’s gauntlet and took stock of my social media memberships, and then joined a few more to see what’s what.  After all, his misguided Spurlockian stunt comes in part from my declaration that I’ll join almost anything just to secure the limeduck name against poachers. (Yes, I flatter myself to imagine that they might exist. Allow me some self-indulgence here, it’s my blog after all.)

It turns out that I have accounts on at least 29 social media and networking sites: (and even as I type this, I realize there are a few more…)

Social networks I actually use. There is original and timely content or information here because I log in frequently and maintain information.

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter

Marginal social networks. I log into these once in a while because they’re very specific or because I have a few important contacts unique to them.

• Technorati
• Plaxo
• Flickr

Insurance social networks. I maintain membership here because I believe its important to have updated information there just in case, or because I know some people search there or have contacts there.

• Spock
• Myspace
• Gather

Vertical social networks. These are very specific, maybe too specific, but I joined them to check them out and they seem to have some useful effect in keeping connected with topics of interest.

• Cork’d
• 9 Neighbors
• Foodbuzz
• Tripadvisor
• Stylefeeder

Social bookmarking sites. I just don’t use them much except occasionally to try and promote my site or a friend’s site.

• Digg
• Newsvine
• Stumbleupon
• Reddit

Repeater and aggergator sites. These are places where I have a profile that does nothing other than repeat or consolidate the RSS feed(s) from some of the sites I actually use and from limeduck.com. I’m here just in case one of these gets big and to protect the limeduck brand.

• Friendfeed
• HelloTXT
• Utterz
• Tumblr
• Pownce

OK, I admit it, I have no idea what these sites are for. I just joined them to try and stay ahead of Tangyslice.

• Plurk
• Humble Voice
• Trig
• Bebo
• Xanga
• Virb

Do I feel 29 times better?  Do I  have 29 times more to say?  Does this get me 29 times more traffic and search awareness?  Hardly.  Are there useful sites I haven’t discovered?  Almost certainly.  I’ll be disappointed if there are no comments alerting me to sites I’ve cruelly omitted.

Watch this space for updates.  Or any of the other 29 spaces.

Some people like to roast or grill asparagus, and some people like to boil or sautée them. I’m a boiler, but a very very particular one. I dread overcooked asparagus and watch mine like a hawk, tongs and colander at the ready, to ensure only the most medium rare of asparagus, al dente if you will. (and yes, I snap the ends off rather than cutting them - it’s easier)

I’m similarly minimal in dressing them. No cheese or creamy sauces for me. A drizzle of olive oil, fresh ground pepper and sea salt. Can’t beat it.

And the next day, the leftover asparagus joined some canned tuna, jicama and snap peas for an impromptu approximation of a Niçoise salad. Very approximate, but still tasty, and Nice is nice.

Clockwise from lower left: edamame and spicy seaweed salad, tuna tataki, spicy tuna roll, red rice veggie roll, salmon skin roll, tuna roll with scallions, octopus, stuffed mushroom, crab noodle cake. This was my first plate.

The sushi at Minado isn’t really all that grand, but it is reliably ok and individual types can be really good. And there’s a full hot buffet as well. For $40 each, we enjoyed all we could eat plus a drink, tax and tip. I suppose for the same money, you could have a single truffle hamachi maki with a drink, tax and tip at Oishii Boston, but you’d still be pretty hungry. But anyway, I was there for the company.

The conversation turned, as it often does, to social media stuff, as the assembled crowd had for a brief moment in history all worked together in the same marketing team. We compared Facebook notes (L is pretty into it for work, R finds old summer camp buddies there, H and J seem to be staying on the sidelines) and then everybody turned to (on?) me and asked, what’s the deal with Twitter?

I’ve tried to explain Twitter before and I generally fall back on “you just have to try it.” Like the matrix, no one can be told what it is. But I think I’m getting better at my answer now that after many moons of twitter-skepticism, I’m a heavy user and mildly bullish on the whole twitterverse. Here’s my new take:

If you just join Twitter and just start tweeting what’s on your mind, you’ll get bored quick unless you’re extremely self-absorbed. But if you find a micro-community of like-minded, or at least interesting and interested, micro-bloggers, and follow them and get followed — you’ll find yourself in a conversation of sorts. People tweet what they’re doing right now, but that’s not as interesting as when somebody tweets a question or breaks some news or reports on an event in progress, and people comment, reply, opine, and commiserate. And that can be interesting.

It could still be a giant load of hooey, of course. Constant partial attention, too many channels for too little information, tweetspam, the works. So far one of my dining companions has tweeted up and followed me. I hope I haven’t led her too far astray. At least I didn’t try to turn her on to Plurk.

One more social media note before we get back to the food. During the discussion I reeled off a list of social networking, social bookmarking, and other random web 2.0 type sites that I’ve joined recently. The overwhelming response was, good grief, why? Why indeed would I sign up for Gather, for example, when I already have LinkedIn and Facebook? For me, the answer is simple - invest a little energy in signing up and exploring because you don’t know what’s going to get big next, and you don’t want your favorite handle poached. A small investment of time for future brand security. (Speaking of personal branding, let me tell you - and google - that DougH means Doug Haslam - get a hundred more like that and you’re golden)

Now, dessert!

Green tea ice cream, chocolate cake, green jell-o. Why jell-o? It makes me laugh. That ice-cube-sized portion is about all the jell-o I’ll eat in a sitting. I boycotted the crepe station for its lack of nutella, but I’m told it was quite nice.

We’d been talking good trash about how many kappa maki we could eat (I think L’s record at a prior outing was 42) but the downside of such great company and conversation is that we talked more than we ate and were more or less thrown out of the place at closing time.

This reminded me of a great lesson via the excellent Presentation Zen blog. (really, it’s excellent, I even bought the book) Hara Hachi Bu means “eat until 80% full” and is a maxim that keeps Okinawans trim and long-lived. Garr links this idea to presentations, and by extension to business meetings and conferences, which are as chronically overstuffed as typical Americans at buffets and in front of televisions. Maybe this restraint will eventually save us from the flood of wannabe social media sites all doing the same thing or the deluge of pointless Facebook apps. We can dream, right?