Information about BarCamp NYC 2 can be found at BarCamp.org.

I’ll be presenting on “hacking the long tail”, discussing how the long tail phenomenon applies to WineLog. We’ll dispute the assertion that wine tasting note sites are doomed to fail and give some reasons why a social community and recommendation engine can be successfully applied to the domain of wine.

Kim and I will also be performing a little wine tasting. “Volunteers” will drink 2 of the 4 red wines we’re bringing. Then we’ll run their ratings through a little spreadsheet application I’ve rigged. The spreadsheet will predict their rating on the other two wines they haven’t drunk yet. Then we’ll see how good those predictions are. The spreadsheet is pretty cool, doing similar analysis to what is done behind the scenes at WineLog. But it also gives me the idea to package something up for people to download and use at their own tastings. Hmmm…

I’ll post back here after the (un)conference and let y’all know how things went.

PhotoCrank’s Demo presentation is available for viewing at demo.com. Go, Jeff!

I am pleased to finally be able to write about PhotoCrank, a service that adds clever overlays to the photos you snap on your mobile phone. Since mid-August, Kim and I have been helping the PhotoCrank team with their website’s design and development. The secret is out now; their site went live sometime this morning.

If you’re still reading this, you should take a break and check the service out for yourself. (Here’s the link if you missed it the first time: PhotoCrank.com.) From their blog:

PhotoCrank is a fun and easy way for you to add entertaining graphics and customized captions directly on top of your mobile photos. There is no software required. All you need is the camera phone in your pocket, and it works at the speed of a picture message.

Cranking a photo is as easy as sending a “pix message” from your mobile phone to an email address (like try@photocrank.com). A team of leprechauns and fairies, working for minimum wage, will add the crank over top of your image and send it back to your phone. A version is also stored at PhotoCrank.com for archiving and to send mass emails later.

Your carrier will charge you their normal fee for sending a picture message. PhotoCrank will charge you an additional $0.20 to $0.30, which is billed to your cell phone, depending on the package you choose. Right now, PhotoCrank’s part of this charge is waved on the first 3 cranks you send.
Jeff and the crew at PhotoCrank are great to work with, and I’m proud of the application they are releasing this week. Kim and I thought the idea was awesome back when it was just a few sketches and a simple prototype. But now that I’m actually able to crank photos from my own Razr and browse through all the cranks on the website, I’m even more excited about things. I can’t wait for my next night out just so I can create more images like this one:

I’m also proud of the design work Kim did on this project. Take a look at how far things have come from the design for the early prototype we built back in July to the final design of the site launched this week.

Kim also did some print work for PhotoCrank, designing this awesome one-sheet they’ll be handing out at the Demo conference in California, where Jeff and the PhotoCrank team will be presenting later this week. (Be sure to check them out there if you are attending or keeping tabs on that event.)

I have a minute, so I’ll throw in a little praise for myself. The original plan was to handoff a static HTML wireframe, with just the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript components programmed. Jeff and Paul were busy jumping hoops for the phone companies and tweaking PhotoCrank’s porn filter however, so I brushed off my VB and ASP.net skills and helped out with some of the server-side programming. For a couple of weeks, I moved shop over to the PhotoCrank office where I got busy, did some .net development, ate as much as 1 1/2 cheese steaks each day, and brushed up on my devil-sticks skills.
Again, I can’t emphasize how great Jeff, Paul, Cristyn, Yoni, and the others behind PhotoCrank are. This is just the beginning for them. I know they have a lot of plans for their product, and I look forward to working with them in the future.