At the European Wine Bloggers Conference (EWBC), Ryan Opaz talked about new web tools that allow people to tell stories more effectively online.  I’ve embedded the video of his presentation below, his slideshow, a list of all the tools he mentioned, and then a couple attempts to use the tools.

Storytelling Technology w/Ryan Opaz from Vrazon on Vimeo.

 

Web tools mentioned

These are broken down into some amorphous categories in Ryan’s presentation.  I don’t agree with all of them, but I’ll stick to his order for the sake of simplicity.

Blog publishing platforms

• Blogger – a blogging platform, less awesome than the others on this list
• WordPress.com – WordPress hosted site, great free platform
• WordPress.org – self-hosted blog with wordpress content management system.  This is how I publish the blog you are currently reading.
• Tumblr – Perfect for telling short stories with quick uploads or highlighting links/photos/media in an easy, aesthetic way.  Might belong in the microblogging category.
• Posterous Spaces– One post here and posterous will turn around and post your update everywhere (ie any blog you set up, any social media account, etc.)
• Squarespace – A premium website creator that is apparently pretty intricate.  For your typical 1000 € website that lots of wineries make, this makes just as much sense (if you have decent design sense) as hiring an outside contractor.  Never used it myself though.

Microblogging

• Facebook – duh.
• Twitter – duh.
• Linkedin – why?
• Alternativeto.net –  Alternativesto totally doesn’t belong in the middle of the microblogging slides, but SUCH is life.  It’s awesome for finding new tools in any of these categories.
• Google+ – awesome?

Audio

• RSS/Podcasting explanation – Really Simple Syndication is a system that lets people know when you’ve updated your website.  Podcasts are audio recordings that use RSS to appear in your mailbox or mp3 player or whatever everytime they’re released.
• AudioBoo – ultra easy way to record audio and immediately publish it

Video

• YouTube – duh
• Qik – like audioboo for video. that is to say pushbutton recording and publishing for your camera phone.
• Animoto – effortlessly make jazzy looking slideshow presentations by uploading photos and music

Weird alternative forms

• Timetoast – timeline creation
• Dipity – more interactie timelines
• Bundlr – like a publishing platform for bookmarks
• Del.icio.us – like a publishing platform for bookmarks
• Pinterest – like a publishing platform for bookmarks
• Flickr galleries – like a bookmark platform just for photos on flickr
• Storify – compile tweets, videos, facebook stuff, etc. to make interesting narrative storylines

Multipurpose tools

• Prezi prepare dynamic slideshows
• Aviary browser based photo editing / art software
• Gimp like photoshop but free and open
• Audacity free audio editing software
• Vimeo amazing video platform; like youtube but better quality (and less community interaction/traffic)  Why isn’t this in the video section?
• Evernote – take notes on everything in one place; lists too
• Voice2Note – voice recordings made easy
• Google Apps – google’s suite of office applications, totally free, includes gmail masked through your domain name
• Scrivener – writing suite that will change the way you think about word processors
• Hover – domain management

Tools not mentioned

• ustream – super simple streaming video recordings
• vocaroo – quick audio recordings; sort of a poor man’s audioboo
• viadeo – billing themselves as something like the French LinkedIn, it’s not surprising Ryan Opaz glossed over them.  It’s very French and very business-y.  But a lot of people swear by it.
• adegga, vinogusto, winedemon – Ryan didn’t really talk about social media sites devoted to wine but these can be an important stomping ground for wineries to tell their stories.  some sites like cellartracker really don’t offer that opportunity to winemakers, but others like Adegga allow for a lot of interaction and “ownership” on the part of producers.

Effort to use the tools

Animoto – I made an animated slideshow for my B&B with animoto.  It was pretty painless but the free version is pretty amateur.  It beats most of the ridiculously boring slideshow software I’ve seen, but it’s a far cry from the quality level I like.  It’s great for a little slideshow for fun.  I wouldn’t be proud enough to put it permanently on the landing page of my website.  I bet the premium version is awesome though and it only costs like 5 bucks to do an unlimited number of videos for a month.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Dipity – I used this timeline tool and I think I should have used it for something else.  I decided to start compiling a history of wines of carcassonne (upcoming book project), but I realize now that I missed the mark.  This tool is really designed for contemporary, breaking news events.  Or personal uploads.  Regardless, here’s my first work in progress on the site.

Bundlr – I started using bundlr for an upcoming Carcassonne audio guide project which also ties into the geolocation presentation I’ll be giving at Vin 2.0 in Paris this December.

Storify – I tried to use storify to make something about the EWBC but it was already November and most of the tweets from the EWBC were already buried in the archives.  Unless I’m missing something, storify is really meant to be used AS the event is unfolding.  So I missed the opportunity to do one for the EWBC.   But Wine Future Hong Kong was happening that day so I made a storify for it.  The interface was very easy to learn and I’d say this whole experience was good.  I like it.  The finished product looked professional and was easy to read.  And people loved my summary.  It got a lot of retweets and attention.  And it just involved me picking out my favorite tweets, photos and links (and I mostly pulled these photos and links from tweets too).  And then it serves as link bait because everybody mentioned in your storify is proud that you cited them.  Plus sometimes you get the opportunity to be pretty funny.  One complaint: I didn’t realize that the URL wasn’t customizable so my hong kong wine future storify still has a soave italy url. Ooops.

View the story “Hong Kong Wine Futures 2011” on Storify

 

So I set up Wine Everybody as my home page for a week.  Wine Everybody is a feed aggregator and social media platform specifically oriented toward wine.  It takes all the feeds from good wine blogs, tweets related to wine, message boards, etc.  and puts them in one place.  It is currently in beta.

The Short version:

Pros

• fast-loading
• no bugs
• responsive design team
• flexible search parameters
• highly customizable
• winnows out affiliate marketers and spam
• does everything you expect (e.g. link to facebook and twitter accounts, one click publishing)

Cons

• doesn’t track what I’ve already read
• I personally dislike some of the CSS (buttons pop up when you point your cursor at a block of text. it moves everything in the column downward and disorients me)
• goofy name (I’m one to talk, right?)

Suggestions

• Add a “follow this person on twitter” button
• Add a “rss url” field so that I can add good feeds to other aggregators I use
• Find out if I’m the only person who hates the popup buttons

The Long Version:

I wanted to give it an honest try to see if it would become a permanent part of my life or not.   My impression is that it’s an overall worthwhile website that works remarkably well considering it’s only in beta.

Now, technically, I set up a specific search query as my homepage.  Rather than loading the generic “Tons of articles about wine” page, I load specifically to a narrowed down search for the term “Languedoc” or “Roussillon”.  This is more pertinent to my work so I said to myself it would be more useful.  And it’s a better point of comparison to the tools I already use (like google alerts for the phrases “Languedoc vin” “Languedoc wine” “Roussillon vin” and “Roussillon wine”).

Immediately, I have to say it’s pretty cool that I don’t need FOUR separate search queries on Wine Everybody.  They have a really simple interface that lets me search for articles with Languedoc or Roussillon and then the entire website only reads stuff about wine and vin, so I get all four of my usual feeds in one little bundle.

Also, it’s pretty admirable that most of the content from my google alerts also pops up in the Wine Everybody interface.  I was worried that some news feeds like local Languedoc papers might not be included in their feed, but I generally saw the same stories published in both Wine Everybody and my google alerts.  Wine Everybody runs a lot faster than Google Reader too.

The only real downside is that Wine Everybody doesn’t track which articles I’ve read quite as clearly as Reader does. . . but that might just be because I haven’t explored the site enough.  Plus the site designers at Vinternet are pretty savvy, so there is still time for them to add features like this one.

While I haven’t fully explored it, I also enjoy Wine Everybody’s level of interaction with message boards.  Internet forums often get overlooked by the feeds I currently have aggregated.  I think a lot of the time new posts don’t have all the same keywords in them and that’s how they get ignored.

Anyway, I’m kind of rambling.  But I wanted to write up a little review of my first experiences with Wine Everybody.  I think the name is sort of goofy.  But I like what the website does.  Will it stay as my homepage?  For now, yes.  On one of my computers.  Although I feel bad because this experiment is adding like ten minutes to my dad’s computer time each morning as he struggles to type G-O-O-G-L-E-.-C-O-M every time he opens a new window.  Bless him.