I’ve been through a long music drought through the end of winter. I finally have some albums worth referring. Enjoy.

Band of Horses
Everything All The Time

Just buy this album. It’s hard not to just put this thing on repeat and play it to death. I’ve been wanting something like this for a while. Seriously–buy this, listen, then come back and check out the rest. You’re still reading. Go get it. My Morning Jacket’s Z was the last album that made me play this much. Before that? Not even sure.

Mates of State
Bring It Back

The first few runs through the 30 second samples didn’t convince me on this album. How wrong I was. In the right mood they finally hooked me. And now, upon more listening, not sure why I didn’t dig it from the start.

Metal Hearts
Socialize

A softer, poppy group of tracks–but Metal Hearts are getting good rotation on the stereo and the iPod–at work, at home, in the car. The cover art reminds me of Magic Numbers–and maybe the sounds do too (not really–sorry it was late when I wrote this). Socialize is the stickiest of the tracks with a hooky repetitive loop that ebbs and flows through the arc of the song.

Tapes ‘n Tapes
The Loon

A unique set of tracks that sound distinctive yet familiar. I think the albums I’ve selected for this Fulminate all fit well into a playlist–as evidenced by my recent tracks played.

The Lilys
Everything Wrong Is Imaginary

This is a pretty whacked out set of songs. Play. Play again. Enjoy. It may take a while to grow. But it will. Gina was unimpressed through the first few tracks I previewed for her. I think she’s warmed up to it like a good spicy chai.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Show Your Bones

It’s not Fever to Tell, but I think I like to better. Too early to tell. But not too early to know there are some winning tracks here. Like Mates of State the songs didn’t immediately grab me but have since.

The Sounds
Dying to Say This to You

This is grrl garage rawk. If I had a 67 Impala I’d be pumping this at volume 11 and riding the roller coaster pasture hills of my childhood home of Wisconsin. A sixer anyone?

Business 2.0 has an interesting feature this month: Road Warrior’s Guide to Travel (at the time of publishing, the site didn’t have the April issue content up). The best of the Road Warrior (?) tips involve air travel. Check out Flight Stats.

The best way to see the value immediately is through the Flight Report. I can imagine scheduling all my business travel through an engine like this. And imagine if you actually paid for performance? I’ll use LGA to ORD as the test flight. It would work something like this:

First, if you delve into on-time performance metrics, you’ll see that on-time is relative. I can travel from New York to Chicago and have a scheduled flight time of 2 hours and 26 minutes if I leave at 6 am and 2 hours and 35 minutes if I leave at 7 am. The later flight has 9 extra minutes built in. Why should I pay the same for a flight that is scheduled for 6% longer for me, all things equal.

The key there is “all things equal.” If price adequately reflects demand (which we shouldn’t assume) we have to understand the components of demand. Comfort, speed, convenience, meets schedule needs, etc…

So let’s go back to the LGA to ORD example. There are five flights that leave on a weekday between 6 and 7 am. Say I need to get to a 10 am meeting in the loop. My primary concern is making the meeting on time–but I also don’t want to get up any earlier than I need to. These five flights are all in play.

So I’ll start with the two 7 am flights. How much time will I have from the time I land until the meeting? I want to give myself 60 minutes from the arrival. That means I have to arrive by 9:00. Looks like I won’t have a problem with either flight. But what are the chances of landing on time? The United flight (669) is on time (within 15 minutes of sked arrival) 78% of the time. The American (305) does a little better at 81%.

The next check is, if it is late, how late will it be? United averages 14 minutes delay with a standard deviation around 11. American comes in with an average of 15 minutes and a high standard deviation of around 31 minutes. So while they have a good chance of being on time, the American flight has much more variance in arrival time–if it is late it will have a much greater chance of being significantly late.

So based on performance, how much more or less will I pay for the American flight over the United flight?
Rather than using Flight Stats on-time percentages, I’m using their average and standard deviation on delays to come up with the 90% Minutes metric: I have a 90% chance of being no more than x minutes late.
For American flight 305, my 90%m is 55 minutes — 90% chance of arrive by 9:29 am.
United flight 669 90%m is 29 minutes — 90% chance of arriving by 9:03 am.

or

I have an 85% chance of arriving by my target time on United 669–subtract a 6% chance of the flight being cancelled = 79% chance of success.
I have a 62% chance of arriving by my target time on American 305–subtract a 6% chance of the flight being cancelled = 56%

This is just the start. If the meeting start time is very important–I’m depending on other people also arriving at certain times, 79% might not even be good enough. This also is using an average that hasn’t accounted for seasonality or additional weather concerns, that I can tell. Without taking this all the way through, so far I decided I have a 24% probability advantage on United. I’ll work some more on this in a later post.

I’ve started the BBX metrics again in time for the NCAA tourney. I’ll define, refresh, and refine the metrics over the coming weeks. I’m still using the Maui Invitational game between Gonzaga and Michigan State as the BBX base. That game is rated a 1. A game rated a 4 means that the Gonz vs Mich State game was 4 times more exciting. So the higher the BBX, the more of a blowout. Here’s a start using the four games from today.

	Iowa	67
	Weighted Time:	-6385
	Avg Points Lead:	-2.67
	% Game Lead:	18%

	Ohio State	60
	Weighted Time:	+6385
	Avg Points Lead:	+2.67
	% Game Lead:	78%

BBX Index: 4.2

(lower is more exciting)
This game could be considered the most exciting of the day. Even though there were only 7 lead changes, the fact that Iowa came back to win after trailing 78% of the game makes for good drama. However, most of the game Ohio State dominated. If you had checked in during the game prior to the last 5 minutes, there wasn’t much excitement to be had.

	Boston College	76
	Weighted Time:	-7943
	Avg Points Lead:	-3.31
	% Game Lead:	17%

	Duke	78
	Weighted Time:	+7943
	Avg Points Lead:	+3.31
	% Game Lead:	73%

BBX Index: 5.2

Boston College versus Duke was a decisive victory over the span of the entire game. However, you can see two major downturns in their lead. Many of their games I’ve watched this season seem to follow the same pattern–at least with sharp downturns where they lose the lead and have to recover. Today there were 15 lead changes (I’m counting evening up the score a lead change–no leader). If you saw the game today, you know Reddick is the reason for the sharp uptick at the end of the game–and the win. He’s going to have to be on during the tournament. You’d think every team is going to try to shut down J.J.

	South Carolina	47
	Weighted Time:	-16289
	Avg Points Lead:	-6.77
	% Game Lead:	0%

	Florida	49
	Weighted Time:	+16289
	Avg Points Lead:	+6.77
	% Game Lead:	98%

BBX Index: 10.6

The least exciting game of the the day–this one. Only 3 lead changes–and that was Florida going from a tie, to the lead, to a tie, and then the lead for the rest of the game. A low scoring sweep by Florida. The final score doesn’t let on how dominant Florida was.

	Kansas	80
	Weighted Time:	3368
	Avg Points Lead:	1.40
	% Game Lead:	59%

	Texas	68
	Weighted Time:	-3368
	Avg Points Lead:	-1.40
	% Game Lead:	30%

BBX Index: 2.2

This was the closest game of the day. And if you use the final score as a judge of closeness, you’d be way off. There were a whopping 28 lead changes. Kansas didn’t really take control until the last 7 minutes or so. At that point the margin increased beyond recovery.

The best image a speaker has been able to create during a presentation comes from Linda Stone. Her image: email is the wood chipper (think Fargo) of attention. Her main point–think about applications, services, products, as improving quality of life.

Imagine inventorying everything you use during the day through that lense.

I’m taking reams of notes–and it’ll take time to synthesize all of it. There are definitely some themes emerging–some insightful, some misguided. I’ll be making some more comments throughout the week.

Announcements of interest this morning:
Clay Shirky and creating the Patterned Language
Eventful and Demand and an API
Flex 2.0 — Ajax meets Flash

Plum and APIs: collect and share anything

In a break right now. The breakout sessions this afternoon haven’t been as good as the morning sessions–which were excellent.

Ray Ozzie started it off with quotes like:

RSS is DNA of wiring the web
Connecting tissue between web sites
Composite applications
Closer to the user, the more agile in solving the problem
Weaving together a composite application
An application bus
The user weaves together a larger application

And coming to the question: Where is the clipboard of the web?
His answer? WindowsLive Clipbook

It basically allows you to drag, cut, copy and paste information from the web… and it’s smart enough to understand the “data behind the data.” Basically it exposes atomic web data in the most discrete meaningful chunks. So if you “clip” an address on a site you can drag it to your outlook and save the contact info, etc.

My take? It’s AJAX meets RSS.

Then Jeff Han did his magic with the multi-touch screen. Awesome stuff. Key takeaways?
A multi-user collaborative interface.
An intuitive and powerful way to interact with an infinite desktop.
Zooming and manipulating objects on screen is magical.

My take: This will be the new musical instrument, mixing, and production tool.

That’s it for now. More later.

I’m thinking a lot about wine lately–thanks to good friends and their love of wine. There is a real possibility that they will start producing wine themselves. Where does my experience take me in helping them out: Marketing. And the first company I think of: Stormhoek. It is getting its buzz through the web. How much are other wineries using the web?

Using the Wine Spectator’s Daily Picks, I searched for each of the wine producer web sites. I only went 50 links deep in google to find them. Here are the results:
Under $15
CHÂTEAU LA GRANGE CLINET Premières Côtes de Bordeaux 2003 (86 points, $12)
No web site apparent.

CASCINA CASTLÈT Barbera d’Asti 2004 (83 points, $14)
All Italian, cheesy, but more full featured site. Check out the 2000-2002 copyright…

MONTGRAS Merlot Colchagua Valley Reserva 2004 (83 points, $10)
More of a placeholder site at the moment. Not sure how long the “new site is coming” has been there. Though buried only in pdfs, the wine tech sheets have lots of good info. If they can incorporate that into the new site beyond making the pdf into html, Montgras has potential.

CONCHA Y TORO Sauvignon Blanc Central Valley Casillero del Diablo 2005 (82 points, $9)
A more complete site than the smaller producers. It has both Spanish and English versions. While the site has quite a bit of information–it doesn’t seem very compelling for consumers and prospective consumers.

Over $30
CHÂTEAU SUDUIRAUT Sauternes 2003 (93 points, $55)
A site you’d probably expect. It’s all flash, English and French. It’s pain to click through more information… seems to be all about the style, rather than substance.

VILLAE LANATA Barolo Cascina Lo Zoccolaio 2000 (90 points, $50)
Another flash affair… style, less substance, and not much value add from a consumer perspective. It is the only site so far with three language options though.

SAN BIAGIO Barolo Sorì del Rovere 2001 (90 points, $50)
No site 50 links deep in Google.

This is by no means a representative sample… and I’ll keep plugging through these. But it’s a start, nonetheless. And from these first seven producers, I don’t see much innovation in an online customer experience.