Archive
A Few Blog Updates
Actual title which I wanted to use for this short post was talking about SSP (Shameless Self Promotion, of course), but then I decided against it. However, this is what this post mostly is all about – a SSP, consisting of some “asks” and updates.
First, the “ask”. SAVEUR, the “definitive culinary and culinary-travel magazine” (their own wording), is running its annual SAVEUR Blog Awards. There is at least one category there, “Best Wine Coverage”, where this blog might apply. If you like what you are reading and think this blog is worthy of a nomination, here is the link to do so:
http://www.saveur.com/article/contests/blog-awards-2015-nominate
Note that nominations will close on March 13th, so you have less than 2 days left. Apparently, the more nominations, the better it is, so … thank you!
Now, a few small updates regarding Talk-a-Vino and social media overall. After long hesitation, I created a Talk-a-Vino page on Facebook. The page had been live for about 9 month, and in addition to all of the blog posts, I share interesting wine news and articles there as well, so you might find it useful. Here is the link so you can follow the Talk-a-Vino page if you are not doing so already:
https://www.facebook.com/talkavino
In case you are using a blog reader, such as Bloglovin’, you can find my blog there as well – below is the “follow button” for your convenience:
Last note regarding social media – about 6 month ago, I finally made it to Instagram. I didn’t create a specific blog account there (yet), instead I created simply an account for myself, so while you will find some pictures of food and wine there, most of the stuff simply relates to the travel, places, nature, flowers and so on. I’m thinking about blog-specific Instagram account, but I don’t know how to manage two with an iphone – if you have any ideas, I would greatly appreciate an advice. In any case, feel free to connect with me on Instagram (@anatoli.l).
And before we close here, a “local update”. In general, I pay very little attention to the ratings of the specific wines. However, I’m curious to know the average ratings for the wines in the specific region for the specific year. That information can be found in so called Vintage Charts. There are many sources for the various vintage charts – some are region specific, and some cover whole lot of different regions. In case you ever need to find and compare the different vintage ratings, I created a new page here in this blog which you might find helpful – here is the link. On the page, you will find a collection of various Vintage Charts from the different sources.
And this is all I have for you on this Wine Wednesday. Have a glass of something tasty and cheers!
Before The Time Runs Out – To Replace The Google Reader, It Is. Or – How Do You Follow?
If there ever be a contest for the longest blog post title, I would have a good shot at winning, don’t you think? It also shows that I can’t make decisions – as to what title is better, as the least. But then I know from the business world that huge number (majority?) of e-mails are not read past the first line, so one really needs to put out all at once…
Anyway, let’s move closer to the subject. As you probably know, Google announced the End of Life for their Reader as of July 1st – and I don’t know about you, but Google Reader was one of my tools of choice to follow the blogs en masse. With Google reader, it was easy to see what is new with the blogs I follow, and easy to focus on reading posts from one blog at a time. Yes, you can subscribe to follow most of the blogs via e-mail – possible, but considering how we all are inundated with the e-mails, it is easy to expect that many posts will just slip through the cracks – lots of e-mails will accumulate for “I will read it later” section, until one gets overwhelmed with amount of unread e-mails and then hits “delete all” button.
Just to give you an idea of how my Google Reader screen looked like, here is a snapshot:
My Google reader Screen – see how everything is grouped by the blogs?
So I started to ask around. I heard from my friend Patty of P’s 2013 Photo Project that she started to use Feedly, but has limited success. Then I asked my friend Kfir, who is The Guru of Social Media, and his advice was – well yes, try Feedly. So at last, I also decided to consult another friend who is close with billions of people (yep, Google search engine), and I found a web site called Replace Reader. This is what I saw there:
Replace Reader screen
As you can see, Feedly has #1 spot. But before going to Feedly (I have to make my own mistakes, part of my DNA, I guess), I decided to try Bloglovin – easy installation, quick sync with Google Reader, and voila. But I didn’t like what I saw too much:
Bloglovin reader screen
The reason I was not too happy with it? It resembles WordPress Reader, which only presents all the blog posts sequentially, sorted by day and time, and if you didn’t read the blogs for a few days (I know, you don’t believe this can happen to anyone – not to read blogs for a few days – OMG, the world is ending…) – but if you actually didn’t read blogs for a few days, good luck following up on what you read and what you didn’t read… This is my WordPress Reader screen, just to give you an idea:
So it seemed that trying the Feedly is inevitable. Download, install (it actually installs a browser plug-in, so you have to restart the browser). Sync up with Google Reader. The first view is a mess – it is called “Title only view”, and it is just a collection of blog posts sorted by date – nowhere near to blog-sorted Google Reader:
Feedly Title Only View
But – Feedly actually offers a number of different views – Magazine view is better, as it allows me to see the blogs I follow in more structured way:
feedly magazine view
See that list of the blogs on the top right side? Now I can see with single glance what do I have to read where. But the best view in my opinion is the one which is provided as “Index”
feedly index view
So I think Feedly with the Index view is what I’m looking for – hopefully it will help me to stay on top of my “follow” game.
Now, the big question is – how do you follow? I’m really curious to know what do you do to follow the blogs you want to read?
Also hope you had a good glass of wine before the new week starts. Cheers!
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