Pizza My Heart

When a pizza craving hits me, I rarely opt for the chain restaurant variety. I typically stroll up a few blocks to my favorite neighborhood joint or bust out the Pillsbury dough (yep, Pillsbury) and whip one up on my own.

Domino's, however, is starting to tempt hungry people like me with its technology offerings. They are testing pizza tracking in 3,200 of its 8,000+ stores in the U.S. For safety reasons, customers won't be able to know exactly where the driver is, but the automated system can say whether or not the pie has left the store.

Pizza service technology (for lack of a better term) has taken shape in recent months. Papa John's and Pizza Hut have both introduced text-to-order and Dominos.com allows customers to rank pizzas created by others. The last time I checked, there were 11,800+ "registered pizzas," ready for ordering. Social networking for pizza? I doubt that is the last new media pizza offering we'll see this year...

Everyone's a Foodie

Whether I'm in a hotel for business or pleasure, I find myself browsing through all of the provided reading materials (save the Bible tucked away in a drawer). Last night, I discovered a Seattle magazine with a picture of some amazing blueberry pancakes on the cover. "Breakfast for dinner would be great," I thought to myself, yet decided on some standard room service fare instead.

Everyone, it seems, is a foodie these days. From culinary mini-classes at Williams-Sonoma to 30 Minute Meals recipe books, who doesn't think they can be the next Thomas Keller? Gourmet.com just relaunched their site, which is a clean and easy-to-navigate version of it's predecessor. It's yet another resource for everyday people to find inspiration for their upcoming meals.

Photography has played a big role in this shift. With Flickr tagging (my last "food" search yielded 2.477MM results) and sites like Tastespotting (which I have blogged about before!), culinary inspiration does not just come from the higher powers anymore. Every time I'm in the kitchen, I often have the need to grab my camera and snap a few macro shots myself.

So, maybe the person that took the blueberry pancakes picture wasn't a self-proclaimed foodie. But his/her work was enough to get me thinking about possibilities in the kitchen...and what my next brunch should look like.

Is that a pita in your pocket, or...

I typically think of my best business ideas while I'm out running. I've considered everything from fashion consultant companies to snack food stands to boutiques but I still haven't come up with something as brilliant as the Pita Pocket Bag.

So a few people may laugh when I pull it out at Nordstrom or J.Crew, but how much more fun would that be than your standard Coach wallet? While the burger phone from Juno is #1 on my food-items-turned-accessories list, the Pita Pocket Bag is a close second.

Material Girl

Ah, Tuesday. The day that DailyCandy Deals are delivered to my inbox and I am suddenly inspired to do some online shopping. There is nothing like the thrill of finding a good deal, especially when it's on something you've been coveting for a while. I've had my eye on a pair of brown boots recently, ever since I saw them on a very stylish girl near Union Square.

After a few rounds of Googling (since I am a hardcore comparison shopper and I like to see lots of images before I purchase something), I stumbled upon Polyvore.com. It's like collages + shopping + your own closet, all rolled into one. You are able to add items to a "set" and then save it for other users to view. This gives everyone the freedom to create outfits from items all over the web, which obviously isn't possible when you are cruising around on specific e-tailer sites. How else could you virtually combine a shirt from J.Crew with a dress from Nordstrom?

Even cooler still, is the fact that you can embed Polyvore.com code onto your own social networking page. All of your friends will be able to see your favorite outfits and maybe tell you if the date outfit you like maybe isn't a good idea after all.

Elf Yourself. Your friends. Your sister. Your co-worker...

Flashback to 2006.

While I am sitting at my desk at work minding my own business, a curious link gets emailed to me. Something about elves, it reads. Of course I click on it, only to find myself laughing hysterically at a small dancing elf with my coworker's face affixed to its body. The elf moves awkwardly across the screen, flashing a few hints of spirit fingers now and then.

Marketing gurus hailed this amazing ElfYourself.com concept as one of the most successful viral campaigns to date. With 11 million elves created in just 5 weeks, who could argue?

Ah, and now we head back to 2007.

Based on the success last year, the elves are back. After a launch in mid-November, the site has already had more than 41 million elves created, crushing all industry expectations. It equates to 35 elves made every second.

Interestingly enough, not many people can name the brand responsible for this stroke of genius. OfficeMax (yes, that's who it is) has a logo placed on the page but doesn't incorporate any other branding into the site. While much of the success can be attributed to the fact that it isn't covered in advertising, brand recall should still be a consideration.

For those of us who aren't big fans of little people in tights, there is also ScroogeYourself.com.

Tag, You're It

Thanks to my new Canon SD850 I have been able to get back on the photo-taking bandwagon. I am also a total Flickr junkie and can get lost in the "interestingness" pretty quickly. My one issue is that I am extremely lazy with tagging, and admittedly very uncreative. For example, my recent zoo trip resulted in the following tags:

zoo
animals
San Francisco
nature

Hm. I'm not sure people are going to be coming in droves to view my pictures, but "zoo" is listed as one of the top all-time tags on Flickr. (As a side note, "macromondays" is another Hot Tag that I found on Flickr. I will definitely be checking those out.)

While Flickr continues to build its database of tags and categories, other sites have been following suit and trying to get their users to label their information. ThisNext, a social shopping site that I have mentioned in a previous post, has launched a tagging initiathat encourages users to label items with "lux".




















I think is a great promotion that will increase membership on ThisNext.com, and also build community around products that are truly "lux". It would be great to see eLuxury (and other brands) start to view tagging as a marketing tool. By leveraging tagging, a tool that people on the site will use anyway, eLuxury could also further associate their brand with the luxury goods that they offer (a true differentiating factor when compared to other e-commerce sites).

Those Are as Good as Money, Sir...

Ah, the ol' beer I.O.U. "C'mon, help me do ________" and I will buy you a few beers. Unfortunately there hasn't been a way to keep anyone accountable...until now.

Foamee is a free service that allows users to keep track of who they owe beers to (and vice versa). It is based around Twitter so each person must already have a Twitter account. I can already see a trend of other Twitter "applications" whereby more and more people will start following random companies and personalities. There is a woman who is trying to lose 10 pounds and she is seeking support from the Twitter community. With 201 followers so far, it's not a huge number, but it is interesting to see how people are responding to someone that they don't know much about (just 140 character snippets every now and then).