I'm going to work with James on adapting the existing Wordpress hReview plug-in for wine reviews and begin to post my tasting notes in this format. If anyone would like to participate with us, let me know.
Here are the details:
Exisiting plug-in code (v 0.3) as a starting point - http://www.aes.id.au/?page_id=28 Target Wordpress 2.2 Modify/add wine relevant fields Change rating system to 100 point scale (i.e. 50-100, not current 5 star)
Working prototype by July 15.
Ryan also posted an challenge for someone to come up with the "Twitter for tasting notes" (e.g. super easy entry with RSS auto-publishing to popular blog platforms like Wordpress). This sounds to me like Cork'd with email output or running an aggregator on your blog subscribed to your notes feed at those services. The only problem is no one seems to publish the details of the notes to their RSS feeds in the four services I tested (Cork'd, Bottletalk, Vinorati, Winelog). Of these, only Vinorati sent the text notes down the feed but there were some other things I didn't like with the output and input is not as slick as I'd like to see. So of these, if Cork'd output more detail, I might just log my notes there and setup Winecast to poll the feed once a day to republish them on my site. Let me know if I should check out any other tasting notes sites to see if they might work for this.
I would love to see this, I said it have jokingly, but Twitter for TN's would be AWESOME! A desktop client even better. Cutomizable output, over the top! Really this would make it MUCH easier to get some of the less motivated among us to add notes...thus expanding the depth of information!
BTW the moving from a 5pt to 100pt makes little sense to me. I use the 5pt, but why not make it dual or opt out? If most TN sites are trying to make it so that they can "auto-recommend" wines to people then the Points will fade away eventually and descriptors, thanks to hreview's, will become more powerful.
> I'm going to work with James on adapting the existing Wordpress > hReview plug-in for wine reviews and begin to post my tasting notes in > this format. If anyone would like to participate with us, let me know.
> Here are the details:
> Exisiting plug-in code (v 0.3) as a starting point - http://www.aes.id.au/?page_id=28 > Target Wordpress 2.2 > Modify/add wine relevant fields > Change rating system to 100 point scale (i.e. 50-100, not current 5 > star)
> Working prototype by July 15.
> Ryan also posted an challenge for someone to come up with the "Twitter > for tasting notes" (e.g. super easy entry with RSS auto-publishing to > popular blog platforms like Wordpress). This sounds to me like Cork'd > with email output or running an aggregator on your blog subscribed to > your notes feed at those services. The only problem is no one seems to > publish the details of the notes to their RSS feeds in the four > services I tested (Cork'd, Bottletalk, Vinorati, Winelog). Of these, > only Vinorati sent the text notes down the feed but there were some > other things I didn't like with the output and input is not as slick > as I'd like to see. So of these, if Cork'd output more detail, I might > just log my notes there and setup Winecast to poll the feed once a day > to republish them on my site. Let me know if I should check out any > other tasting notes sites to see if they might work for this.
This thread had me take another look at our RSS code, and I was able to fix some bugs. So we were posting notes through RSS (though there was a bug) and now are posting comments through a users RSS feed as well.
I think this discussion/effort is very interesting. I could see writing a WordPress plugin that would listen to your WineLog feed and auto post about a wine from it. So you would review the wine at WineLog and then it would show up on your blog.
I suppose I could also be adding more wine info into the feed (varietal, etc) and coding it with microformats. Or this could be done on the plugin side.
Let's keep this discussion up. And let me know if you guys need any help. I'm super busy, but will try to help out if I can.
Regards,
Jason Coleman Co-founder, WineLog.net
On Jun 15, 6:47 am, Ryan Opaz <obisco...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I would love to see this, I said it have jokingly, but Twitter for > TN's would be AWESOME! A desktop client even better. Cutomizable > output, over the top! Really this would make it MUCH easier to get > some of the less motivated among us to add notes...thus expanding the > depth of information!
> BTW the moving from a 5pt to 100pt makes little sense to me. I use the > 5pt, but why not make it dual or opt out? If most TN sites are trying > to make it so that they can "auto-recommend" wines to people then the > Points will fade away eventually and descriptors, thanks to hreview's, > will become more powerful.winec...@gmail.com wrote: > > For those here who don't read my blog an interesting discussion has > > broken out in the comments of this post:
> > I'm going to work with James on adapting the existing Wordpress > > hReview plug-in for wine reviews and begin to post my tasting notes in > > this format. If anyone would like to participate with us, let me know.
> > Here are the details:
> > Exisiting plug-in code (v 0.3) as a starting point -http://www.aes.id.au/?page_id=28 > > Target Wordpress 2.2 > > Modify/add wine relevant fields > > Change rating system to 100 point scale (i.e. 50-100, not current 5 > > star)
> > Working prototype by July 15.
> > Ryan also posted an challenge for someone to come up with the "Twitter > > for tasting notes" (e.g. super easy entry with RSS auto-publishing to > > popular blog platforms like Wordpress). This sounds to me like Cork'd > > with email output or running an aggregator on your blog subscribed to > > your notes feed at those services. The only problem is no one seems to > > publish the details of the notes to their RSS feeds in the four > > services I tested (Cork'd, Bottletalk, Vinorati, Winelog). Of these, > > only Vinorati sent the text notes down the feed but there were some > > other things I didn't like with the output and input is not as slick > > as I'd like to see. So of these, if Cork'd output more detail, I might > > just log my notes there and setup Winecast to poll the feed once a day > > to republish them on my site. Let me know if I should check out any > > other tasting notes sites to see if they might work for this.
> This thread had me take another look at our RSS code, and I was able > to fix some bugs. So we were posting notes through RSS (though there > was a bug) and now are posting comments through a users RSS feed as > well.
> I think this discussion/effort is very interesting. I could see > writing a WordPress plugin that would listen to your WineLog feed and > auto post about a wine from it. So you would review the wine at > WineLog and then it would show up on your blog.
> I suppose I could also be adding more wine info into the feed > (varietal, etc) and coding it with microformats. Or this could be done > on the plugin side.
> Let's keep this discussion up. And let me know if you guys need any > help. I'm super busy, but will try to help out if I can.
> Regards,
> Jason Coleman > Co-founder, WineLog.net
> On Jun 15, 6:47 am, Ryan Opaz <obisco...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I would love to see this, I said it have jokingly, but Twitter for > > TN's would be AWESOME! A desktop client even better. Cutomizable > > output, over the top! Really this would make it MUCH easier to get > > some of the less motivated among us to add notes...thus expanding the > > depth of information!
> > BTW the moving from a 5pt to 100pt makes little sense to me. I use the > > 5pt, but why not make it dual or opt out? If most TN sites are trying > > to make it so that they can "auto-recommend" wines to people then the > > Points will fade away eventually and descriptors, thanks to hreview's, > > will become more powerful.winec...@gmail.com wrote: > > > For those here who don't read my blog an interesting discussion has > > > broken out in the comments of this post:
> > > I'm going to work with James on adapting the existing Wordpress > > > hReview plug-in for wine reviews and begin to post my tasting notes in > > > this format. If anyone would like to participate with us, let me know.
> > > Here are the details:
> > > Exisiting plug-in code (v 0.3) as a starting point -http://www.aes.id.au/?page_id=28 > > > Target Wordpress 2.2 > > > Modify/add wine relevant fields > > > Change rating system to 100 point scale (i.e. 50-100, not current 5 > > > star)
> > > Working prototype by July 15.
> > > Ryan also posted an challenge for someone to come up with the "Twitter > > > for tasting notes" (e.g. super easy entry with RSS auto-publishing to > > > popular blog platforms like Wordpress). This sounds to me like Cork'd > > > with email output or running an aggregator on your blog subscribed to > > > your notes feed at those services. The only problem is no one seems to > > > publish the details of the notes to their RSS feeds in the four > > > services I tested (Cork'd, Bottletalk, Vinorati, Winelog). Of these, > > > only Vinorati sent the text notes down the feed but there were some > > > other things I didn't like with the output and input is not as slick > > > as I'd like to see. So of these, if Cork'd output more detail, I might > > > just log my notes there and setup Winecast to poll the feed once a day > > > to republish them on my site. Let me know if I should check out any > > > other tasting notes sites to see if they might work for this.
On Jun 15, 5:47 am, Ryan Opaz <obisco...@gmail.com> wrote:
> BTW the moving from a 5pt to 100pt makes little sense to me. I use the > 5pt, but why not make it dual or opt out? If most TN sites are trying > to make it so that they can "auto-recommend" wines to people then the > Points will fade away eventually and descriptors, thanks to hreview's, > will become more powerful.
OK, so I'm going to hack the plug-in this weekend but need your help with the additional fields. Right now here are the one's I've identified in roughly the order they will be presented in Wordpress:
Winery Vintage Varietal Country Region Appellation Designation (e.g. Vineyard, Reserve) Retail Price Rating (1-5 stars) <-- This is the current scoring mode in the existing plug-in Score (50-100) <-- I'm going to add this but it might not make it into my first release
Let me know if I've missed anything here.
Once I have it running on Winecast, I'll post a review and the source code for everyone to use/test.
On Jun 15, 9:25 am, ideadude <idead...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think this discussion/effort is very interesting. I could see > writing a WordPress plugin that would listen to your WineLog feed and > auto post about a wine from it. So you would review the wine at > WineLog and then it would show up on your blog.
This might be closer to Ryan's Twitter dream as you support mobile devices. Go for it as I can see value in us coming at this from multiple angles for multiple purposes.
So if I'm on the road, I might use my phone to type a note and publish to Winelog that's then pushed to my blog much like Flickr does for photos (via email; WP directly supports this without any work on your end). We'll work the other end with an hReview plug-in for when we are at our computers that you can scrape from our RSS feeds. A win-win, I think.
And, Jason, please send me your spreadsheet for my notes ;-)
We have just "region". However, I may be able to tweak country, region, and appellation out of our data. When you enter a region, we actually compare it a list we have and place it. But our labels are like region level 1, region level 2, etc. They pretty well correspond to those anyway.
> Designation (e.g. Vineyard, Reserve)
We have just "name", which often includes the winery/producer and varietal. However I think we can get this by filtering out the winery/ producer and varietal from the name.
> Retail Price
We have a user entered price that often corresponds to the retail price.
> Rating (1-5 stars) <-- This is the current scoring mode in the > existing plug-in
winec...@gmail.com wrote: > On Jun 15, 5:47 am, Ryan Opaz <obisco...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> BTW the moving from a 5pt to 100pt makes little sense to me. I use the >> 5pt, but why not make it dual or opt out? If most TN sites are trying >> to make it so that they can "auto-recommend" wines to people then the >> Points will fade away eventually and descriptors, thanks to hreview's, >> will become more powerful.
I like the idea of giving the user a choice of at least the 5 point or 100 point scale. That should satisfy almost everyone. Or a more flexible option would be to allow the user to set the range (and then remember it). It's the job of the tasting note aggregators to normalize the scores into whatever range they use. This is what Scrugy does (i.e. 100 point scales are converted to 5 point when parsed). Luckily the hReview spec supports the "best" and "worst" classes so you can define your range.
> OK, so I'm going to hack the plug-in this weekend but need your help > with the additional fields. Right now here are the one's I've > identified in roughly the order they will be presented in Wordpress:
> Winery > Vintage > Varietal > Country > Region > Appellation > Designation (e.g. Vineyard, Reserve) > Retail Price > Rating (1-5 stars) <-- This is the current scoring mode in the > existing plug-in > Score (50-100) <-- I'm going to add this but it might not make it into > my first release
> Let me know if I've missed anything here.
Looks good.
I think the wine type can also be important. In most cases it can be inferred from the varietal but pink and dessert/late harvest wines cannot always be accounted for with just the fields above.
Price can be tough to make sense out of since it has so many dependencies. The TN author will probably know what they paid for the wine but it may not have been retail. And it may have been a taste/glass and not a 750ml bottle. Or it could have been a magnum. The currency should also be noted. To solve some of these issues I support the "money" microformat in hReviews which captures the amount and currency and added a "unit" class to support the size of the wine (default being 750ml). Probably a bit of over thinking here but just wanted to throw it out there.
Some other data points that can be important to some folks (authors and readers) is the alcohol and enclosure type. Obviously these are optional.
To see an example of how all of these data elements can be used with wine-centric hReview, see the following blog post.
Also, Scrugy has an unpublished (until now) hReview parser that can be used to test your hReview markup to see if at least Scrugy thinks it's valid. You can copy/paste an HTML snippet to be parsed or enter a URL to a web page that has an hReview on it. Here's the URL.
(Note: the current version doesn't support the "winetype" class yet but will soon).
Finally, I'd like to bring up the Wineformats wiki and user group. If you're interested in collaborating on how we can use microformats to better describe wine information on web pages and in RSS feeds, please take a look. The effort sort of stalled a few months back but perhaps we can build on what's going on here to tackle other areas.
ideadude wrote: > I think this discussion/effort is very interesting. I could see > writing a WordPress plugin that would listen to your WineLog feed and > auto post about a wine from it. So you would review the wine at > WineLog and then it would show up on your blog.
Another option is to use the blogging APIs to post the TN right into your user's blog when it's added to Winelog. That's the approach that I'm taking for the tool I'm building now.
> I suppose I could also be adding more wine info into the feed > (varietal, etc) and coding it with microformats.
1. Not just one varietal, but blends - how do you designate? (I feel like I keep asking this.)
2. User perspective on ratings of any kind. I use and value descriptors more, of course - but when I am buying, say, a camera, I will look at the reviews of people who gave it a poor rating to find out why they hated it, and the reviews of those who loved it for their reasons. Ratings aren't going away.
> 1. Not just one varietal, but blends - how do you designate? (I feel like I keep asking this.)
> 2. User perspective on ratings of any kind. I use and value descriptors more, of course - but when I > am buying, say, a camera, I will look at the reviews of people who gave it a poor rating to find out > why they hated it, and the reviews of those who loved it for their reasons. Ratings aren't going away.
> I have to echo what Jeff is saying here about the blends. Those can > be some of the more interesting ones. Whats the proposal for how > they're handled?
> On Jun 15, 11:47 am, Jeff Stai <j...@twistedoak.com> wrote: >> 1. Not just one varietal, but blends - how do you designate? (I feel like I keep asking this.)
>> 2. User perspective on ratings of any kind. I use and value descriptors more, of course - but when I >> am buying, say, a camera, I will look at the reviews of people who gave it a poor rating to find out >> why they hated it, and the reviews of those who loved it for their reasons. Ratings aren't going away.
On bottlemonkey.com, we track up to 4 varieties per wine.
I like the solution already presented in regards to pricing with the size and currency units.
Another thing we track is the alcohol percentage and if the wine is unfiltered or a reserve or an estate wine.
-- ======================================================== David Hageman <david.hage...@bottlemonkey.com> Developer/Founder http://www.bottlemonkey.com/ ========================================================
Jeff Stai wrote: > 1. Not just one varietal, but blends - how do you designate? (I feel like I keep asking this.)
The wine extensions that I've defined for hReview support multiple "varietal" elements that make up the wine's overall composition. Percentages can optionally be applied to each varietal to describe the breakdown for each varietal in the finished wine. Also, the "designation" field can be used to capture the special name given to many blended wines. A basic representation of the Twisted Oak Murgatroyd blend in an hReview might look like this:
<h1><span class="*vintage*">2004</span> <span class="*region*">Calaveras County</span> <span class="*producer*">Twisted Oak</span> <span class="*designation*">Murgatroyd</span> </h1> Murgatroyd is made of up of <span class="*varietal*">Cabernet Sauvignon</span>, <span class="*varietal*">Petit Verdot</span>, <span class="*varietal*">Tempranillo</span>, and <span class="*varietal*">Grenache</span>.
Is this sufficient or is there something else missing? Thoughts?
> 2. User perspective on ratings of any kind. I use and value descriptors more, of course - but when I > am buying, say, a camera, I will look at the reviews of people who gave it a poor rating to find out > why they hated it, and the reviews of those who loved it for their reasons. Ratings aren't going away.
Good point. Besides the "description" field, the "rel-tag" microformat can also be used as part of an hReview to provide descriptors. The "description" can also be combined with "rel-tag". Another example for how this might be formatted using the Murgatroyd wine description from your website.
<p class="description">With a name like "Murgatroyd" you might expect this wine to smell and taste like a pink mountain lion. While this wine is as <a href="..." rel="tag">dry<a/> and <a href="..." rel="tag">intense*</a>* as a night in the desert, and its spice and <a href="..." rel="tag">herbal</a> aromas might be the result of a romp in the sagebrush, nothing could be further from the truth. Bright aromas of <a href="..." rel="tag">plum</a> and <a href="..." rel="tag">blueberry</a>, and full fruit flavors of <a href="..." rel="tag">raspberries</a>, <a href="..." rel="tag">currants</a> and <a href="..." rel="tag">vanilla</a>, are certainly nothing like a pink mountain lion. Then again... why is he pink? </p>
The tags in the above paragraph can be extracted by an hReview parser, be normalized, and aggregated to provide a much more valuable tasting note than otherwise would be possible with straight HTML.
This is just an example. There are many variations possible and with CSS you can make it look any way you'd like.
Sorry to keep banging the drum on microformats here. I just think they provide a huge head start to reach the end goal of turning our content into information.
On Jun 15, 11:46 am, ideadude <idead...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Rating (1-5 stars) <-- This is the current scoring mode in the > > existing plug-in
Jason,
It would be really cool if you supported half-stars. I would also ask all the other sites interested in bloggers using your service and posting back to their blogs to do the same. I think there is a lot of potential for standardization on the 5-star system but we need the granularity of half-stars. More on this in a post at Winecast later tonight.
> On Jun 15, 11:46 am, ideadude <idead...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> Rating (1-5 stars) <-- This is the current scoring mode in the >>> existing plug-in
> Jason,
> It would be really cool if you supported half-stars. I would also ask > all the other sites interested in bloggers using your service and > posting back to their blogs to do the same. I think there is a lot of > potential for standardization on the 5-star system but we need the > granularity of half-stars. More on this in a post at Winecast later > tonight.
We currently support the 5 wine glasses (stars) in 1/2 increments. During implementation, we also agreed that the 5 stars needed the extra granularity.
-- ======================================================== David Hageman <david.hage...@bottlemonkey.com> Developer/Founder http://www.bottlemonkey.com/ ========================================================
If you had a ten star system, you wouldn't need half stars...:)
D. Hageman wrote: > We currently support the 5 wine glasses (stars) in 1/2 increments. During > implementation, we also agreed that the 5 stars needed the extra > granularity.
> If you had a ten star system, you wouldn't need half stars...:)
> D. Hageman wrote: >> We currently support the 5 wine glasses (stars) in 1/2 increments. During >> implementation, we also agreed that the 5 stars needed the extra >> granularity.
I like your humor, but all jokes aside, you do realize there is a good reason that all the rating systems just go up to five objects right?
It is quite a bit more visually appealing then having the 10 objects in a row. People also have to stop and slowly count each rating object when the number of objects get that high. Using the 5 objects in 1/2 increments gives them less to "think about", but still the same amount of control over the "opinion".
Again, internally - we map everything onto the 100 point system for the more experienced users.
-- ======================================================== David Hageman <david.hage...@bottlemonkey.com> Developer/Founder http://www.bottlemonkey.com/ ========================================================
That's an interesting perspective, and I hadn't entirely thought of it that way.
I tend to prefer ten stars/objects because they're easier for nearsighted guy (meaning me) to see. The half coloring of a half star is often too subtle for me.
I've seen them used well enough in Wired magazine, for example. To each their own, I guess.
D. Hageman wrote: > On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, Jeff Stai wrote: >> If you had a ten star system, you wouldn't need half stars...:)
>> D. Hageman wrote: >>> We currently support the 5 wine glasses (stars) in 1/2 increments. During >>> implementation, we also agreed that the 5 stars needed the extra >>> granularity.
> I like your humor, but all jokes aside, you do realize there is a good > reason that all the rating systems just go up to five objects right?
> It is quite a bit more visually appealing then having the 10 objects in a > row. People also have to stop and slowly count each rating object when > the number of objects get that high. Using the 5 objects in 1/2 increments > gives them less to "think about", but still the same amount of control over > the "opinion".
> Again, internally - we map everything onto the 100 point system for the > more experienced users.
> That's an interesting perspective, and I hadn't entirely thought of it that way.
> I tend to prefer ten stars/objects because they're easier for nearsighted guy (meaning me) to see. > The half coloring of a half star is often too subtle for me.
> I've seen them used well enough in Wired magazine, for example. To each their own, I guess.
> cheers! - j
You actually just illustrated what I call the biggest trade off - visibility. In the web world we get very concerned about space and presentation. I often feel that the rating stars often get too small to be useful and when they get too big they look ... amateurish or cartoonish.
Print graphics are much easier because you can ensure that everyone's final product is the same!
I have done and redone the wine glasses on http://www.bottlemonkey.com about 10 times. I have also tried using wine bottles instead of glasses. The idea of stars bores me. In truth, I just am not happy with any of it. ;-)
*sigh*
I am enjoying your candid thoughts on the matter. It never hurts to say, "but why?" and "wouldn't this be better?". :-)
-- ======================================================== David Hageman <david.hage...@bottlemonkey.com> Developer/Founder http://www.bottlemonkey.com/ ========================================================
It seems to me that when we look at distributing this data, we should strive to make detailed data available rather than "pre-destroying" it into a single score... why emulate the past?
> On Jun 15, 11:46 am, ideadude <idead...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Rating (1-5 stars) <-- This is the current scoring mode in the > > > existing plug-in
> Jason,
> It would be really cool if you supported half-stars. I would also ask > all the other sites interested in bloggers using your service and > posting back to their blogs to do the same. I think there is a lot of > potential for standardization on the 5-star system but we need the > granularity of half-stars. More on this in a post at Winecast later > tonight.
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