Every BBQ must be accompanied by appropriate drinks. To me, that means a great big pitcher of cold, juicy sangria. After last weekend’s humongous BBQ/Garden warming party where pitchers of it were drunk faster than I could make it, I thought I should share my (not-so) secret recipe.

Vero’s Pitcher Perfect Sangria Recipe

Ingredients:

• 3 parts red wine
• 1 part orange juice
• 1 part pineapple juice
• 1 part lemonade (Sprite or 7-Up to the North Americans)
• A good glug of apricot or cherry brandy
• Lime, lemon and orange cut into small pieces
• A splash of grenadine (optional, but a good addition if your wine isn’t so fruity/sweet)

For this recipe, don’t worry about using your best bottle of vintage red. A reasonable supermarket’s own brand red wine will do the job just fine. We tend to use Shiraz, since it’s less heavy than, say, a Merlot.

When getting lemons and limes, leave them out of the fridge the day you make sangria and roll them around under your palm before cutting the fruit. You’ll get much more juice out of them that way.

If you’re expecting to be on a marathon drinking session starting with a lunchtime BBQ, you might want to lighten up the recipe with more juices to avoid feeling woozy too early in the day.

Alternative recipes:

White sangria:
Substitute red wine for white wine, use apricot brandy instead of cherry brandy for a lighter, tannin-free sangria.

Cava sangria:
Substitute red wine for a bottle of Cava or sparkling wine for a celebratory, bubbly sangria.

Bellini sangria:
Using red, white or sparkling wine, replace brandy with Archers peach schnapps and put in pieces of soft, juicy peaches instead of lemons and limes. This makes a less acidic, sweeter alternative to the classic sangria recipe.

Looking for more great summer cocktails? Check out Cocktail Happy for loads of great, easy drinks recipes!

While I’m not sure my blog really fits within the technology category at all times, I suppose it’s had a geeky slant in recent years, so I should come to terms with it, eat my own dog food and take pride into the ranking they’ve given me!

Here’s my top 10 keywords list

1. canadian girls
2. baxi boilers
3. i can sing a rainbow
4. pouding chomeur
5. japanese makeup
6. cracked macbook
7. funny google searches
8. postsecret archive
9. virtual barbershop
10. canadian

Now I can’t believe I come up as the 4th result for “Canadian” in Google - when searching from a UK IP address, granted - but still!

So, go on, little Friday afternoon meme. What are your top 10 search terms?

Darren Rowse, pro-blogger and six-digit-salary man, tells bloggers to get rid of their inferiority complex, and I could not agree more! He gets loads of emails from bloggers asking for tips or advice (why don’t I get more mail from you readers?!) with many self-deprecating comments, claiming they’re “no A-list blogger” and “don’t write as well as they do…”

So this is to tell you, my fellow bloggers, to take pride in what you do. It doesn’t matter if all you write is a weenie little blog to track your child growing up, your BMI going down by preparing for a half-marathon for charity, or a technology rant.

Think positive, be proud of the fact that you’ve braved the wild world of blogging. You may not realise it but you’re boldly going where most of people around you won’t have. So grab that blog by the horns and be a sassy self-promoter. Whether it gets you a job, helps you find like-minded people for a project or just gives you an outlet to blow some steam off, enjoy the fact that you’re still more cutting edge than you might think.

But in my attempt to justify the thousands of updates I’ve posted on it, I’ll highlight a few amazing ways Twitter has helped me and those around me this week.

• It helped me discover how other bloggers felt about being accosted by PR agency, resulting in an article for The Blog Medic called “Marketing Ethics: Ten ways to piss off a blogger”.
• An ad hoc conversation led to a friend getting a job offer, and the entire conversation up to scheduling an interview call happened over Twitter.
• It allowed me to find a couple of new contracts for Pepsmedia redesigning blog templates & site launches.
• Since SXSW, I’ve managed to stay in touch with many of the lovely people I met there without going through the usual “ok I’ll reply to that email later”, where later becomes never. By keeping it bite-sized, Twitter makes it easy to stay in touch.
• I’ve found amazing support for the idea of SocialMediaCamp in London in July through fellow Twitter users who are interested and can provide skills and contacts I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise.
• A few people offered sound advice with regards to the process to setting up a limited company, again calling on the experience of others.
• It was the fastest channel through which I heard about Russell’s decision to stop developing Mowser on Monday night.
• It’s a great way to swap kitty photos with Mel Kirk

So there you go, it’s a business resource like no other, a great communication tool and an entertaining place to have water cooler conversations with like-minded people.

I bought it last year, got a great deal (literally, 25% off the original showroom price) on a brand new 5-miles-on-the-clock Ka, just weeks before I passed my driving test. We’ve taken great care of it, Andrew’s been the only person cleaning it - both because I’m a lazy cow and because he puts such love and care into it. He uses these fancy shmancy cleaning products acquired through a friend who’s a professional detailer (really high class valeting) and it always looks amazingly shiny.

As a rule of thumb, when he gets his car serviced at BMW, he always asks them not to wash it. I didn’t do the same when I went to Ford, which was a stupid move, because they cleaned it. The paint finish now looks like a bunch of children cleaned it with dish soap and gritty sponges. In the space of 3 hours, my car went from looking brand new to looking pretty averagely scratched.

Trying to discuss with the car valeting service manager, Brian, at Ford was pretty pointless. He wasn’t having any of it, “my boys didn’t do this. We clean 200 cars a day and they don’t do it that way.” Well… if you clean 200 cars a day, you probably don’t give each one much attention or carefully rinse your washing mitts in between, do you? He offered to polish it “as a good will gesture”, but still didn’t admit he was in the wrong.

Andrew’s taking on the job of polishing as much of it out as possible, and I’m in two minds about getting his detailing friend to come and machine polish it properly. But one thing that’s for sure is that I’ll get Ford Marshall in Cambridge to annotate my file to say never to wash it when it goes in for a service, thank you very much, we’ll do it ourselves.

I know a lot of people will roll their eyes at this and say “well, your car still runs, doesn’t it? What’s the big fuss?” but I care. I like my belongings to still look good over the years, especially when it doesn’t require huge amounts of extra time and it means it lasts that much longer without needing to be replaced. My iPod is scratched to high heavens after living in my handbag, and that’s fine, it’s so disposable. But my iPhone has a nice red case to avoid it getting damaged. And my car doesn’t go through Tesco carwash.

So if you’re in the Cambridge area and get your car serviced at Ford, think twice before letting them give it a clean while you’re there. And if you’re that Nissan 350Z owner who also complained about scratched paintwork a few weeks ago, I’m sorry, we still haven’t got through to them.

Now, I hope this post gets right up there in search engines when someone looks for Ford Marshall. Not because the rest of the service is poor, it’s great in fact! But it’ll be a word of warning for those who like their paintwork scratch-free!

The reason? Spam, spam, eggs, bacon and spam. Well, without the eggs or the bacon. The sheer volume of new followers I’m getting these days who are blatantly spammers is getting increasingly frustrating. Sure, I can block them one by one, or simply ignore them, but if Twitter could implement a “flag as spam” a la Blogspot, then we could help each other and avoid 10,000 other users getting the same spammy follower message.

To add to the frustration, a friend pointed out that spam followers could very well use your RSS feed to create random copy for spam emails or blog comments in the future. I haven’t come across it yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s already happening.

I guess for now, the less drastic route for me to take will be to create a rule where all notifications of new followers will go straight into a mark-as-read folder. It won’t solve the problem that my feed could end up as spam material for some unscrupulous asshole out there, but it’ll have to do for now.

What this means is that if you start following me and you want to have a conversation, you’ll need to send me a message @vero for me to react and add you as well. Crappy, but it’s the best solution I can think of.

Anyone got a better idea?

Want proof? Here’s me and my Big Table hanging out together last summer.

Good ol’ Technorati, one of the largest blog directories on the web, has announced that, due to some security issues with older versions of WordPress, you need to upgrade to the latest version in order to continue being indexed.

Because of this ongoing problem, we’re discontinuing processing crawls of blogs that exhibit common symptoms of being compromised. We strongly recommend upgrading your WordPress installation. Even if you haven’t been afflicted by a compromise, by the time you are aware that you have been a number of negative consequences may have already occurred (for instance, flagged spam by Technorati, Google or Yahoo!) — this has been reported by many WordPress users.

This will be interesting to watch, seeing as even large blogs like TechCrunch haven’t gotten around to updating yet. Many less techy users will have to wait until their hosting’s control panel updates the Fantastico scripts to contain the latest version of WordPress. Considering the millions of ghost town blogs currently listed on Technorati, I wonder whether this will become a huge Spring Cleaning of all the unloved, dead blogs across the web. This might just turn out to be a good thing…

So, go on, get off your butt and upgrade WordPress to the latest version, and tell those around you to do the same!

The first post was something to do with There.com, an early sibling of Second Life, the kind of avatar-based online world I’ve never had much interest in. A random start, but a start nonetheless.

Now, four years on, I can hardly imagine my life without blogging. It’s shaped much of what my career has become, giving me the fun experience of writing for Shiny Shiny a few times and resulting in getting headhunted to become a corporate blogger for Taptu a year ago.

Since those days, blogging has become pretty mainstream, both to my pleasure and dismay. It’s great to see so many people picking up a hobby once reserved for nerds who knew how to clunk together some HTML and update pages manually. Unfortunately, so many people also get the wrong end of the stick. I can’t judge personal bloggers, because it’s entirely up to them to write how they like and when they like. It’s the marketers, the CEOs, the business people who’ve decided to pick up blogging - I wish I could lend them a hand, help them make sense of blogs, which are so much more than just an online marketing platform.

But at least, at the very least, they are picking up on these new technologies. You gotta start somewhere, after all. You fall over the first few times you ride your bike, but you learn. Hopefully, I can help these marketers stop falling off their bikes. (Oh now that was a funny mental picture for me. Was it good for you?)

So, four years then… I might not be willing to raise little sprogs of my own any time soon, but my blog, that’s my baby. Happy birthday, little one!

Looking back:

• First birthday post
• Second birthday post: Whoops, I’d forgotten!
• Third birthday - I’m in trouble!: Andrew takes my blog down for a few hours after I ate all the Skinny Cow ice cream…

He also agreed with me that making your own wine is a bad idea, mmmkay dad?

PS - I want my own WLTV sweatband bracelet thinger!

I couldn’t tell you because Andrew worried that you’d come and nick our telly while we’re away. But now that we’re home and equipped with two barking mad security cats, now, I can tell you. And let me tell you, it was a blast of a holiday. No technology, just a bloody big fireplace and a jacuzzi on the roof of the castle.

You’ll tell me, it’s no excuse, you’ve been back since Friday, why haven’t you blogged since, you slacker? Well, partially because I’m just that, a slacker who wallows in her non-blogging guilt. But also because my brain power has been taken by some new and exciting project I’ve cooked up. More on this next week.

Tonight’s blog entry, aside from a (totally insincere, can you tell?) apology for not writing in nearly two weeks, it’s my first opportunity to play with the freshly-released WordPress 2.5, which has a lovely and swish new user interface. Thank you Mr. Mullenweg, we lurve you!

This is all we’ve got time for today, folks, but I’ll be back later with some more of my insightful babble. For now, back to your knitting, origami swan making or whatever it is you people do with your evenings!

Good night.
Mrs. Vero S. Pepperrell
Queen Bee in your Bonnet

The geekier masses have migrated towards online sources for entertainment, and I’ve got a feeling that if UK television is heading the same way as American shows, crammed with obnoxious and imposing ads, more Brits will start relying on Joost, Bittorrent, iTunes podcasts and other services.

The advertising industry is so sick, all the way to the core, I don’t think it’ll ever recover. If you agree that this new suggested ruling, allowing more ad breaks, should be stopped, please let your comments be heard by Ofcom, do it now, and pass it on to others around you!

The Future of Corporate Blogs

Lionel Menchaca @ Dell

Monitor the blogosphere and listen. In 2006, 48% of feedback was negative comments on the web
Social media plan with the blog was to address this issue in public, ie. when the batteries exploded

Sundar @ LinkedIn
Comments policy should be open, Google don’t have an open comments policy
It should be a 2-way conversation

Huyse
- Where are the communities? What do THEY need from my company. Find the sweet spot where what they want and what we want meets

Measuring relationships
- What would success be?
- Look at competition as benchmark
- Measure engagement
- Analytics, subscriptions
- Comments to post ratio

delicious.com/kamichat/sxsw2008

Find what the community wants
Listen, analyse then act on the feedback

Find out about problems via listening post means insight on the problem 2-3 weeks before they become call drivers at Dell
IdeaStorm is a digg-style system for ideas that could improve the experience of the users.

IdeaStorm resulted in a Linux version of the laptop being released on short turnaround (3months?) instead of usual 9-12 months cycles

You should be aiming to solve problems faster for your customers

Both responding early on and sorting out: Need to change the company culture of having a fully formed answer before responding. It’s fine to say thanks for flagging that up, we’re looking into it, then responding more fully later. It shows a sense of care and urgency. Incremental release of information is a way of managing crisis.

Make everyone respond, not just the blogger/pr/marketing, if it takes a developer, then so be it. It’s your job as community link to push that. Humanise a company by being willing to say sorry.

Create an internal feedback wiki to help everyone get the fuller picture when problems reoccur, internal support method. Help change the company culture to be customer-focused.

How can we serve our users faster? Better?

Question from the public: How can you maintain your own brand while working for a corporate blog?
Bring the team together, don’t become the only person writing, bring others on board and facilitate the communication. That way the company will have multiple faces, not just yours.
(Not sure I’m satisfied with this answer, but I guess it’s part of the answer…)

Question from the public: What about SEO?
Don’t focus your blog around SEO, it’s a by-product but the blog should be about thought leadership, customer focus.

Creative Collaboration: Designers and Developers working together

Hammond @ Flickr
Dave Shea @ CSS Zen Garden
Matt Biddulph @ Dopplr
Simon Willison, ex yahoo, Django
George Oates @ Flickr (designer yahoo)

Dopplr release everyday, live testing done by turning features on for a few users at the time (awesome system, I’m deadly jealous!)

Designer husband, developer wife, like a partnership

Django created to support fast-paced development
Flickr was also of the release early, release often mentality
Barebones prototypes using real data strikes better discussion than mockups

My notes might be a bit garbled but sue me, I was too busy listening.

“Self-Replicating Awesomeness: The Marketing of No Marketing” panel notes
Panel: Deborah Schultz, Chris Heuer, Jeremiah Owyang, Tara Hunt, Hugh McLeod, David Parmet

Community around a business requires participation. “Stop trying to sell to me, start helping me buy”

“Marketing is the price you pay for creating mediocre products”
The more you give away, the more you get back out of it
The concept of Whuffie

Best way to build your own whuffie is to help others build theirs.

Social objects: facilitating communication via social gestures

You don’t own or even create a community, you are part of one, or many, around you.

Take action: Give freebies, get out of your ivory tower and don’t be pushy with people

“If you’re a startup and you have 10 customers, then talk to them every day. It’s not about Superbowl ads and flowers on Valentine’s day, be consistent and constant.” - Deb Schultz

“It’s all about every tiny thing, not one big idea. Do all the little things to make it happen” - Hugh

You can’t “go viral”, the product needs to do it. Go to the customers, put it in their hands and let the chatty ones show it off.

If your product is already free, then work to improve their experience.

Example, Hugh couldn’t just drop off wine bottles at a party and expect it to work. It’s the follow up around it that matters.

So while I think this girl is mad for going to a Music Idol show in Bulgaria and choosing an English song, I can completely hear what she’s hearing in the song. Hilarious video!

Sorry if I’ve started posting loads again! I’ve got internet access again, have returned to something resembling routine and have dealt with the bulk of organising the new house, so I’ve got time to write.

Now, what mystifies me is that while she’s targeting time-poor people, she’s unquestionably aiming for the top tier richer people. Last week, when she made her fish pie involving frozen pre-mashed potato cakes, we estimated the cost of the meal at nearly £15! For that price, you could get a delicious Marks & Spencer meal that you can stick in the oven and enjoy just as much without having to fight with frozen potato lumps and pre-smoked, pre-cooked salmon!

I suppose she’s shooting for the even-smaller niche market of those who need to pretend they’re eating “homemade” food to have a clear conscience!

Seriously… pre-mashed potatoes… Delia, honey, you can’t be serious!

“What teens like online and on their phones”
Panel of teens from age 11-17, based in the Austin area and of different levels of interest in technology, music, etc…

sites teens like
goodreads.com: book reviews, allows them to check reviews and know they’ll like it before they buy it (since they can only buy so many…)
purevolume.com: unsigned cool bands to check out
MySpace, Facebook: Own mark on the site, cmn w friends & family (but not mom) after school
Using FB to stay in touch w friends, only uses it bc there’s critical mass of friends on there
Digg.com to stay up to date w things like games news (Halo 3, Sports games)
12 year old says she’s 16 on MySpace, boy says he’s 99
Mixmatters, music site w latest stuff before it goes out
Seventeen.com but not totally happy w that site
Hipster.com music playlists ppl who aren’t quite famous
Runescape, game, chat to people and meet them on myspace

What turns you off about websites?
Too much advertisement about “free xbox 360″ but all i want to do is watch my video
Advertising also slows down my computer
NBA.com has ads for Miller between every video
MySpace profile “invaded” with a virus, sent innappropriate videos
Clear issue with ads that stop the flow of activity
Heavy pages with too much content and too many ads, page takes too long to load

Social networking fatigue? Do you think so?
Used to check every minute, looking for more friends on FB, but once all friends got added, the bulk of it is done, not much else going on.
MySpace, all have accounts. FB about half of them

Use email more?
Email address was created FOR myspace, but already aware of the need for different email addresses for different things.
Contacting teachers to ask for homework help
Already have a concept of “professional” email address, importance of proper writing and correctly written emails

What kind of phone do you have? Is that the phone you want/would like to have?
- Doesn’t have a phone
- LG Music phone, unlimited SMS and uses it a lot, plays Tetris a lot, can’t get to the internet on her phone, its too expensive, but friends sometimes share ringtones by bluetooth
- TMob blackberry pearl, loves email, sends him MySpace msgs, uses SMS lots, gets ringtones from friends and creates his own, no internet on his phone (too expensive)
- Mom gave her basic phone but its never charged, only meant for emergencies, isn’t allowed to use for anything else
- Old phone, broken in his pocket, makes calls/receives, SMS, really basic. Emergency games in case he’s too bored but would like better phone, but as long as it works…
- Sony slidephone. Likes the slide. Listens to music on her phone, chats on the phone, but doesn’t like SMS or use it much. Likes a few games
- (Girl in pink) LG cameraphone Uses SMS but has a limited number (150ish), has ringtones at $3 a piece, Tetris $5, doesn’t download ringtones or wallpapers, cant afford it anymore. Uses camera a lot, sends the pics to other ppl.

Few watch video
Think they could mostly cope without except for 2

Virtual worlds, creating avatar-based social network sites. Do you go to virtual worlds?
Runescape
Xbox live, no avatar but can play against ppl
Zwinki
Runescape, Gaia but Pay-to-play is really dying, it’s not popular anymore
Zwinki requires acquiring points and stuff and i just wanted to customise my avatar

Creating videos, do you do it?
- In the backyard, used Windows Video Maker, think it’s pretty cool, would prob do it again
- If I had a camera, I probably would
- Have a camera but never made it by the deadline to send in videos, it’s pretty cool, likes the idea of her video possibly being used

Do you like the brand more if they do this kind of thing?
Pink one htinks she’d respect the company more for doing video competitions for thinking that you’re able to do it too (knowing marketing is hard, creative)

Digg for news on war in Iraq, youtube, etc (yikes!)
The Onion catches their attention

Needs to be funny, different angle
The news are too dead and dull

None of them go to CNN or NewYorkTimes

Do you (and how) do you take part in causes?

Answering questions in exchange for grains of rice to 3rd world
Donation services from the school, selling cards for charity

Would like to do things physically in-person for some
Others prefer the game aspect of the grain of rice quiz
Things that are easy to do make it easier for kids to help from home in their pyjamas. People want an easy out to feeling they help

TV shows…
Family guy
Hannah Montana
History channel (Future weapons)
Veoh for new eps of stuff they missed
Disney channel, watch Cody on the Disney website
Wrestling (tend to watch live)
CSI (watch live)
Kyle XY and Wildfire must be watched live
Love watching anime, but use reel.com and others to try to find the ep asap online if missed
Spanish dramas and telenovelas

Projects designed to try to break advertising campaigns: Would they push back on advertisers to get them off websites?

They understand that advertising funds the websites and allows them to get stuff for free. Don’t mind ads if they’re contextual and relevant (shoes, not beer) Keep the advertising on sites where you’re actually trying to purchase something
Please don’t make it like teh Futurama ep where they broadcast ads to Fry’s sleep

Brand microsites, flash games, miniclip?

Addictinggames.com
Home computers tend to be too slow to play them properly, would probably play them if they didn’t have such PoS machines
Like to play games when they’re at school and done their work, uses it all the time
Each one of them played games on their phone before panel started
Newgrounds.com, ebaumsworld, albinoblacksheep
They love flash games, they know how to unblock websites at work

More notes here: http://www.ianschafer.com/2008/03/08/from-sxsw-what-teens-want-online-on-their-phones/