Read all posts matching 'mccarthy wine' in Crave
Money is boring, unless you're spending it on something like an iPhone or a cute new pair of shoes.
Or unless you make investment cool, which is what a new company called Thrasher Funds is trying to do. It's a new mutual fund that's targeting the under-35 crowd with a bunch of youth-oriented and tech-focused holdings (Apple, Uniqlo, Diageo, American Apparel, Volkswagen, Google, and Garmin), "investment parties," and a Web site that looks like a Good Charlotte album cover.
"Commercials from financial behemoths only implore Baby Boomers to start planning and saving for their retirements, and/or their children's college tuition," a company description explains. "That's fine if you're over 40 with children. But what if you're not? What if you're a child of the 70's, 80's or 90's? What should you be planning for?"
Yeah, it's different. New York magazine's Web site called Thrasher Funds "despicable [and] brilliant, and its young writers attested that "we already have an extreme case of generational embarrassment, one that may or may not be manifesting itself in a full-body rash right now. But then again, that's how we felt about Garden State!"
Thrasher Funds isn't a technology company, really. But they're targeting the social-networking generation, which means that yes, the company has a MySpace page. And they've set up shop in the Silicon Alley boardinghouse known as Sunshine Suites, meaning that they're getting plenty of cooties from local Web 2.0 start-ups also using the space.
They're additionally getting a boost from the city-focused women's newsletter Daily Candy, which not only has proudly touted Thrasher as the first-ever investment company to advertise on the e-mail list but also hosted the finance start-up's launch party last week at the Caravan clothing boutique in Manhattan's NoHo neighborhood. The sparkling rose wine was flowing, the company founders were chatting it up with guests, and everything in the store was priced at 20 percent off. (Now that's what I call a party!)
At this point, it looks like all Thrasher really needs is a celebrity executive, you know, like DanceJam's M.C. Hammer or Ooma's Ashton Kutcher.
Thrasher Funds' Web site, which looks like it took a cue from Good Charlotte.
(Credit: Thrasher Funds)That said, the company also has to prove itself to some extent before young people (even the ones eager to jump on the trendiness bandwagon) are willing to commit actual cash to it. Word-of-mouth testimonials, when they exist, are going to mean a heck of a lot more than a savvy ad campaign. This is the generation that's reportedly afraid to tackle health insurance head-on; mutual funds still are going to look kind of scary to some, no matter how much hot pink is on the Web site.
(Credit:
Pek Preservation Systems)
Thanks to certain other Cravers who fancy themselves oenophiles, we've managed to keep up on all manner of wine refrigerators and preservers. But surprisingly enough in this world where everything is converging, we haven't seen an appliance that could provide both functions until now.
The "Pek VinoVault" claims to be the first wine refrigerator of its kind, using argon technology to preserve open bottles while keeping them chilled. Luxist says it holds 14 bottles, which may not seem like much until you think about it. (Why would you have that many unfinished bottles in the first place?)
The compact box also displays the bottle of your choosing in an oblong window bathed in blue LEDs. Classy.
The more Microsoft events CNET sends me to around New York (the Windows Vista launch weekend, Halo 3's raucous little debutante ball), the more I realize one thing: No matter how much Gates, Ballmer, & Co. seem to always have issues (like that "Zune" debacle), that company knows how to throw one hell of a party. I'm not kidding. It even has its own wine now.
Created by South African winery Stormhoek especially for Microsoft, the "Blue Monster Reserve" sauvignon blanc is accompanied by the tagline "change the world or go home." It's only available to Microsoft employees, members of a "Friends of Blue Monster" Facebook group, or Stormhoek insiders. The cute little logo was designed by Stormhoek marketing strategist Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid.com.
This, for the record, furthers my speculation that Microsoft is actually the Dharma Initative.
But, that said, this really isn't that big of a surprise. I speculate that Google has a half dozen tasty custom microbrews on tap in the Googleplex at all times. I've also heard this rumor that Steve Jobs has commissioned a wheatgrass-infused organic sake that was uncorked shortly after the iPhone launch. Don't even get me started on the juicy gossip about Mark Zuckerberg's plans to make Facebook-branded Smirnoff Ice as iconic a part of his image as those Adidas sandals.
And here at CNET, you might not know that we have our own private-label scotch! It has been absolutely instrumental recently as Craver-in-chief Mike Yamamoto attempts to deal with Tim Moynihan's robo-hellraising.
(Via PSFK)
(Credit:
John Lewis)
If we had to pick our favorite inventions, the refrigerator bar would have to be near the top of the list. But, sadly, we acknowledge that hard liquor isn't for everyone. We further realize that space-challenged dwellings present some difficult logistical issues for the wine lovers among us (Caroline McCarthy). Nor can everyone afford a wine vault, much less a cellar of the brick-and-mortar variety.
There is one possible alternative, however: the wine fridge from the U.K. department store John Lewis. This inspired appliance cools up to 39 bottles of your favorite fermented beverage (never red, of course) while still functioning as a standard fridge and freezer in its other compartments. The problem is its price--2,000 pounds, or more than $4,000, according to Coolest-Gadgets. Mind you, that's more than 2,000 bottles of "Two-Buck Chuck," excuding sales tax.
For that kind of scratch, we'd much rather have a bar TV or liquor pool table.
Does this look like a booze cruise on wheels to you?
(Credit: Amtrak)Riding on a sleeper train for several thousand miles seems a bit silly sometimes when you can just hop a plane for a couple of hours and get to the same destination in a fraction of the time, especially when it's often cheaper to fly anyway. Amtrak, however, is attempting to counter that image by promoting its train service as the landlubber's equivalent of a luxury cruise--a booze cruise, that is. According to an Associated Press article, the passenger rail service is trying to "gin up new business" (Ha, ha! You slay me, AP!) by offering a complimentary $100 worth of alcoholic beverages to passengers who cough up the cash for first-class seating.
Kind of. If you're a member of Amtrak's guest rewards program and you book a ticket that's part of its GrandLuxe offerings (be prepared to pay somewhere between $800 and $1600) between November and January, you'll be given a hundred bucks' worth of credit toward libations en route. Considering a glass of house wine costs $6 and a fine scotch costs about $7, it'll be enough to keep your cheeks nice and pink for the entire journey.
The AP article quotes an Amtrak representative as saying that it's a test move as part of a greater plan to revive rail travel's vintage image as a classy way to get from coast to coast. It could equally, however, turn Amtrak into a hot destination for traveling bachelor parties or fraternity spring break trips. ("Cancun? No way, dude, we're doing the Amtrak thing!")
Unfortunately, the Amtrak party-train service won't extend beyond a few overnight routes: the California Zephyr between Chicago and San Francisco, the Southwest Chief between Chicago and L.A., and the Silver Meteor between the District of Columbia and several Florida cities. That means it won't be valid on my beloved Acela Express that runs from D.C. to Boston, but then again, I don't think the BlackBerry-and-business-casual crowd that rides the Acela needs to be given any top-shelf scotch anyway.
Some advocacy groups have already voiced concern that people will get a little too sloshed on board and then stagger right behind the drivers' seats of their cars upon reaching their final destination. Makes you wonder whether Amtrak will have to breathalyze its passengers when they debark...
Yes, Crave looks all new-wave and fancy and youthful, but did you know it just turned 5,000? That's right.
On Friday, July 27, Crave celebrated its 5,000th post. With this monumental occasion, it gives us an opportunity to look back on the magic we've experienced since last October.
So here we go: the best and worst that Crave has to offer. We may even add new awesomeness and atrocities as our collective memory bank kicks in.
Crave's faves
(Credit:
StrapYa World)
Best convergence of Crave obsessions:
Hello Kitty pirate cell phone charm
Cravers Mike Yamamoto and Caroline McCarthy are generally fascinated and disgusted by Hello Kitty-themed objects--so much so that they write about every one of them they can find. Similarly, no one on the Crave team can sit idly and let a pirate-themed gadget go unreported. With this too-good-to-be-true Hello Kitty pirate cell-phone dangle, two worlds come together in a most marvelous and disgusting fashion.
(Credit:
Born Rich)
Worst convergence of Crave obsessions:
$30,000 Hello Kitty doghouse
Dogs and cats seldom get along. That said, we can't speak to relationship tendencies between lap dogs and cartoon Japanese cats, but we're not about to pay $30,000 to find out. This cutesy, crystal-encrusted monstrosity is available for those who'd rather imprison their tiny dog in a chandelier than buy a hybrid car. Same price.
(Credit:
Alex Samlihan)
Best reminder of how awesome the future will be:
Future of tech slide show
There is no stopping the future. Teleportation, flying cars, androids, and dream recorders will be here before you know it. (Then, Steve Jobs will reinvent them all a couple of years later with a $150 markup.) Once these things become a reality, they'll become mundane, commonplace, and boring, which is why you should appreciate the future right now. Take a look at our "Future of tech" slide show, where Jasmine France and Alex Samlihan take on the future of tomorrow...today.
(Credit:
baraskit.se)
Best way to save energy:
Use rad slides
Instead of elevators, install mega-awesome twisty slides in your office building, just like they have at the Tate Modern Art Gallery in London. Getting upstairs is best achieved by using a sweet jet pack.
(Credit:
Moller)
Best advice for flying saucer owners:
Top 5 UFO dork-out tips
There are big, bad flying saucers in the works right now, but you're probably still tooling around with your very own personal Moller M200G saucer. That's understandable; it's a classic. To assist you on your personal, 10-feet-up space journeys, Caroline McCarthy has some great advice.
(Credit:
tomwet.de)
Best kitchen appliance:
Pirate toaster
It's in aching need of a Hello Kitty/pirate toast-theme switch, but that's about the only thing that isn't sensational about this toaster. It creates pirate-themed breakfast bread, and an obtuse reference to a Guns 'n' Roses song is even printed on it ("Sweet toast of mine.") Just because it doesn't make sense doesn't mean it isn't the best thing ever created in the history of man.
(Credit:
William Optics)
Ferraris that, for some reason, are not cars:
These items
I like meatball sandwiches, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'd buy a new computer that had "Meatball sandwiches!" printed on the side of it. For whatever reason, Ferrari is plastering its logo all over various pieces of technology, from cell phones to boomboxes to binoculars. I don't get it. The knitted Ferrari is kind of mind-blowing, though.
(Credit:
Red Ferret)
Best use of Swarovski crystals:
The Swarovski LP bus
Yes, it costs $487, and yes, it will probably ruin your entire record collection faster than you'd even expect, but this miniature record-playing VW bus is still the best convergence of Swarovski crystals and technology we've seen yet. And no, that's not saying much.
Worst use of Swarovski crystals:
Jeez, take your pick
Most TalkBack comments:
On shovelware: A rant
What tech topic most inspired the most feedback from Crave readers? No, not the iPhone. Hello Kitty wasn't even on the map. The big winner in terms of TalkBack posts was Matthew Elliott's rant on the ills of shovelware. Yes, shovelware: that pre-loaded free trial junk that comes unwanted with practically every new PC. Everybody hates it, except for a few schadenfreude-fueled Mac fans.
Best TalkBack comment from my mom:
Pantsgate '07
There is no escaping mom. There is especially no escaping mom when you shoot a video in which you are not wearing pants. Be forewarned: if you post a video in which you are not wearing pants, my mom will scold you and make you feel guilty about shocking my grandmother.
Crave milestones
First post
The mother of all game desks
1,000th post
New iRiver looks like lucky charm
2,000th post
So much wine, so little time...keep track of it with this
3,000th post
Eight-core Mac Pros arrive
4,000th post
My BlackBerry Curve arrives!
5,000th post
"8-track" hydrogen cartridge for cars
(Credit:
Dom Perignon)
Larry Ellison aside, those Middle Eastern businessmen sure do put Silicon Valley to shame when it comes to extravagant displays of opulence. Typically, we don't get names to accompany the tales of pimped-out Airbus A380s and the like, but generally the price tags speak for themselves. My favorite new "oh my gosh, I can't believe how much cash that guy spent" story was covered in the British press earlier this week: a band of partiers, led by an anonymous Dubai cash cow, spent a total of $210,000 at the posh London nightclub Crystal last Saturday night. With tax and gratuities, the final bill was more like $218,000.
To put things into perspective, that's the equivalent of about 360 8GB iPhones.
According to representatives from the nightclub (where apparently Prince Harry likes to booze it up on occasion), the evening started off innocently enough. The party of 18 people started with a bottle of pinot grigio that cost a paltry $50, but ultimately went through absurd amounts of champagne and vodka that included a $20,000 bottle of Dom Perignon. Also included in the bill were six Cokes, 17 orders of Red Bull, and eight bottles of the luxury-brand Voss water.
ABC News reports that the tab was closed at 4:24 AM. In other news, the $2 bottles of wine at Trader Joe's still get a thumbs-up from me.
(Credit:
Fabstuff)
As fellow Craver Caroline McCarthy is off on other assignments, we've been asked to fill in on some of her regular beats. No, it doesn't involve wine or beer. Or still more wine and beer.
In this case, it's something that combines two other of her favorite topics, stuffed animals and planetriums. (We don't ask questions.) The "Twilight Turtle" looks like a regular plush by day but, by night, its plastic shell turns into a planetarium that projects the night sky onto any ceiling.
It comes in white, green or blue, colors that researchers say have "relaxing, rejuvenating and calming qualities," according to Uber-Review. If only they came in 'gwins, we'd have a trifecta.
(Credit:
Scandinavian Design Center)
Boxed wine: it's the punchline of so many jokes and the drink staple of so many low-budget sorority parties. Once you're a "real" grown-up, it's more than a bit gauche to actually serve this stuff without some kind of forced hipster irony--and in case you didn't get the memo, that faux-cheapo attitude is so out. Nevertheless, if you're on a budget and need to serve a lot of beverages to a lot of people, boxed wine is still a tempting choice. So how can you make it a little bit sexier?
Leave it to the Danish to come up with a solution. The VinUno, designed by Lars Erdman, is a boxed wine dispenser made of--we kid you not--polished steel and lacquered wood. You can choose from red, white, and black options, and there's some way to insert a cooling element into it so that you can keep that white wine nice and chilly.
Sure, it'll cost you $132, which ostensibly defeats the purpose of being cheap with your booze selections, but it'll probably pay for itself in the long run since now you'll be saving money by serving Franzia instead of that horrifically overpriced Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's. (Actually, where I live, it's Three Buck Chuck because of our liquor tax, but you get the idea.)
(Via CubeMe)
The Sun Streaming System -- film festival diva?
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com)Can you make a server sexy?
Short answer: No.
But you can still throw it a glitzy launch party.
Over the past week or so, I've been poking my head into various events at the Tribeca Film Festival in lower Manhattan, which runs through tomorrow. I've always thought of film festivals as sort of low-tech affairs, and in a lot of ways, it's true--at a screening of Edward Burns' new flick, Purple Violets, the producers apologized for the first reel being "too light," and at the premiere of Spider-Man 3 co-star James Franco's latest project, Good Time Max, Franco acknowledged that the sound on the film was still a bit iffy.
But despite that, there are more than a few high-tech companies among the festival's list of sponsors. Some are no-brainers--Apple, for example, seems quite at home among the stars and red-carpet premieres (and festival kickoff guest-of-honor Al Gore). But Verizon? Yahoo? Sun Microsystems? Last week, Sun debuted its Sun Streaming System, a new product geared toward speeding up the delivery of Internet protocol television (IPTV), in conjunction with the festival. Guests were invited to the luxe Tribeca Grand Hotel for an evening of wine and hors d'oeuvres, followed by a private screening of Burns' Purple Violets. The Sun Streaming System, meanwhile, was standing awkwardly out in the hallway, humming away. A few people opted to pose for photographs next to it. But let's just say it wasn't exactly the life of the party.
Yes, the Sun Streaming System is a step forward in IPTV's short history, but an indie film premiere still seemed a little bit of a disjointed promotion for a server, to say the least. I was in attendance that evening, and my goal was to figure out exactly what both Sun and Tribeca Enterprises had at stake in such a partnership. The answer, according to Adam Sloan, the festival's executive vice president of sponsorship sales and marketing, is content delivery. Whether it's Verizon's
So are film festivals inking these new-media content delivery deals because they're afraid they'll be losing market share to Ask a Ninja if they don't expand? Sloan assured me that isn't the case. But the truth is that films nowadays have started to rely heavily on viral buzz, and the Internet is (for obvious reasons) the place to build that buzz. I asked Sloan about whether or not the festival was doing anything with that perpetual buzzword--user-generated content. After all, it's one of the major reasons that IPTV and broadband video are gaining the momentum that they are. "In many ways, everyone's becoming a filmmaker, and that's what makes it really fun," he said, but then added that the Tribeca Film Festival currently does not have any categories that the average person would associate with the YouTube revolution. There's a Cadillac-sponsored award that viewers vote on, and Sloan hinted at adding some more interactive features to the festival's Web site. Aside from that, it's still a hand-picked selection. Not very 2.0--but the idea I got was that it's gradually evolving to that point.
As is everything these days, right?
