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I chose Weinviertel as my Sunday post trip during the 2010 edition of EWBC. During the trip I filmed a few clips and today decided to put them together to create a short video of that nice day. Enjoy!
I’ve just landed in Lisbon after a great week in Austria where I attended the 2010 edition of the European Wine Bloggers Conference.
I was a speaker at this year’s conference and my presentation was included in the panel about Online Wine Commerce. Rowan Gormley, CEO of NakedWines and Evelyne Resnick, Author of Wine Brands Blog were the 2 other panel participants. Julia Sevenich carefully led the panel where we presented and discussed the new world of online wine commerce. A great moment at the EWBC that I hope others have also enjoyed.
Presenting at the conference created an opportunity to meet lots of cool people and to have great conversations with new and old friends from the wine world. I got lots of feedback on Adegga and the AVIN and interestingly, I even was invited to speak in another wine conference (in Croatia in 2011) just minutes after I finished the EWBC presentation!
Apart from the sessions I really enjoyed the big wine tasting room where you could try dozens of delicious Austrian Wines. Amazing Rieslings (starting in 1973), Gruner Veltliners, Pinot Noirs, etc.
All this in the beautiful Orangery at the majestic Schönbrunn Castle. Simply a great venue.
I spent the last 3 days of the conference visiting two different Austrian wine regions. First Weinviertel where the new DAC system has changed the way the region is making is classifying its wines. Lots of quality wines as you’ll be able to see in the tasting notes that will be uploaded to Adegga in the next few days.
Then 2 days in a fabulous trip around the Danube which included visiting the regions of Kremtal, Kamptal and Traisental. Again great wines, great modern architecture and great food. We stayed at the Arte Hotel in Krems, visited such cool wineries has Wiengut Loimer (amazing cellar architecture!) and Weingut Huber and had lunch in the new Loisium Wein & Spa Wellness Resort Hotel. All great moments in a carefully planed weekend.
The common point across all EWBC moments is people. People who love wine and traveled to Austria to share that love with other people. People who show that love by creating delicious wines and more importantly people who care about this great world of wine that we’re all passionate about. Thanks to Ryan, Gabriella and Robert for organizing another great event.
As for Austria, I have only just started discovering one of the most amazing wine regions of the world. The richness, the attitude and above all the taste of Austrian wines have made me comeback to Lisbon wishing Vienna was just closer to me that it really is.
More pictures on Facebook.
A few weeks ago I attended the Fine Wine conference in Ribera del Duero. During the conference I met again with great cook and friend Txaber Allue, also know as El cocinero fiel who did an interesting interview / wine tasting with me.
Txaber interviewed me in Spanish and I tried my best Portunhol so that we could have a nice conversation. I think it went pretty well.
Here’s the video:
I met Txaber a few months ago at WineFuture during a Gary Vaynerchuck interview he did. Txaber is a great guy who has been passionately doing his own project. He started posted online videos of him cooking day-to-day recipes and after almost 200 videos he already has even published a book. He’s a true entrepreneur using the power of the web and his passion to make his ideas happen. He’s also a good proof that you don’t need to be a developer to create your own project online.
I had a great weekend in Coimbra as a mentor at the INEO Weekend.
More photos from the event on Flickr.
The recipe for the event was simple. Get a few mentors (entrepreneurs with some experience) and some people with new ideas together and let them discuss for 2 days. In the end toss in a few investors and mix everything very well. Hopefully you’ll end up with some nice results.
And that’s exactly what happened. After 2 days, the new projects were now more solid, mentors met new entrepreneurs and learned from new ideas and investors discovered a couple of new cool projects.
The teams and their projects were all in different stages. While a few need to think more about what they want to do, others were clearly ready to launch and start this amazing journey that is being an entrepreneur.
Thanks to Carlos Cerqueira and everyone else from jeKnowledge and IPN for organizing such a nice initiative.
Here’s my presentation from SHiFT 2010 where talked about my experiences with Adegga from the entrepreneurship point of view.
Today is my 32nd birthday! To celebrate I made this short stop motion film using 32 wine bottles and a Nikon D90.
This video is actually a pilot for an interesting Adegga project 
Straight from the 2010 Academy Awards (and my passion for animation) here’s the trailer from the Best Animated Short.
Logorama explores the extent to which logos are embedded in our daily existence. Said members of H5, “Logorama presents us with an over-marketed world built only from logos and real trademarks that are destroyed by a series of natural disasters (beginning with a hurricane, cyclone, tidal wave). Logotypes are used to describe an alarming universe (similar to the one that we are living in) with all the graphic signs that accompany us everyday in our lives. This over-organized universe is violently transformed by the cataclysm becoming fantastic and absurd. It shows the victory of the creative against the rational, where nature and human fantasy triumph.” [from wikipedia]
It’s a very interesting perspective on how daily life is surrounded by logos, brands every day and every time. Also, interesting to note that the city overview looks like a container city.
The runners up for Best Animated Short were:
In the last few weeks I’ve had the opportunity (read footer) to test one of the newest LED-backlit monitors from LG, the W2486L.
LG says that the monitor is perfect for gaming, but not being a huge gamer I’ve decided to test the W2486L as my Mac monitor (which includes movies & TV series) for a few weeks.
The W2486L would be a normal 24” monitor if it wasn’t for 2 things. First it uses the LED-backlit technology with allows LG to make a very thin monitor with a high efficient use of energy. And, with a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080, the W2486L is also capable of playing Full HD videos. Which is specially interesting given its 16:9 aspect ratio.
Design
The W2486L is a beautiful piece of design. For those of you interested in using this monitor in your living room (like I do) you won’t be disappointed with the way it looks. The monitor’s buttons are nicely integrated into the design and even the pointy power button gives the monitor a nice stylish look. It won’t totally seem like a misfit next to your media center and those lovely B&W speakers.
Performance
I didn’t perform any specific tests to the monitor. First because I would have to research them and second because most people won’t bother to read them or even try them at home. The truth is that most people want a above average screen that performs well at their eyes, which means crisp and clear image, no lagging and lots of power (HD support). For the extremely geek of you I will copy what CNET said about their tests:
The W2486L scored well in our color tests, faltering only in our color ramp tests as it didn’t show a smooth intensity color ramp. In our Dark Screen test, clouding or backlight bleedthrough was noticeable on the top and especially the bottom-middle edge of the screen, but not quite as much as we saw on the XL2370. We were pleased though that the display didn’t crush dark grays and confuse them with black. We were able to see low levels of dark gray.
There, happy now?
Connectivity
The monitor comes with 2 HDMI ports, a D-Sub port and a DVI-D and also a headphone jack. Lots of options for the gamer in you (I’m thinking about Xbox 360 and PS3).
Downsides
The W2486L is quite a good package. If I could change anything I would probably remove the Photo Effect feature which is pretty useless (why would you change your monitor to Sepia?) and also the Auto Bright Sensor which is a smart but annoying feature that fortunately can be turned off.
Conclusion
Overall I’ve had a great experience with this monitor and would recommend it as a computer monitor that is occasionally used to watch movies or TV series. For an average retail price of 300 euros (best price at Pixmania) this is a great monitor to have in the living room connected to your computer or media center.
More W2486L reviews here, here, here and here.
Note: I’ve received this monitor from LG and was asked to test it for a few weeks. As part of that LG program, the monitor will now be given free-of-charge to the Associação Terra dos Sonhos (my choice) which supports children and teenagers with chronicle or terminal illness. Well done LG.
Since my times initial times at the university where at 19 I was the proud owner of a company called Maniacustica and spent my time building and selling car audio equipment (and not studying) that I’m a big fan of fine audio equipment.
I’ve always had a thing for really good, deep and powerful bass. Be it on house-style music, a good RnB, a rock classic or even heavy metal (think Metallica) bass can have a striking impact on the quality of your music-listening experience.
It’s been a while since I paid any attention to fine audio equipment. I was decided to go back to owning some really good, bass-powerful audio equipment and so I recently acquired the Sennheiser HD 215 headphones.
I was not going to buy a full audio system and so I decided to consider a new set of headphones that would have really good bass but wouldn’t compromise on the audio quality of the the other side of the frequency response range.
With a factory response of 12 to 22000 Hz and big ear cups the HD 215 is definitely designed to handle deep and powerful bass. However, my tests with music requiring a good mid-to-high response, have also show that the HD 215 can handle any type of music with a clear and vivid sound. The excellent attenuation of ambient noise together with the very good wearing comfort makes the HD 215 ideal for long listening sessions.
Another little feature that I like on the HD 215 is the fact that you can unplug the headphone cord from the body of the headphones. This means the cord can be replaced if it gets damaged avoiding having to throw away a perfectly good pair of headphones. The headphones come with a practical protective pouch to carry them around.
At 80 euros these are not your everyday headphones but they certainly they justify every euro spent. I’m loving them.
Hi! I'm André Ribeirinho, an entrepreneur from Lisbon, Portugal. I've co-founded Adegga.com, an online wine community and also the AVIN (an ISBN for Wine).
