This weekend was BimmerFest East, a huge meetup of BMW owners organized and sponsored by Turner Motorsports. These events have been going on for a few years on the west coast, and came east for the first time last year. Like last year, it was held at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen, MD. I caravaned up […]
Over at GigaOm Mathew Ingram is doing some excellent reporting on the evolution of Twitter. Twitter is evolving from a sort of free informational utility to a media company that uses other people’s content to sell advertising and drive eyeballs to other media partners. The company is adding features like expanded tweets and providing […]
My 13 year old M3 is approaching 60,000 miles. In BMW vernacular, that means the car should receive an Inspection II service. An Inspection II involves a large number of things getting inspected (hence the name), but when you look at the work actually done it boils down to a general tune-up. Spark plugs, air […]
My partner Marc Hausman wrote an excellent column last week for the Washington Business Journal. In it he introduces a concept we’ve been stressing to clients and prospects — lead introduction vs. lead generation. What’s the difference? Really it comes down to numbers. Our B2B and B2G clients are usually selling a specialized and relatively […]
WINE & DINE COLUMN My latest WashingtonExec Wine and Dine column was published today. It highlights a debate in the wine world that started between the New York Post and New York Times wine critics, and has spread from there. What kind of wine list do you expect when you go out for a fine […]
Last week I described replacing most of the cooling system components in my M3. While doing that job, I also replaced my rear shock absorbers. My car only has 57,000 miles, but it is more than 13 years old. While replacing and reinforcing the rear shock mounts (RSMs) last year, I noticed the shocks were […]
With DC firmly in the grip of the dog days of summer, Pinot Noir is often a good bet for red wine drinkers. It’s lighter in body and style than other reds, which can be perfect when the mercury rises. Gabriele and I have had some excellent Pinots this summer that were new for us, […]
Recently I’ve been taking a micro look at the exchange of online tools for personal information. The example was the personal information I signed over in exchange for the mobile Twitter application TweetCaster. John Battelle took a macro look at online trust recently on his blog, and it’s a very good read. He uses the […]
This weekend I accomplished a preventative maintenance goal for my 1999 M3. With the help of a fellow enthusiast and E36 M3 owner, I replaced most of my cooling system with new parts. The cooling system on many modern BMWs is a known weak point. Most of the problems arise from using plastic where metal […]
Earlier this week I published a post on how much privacy users give up for phone apps. In my case, I was downloading the TweetCaster app for Android. After reviewing the company privacy statement I still wasn’t clear on whether location tracking could be turned off. So I emailed that question to OneLouder, the developers […]
WINE & DINE COLUMN My latest Wine and Dine column was published by WashingtonExec yesterday. It focuses on the Neighborhood Restaurant Group, which operates a number of quality restaurants in this area. The location Gabriele and I enjoyed most recently was Columbia Firehouse in Old Town Alexandria. I also discuss an excellent Pinot Noir we […]
I’m on record saying there needs to be more transparency around the current online business model. In most cases, cool and useful tools are available free or at low cost, in exchange for personal information about the user. I discussed this in my post about the supercookie debate, one of my best read posts last […]