Mary S. Butler

The one thing I miss most about owning a car is the ability to road trip at a whim. Now that I live in New York, it takes a bit more planning. Part of our preparation for this Fourth of July weekend trip was getting a DC power inverter for Dave’s MacBook Pro and a Sprint wireless card. One of the benefits of being connected while driving was the ease with which we were able to bypass fast-food chain restaurants at rest areas and navigate to roadhouses, courtesy of the Sprint Location & Search application and the carrier’s Google partnership, which powers location-enabled searches and maps.

I also wanted to capture some trip notes along the way, especially for the return portion, which we are doing this afternoon/evening, and are stuck in the inevitable back-to-the-city Sunday night traffic. Although as bad as the Manhattan re-entry traffic is, and I write this in hour nine of what should have been a six-hour return trip and still have another 40 miles to go, I can appreciate how much better New York state driving is compared to Illinois.

I still marvel at these thoroughfares in New York and New Jersey called Parkways. They are billboard- and double tractor trailer-free and are much more attractive than the pothole-scarred, perennially under construction I-55, I-90, I-94, I-290 and I-294 expressways and/or tollways that Chicagoans have to traverse on ingress to/egress from the city.

[For a Butler family trip last month from my parent’s home on the northwest side to Kalahari Water Park in Wisconsin Dells, we had the Chicago driver’s trifecta – bad-condition roads, lanes blocked due to road constuction (regardless of how much of the latter you endure, it doesn’t seem to lessen the former) and multiple-mile traffic backups preceding each of the cashboxes placed at 10-mile intervals in Illinois.]

For this July 4th extended-weekend trip we had four days and two cities, Saratoga Springs, N.Y. and Burlington, Vt., which we wanted to visit. Some of the highlights, and lowlights, from this trip:

+ We left the Lower East Side on Wednesday and drove to Saratoga Springs. We spent the night at the lovely Saratoga Arms, which combines the charm of a B&B with the amenities of a hotel, and walked down the street for an impeccable dinner at Chez Sophie. Although we were a few weeks too early for the Saratoga Race Course season, we weren’t there to bet on the horses. We came for the water. The effervescent mineral water at the Lincoln Bath House, to be exact. Seemingly one of the best values among spa treatments is a soak in a mineral bath ($20 for 40 minutes; add $5 if you want an aromatherapy oil added).

- Unfortunately, I didn’t learn until after my bath had been poured that the naturally cold, highly carbonated pale green mineral water is mixed with hot tap water to bring the water closer to body temperature. (The chlorinated tap water being added to the mineral water causes a reaction that turns the water a murky brown, as seen in the above photo.) If you want an all mineral water soak, you need to specifically request it at the time you make your reservation. Considering the negative publicity the state-owned facility received after the New York Post reported last March that the mineral water was being diluted, I would have expected the staff to have volunteered this information upfront.

+ On Thursday we took the Essex Junction ferry to cross Lake Champlain from the New York side to Vermont. While getting ready to board the ferry, I spotted a beautiful 2005 Airstream Safari trailer in the queue. The driver, Rich Luhr, was nice enough to give me permission to photograph his 30-foot trailer as well as himself. Rich is the editor and publisher of Airstream Life magazine. He and his wife Eleanor, along with their then five-year-old daughter Emma, set out in an Airstream in October 2005 for what was supposed to be a six-month trip. Almost three years later, they are just now completing this stage of their American journey. They are spending the summer with family in Vermont and in August will begin a 3,000-mile tour from Vermont to Arizona (via N.Y., Ohio, Ind., Mo., Ks., Colo. and Utah) with many stops along the way. By October they plan to end up at their new home in Tucson, Arizona. Read more about the Airstream lifestyle, as well as the Luhr family adventures, on the family’s Tour of America blog. (Rich also told us about Vintage Trailer Jam 2008, which takes place July 11-18 in Saratoga Spa State Park in Saratoga Springs.)

+ We spent Thursday through Sunday in Burlingon, Vt. and were utterly charmed. Much of our time was spent near Waterfront Park and in the four-block Church Street Marketplace area. We had a number of excellent meals, including dinners at American Flatbread and Taste of Burlington, breakfast at Penny Cluse Cafe and coffee and bagels at Muddy Waters.

- As an SPG Gold member, I try to stay in a Starwood hotel whenever possible. In Burlington, my only choice was a Sheraton. If I had to do it over again, I would have passed up the opportunity to earn points — and receive indifferent service — in favor of the waterfront proximity of the Hilton Burlington or Courtyard by Marriott Burlington Harbor.

Burlington reminds me a lot of Portland, Ore. in that both are bike-friendly, have a coffee culture, are green in both sensibility and surroundings, and possess the good manners of a small town along with the cultural activities of larger cities.

Three days is not enough time to explore all that Burlington has to offer. Dave and I hope to make a return trip this fall and plan to bring more recreational equipment, including our bikes, next time.

Even as mobile browsing and pageviews among smartphone users have increased substantially in the past year, 89 and 127 percent respectively, according to M:Metrics, the development of mobile automotive sites has not kept pace.

Consumers who are looking to access third-party and automaker sites from their mobile devices have few to choose from and even fewer that offer an optimum experience.

Third-party automotive mobile sites are best for searching inventory
The few sites that are getting it right are those focused on classified listings. In-market automotive consumers looking to find decision-making advice are better served by their laptops. However, once it’s time to search local dealer inventory, their mobile devices can help them pinpoint what’s available in their area.

The mobile automotive sites with the strongest inventory focus are those from Cars.com and Vehix.com. Both list new- and used-car inventory search as the first two links from their landing screens.

Cars.com Mobile, which launched in June 2007, is the best site for consumers who wish to check out local inventory, find a dealer and get maps and directions. The site also makes it easy to quickly find the make you are looking for – the new-car listings screen displays multiple makes side-by-side. [Full disclosure: I am the former Managing Editor of Cars.com, a position I held until December 2004. However, I did not have any involvement with the current iteration of the Cars.com mobile site.]

The one advantage that Vehix Mobile, which launched in October, has over Cars.com is a cleaner interface. Unfortunately, I was unable to compare inventory results between the two sites because of “internal server” errors I encountered both times I tried to use the Vehix mobile site.

[You can read the rest of my article in the June 2008 issue of headlightblog.com, where it was first published.]

Jimmy Wales takes his Wikipedia magic show to New York City

Happy to do my part. <grin>

Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, included headlightblog.com in his Ongoing List of Social Media Examples in the Auto and Car Industry post this week. Apparently, our May issue, which was devoted to Social Influence Marketing as it pertains to digital automotive, was well-timed.

Why is this mention noteworthy? For starters, Owyang’s Web Strategy by Jeremiah blog topped Technobabble 2.0’s list of the Top 100 Analyst Blogs, which was posted in February. Also, as the editor of headlightblog.com, I am glad to see that after only two issues the blog is starting to gain notice. Of course, the primary reason for this attention is the high-quality contributions from my talented colleagues, including Shiv Singh, Ben Bloom, Jesse Pickard and Grant Owens (who also doubles as publisher of headlightblog.com).

Another shameless plug: If you are interested in reading more about digital automotive-related topics, check out the upcoming June issue of headlightblog.com, which will be devoted to Mobile, and will feature the contributions of Kyle Outlaw and Terri Walter.

This week my company published the first issue of the Headlight blog, which covers digital automotive trends and insights. I am the editor and my colleague Grant Owens, director of account planning, is the publisher. Our first issue is devoted to Green topics in the digital automotive space.

Next month’s theme is Social Media and is already shaping up to be quite an interesting issue. Social media expert Shiv Singh, director of strategic initiatives at Avenue A | Razorfish, will be covering Social Influence Marketing in the automotive channel and Senior UXA Jesse Pickard will be looking at automaker-created owner sites and how existing customers can be tapped to help lure in-market consumers. Grant and I, along with a few other co-workers, will help round out the May issue.

I received an Eye-Fi wireless memory card and a red Casio Exilim this past Christmas (thanks Dave!) and continue to be impressed with how much use I have been getting out of this great gift combo. As any of my Flickr contacts know, when it comes to digital photography I am more interested in immediacy than in optimizing my images. My Flickr page frequently doubles as a blog, which helps explain the paucity of posts here, and is the best way to see what I’ve been up to in any given week.

In case you aren’t familiar with it, the Eye-Fi automatically uploads pictures from your digital camera to your PC or Mac as well as to photo sharing, blogging and social networking sites. My only quandary was deciding on Flickr or Facebook as the online repository. Setup is pretty easy — check out this CrunchGear review if you want the step-by-step. All I need to do to upload the images when I get home is to put my camera in play mode. Within minutes my pix start appearing on Flickr. (Yes, a home wi-fi network is required.)

Although the $99 retail price is a lot for an SD card, for me the convenience of having the built-in WiFi transceiver is worth the extra cost. As of today Amazon is still selling the Eye-Fi for full price, but it does qualify for free shipping. And no, I am not a paid shill. I just like the product that much.

I have been spending a lot of time this year looking at social networking sites and the opportunities that exist for both car shoppers and automakers. I recently came across a press release for a new site that is touted in the headline as “the first automotive social network.” (Although the folks at CarDomain would rightly claim that is not the case.) Specious claim aside, I went to check out the new site. Unfortunately, the only thing on the CarFolks.com homepage, at least at the time of this posting, is a Flash intro and links to a contact form and to the November 8 launch announcement. Definitely not what I expected after the press release buildup.

Michael Arrington reports on TechCrunch that “Google will announce a new set of APIs on November 5 that will allow developers to leverage Google’s social graph data.” I’ll let Wikipedia explain the social graph geek concept. I am more worried about another daily timesuck.

Only a few months after creating my profile on Facebook, it is already fifth on the list of sites I visit daily, after my client’s site, Gmail, my Flickr and my company’s wiki. OK, maybe it edges out my company’s wiki.

If Google succeeds at adding “a social layer on top of the entire suite of Google services,” creating an engaging environment and, as one TechCrunch commenter suggests, using judicious data mining to measure the depth and exclusivity of your connections, they could contribute additional texture and shading to the friend construct. It may be possible to have these connections be more implicit than explicit. Of course, there are a number of privacy concerns that come to mind, but I suspect the Google team will address these as part of their November 5 announcement.

09/28/07 update: How did Microsoft respond to this news? Yesterday Fortune reported that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was spotted Tuesday in Seattle, headed for meetings with executives at Microsoft. Unfortunately, I have no insider insight to add to that. Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms & Services Division of Microsoft, was in AA|RF’s New York offices this week and during Q&A with the staff was asked about published rumors that Microsoft was considering buying a stake in Facebook. Johnson said he doesn’t comment on those types of speculations in the press.

And they are paying employees a nice chunk of change for referrals — $4,500! We have almost 200 openings nationally and I can vouch for it as a great place to work. Don’t take my word for it though — watch our Working With Friends video. Get in touch if you want some more info.

In a previous post I mentioned that I did not have a Facebook profile. That is no longer true. I am now a member of the Avenue A | Razorfish network and have reconnected with former colleagues from Forbes.com and cars.com as well. (For any of my friends reading this who are not in my network, I would love to connect with you on Facebook as well!)

In a matter of minutes I had created my profile and added the Flickr thumbnail and Forbes.com stock tracker applications to my page. These applications are a result of Facebook’s decision in late May to offer any company, such as a publisher or software maker, to build services for its members. Although questions have been raised about Facebook’s Terms of Service for the developers of these applications, as a user I found the experience to be a seamless one and the applications encouraged me to spend much more time on the site than I had planned. And, as other commentators have noted, your Facebook page goes beyond social networking and is becoming more like your personalized Google homepage. Although you can’t personalize your Facebook page with a beach theme, you can see which applications your friends have selected for their profile pages, which can be more revealing than their lists of iLikes. Drinks application, anyone?