Alfred App Finds Restaurants You'll Love

I'm addicted to "discovery apps" -- software that learns what you love, then recommends new options based on your preferences.

So I was delighted to come across Alfred, an app from CleverSense. Alfred learns about the restaurants you like in your neighborhood: where you like to go for breakfast, for brunch, for lunch, for dinner, for coffee and dessert. Then, based on those preferences, Alfred recommends nearby restaurants wherever you are: at home or on the road.

Especially when traveling, I use UrbanSpoon and TripAdvisor to discover great restaurants all the time. But both neither UrbanSpoon nor TripAdvisor actually make recommendations based on *my* preferences; instead, they rank eateries based on the preferences of everyone who bothers to vote.

And while the wisdom of The Crowd can be useful -- especially if you have nothing else to go on -- it can also be flawed. In the suburbs, for example, The Crowd is apt to rank McDonald's as a great diner or Pizza Hut as fine Italian restaurant. And that's ultimately the problem with ranking apps: systems that average together the votes of average diners tend to point to average results.

Alfred is different, in that his recommendations are, at least in theory, based on your preferences -- the specific experiences you *personally* enjoy. I spent a little time training him (telling him about restaurants we go to on a regular basis), and in minutes, Alfred was recommending places within a mile or two of our house I'd either forgotten about (Tin Lizzy), avoided (Mojito), or never even heard of (Cafe 640?!?).

It's easy to get excited about recommendations before they're road-tested, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to depend on Alfred to answer "What's for dinner?" If you do the same, let me know how things go.

Sunrise, My House, Today.

Skyscrapers at sunrise, from my balcony, made just this morning.

Jawbone Jambox: Portable Wireless Music for Less

A MadeByMark reader asks via email: "The Sonos system you recommended sounds cool, but is pretty expensive. Any alternatives you'd recommend for lower budgets?"

Why, yes: the Jawbone Jambox wireless portable speaker.

Especially if all you want to do is pipe some music from your iPad or iPhone (or some other Bluetooth-enabled* device), the Jawbone is a good choice. Right out of the box, it connected to my iPhone in just a few seconds. And as "Peter" in Seattle notes in his Amazon.com review, for a device about the size of two Wii controllers stacked on top of each other, the volume and depth of sound the Jambox puts out is remarkable.

And because the Jambox is from Jawbone -- the folks who make those tiny, blinking earpieces everyone seems to be wearing these days -- this little boombox is also a serviceable speakerphone. At The Company, we've taken to putting ours in the middle of the office during all-hands conference calls. While you do need to be standing or sitting reasonably close to the Jambox to be heard clearly by callers, the box does an excellent job of broadcasting the callers' voices to the rest of the room.

The Jambox has one of those tiny (3.5 mm) stereo input ports, and, using the included cable, you can connect the speaker to pretty much any sound source with a headphone jack, from your Microsoft Zune (ha ha ha!) to your dad's old pocket-sized FM radio.

The Jawbone Jambox comes in silver, blue, red, and -- my personal favorite -- black diamond. At $185 or so, the Jambox compares very well the $299 Bose SoundLink, which is larger, heavier, and more expensive. Neither is a good choice if your goal is to appreciate the finer details of your music, as both sound a little mushy or tinny to my ear.

But if all you want to do is stream a few tunes to a wireless box at a party (or make your movies or video games sound bigger than they do on the iPad), the Jambox will do just fine. It's small, light, stylish … and because the internal battery lasts eight hours on a single charge, you can carry it out to the patio and annoy the neighbors all night long. (If the battery gives out before you do, you can always plug the Jambox into a wall socket using the included power adapter.)

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*While "Bluetooth" sounds like something you'd get from eating too many grape popsicles, it's actually a way to move information (music, files, whatever) from one box to another without using wires. When you see someone using one of those earpieces with a blinky blue light to make calls on the phone in their pocket, that earpiece is connecting to the phone using Bluetooth technology.

Bluetooth works well, and setting up a Bluetooth connection is usually very easy. Keep in mind, though, it's a short-range technology, and the two devices talking to each other -- like your iPhone and the Jambox, for example -- have to remain pretty close to each other (within about 30 feet) to maintain a stable connection.

Getting Started with Sonos: What to Buy and Why

This past Christmas, Clyde gifted me with the Sonos wireless music system. Now, using my iPad or iPhone as a remote control, I can quickly and easily fill my house with music from my iTunes library. Better yet, because Sonos works with the Spotify subscription music service (and my XM Radio subscription, and my Pandora account), I can pull virtually any song ever published into my home with just a few taps of my finger.

I love Sonos. But the more I talk with people about the system, the more obvious it becomes that Sonos, as a company, isn't doing a very good job of helping potential customers understand what Sonos is, or how it works, or what you need to set it up. While the website does a good job of showcasing the individual pieces of the system, it fails to provide a clear, simple list of what bits you need to buy (or why you need to buy them).

At least two smart friends of mine have gone to www.sonos.com intending to purchase the system, but left without buying it. I'm pretty tech-savvy myself, and I had to invest an hour or two reading articles about and reviews of the system in order to figure out what to put on my Christmas list!

And that's a shame, because the Sonos music system is a great product that I really think most MadeByMark.com readers would enjoy. So, here's my pass at giving you what Sonos hasn't: simple directions telling you what you need to buy ... and why.

The System

To really enjoy Sonos, most poeple are going to need three things:

1) The Bridge. For simplicity's sake, think of the Sonos Bridge as the "antenna" for the Sonos system. It plugs into your home's wireless internet (or wi-fi) router, and makes all the magic possible. (There is a way to use a Sonos speaker without the Bridge, but -- trust me -- you aren't interested in that solution.) Buy the Bridge. It's $49 bucks at Amazon.com.

2) The Wireless Speaker. You're probably used to thinking of great sound coming from at least two speakers. With the Sonos system, one speaker is all most people will need to fill an entire room with fantastic sound. Eventually, you'll want one speaker in each room where you listen to music -- but for now, you can do what I've done, and just pick one. (It's powerful enough to fill our whole condo with sound, much to the annoyance of our neighbors, I'm sure.)

If you have a small room, you'll want the the speaker Sonos calls the Play:3 for $299. If you have a very big room, you'll want the Play:5 for $399. (There are other options, but we're keeping this simple, remember?) You can get these in any color you like, as long as you like either white or black.

And, for clarity's sake -- because this has confused many friends of mine -- whichever of these two options you choose, you'll get just one speaker. The Play:3 is a smaller speaker, about the size of a loaf of home-baked bread. The Play:5 is the larger speaker, about the size of a basketball. (Because of the names and the marketing copy on the Sonos website, people think the Play:3 option comes with three individual stand-alone speakers and that the Play:5 options includes five individual stand-alone speakers. This is not the case.)

3) The Sonos Software. Sonos sticks software CDs in every box they ship you. You install this software just once on a computer that's *always on* and *always connected* to your home's wireless network. For most of you, that's going to the the desktop PC or iMac that you rarely touch since you bought that shiny new iPad.

It took me about ten minutes to connect the Bridge to our wireless router (you just plug it in using a simple cable), place and power up my Play:3 speaker in the bedroom (it receives music wirelessly, and you can move it from room to room, if you like, but it has to be plugged into the wall for power), and install my software. Setup was easy, and I was listening to music in seconds.

Playing and Controlling Music

Sonos streams music from your computer to the wireless speaker. Especially if you're an iPod, iPhone, or iPad user, you probably already have a music library on your computer in iTunes. Sonos will find this music. Got a Pandora or Spotify or XM Radio account? You can set those up in the desktop software, and Sonos will stream tunes from your Spotify tracks and playlists or your Pandora or XM stations to the wireless speaker as well.

But part of the magic of a wireless music system is freedom from having to sit at the computer to control your music ... so you'll want to download the Sonos app for your iPhone, iPad, or Android phone. The app transforms your handheld device into a remote control for your Sonos system, making it fast and easy to search for and play any of your music. (If you have more money than sense, Sonos will be happy to sell you a dedicated Sonos remote control for $349. Given that a new iPad sells for $499, I can't imagine that a $350 dedicate remote is flying off the shelves these days.)

Options for Expansion

With one speaker in your favorite room, you're good to go. Once you know and love your Sonos, you have options for expanding the system.

1) One Speaker per Room. Want to fill the whole house with music? Drop one speaker in every room. Once they're in place, you can do some cool stuff:

- Stream one song to all speakers. You can, for example, stream Donna Summer's "Bad Girls" to every speaker while you're cleaning house (yes, yes, I listen to '70's disco tunes while cleaning my house -- you should try it!). As you move from room to room, you won't miss a beat.

- Stream different songs to different speakers. The Sonos system can stream different songs to every single speaker. Take a second. Let that sink in. You could, for example, stream "Hot Stuff" to the kitchen speaker, "I Feel Love" to the bedroom speaker, and "MacArthur Park" to the living room, where there's more room to shake your boo-tay without knocking over the knick-nacks -- all at the same time.

2) Pair speakers. If you're loaded with cash and addicted to huge, broad, rich, highly-separated stereo sound, you *can* put two Sonos speakers in one room and tell Sonos "Make the speaker over here a 'Left' speaker and the speaker over here a 'Right' speaker." Sonos will then send the left stereo channel to one speaker and the right stereo channel to the other.

3) Add other doo-dads. Want to send streaming music to your existing home theater system? You can, with the Sonos:Connect ($349). Got two high-end speakers you can't bear to part with, and wish you could stream music to them? You can, by plugging those speakers into the $499 Sonos Connect:Amp.

In A Nutshell

My advice: start simple. Get a bridge and the Play:3 speaker. Once you're hooked, you can add other speakers any time. Enjoy!

A Favorite Photo from Detroit

My favorite photo from our trip to Detroit is this one, taken from the Canadian border.

It captures the chill of that snowy day. It showcases the view from the river. And, at this distance, it's very hard to tell that almost all of those towering buildings in the city are empty, deserted ruins.

Mark in 2044

On the bus to the airport, I sat by a team of teenage hockey players who were snapping photos of each other, running the picture through an app, and hooting over the results.

A little research led me to AgingBooth, which purports to reveal how you'll look in 2044. I downloaded it and tested it on myself. Accurate? Predictive? Ask me in 30 years.

Pastitsio - Greek Lasagne

A lesson learned: while dining at Parthenon, one of the cavernous eateries in Detroit's Greektown, I broke the "Blink" rule.

You know the "Blink" rule, don't you? According to Malcom Gladwell's _Blink_, we make decisions more rapidly than we can consciously follow. The decision is made in a "blink" -- and we spend the next several minutes either justifying what we've already decided that we want ... or second guessing ourselves.

In restaurants, that plays out this way: the diner who orders the first thing that catches his eye tends to report being more satisfied with his dinner than the diner who agonizes over the choices on the menu.

So at Parthenon, what I really wanted -- what caught my eye -- were the gyro platters. The thick pita bread ... the glistening curls of roasted meat ... the pile of crispy-fried potatoes ... beautiful. But then, I sat down at the table, plowed through the menu, and began waffling. Should I get the stuffed grape leaves? The chicken stir fry? No, no ... the pastitsio!

The pastitsio is a sort of Greek lasagna, with layers of macaroni melded with cheese and ground beef. The description swayed me from my first choice ... and it was a mistake.

The pastitsio was tasty enough -- if a bit pale and spiceless -- but huge. I mean, this pastitsio was the size of a football. Five people could have shared it. And just a quarter of the way into it, I was weary of tasting the same thing bite after bite after bite after bite. Eating it -- and not eating most of it -- was just exhausting.

Next time, it's the gyro platter -- or whatever catches my eye first.

My Next Car

Or ... maybe not. But still, it's fun imagining myself zipping around Atlanta in Chevy's concept for a personal mobility vehicle.

Hmmm ... would The Company let me park it in a corner of the limited and closely-regulated employee parking lot?

At the Auto Show

Hyundai, our car maker, had a cool booth where the friendly photographer snagged a not-bad (and rare!) shot of the two of us side-by-side.

Canadian Club Distillery Tour - Windsor, Ontario

We aren't big whiskey drinkers. (Heck, we aren't big drinkers of anything much, except water!) But in Windsor, Ontario, on wintery afternoons, there aren't many options for tourists ... so we drove down Riverside Drive to the Canadian Club Distillery's world headquarters -- which look for all the world like an Italian palazzo.

And there's a reason for that: when Hiram Walker decided to build the world headquarters for his increasingly popular brand of whiskey, he vacationed around the world until he spotted a palace in Italy that struck his fancy. $100,000 dollars later (quite a sum, for the time), he had a copy of his favorite palazzo, complete with mahogany-paneled offices and marble fireplaces.

While the phone recording claims tours run from May through December, they're apparently a year-round affair, as we were able to walk in and snag spots on the noon stroll through the home office. The gift shop and tasting center are located in what used to be Mr. Walker's Bank, where workers could cash their paychecks -- less charges they'd run up at the company store, of course.

The tour includes a stop in a wine cellar once used by Al Capone as a secret meeting room. The gangster, the company's number one customer during Prohibition, commanded his own personal entrance and a windowless private lair insulated from prying eyes. (The number two customer was a Kennedy, we were told.) There, he helped the company design flat, thick glass bottles that resisted breakage ... and that could be literally slipped into a boot and walked back over the border. (Coining, apparently, the term "bootlegging.")

As all factory tours should, this one ends in the tasting room, where we were given small samples of the company's four flagship products. A little sip of each did me just fine, but I have a nephew, I believe, who would have wept over the whiskey we left behind in each sample glass.

The guides are knowledgable, the company has a remarkable sense of humor about the darker side of their business during Prohibition, and everyone in our party seemed to enjoy their hour wandering through the "Palace that Whiskey Built." In fact, the only thing I can criticize about the place was the Thai eatery our guide recommended, a hole in the wall (which is *not* a problem for me) that served us indifferently prepared, mediocre Thai food (which *is* a problem).

Lesson learned: follow the Canadians to whiskey ... but for dining options, trust TripAdvisor.com over local recommendations!