Warning - I try to hold off on my non-technical blog posts till the weekend, but I thought this was kinda cool so I figured I'd share it now. I signed into Klout about a year or so ago. It purports to rank your social influence with a score from 1 to 100. (You can read more about it here.) Frankly, it seemed fun, and I like numbers and charts, but I didn't really think more about it. In some regards it seems dead on - I'm considered influential in ColdFusion and jQuery. In others it seems a bit... off. Apparently I'm also influential in design. Yeah, design.
A few weeks ago I was flying to San Francisco and reading an article in Wired that talked about the company and how it came to be. I thought it was reasonably interesting and told myself to check the site out again next time I had a free moment.
Then I got to the part where they talked about Klout Perks. Apparently, Klout works with companies to share free offers and gifts with people at certain score levels. Let me say right away - I love free crap. Yes, I know that is a bit shallow but I'm a sucker for it. As soon as I could, I logged into the site and checked out the perks. Apparently I had missed quite a few. I had five available to me and while they all seemed kinda interesting, only one really caught my eye, Bing's Summer of Eating promotion. Unfortunately, it wasn't free food, but rather some wine related items and a 10 dollar gift card. I don't drink wine, but my wife does so I figured, what the heck, let me request it.
The perk finally came in this week while I was out of town. The package included an envelope:
With a nicely flattering form letter (ask my friends - I'm all for having my ego flattered):
Here is the back with the code of ethics:
Here was the actual wine-related gift:
That's an opener, decanter, what my wife thinks is an aerator(sp?), and a ring that neither of us could figure out. All the items (and the box) are really well done. So overall, not bad for a freebie.
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Ok, if I can still remember my wine waiter days, I will try to tell you what they are.
The first one (starting on the left) is indeed a corkscrew and cap remover.
The one to the right is a bottle plug. If you are not familiar with that, it will keep your wine fresh for a few days. If it is a good bottle you won't need it.
As for the ring, I believe that it might be used with the bottle plug (might want to do some research on that).
The aerator is correct, although it is rather strange looking.
Wait - are you saying some people open wine and don't finish it in one day? Absurd! ;) (Thanks btw!)
The ring is for wine drops... to keep your nice bottle clean
Not me anyway.:>)
Wine drops. If coffe did not own it, you could say 'good to the last drop, with a wine ring'
The ring goes over the neck of the bottle and soaks up any dribbles that may run down it after pouring. Keeps your tablecloths from getting wine stains (unless you get wrecked and just knock over the whole bottle, in which case the ring will be ineffective).
Not a bad gift at all,
First picture, I thought its a Bing mouse mat, lame.
But thats pretty decent as freebies go.
Who knew wine drinking was so complicated. ;)
@Dale: Yeah, the 'box' (well, round box, whatever) is VERY well done. Feels like high quality material.
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I think you can stop that from happening by including server,username & password in your cfmail tag.
I'd like to see someone influential propose a project in kickstarter and see how quickly the project gets funded.
I think _who you are_ might have a big influence on the investors even more than being able to articulate what the proposed project is going to do.