Delicious Italy

Good Morning Tempe

Our website statistics provider has supplied us with a wonderful new tool.

We now are able to track in real time each visit, what keywords they use to arrive at the site, which pages are viewed, which city they access the site from and a whole host of other interesting navigational information.    

So the person or company in Tempe, Arizona, who has been viewing every single page of the website over the past week, we know you're out there!

Coincidentally, this week in Borgata, Phoenix, the Italian Government Tourist Board North rolled into town in an 18-wheeler truck called 'Italy for Life Hospitality Truck' to encourage travel to Italy.

The truck has expandable sides and is wrapped in graphics that depict the culture and flavors of Italy.

The hospitality truck also boasts a customer service specialist to answer questions about planning a trip to Italy. Potential travelers can use interactive kiosks to learn more about what Italy has to offer visitors.

The Italian Government Tourist Board North America press release stated how 'in this digital age of online access to information and do-it-yourself research, we wish to get close to our visitors; we want the human element of the traveling experience to take center stage and leave a permanent mark in everyone's memory'.

Web errors, meant or otherwise

We sent out a newsletter today. It had a lot of original content in it, a few links that had to be checked and a mixture of Italian and English text. 

It requires a lot of concentration at the best of times to ensure all is correct and the html comes together. So, coming off the back of a day spent in bed with 38.5 degrees of flu, it was inevitable something might give.

And in fact, our template had not been updated from 2007 to 2008 before we sent it out. Not many noticed, but we did and it matters to us.   

Who has had plenty of time to update their records is a certain person who continues to insist on her own website that she is an ongoing contributor to www.deliciousitaly.com.

This is news to us as we have not been in contact with the individual for at least 3 years and the contributions implied refer to a handful of pages of text she gave to us to promote her own writing ambitions and professional profile back in 2002/3.

But its the web isn't it, so if we keep these pages online does this mean she is an ongoing contributor?

They're striking in Hollywood over this very point.

For the record the Delicious Italy website is compiled completely in house with the only external contributions coming from Italian incoming clients for whom we are offering promotional and communications services.

Italia Punto It

On Saturday 19th January 2008 the plug was pulled on www.italia.it, the official State portal website whose objective was to present the best of Italy to the world.

The site was also meant to put an end to the fragmented nature of the online Italian incoming tourism offer by presenting the national territory from a single reference point with each region providing content, links and a whole series of useful information for visitors.

In less than year from its launch at the BIT or International Italian Tourism Fair in Milan and just a month before this year's trade exhibition, it seems the whole project has been archived.

45 million euros invested and nothing to show for it.

About Italian Food

We receive the regular newsletter from About.com Italian Food.

This one passed us by we have to admit, but today is International Day of Italian Cuisines as declared by the Gruppo Virtuale Chef Italiani.

According to About: 'a group of Italian chefs who work all over the globe. They suggest you celebrate with a nice bowl of pasta alla carbonara, an unusual Roman pasta dish seasoned with pancetta and egg'.

Hang on a minute!  An unusual Roman pasta dish. Something is not right here. Carbonara is as usual Roman as the Colosseum.

About.com follow up by saying 'a Roman sauce with pancetta and eggs; since I have had it with cream added in Italy, I include cream as an optional ingredient though the GVCI says to avoid it'.

Correct, you do not add cream to carbonara, although standard practice elsewhere. 

Also describing themselves as the 21st Italian region, the Gruppo Virtuale Chef Italiani has its headquarters in '“the world”. 

There are many parallel Italy food lobbies and circuits out there, each one custodian of the real soul of Italian gastronomy and cuisine.    

Read widely, learn Italian and visit Italy regularly to form your own opinion.

http://gvci.org

www.deliciousitalyblog.com

This blog has a new title.

www.deliciousitalyblog.com.

All we need to do now is reload the site... here goes...

Delicious Everything 2

We noted a little while back the plethora of websites utilizing the word Delicious. All good fun.

We even noticed the more than casual use of the word 'delicious' on packaging throughout London, from take-away sandwiches to Sainsbury's food products etc.

This latter trend can be explained, in our humble opinion, by the rise of general Brit interest in eating well and the presence of such glossy mags as 'Delicious'. And television cooks.

Now we are the first to say that imitation is the best form of flattery and too much of a good thing spoils the broth, to mix your metaphors.

So 'Italianicious - Essence of Italy Magazine' from Sydney in Australia is an interesting discovery.

Cut and paste

We received an email from the UK asking for more information about the Chiaretto wine festival in Bardolino. 

Our page on the Bardolino Wine Route in Veneto contains a link to the wine consortium which organises and promotes such events.

A quick search of the web also revealed a couple of sites with a full and identical page description of the event. One was a site dedicated to events and one a cooking blog from a lady in Bardolino.

The former declare their source of their information as www.bresciaatavola.it, which is not even in Veneto.

Brescia Tavola say that their reference is www.sottocoperta.net who clearly and rightly say that it is forbidden to reproduce any content from their site.

This is a bit rich, however, as www.sottocoperta.net is simply a compilation of notices from other websites to mask an affiliate loaded interface of earn per click.

If our logic is correct www.sottocoperta.net must have lifted the content word for word from someone else, no doubt with permission of the originator. 

It seems the original source of the information was still the Consorzio Tutela Vino Bardolino.

As the website first in Google's search results is that of the Consorzio, we rest our case.

Something's changing

We heard today that eBay are trying to offload part of their Skype investment. What seemed like a good idea is not bearing fruit in an otherwise successful concept.

A commentator pointed out that the success of the web, and sites like eBay, is that people can do business without having to get to know each other. Or in this case talk to each other, perish the thought.

Affiliate programs seem a bit like this. Do we really know how the mechanics or business models work. Even if they are transparent, can they be considered a real partnership. 

The number of Weblogs, at least in English, has now peaked as everyone has had a go. Time to move on. Let's have a go at video. A beautiful thing, but it's the content that counts.

We have also heard of a new social networking initiative. The site would allow the subscriber to build, in effect, their own television interface and share programs, comment with friends etc. It hits all the buttons, but nobody has yet picked it up.

Its your move.

Delicious Everything

We launched our www.deliciousitaly.com in the year 2000 and since then have noticed a lot of 'delicious' both on and offline.

Firstly, there was Delicious India, then the Jamie Oliver fronted Delicious Magazine in the UK and Australia. Donna Karan launched her 'Delicious' scent "combines the scent of apples with a sophisticated blend of exotic flowers and sensual woods" and Ferrero used a series of 'Deliciously Italian' tag lines for a series of print ads.

With all this delicious going on we took the jump and signed up for the social bookmarks manager del.icio.us, as 'deliciousitaly' of course.

A quick review of Google has also thrown up the following: deliciouslivingmag, the Delicious Italian restaurant in New Zealand, deliciousdecisions (recipes for people with cardiac problems by the American Heart Association), delicious.dk (German female djs) and, in a similar vein, 'deliciousgony' webcasts of streaming progressive rock.       

Scrummy.    

Pecorino by satellite

Expect to find a whole raft of tourism satellite navigating systems on the market very soon.

We know of three, 2 of which we can reveal immediately.

The first is Qualigeo, 'the first integrated system for the development of the agricultural and food products of certified quality and of all the related activities'

Translated, this means a portable GPS navigation systems whose software will help you locate Italy's DOP, IGP and STG products, the firms who produce them and the territory of reference.

The second is Metafacile, another GPS tool which guides the tourist through the production zone of Franciacorta wine and associated sites and sights.

You have to be tempted to try them out, but both are surely just prototypes for much more sophisticated tourism gadgets over the next few years.

Or maybe a scribbled note on your well thumbed route map is still the best way to travel.