Rouge Tomate Restaurant and Rob Valencia Score Big in New York

TasteTV’s chocolate salon judge and adviser, Rob Valencia, and his gig at Rouge Tomate in New York have just gotten a fantastic writeup in the New York Daily News. 
According to the Daily News’s writer Restaurant Girl, “..less is more!“
Other tasty observations: 

“Rouge Tomate may be a prototype for a restaurant of the future – a new way of thinking, a new way of eating, a new way of dining out.
…There’s also dessert, which is where you would really mourn the missing calories. Except you don’t here. The chocolate and banana tasting is 272 calories – a chocolate and caramelized banana napoleon, roasted baby banana split and a teacup of rich hot cocoa”

Four out of Five stars…Kudos Rob!

GigaOm goes to a new Ad Network

GigaOm goes to a new Ad Network, and if you don’t think this is a big deal, look at the report from the newly downsized (down to one editor…period) Valleywag.com, part of Gawker. They call it the Death of Conversational Marketing, which as anyone with a blog and an ad knows, is Federated Media’s catch-phrase. But is this really death, or possibly “renaissance? (rebirth)”


Speaking of which, Gawker’s Nick Denton has posted what he calls a “2009 Internet Media Plan,” which details who blog networks like his are going to survive the upcoming drop in online revenues and increase in cost-cutting.

It ain’t pretty, but it might be right.

“Everybody talks about the new sounds funny but it’s still rock and roll to me” – Billy Joel, poet and pianoman

Photos from the Mini Chocolate Salon @ Williams Sonoma (SF, Union Square),

Photos from the Mini Chocolate Salon @ Williams Sonoma (SF, Union Square), featuring Saratoga Chocolates and Sacred Chocolate can be seen here.

Budgets for Online Video may Shrink at Corporations

As a follow-up to the previous post that included the video from the Beet.tv Online Video Roundtable, we’ve included this interesting one that includes an interview with Dina Kaplan of Blip.tv on how the economic crisis is affecting corporate tests of the effectiveness of online video.


Should Online Video Advertising Matter to Publishers?

Below is a very informational video from the Beet.tv Online Video Roundtable. The attendees address the question of “Should Online Video Advertising Matter to Publishers?” There’s a lot of back and forth about who or if to monetize the videos on a publisher’s site, or whether the videos are part of an overall package.

AOL Abandons User Generated Videos

AOL Abandons User Generated Videos, leaves them for someone with more time and money to worry about, reports TechCrunch:

AOL is on a product-cutting spree. In addition to the shuttering of XDrive, AOL Pictures, MyMobile And Bluestring, the company will also be shutting down the AOL Video Uploads service starting this week.

Users must move their videos prior to December 18, when the service closes for good and the videos will no longer be available. AOL is recommending that users transfer videos to Motionbox, a New York based video sharing and editing startup that we first covered in 2006.

Now that this particular online video bandwagon has been left in the hot desert sun to rot with the cactus of “good ideas past,” where will the big media caravan go next for inspiration? It’s not clear, but it better have guaranteed dollar signs around it.

We love two of the comments to this post. They basically say –  social networking and user generated media — “where’s the beef?“