Last year for my birthday, I received one of the best presents in recent memory: a Nespresso coffee maker.

There are few things in life that I enjoy more than the smell and taste of fresh brewed espresso coffee. Cappuccino, a simple mixture of espresso-brewed coffee and steamed milk, when it’s done well, is the most heavenly experience to this coffee lover.

The Nespresso brand excels at delivering a remarkable experience: from the product itself, to the packaging and the customer experience.

Let’s start with the product, the pure substance itself: the coffee.

I have become a connoisseur of fine cappuccino. I love the smell of coffee brewing and when properly executed a cappuccino is nothing short of heavenly.

Nespresso consistently produces a very good quality coffee. Is it the best I’ve ever tasted? Well, no. A fine cappuccino produced by a competent barista with a $50,000 machine will beat Nespresso any day. But, compared to Starbucks and Second Cup cappuccinos, Nespresso can hold it’s own.

And Nespresso gives you this coffee quality for well less than half the price. The machine I have (pictured right)  goes for about $300 and the coffee capsules cost about $0.70 each. Say you’re in the habit of picking up a double tall non-fat, no foam latte from Starbucks on the way to work each day. With the extra shot of espresso, that drink will cost you over $4 at Starbucks, but under $2 on your Nespresso. Make it five minutes before you leave the house and it’s probably even the same amount of time or less.

But Nespresso’s success isn’t merely based on it’s taste. Check out the actual design of the machine itself – it’s a work of art and very well-designed. The way the coffee capsules are inserted and locked into position feels satisfyingly like loading and cocking your caffeine shot. The design of the milk steamer is clever and effective and so easy to clean.

This attention to design and style carries over to the product packaging. The capsules come stacked in sleeves of 10. The dark black packaging features the brand name in embossed letters creating an ultra-cool black on black textured look. And each flavour, of which I think there are 16 or so, is denoted by the colour of the capsule itself which is mirrored on the ends of each sleeve for easy identification.

It’s clear is that Nespresso has gone to great lengths to define the entire product experience – the product storage, creation of the drink, and the flavour – in terms of an overall aesthetic of style and excellence.

What sent me over the top was my recent experience at the new Nespresso boutique in Edmonton. Located in a lonely back corner of the third floor of the Bay in Southgate Mall, you will find a characteristically stylish retail outlet for Nespresso machines and capsules. After selecting our capsules and paying, we were offered a stylish leather key fob that could be used at any Nespresso store to link to our customer profile. On top of that, the fob will get us a free coffee anytime and any Nespresso stores anywhere. You know what that means: next time I’m at Southgate, I’m heading up to the Nespresso boutique to try a new capsule flavour and say hello to the friendly people there.

If you don’t want to visit the mall, Nespresso offers a speedy and convenient online ordering and delivery service for their coffee capsules. Set up you account at the Nespresso online store.

Guy Kawasaki has written a book about the importance of not just being good, but being great — being enchanting. Nespresso is the epitome of an enchanting brand experience.

As I was writing this piece, I was thinking: people are going to think I was paid by Nespresso to write this. For the record, I was not. Yet, as I think more about it, in fact, I was paid. Everything about the Nespresso brand experience is designed to enchant me so that I want to recommend them and talk about them with my friends. And I have noticed that all of my friends who are already Nespresso customers talk to each other about how much we like the product. And we want to bring others in on the secret.

Isn’t that the objective of any brand and any business? To get people talking about you with their friends and recommending you because you have enchanted them in some way.

I’m enchanted, Nespresso.

“The regular,” I said. (I love being a regular and having a regular order and walking in and saying “the regular”.)

I grabbed a Diet Coke from the cooler and sat down with my MacBook and connected to the free wifi. (Here’s why free wifi is very important to small businesses.) A few minutes later a member of Fadi’s always smiling and friendly staff delivered my falafel with hot sauce. I devoured it in minutes. Man, was it good.

Dahlia’s Bistro is a great little spot. The food is fresh and tasty – and well-priced. The atmosphere is convivial and the attitudes of Fadi and all his people are exceptionally friendly. It’s a perfect example of a business that attracts it’s customers by being really good at what they do.

Then, Fadi walked over and showed me his new point-of-sale (POS) system – a sleek iPad2-based system sold by a Toronto company called TouchBistro. Using his personal iPad, he can take orders and print receipts wirelessly, control inventory, and track staffing. He can even watch order processing remotely via his iPhone in real time and get his reports emailed to him nightly.

Best part is the cost: Well under $1,000 for the software app and all the required hardware (printer, cash drawer, iPad stand). This is compared to $6,000-$10,000 for a traditional POS system. Huge savings for any small business person. Very bad news for the traditional POS vendors.

If you’re a small business owner in Edmonton, I highly recommend you drop into Dahlia’s Bistro and see the new POS in action. While you’re here, you have to try the falafel. There’s lots of other great sandwiches and dishes too.

But trust me on the falafel.

We are planning a brainstorming conference call on TUESDAY November 23 at 8:00 pm EST and are inviting ANYONE with good ideas – even if you are over 40 – to join us and participate.

I know what you’re thinking – it’s kind of lame to be organizing a conference call to discuss social media strategies. Hey, what can I say – you’ve got me there. But we don’t want to exclude people from the conversation for whom social media is still very new. By all means, start the conversation now and share your thoughts. The Nov. 23 call is just one stage of the discussion.

For more information, watch my short animation…

Please join us on TUESDAY November 23 at 8:00 pm EST for a brainstorm session about social media and Reform Jews in Canada.

Please register for the Nov. 23 call by completing this form. We will contact you a few days before the call with the conference bridge details. Even if you can’t make it, but you’re interested, please fill out the form.

In the meantime, let’s start the conversation now. Feel free to share your thoughts, feelings and ideas in the comments below.

Looking forward to meeting and talking with you.

If you were in Vancouver for LAP40, you probably missed some of it because of the ancient DVD and TV set-up at James and Mark’s place. (Frankly, the audio-visual equipment is the only thing they haven’t upgraded yet in that wonderful condo of theirs.)

Fabulous at Forty from Jay Palter on Vimeo.

In case you are interested, the show was made with iMovie and then saved as a high resolution Quicktime movie file and shared using Vimeo (a much higher quality video sharing site). If you’d like to make a slide show video for someone you love, I highly recommend iMovie for it’s ease of use and power.

Everywhere I go these days, the theme is mint. As in the colour, the fresh aromatic scent and the personal finance site.

We added a bit of minty green paint to the basement this week and it has really added a cool, refreshing vibe to the place. (Technically, the colour is more in the lime category or chartreuse, according to my wife, but the minty theme resonates more, I think.)

Then there’s the mint tea I’ve been drinking. In the evenings, I love to drink mint tea. The other day, on my hunt for fresh basil at the local Chinese grocer, I got a whiff of fresh mint. There was no basil in stock so I walked out with a bag of peppermint. Put some fresh mint in a teapot and add some boiling water. The best mint tea you’ll taste.

Finally, Jon Chevreau tweeted recently that mint.com – the personal finance site – is coming to Canada this fall. Mint is a free personal finance and planning site that is, literally, a breath of fresh air. And the logo with the little mint leaves with dollar signs – aw, how I wish I came up with that connection between mint in the currency sense and in the fresh smelling sense.

What is the deal with mint these days – why is it so hot?

I was remorseful. (If I had only put it back in my pocket before moving.)

I was hopeful. (AppleCare, the Geniuses, someone will help me make this right.)

It doesn’t take much for this fragile little mobile brain to shatter. (Note to self, get your iPhone a helmet next time.)

Apparently, I am not the only one who has experienced this and taken pictures. The device still works, but is the screen fixable?

I am going to the Apple Store today. I am hoping (praying) there is a repair possibility.

I am a little worried about how it is affecting me. But I keep telling myself, it’s just hardware. It’s just money. There are way worse things that can happen.

Right? (Right?)

This is a Wordle for this blog, Newish in Edmonton.

What is a Wordle, you ask? It is a word cloud. The larger the font size on a word, the greater the frequency of its use. It looks kinda cool, I think.

The word that doesn’t appear prominently on my Wordle is “why”. Why do I blog?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately and have a few reasons to offer:

1. I learn a lot about what I think by writing about it.

2. I blog so that our family and friends back in Ontario can keep up to date with what’s going on in our lives.

3. I blog to meet people who care about the same things as I do. For instance, I met a reader of my blog this week – a total stranger. She had followed the blog for some time and then contacted me. Within a short time, we found we had all sorts of things in common and I feel like I made a new friend. My sense is that if I write honestly, it will attract people who care about similar things.

4. I blog to share. I love talking with friends and acquaintances about our lives, our kids’ accomplishments and their wonderful personalities, so why shouldn’t I write about it?

5. I enjoy designing content. I love the process of crafting an interesting post, editing the words to be just right, matching the words with images, and topping it off with a clever (not always, but I try) title.

6. I blog to remember. Memory can be fragile and fleeting, especially as we get older. If I write about something, it becomes in a way a shared memory and there is a greater chance it will be remembered.

I’m still thinking about this one. If I come up with any more reasons, I’ll comment them.

One of those apps is called Remote. It basically turns your iPhone into a remote control device for your iTunes. This was the final straw for me – the one piece of the whole home technology puzzle that sent me into a giddy spasm of euphoria.

You see, I live for music. The way it moves me and grooves me. The way it triggers creative thoughts and helps me remember people and places and feelings in my distant past. When I am feeling down, music can lift my spirit. And when I’m feeling good music can make me fly.

So we have music playing in the house often and I have been seeking an affordable whole home audio solution for several years. I tried a number of the early systems, like Creative’s Xmod, but found spotty performance and poor quality hardware. Of course, there are a number of quite pricey solutions on the market (Sonos, Zon, Squeezebox), but these systems always struck me as the wrong approach for me. With the rapid pace of technological innovation, it never made sense to me to spend thousands of dollars on a system that would be eclipsed within a few years.

All I wanted to do was move the music around. It should be easy, I thought. Turns out, it is. Here’s my whole home audio solution.

The Base

The family computer is an iMac – a big, beautiful, shiny Apple. On that computer, we run iTunes because there are iPods floating around all over the house. The iPod brought iTunes into our lives and it’s stayed there, not because its a great piece of software but because its convenient (that’s the way Apple likes it, but that’s for another post). This base machine sits in the family room and pre-dates the whole home audio quest.

The AirPorts

Apple’s AirPort Express device acts as a node on your wireless home network (oh yeah, you’ll need one of these too – a wireless home network). Each one plugs into the wall and has a mini-jack output that can go to any powered speaker system. iTunes uses a little-known built-in functionality called AirTunes to talk to these devices. So, if you have an old-fashioned stereo like we do, you can run the mini-jack to RCA connector into your stereo receiver and now your stereo speakers can be controlled by iTunes. We have four AirPorts currently in the house and they can be moved around depending on our needs.

The Powered Speakers

In addition to the two stereo receivers connected to the AirPorts, we have two roaming speaker sets. I’ve found the Bose Companion 2 powered speaker system has great sound – a nice rich low-end and good styling – for a great price. We have one of these set-ups in the kitchen and one in the bedroom. When weather permits, we could move one or both to the backyard and party our faces off.

The Remote

Which brings me to where I started. If the above set up wasn’t amazing enough, I now have the Remote app for the iPhone. This means I can walk around the house and control the iTunes application via my iPhone. I can turn on and off remote speakers, browse songs, select playlists, skip songs, pause a song when the phone rings.

The Bottom Line

This whole-home audio system works like a charm and its a fraction of the cost of the high-end systems. You do not need an iMac to run iTunes – it runs fine on a Windows PC and AirTunes can talk to the AirPorts. Mind you, I’ve never tried the iPhone Remote app with the PC.

Final cost breakdown for my four-zone whole home audio set-up, leveraging an existing stereo received and home theatre receiver looks like this:

• 4 AirPort Express @ $100 each = $400
• 2 sets of Bose Companion 2 powered speakers = $300

Technically, if you didn’t have any existing speakers, you’d have to get two additional Bose speaker sets – which brings you right up to the $1,000 mark.

Obviously, there are many ways to improve on this system and increase the cost, but I challenge anyone to build a better system for the money.

Drop me a line if you need any help setting yours up. Makes a great Father’s Day gift!

“Dad, do you have an iTouch or an iPhone?” Ben asked me tonight as I was preparing dinner.

“iPhone,” I answered.

“Good, ’cause that’s the best one.”

“Why, Ben?” I wondered.

“Can your phone see YouTube?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s a really important site,” he assured me.

Even before I had a chance to play with it and figure out how it works, Ella and Ben were all over it. See, Grandpa Hal has one and they have grown quite accustomed to playing with it when grandpa is around. Turns out they know their way around an iPhone. Before long, Ella was taking her picture, recording her voice and filming a video.

“You know more about my new phone than I do,” I told her, a sentiment she would joyfully repeat several times over the next day.

I must say the iPhone is wonderful in most regards. The slick design and user interface is a joy. The WiFi connectivity is effortless and efficient. And the abundance of applications – for doing work, recreating, productivity – is a real draw for me. I was amazed at how quickly it synced up with all my data in Outlook – and through iTunes, of all things. Clearly, Apple will be renaming their music application in the near future, since iTunes appears to have less and less to do with tunes and more and more to do with Apple’s control over your use of cool, mobile tools.

My only real trouble has been with the typing interface. The virtual keyboard is a bit small and my thumbs keep hitting the wrong keys, but I’m told it gets better. I also struggled a bit today with the email configuration. I wanted to use the “push” technology, but I needed to set up a separate Gmail account to do so. It seems to be doing what I want with it now.

I can’t wait to get into those apps.

Apparently, I’ve won a Hoover Platinum Bagless Vacuum. Huh? (Check it out, I’m at the bottom of the list on April 13, 2010.)

I’ve never won anything in a contest. I was hoping for the car, maybe the hot beverage system or the digital video camera – even the cookware. But no, I win the vacuum.

(Sidebar: Apparently my real estate agent Murray has never won anything in a Safeway contest, nor has he ever known anyone who has. This prompted an email from Murray and a proposal for lunch, which I graciously accepted and enjoyed. You know what, there is a decent sushi place in the Bon Ton plaza where we get our challahs and baked goods. But I digress.)

So, what am I to do with another vacuum? We already have a Filter Queen central vac system. And a relatively new Miele bagged cannister vacuum. And now, a Hoover Bagless. I guess I could organize some vacuum races – turn them all on and see which moves across the carpet faster. Or, compare the dust and dirt uptake among the competitors. Maybe I should keep one on each floor of the house so I don’t need to schlep them up and down the stairs.

I’ve considered selling the Hoover on Craigslist or eBay, but what can you get for a vacuum these days. According to Safeway, the retail value of the prize is $530. According to Walmart, I can pick one up for $299. Maybe I could get $150 for it online?

I could try doing what that BC guy did with the one red paperclip – trading it up until he got a house. I’d be at least $298.95 ahead of him, as far as I can figure.

So, anyone out there want to trade me something for a brand new Hoover Bagless?