Wine.com has recently released a free iPhone app for wine enthusiasts on the go, allowing users to access listings, varietals and recommendations from everywhere in the world! Okay, maybe not everywhere, but wherever there’s service at least.

The new app lets you research and buy from Wine.com’s vast database of 45,000+ wines, with the ability to save wines in your “Cellar,” keep track of your favorite bottles, and even create wish lists. The app also serves sort of as a mobile encyclopedia of wine providing ratings and reviews on the go. This is a great step forward for the website, especially with the growing number of wine enthusiasts out there. I see this as a very practical app especially when you’re out trying to order wine, noting a great wine you want to buy later, or trying to figure out the best wine to buy under a budget. While the functions are fairly limited at this stage, Wine.com is expected to include more features in the coming year such as food and wine pairings and integration of your Wine.com profile. While Snooth and Corkd have their own iPhone apps, Wine.com’s app stands out from the rest with its ability to buy bottles on the go from its extensive list of wines.

John Madden logged 80,000 miles annually in his own custom model.

Sarah Palin recently faked a trip cross-country hocking her book in one.

And any country star with a freshly inked recording contract has one with an airbrushed mural down the side.

They’re the 45-foot long, ten-wheeled tour busses and they’re getting a new lease on life.

Entering the market comes a group of entrepreneurs who see opportunity on America’s highways.

The choice of the white line cruisers for travel had shrunk to those who are afraid to fly or those who are forced to endure grimy Greyhounds and sleazy bus depots.

Turns out that bus travel, at least in the Northeast and Midwest, has become a hip, and hiply budget-conscious, mode of transport. Book early enough on some of the sleek new lines, and you can travel from city to city for as little as $1. A dollar won’t get you from 14^th to 42^nd on the A line and in addition, the post Greyhound generation of buses even pick up passengers at convenient curbside locations and offer such amenities as free wi-fi and movies.

“Who wants to drive when you can watch movies and play with your computer?” asks Joe Schwieterman, a DePaul University professor who specializes in urban planning and transportation. He recently published a study on intercity U.S. bus travel that showed a nearly 10% jump from 2008 to ’09. As Amtrak and the airlines have struggled with incorporating wireless, we think that’s a big part of why it’s suddenly cool to jump on the bus, “ he says.

That and the jaw-dropping prices. A bunch of coach lines now compete for fare–surfing customers on BusJunction.com offering a $1 fare to at least the first passenger to book a seat on each bus. BoltBus caps fares at $25 each way. This means a ride from New York to Boston costs about a third as much on a bus as it does on Amtrack or JetBlue.

Last but not least the buses turn out to be surprisingly green, far outshining other vehicles in eco-efficiency. When you combine passenger occupancy with mileage per gallon, bus travel is four times as energy efficient as car or air travel.

It shouldn’t be surprising that bus travel for the cognoscenti would be enjoying a bit of a revival.

The image of a solitary bus, air brakes hissing to a stop on an empty stretch of highway, a quintessential American type disembarking for home or new horizons, occupies an enduring place in our collective conscience. It’s a mode of travel made for America and during a time when lots of people need to watch every penny totally relevant.

Este Lauder’s Social Media Campaign is a Smart Departure For Luxury Brands

Google continues to dominate headlines on tech blogs whether its the highly touted Android, rumored Google Phone, or some type of new app in beta release.

This time around its Chrome, a web browser released by Google, which has many people talking. The browser is on its 4th release and is currently available on both the Windows and Mac OS platform. Chrome really sets itself apart from the pack with its list of impressive features.

Introduced as the new way to see the Internet, Chrome gets it right, borrowing features from market leading browsers and combining it all into one simple program. One of its best features is its stability. Frozen tabs and crashes no longer affect other browsers, allowing for continued browsing without losing all that data. I can already see this becoming very useful for me since I love to utilize tabbed browsing but theres always that link that causes the browser to crash. Another interesting feature is the Incognito mode, which borrows from Apple’s Safari, allowing users to browse the internet without any recorded traces.

Google really stepped up its marketing for Chrome, releasing a fun little video outlining the various features of the browser, and fortunately has paid off for the search giant. As of today, Google has overtaken Safari, is currently ranked as the number 3 browser, with Firefox a distant 2nd, and Internet Explorer as the top browser.

Only a year into its release and Google has already established a 4.4% market share while narrowly beating Safari. Google’s success has translated well over its various products, the browser has a long way to go to gaining a significant slice of the pie.

Thought that Issac Mizrahi along with a few other fashion elite are the only ones who could create a runway show? Well think again. Ralph Lauren, the company that has been leading the luxury fashion market into the digital world with the first fashion forward iPhone app, has created the digital fashion show. The virtual show allows the fashion obsessed to indulge in choosing outfits for Ralph Lauren models and watch them walk down the runway.

Lauren reflects on the nature of the changing industry: “Right now there is a lot of discussion. People are cutting their budgets, and are spending a million dollars a show. You can produce this for very little, and you can do this with no audience and no invitations, and you can reach a million times the amount of people.”

The movement of live runway shows to the digital space represents a common trend in our industry of advertising where services can be found online at a fraction of the price we used to pay for them. In the case of Ralph Lauren, it means out-of-work models and un-rented runways, but more money that can be spent on new creative projects.

The down turned economy may just mean that there is more capital available for creative work, resulting in increasingly interesting and effective advertising.

The Do-It-Yourself Economy

Rugby Ralph Lauren to Hold Virtual Runway Show

Standing tall at 4.9″, weighing in at 11.2 oz is the unproven rookie, straight out of the Barnes & Noble bookstore introducing, the nook!

As we’ve all heard by now one of the hottest gadgets of the holiday season (currently sold out for the year) is the latest entry in the world of eBook readers, the Barnes & Noble nook. Set to compete against the top-selling Amazon Kindle, B&N has a tough opponent ahead of itself.

The nook is billed as the first e-book reader powered by Android, which features a 3.5″ color screen as well as a 6″ E-Ink screen. The e-reader boasts 2GB of internal memory with the ability to expand memory up to 16GB via a microSD card. It’s most notable feature however is the nook’s lending option which allows users to share their eBooks with friends for up to 14 days. The feature although is not without limitations since users are allowed to share each book only once.

The nook is all about the unique user experience packaged with its list of impressive features. Barnes & Noble’s strength doesn’t lie in the nook but rather in its storefront, the company’s greatest advantage over Amazon. Having a storefront proves advantageous for future users looking to pick up a nook or for current users who can easily turn for solutions to their nook problems. Using the nook in a B&N store provides another noteworthy feature, allowing users to browse and read entire books, free of charge as long as they’re connected to the B&N Wi-Fi. Another big feature is the ability to read books on your iPhone or BlackBerry if you happen to forget your reader at home, which will be introduced in early 2010. Many critics have already started talking about the potential of utilizing Android and possibly adding an app store to the nook.

I think B&N has produced a real winner with the nook, and while it’s still in its early days, there is a great future ahead for the device. While the device may be sold out for the year, the amount of buzz generated will last through the holidays till the upcoming year, with many early adopters looking to get in on the craze.

The nook is full of features, setting it apart from the Kindle. There’s great potential in taking the crown away from the Kindle, but it is months, maybe years from doing so. With the nook as B&N’s first entry into eBook readers, the company has succeeded in creating a device that is loved and lauded by many.

As part of the Life goes better with Bordeaux campaign, CreativeFeed has designed a kit for curious wine drinkers to rediscover good value Bordeaux with their friends.

The kit is composed of 6 best rated wines under $25 (4 Reds and 2 Whites), all from different appellations for bloggers to taste the diversity of Bordeaux. It also contains a couple of fun tools such as the Bordeaux Match wheel for you to find new Bordeaux to try, based on your favorite wines

This morning, we have been very pleased to see that our very first blogger has opened its Bordeaux party kit, and shared his experience in a post.

We can’t wait to get some more news after the party. Cheers Allan!