If vintners can conduct wine tastings via Twitter, it stands to reason that restaurants could do much the same thing to promote their foods. Which is just where TasteCasting comes in, facilitating the use of social media for taste tests and other promotional events to help restaurateurs get tongues wagging about them throughout the socially networked world.

Ohio-based TasteCasting draws upon teams of socially connected bloggers, Twitterers, Flickr users and YouTubers in cities across North America—there are currently 20 with active teams, and more are already forming. Restaurants, cafes and other food service establishments in any of the cities the company serves can host tasting events at which local team members will "taste, tweet, and then repeat," broadcasting their experience of the restaurant across their social media platforms. Specifically, TasteCasting teams post stories, videos and pictures of each event to the TasteCasting site, and each team member adds comments and includes links to their blogs, photos and videos on the TasteCasting profile for that establishment. Grand openings, new menu items and special offers can all be publicized using TasteCasting in exchange for just a complimentary tasting and tour. Currently there is no charge to restaurants and no compensation for tasters, but TasteCasting says it may ultimately consider rolling out an advertising profit sharing opportunity for tasters interested in becoming independent agents.

TasteCasting is looking for sponsorship from major suppliers of food products, equipment, supplies and services. Alternatively, could be one to partner with in food-loving cities around the world—starting with, say, Paris...? ;-) (Related: Foodie podcast highlights curbside cuisine — Food blogger turned intermediary and purveyor — Wine tastings via Twitter.)

Website: www.tastecasting.com
Contact: info@tastecasting.com

Spotted by: Jim Stewart

Travellers looking for city maps and advice face an overwhelming array of alternatives, all competing with a slightly different approach. Whereas recent entrants such as Tripwolf, Offbeat Guides and TripIt all strive to provide some tailored package representing the best of what's on the web, however, a new Swiss startup aims to focus instead on what a local friend might say, presented artistically with hand-drawn notes.

Launched earlier this month, A la Carte Maps are designed to combine guidebook, tourist map and original art in one. Currently available for six cities—Barcelona, Munich, Zurich, Shangai, Tokyo and Washington, DC—A la Carte Maps present an array of each city’s best-kept insider tips on a beautiful, 70-by-42-cm, hand-drawn map. An accompanying welcome letter provides key information about the city in question, such as where to exchange money, how to get around, what to do on a rainy day, etc., while access to a comprehensive city database—provided with each purchase—adds even more insider information as well as the ability to create a customised itinerary. In addition to its curated "My City à la Carte" maps, A la Carte also allows seasoned travellers to create their own, customised maps of a city with their own notes and artwork. Both types of map are ad-free and matt-laminated, and are priced at EUR 8.90; A la Carte donates 10 percent of the profits from each map to a social project in the city it represents.

Maps have always been an essential tool for travellers of every kind, but in this era of technology-enabled mapmania, they are the focus of perhaps more attention than ever before. With its unconventionally personal and hand-crafted approach, A la Carte could stand out amid the sea of web-focused competitors. Where else could a low-tech and artistic approach provide a compelling alternative...?

Website: www.alacartemaps.com
Contact: www.alacartemaps.com/index.php?id=121

Spotted by: Yuan

As many incentives as there are for consumers to go green these days, 'hot girls' strikes us as fairly novel. A new eco-site called Angry Green Girl is celebrating its launch with a car wash featuring five models sporting teeny green bikinis, who'll sud up eco-friendly cars for free using waterless cleaners. When it launches, the site will provide earthsaving tips, product reviews, home makeovers and green networking. The official line is that the green girl will exploit everything she's got to save the planet. Sure, it's superficial, but that's the point: it's refreshing to see that the green movement is finding new ways to engage people and to reach new audiences. One to rinse and repeat elsewhere?

Website: www.angrygreengirl.com

(The car wash will be operating on the southeast corner of Highland and Franklin Avenues in Hollywood, CA on Tuesday, August 25th, from 10 am until midday.)

Spotted by: Mother Nature Network via Judy McRae

Airports in August are generally heaving with tourists, delayed flights and the occasional strike. London's Heathrow Airport, however, seems to be focused on moving forward, judging from two innovative services it launched this month: first its new driverless personal transport pods, and now a writer in residence. And not just any writer: residing in Heathrow's Terminal 5 is Alain de Botton.

Focusing both on the people who work at the airport and those that pass through it, De Botton's weeklong layover at Heathrow seems to combine elements of his recent "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" and his earlier "Art of Travel". The author won't be idling away his time in Terminal 5's lounges or champagne bars; seated at a desk, he's writing a book that will be published late September. As he types, the work-in-progress is projected on a screen behind him. An excerpt published by The Faster Times:

"In the cloudless dawn, a sequence of planes, each visible as a single diamond, had lined up at different heights, like pupils in a school photo, on their final approach to the north runway. Their wings unfolded themselves into elaborate and unlikely arrangements of irregularly sized steel gray panels. Having avoided the earth for so long, wheels that had last touched the ground in San Francisco or Mumbai hesitated and slowed almost to a standstill as they arched and prepared to greet the rubber-stained English tarmac with a burst of smoke that made manifest their planes’ speed and weight."

Besides publishing at the speed of light and providing Heathrow with some lovely literary publicity, the endeavour taps into two ongoing consumer trends. First off, the status stories element: passengers and staff members are invited to share their stories with De Botton, and have a chance of being immortalized in A Week at the Airport. Secondly, a generous dose of free love: Heathrow will be handing out 10,000 copies of De Botton's diary to passengers travelling through the airport. Smart marketing move by Heathrow, and one for any other brand to be inspired by: be delightful, be relevant, be generous. (Related: Hotel offers 'reader in residence' — Airline alliance offers free audiobook downloads at airports — Personalized inflight mags at Heathrow's Terminal 1.)

Website: www.heathrowairport.com

Spotted by: Raymond Kollau

With all the mobile app stores that have sprung up in the past year, developers and brands have a raft of new ways to reach mobile users. As is so often true, however, opportunity brings new challenges, and in this case it's monitoring sales and performance across all those platforms. Enter Distimo, a Dutch startup that tracks prices and download activity on all the major app stores.

Covering the Apple, Android, Blackberry, Nokia and Palm app stores, among others, Distimo functions as a sort of Google Analytics for mobile applications, monitoring and reporting on the details of each application's performance across platforms. In addition to a free monthly report focusing on Apple's App Store, the company also offers custom reports for the Apple and Android markets that provide data specific to a client's applications, including those of the competition. The free Distimo Monitor program, meanwhile—now in beta—offers a central place to monitor one's apps in all app stores. Updated daily, the Monitor program provides an analytics page that also includes information on the competition, such as which channels they're doing best in and how price changes are affecting their download numbers.

As the world embraces all things mobile, there are opportunities aplenty not just for developers, but also for those who can help support them. The mobile tide is still rising—ride along with it, and watch your boat get lifted too!

Website: www.distimo.com
Contact: info@distimo.com

Spotted by: Vincent van Dugteren