Selecting wine wirelessly

The next time you're puzzling over which wine to buy you may well be able to take advantage of a new wireless service from wine site, Sommnet.

The next time you're puzzling over which wine to buy you may well be able to take advantage of a new wireless service from wine site, Sommnet.

Sommnet is a new site with a twist – site developer Corporate Solutions is working with Ericsson Synergy to provide mobile information for those wine buyers who just can't quite make up their minds.

"You'll be able to enter the bar code number into your cellphone and get tasting notes on the wine you're looking at," says Corporate managing director Gary Benner.

Content for the site is provided by Keith Stewart, wine columnist with The Listener, who will be travelling to Europe later this year to promote the concept at other wine growing regions.

Ericsson's mobile internet manager Jill van Nortwick says the mobile side of the site will be delivered in two flavours.

"The first is a subscription-based system that sends out an SMS message 'wine of the day' and you'll be able to sign up for red, white or sparkling as you wish."

Users of new generation phones, like Telecom's CDMA and Vodafone's GPRS will be able to go one step further with WAP access to the information.

"So you could be standing there with $20 to spend on chardonnay not knowing which bottle is better and be able to look them up and find out immediately."

This part of the site won't go live, says van Nortwick, until Stewart has put his extensive collection of tasting notes into the system.

"We really don't want people typing in bar codes and getting no response so we're not launching until we have a full list."

Van Nortwick says Ericsson is working with Stewart to help demonstrate the site's capabilities in Europe as well as providing the wireless functionality here in New Zealand.

The next stage for the site is the obvious move – adding purchasing power to the wine notes.

"You'll be able to cut out the middle man and simply order via the phone or the site," says van Nortwick.

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Tags wireless

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