Que Boire Que Manger: Shortcut to Wine-Pairing Mastery

If you have ever made the mistake of pairing an Australian Shiraz with curry, like I have, this will save your life ... or at least the 4 minutes at dinner your friends usually spend making fun of you while you're in the loo.

Que Boire Que Manger is a French startup that launched in summer 2011. Its proposition is simple: email a meal to queboire@qbqm.fr, and in a minute you'll have a detailed and easy-to-read survey of the best wines to match it, any unique qualities they possess, a brief history of their territories, and price ranges (from € to €€€). The service works on any device that can send email, and an app is available on iPhone.

Today QBQM launches its free iPad app, whose intuitive interface permits you to match food to wine and vice versa.

Humor me ››

Shake Well for Love

The Zuck may spend his private time producing hook-up algos for Facebook users, but the socnet that's managed to weld all our social circles together (for better or worse) still lacks plenty in the matchmaking arena.

But who wants to use Facebook for love? How lame are you? ...It's a fine line, certainly, but one that can be exploited.

With that in mind, some friends of friends have produced ShakeCoeur, the iPhone/Android app that lets today's discriminating and time-constrained networker pick and choose would-be mates from friends, and friends of friends, via Facebook Connect.

The idea is deliciously simple: enter your stats (26/female/single). Specify your range (28-35/male/single). Then shake.

Humor me ››

All the French Tech News That's Fit to Print

Hi, honey, I'm home! And with the changing leaves come a new project.

Frenchweb, which covers news in tech among French startups, has launched an English site, Frenchweb News (@FrenchwebNews). I'll be helping get it on its feet, which means you - anglo compatriot! - can expect a couple of articles summarizing news in French tech for that week, coverage of industry conferences, and video interviews in native tongue.

Why read Frenchweb News? I can think of a few reasons:

1. You want to penetrate the European market, so you'll need a sense of the atmosphere and potentially useful partners.
2. You're looking for promising French firms to invest in and scale.
3. You want to broaden your sense of trends that may go global - and not just from home turf.

When I arrived in France a year and a half ago, I wanted to help make European creative more accessible to the American agency audience. To varying degrees I'm still doing that, and the vice versa, over at Culture Buzz, which also has a healthy EU readership.

But I also discovered something else.

Humor me ››