Vertical World.

I’ve been a bit hard on Mauritius. After all, everything I’ve said about it on my blog or on Twitter has been a complaint about the lack of a fast and stable Internet connection on the island.

(I won’t apologize for the complaints. The connection was truly horrendous.)

I will apologize for failing to mention all the amazing things about the country: the warmth of the people, the beauty of the environment, the diversity of the culture, the richness of it’s visual splendor.

And Krish.

Krish runs a company in Mauritius called Vertical World. If you’re planning a trip to the island, Krish should be the first person you call.

Vertical World specializes in adventure activities, and is by far the best outdoor activity company I have ever worked with. Anywhere. If you’ve ever had the urge to go abseiling down waterfalls of scrambling up mountains in a tropical paradise, Vertical World can make it happen.

But Krish is much more than an adventure company owner. He’s also one of the most knowledgeable, motivated, compassionate, and dependable people I have ever known. Krish gets things done, and most of time he does it better than you could have ever asked.

If you’re heading to Mauritius anytime soon, give Krish and his guys at Vertical World a shout. You won’t be disappointed.

I’ll stop gushing now. Promise.

(Photo of Krish and I asleep by Jo Amand.)

Social.

A few thoughts I threw together based on the questions I asked two days ago and your answers. Obviously, this is a lot of big-picture kind of thinking and a lot more thought needs to be put into the details, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I’ve got so far.

I recorded this after three straight days of traveling trying to get home from Mauritius — stuck in planes and airports — so my apologies if my voice is a little raspy. You might have to turn the volume up a bit. Okay, a lot.

Thanks to everyone for sharing your insight. I’ll pass along more information about the reason I embarked on this project in a few weeks.

Need Your Help. Please.

I need a tiny little favor.

I’m in the process of applying for a small work gig and they’ve come back with a few questions for me. I was wondering if any of you had any insight that you can share on the following questions:

• What do you foresee the most “socially-successful” institutions will be doing with their users/web presence in 5/10 years?
• What could be done in the space of 1-2 years to see overwhelmingly positive results from a social media strategy? What could backfire?
• How would you go about convincing an overworked researcher that using social media is a good idea?

Can’t really share too much context right now, but if you have some thoughts please email me or leave me a comment on this post. I’ll email you back and give you more information personally.

Thank you so much for your help. Looking forward to your insights!

Netless.

Mauritius is truly heaven on Earth. If heaven doesn’t have a stable internet connection, that is.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Not only am I finding it difficult to find a decent connection here, but I’ve been much too busy snorkeling, canyoning, abseiling, hiking, and mountaineering to really get to a computer.

Oh, and working of course.

My workshops on blogging and online networking have been going great. We’ve been using chalk on pavement to demonstrate the power of online conversation. It’s a great way to get people moving around and interacting with each other, and serves as an excellent metaphor for the online experience.

I’m looking forward to giving you all a more in-depth update on my workshops and on my trip a little bit later when I have a more stable connection. Hasta luego!

Paris, je t’aime

I arrived in Paris this past Friday morning tired, cold, and rained on.

I had just gotten off the bus and was walking towards my hotel, luggage in tow, when I witnesses an accident between a small car and a man on a bicycle. In there, the dilemma: the man on the bicycle only spoke Spanish, while the man in the small car only spoke English. The local police officer who stopped to help didn’t speak a word of any language other than French.

So there I was — with my tired and cold English, my rusty French, and my broken Spanish — standing in the middle of the intersection, luggage in tow, surrounded by three men who could only speak to one another through me.

In the end, the police officer walked away satisfied that the situation was under control, the Englishman drove away after receiving a harsh warning, and the Spaniard rode away with just a small bruise on his left arm.

Leaving me alone to walk to my hotel, luggage in tow.

Welcome to Paris.

Covered.

I don’t get to vote for the American Society of Magazine Editors’ Best Cover of the Year, but that doesn’t mean I can’t share my favorite covers with all of you here.

I read a lot of magazines, so I get to see a whole lot of magazine covers every week. For me, magazine covers should be able to tell a story (or reference a previous story) with subtlety, wit, and minimalism. Also, I like bright colors.

Check out the list of finalists for the best cover at the ASME page. Here are my picks for the 2008:

Best Celebrity Cover

Best Concept Cover

Best Fashion Cover

Best Leisure Interest

Best News Cover

Best Service Cover

Best Coverline

Cover of the Year

Winners will be announced this coming Monday. What’s your favorite magazine cover from this year?

Going Barefoot

We all hear horror stories about bad PR professionals annoying bloggers by their untargeted pitches, and complaining about PR seems to be something everyone has to do at least once in their blogging life cycle. I get a ton of pitches and press releases (mainly film-related) from PR and marketing professionals. At least 95% of them are useless or poorly-targeted.

Today, I’m not here to complain about bad PR pitches.

I’m here to commend and celebrate someone that gets it right. That person is Darren Barefoot.

Darren is the “head geek” and founder of Capulet Communications, a Vancouver-based PR firm that understands how content creators on the web think. I’ve had a few chances to interact with Darren with regards to events or clients he has been promoting, and each pitch I’ve received from him has been personally tailored to my interests and the ideas I interact with on a daily basis.

He’s able to do this because Darren reads my blog and follows me on Twitter. From that, he’s able to understand what makes me tick, and more importantly, what intrigues me. Instead of getting pitched on things that have no relevance to me at all, Darren’s able to feed me information on issues, events, and companies that pique my interest — and more importantly, is able to wrap that information in a personal context.

Plus, he’s also just an all-round nice guy.

It’s easy to complain about PR professionals that get it wrong. The best way to fix the problem, however, is to make examples of the people that get it right — people like Darren Barefoot.

(Oh, and that awesome photo of Darren I’ve used in this post was taken by the ever-amazing Kris Krug.)

Cupcake Economy

Just found out, through a post on Buzzfeed, that Google Trends shows that the world is far more interested in “cupcakes” than “financial crisis.”

Cupcakes FTW.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge cupcake fan. Recently, on GigPark, I decided to recommend my two favorite cupcake-makers in the world so that more people can revel in the wondrousness of their baked goods. Here’s a quick look at them:

Sugar Baking (Toronto, Canada)
Cupcakes are definitely the “in” thing right now, and nobody in Toronto does cupcakes like Sugar Baking. (Trust me, I’ve checked.) Catherine is not only one of the most pleasant people I have ever met, but she has immense skill in blending exotic flavors to make every cupcake delectable — all at a great price.

Lola’s Kitchen (London, UK)
Tasty cupcakes and an easy-to-use website ordering system aside (and that’s a lot already), the people at Lola’s are wonderful. When I had a problem, they not only answered my question immediately, but they fixed their entire ordering system to meet my needs. Plus, you really can’t go wrong with the delicious pastel icings they use on their cupcakes.

If you order cupcakes from either of those two places, let me know — and more importantly, recommend them on GigPark. We need to spread the cupcake love.

Bruce Mau, Poorly Designed

I recently got a message on Flickr from a designer from Bruce Mau Design that proves that, despite using Tumblr to power their awesome blog, they just don’t get it when it comes to the web.

Here’s the message, unedited:

Hello Flickr Fan,
I am a designer at Bruce Mau Design. We are currently re-imagining our website, brucemaudesign.com and our images category is intended to show the breadth and depth of our work. I am tasked with the curation of 100+ images every few months.

As part of the shift from web 1.0 to web 2.0, we realize and want to capture the power of social networks and photostreams. While we often photograph our own work, we know thousands of you probably do even a better job and with a wonderfully, beautiful diversity of perspectives.

We are posting to our website images we have found on flickr containing our exhibitions, books, installations, strategy, communications, studio, and yes, bruce from your set.

If you would like us to remove your image please email me at clark@brucemaudesign.com.

We hope that our website represents a pixelated but audaciously complex view of our work and pushing design not to its greatest power but its greatest service.

Seems harmless, but there are a few massive problems with this message — and I’m not counting the poor grammar, capitalization, and convoluted language. Here’s a short list of some of them:

• He didn’t use my name, but instead referred to me as a “Flickr Fan.” My name (and user name) is clearly all over my Flickr pages, so it isn’t hard to address me by name.
• I have no photos containing Bruce Mau. I have one photo that references Bruce Mau in the comments, but none of Bruce as the designer seems to imply. Further, he doesn’t tell me what image they plan on using or provide a link to any of my photos that piqued his interest.
• He’s using my image for a commercial purpose — to pad Bruce Mau’s portfolio — when my images are clearly marked with a license that prevents commercial use. Instead of asking me to use my image, he has decided to use the image, expecting me to email him if I want it removed.
• He doesn’t provide a link to where my image is being used so that I can see the context of its use. In addition, all the images used on the Bruce Mau image gallery don’t include links back to the original photograph or any attribution at all. (A clear violation of my image license.)

I’m a huge fan of Bruce Mau’s work, which is why this blatant disregard for web etiquette, ethics, and appropriateness upsets me so much.

So here’s what I’m going to do.

Bruce Mau Design people, tell your communications directors that I’m willing to come in and run an introductory workshop for everyone in your communications department on web tools and online interaction — for free. I usually charge my clients a whole lot of money for those kinds of workshops; I’m willing to run an introductory workshop for free because I think that you’ve got the drive to do great things on the web, but just need a slight primer on how to do them.

Bruce Mau Design, the ball is in your court. Looking forward to hearing from you by email or in the comments.

(Oh, and for those of you that are reading this post and feeling generous, help me out by leaving a comment on my earlier post ‘Carsonified’ and help me win a trip to an exciting web event.)

UPDATE: I’ve had further contact with BMD, and have posted updates in my comment section. They’ve been really nice about all of this, and show a great willingness to learn.

Screen time.

I’m never one to pass up a fun internet meme — particularly one that is being spread by my favorite blogger Jason Kottke — so I’d like to chime in on the Onion AV Club’s question of the week:

What’s your most-rewatched movie?

Here’s my list of top 10 most-rewatched movies:

1. Beauty and the Beast
2. Garden State
3. Cool Runnings
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
5. Dodgeball
6. The Shawshank Redemption
7. Fight Club
8. Edward Scissorhands
9. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
10. The Usual Suspects

What’s on your list? And more importantly, what does it say about you?

(Oh, and if you’re feeling generous, help me out by leaving a comment on my earlier post ‘Carsonified’ and help me win a trip to an exciting web event.)