In November 2010 I had the privilege of travelling to New Zealand with my business partner Chad Mustard, his brother and another friend. We rented a car and traveled from Fiordland, in the southwestern part of NZ’s South Island, to Auckland in the North Island. I won’t spend much time here trying to put into words the incredible, jaw-dropping, spectacular scenery New Zealand blessed us with. The photos below speak for themselves. It was the trip of a life time, and we’re all dying to go back.

So if you’ve ever dreamed of venturing to a remote part of the globe, filled with lavish rain forests, magnificent alpine peaks, lonely valleys, quaint villages, sun-drenched beaches, ancient volcanoes and a penguin or two, I highly advise you to save your pennies and book a trip to the Land of the Long White Cloud. New Zealand is a nation of wonders, and you’ll never regret visiting.

Mt. Cook, NZ's highest peak, from the descent into Queenstown.

The road to Milford Sound, with thousands of other-worldly waterfalls cascading from the clouds above.

Milford Sound cannot be captured in a photo. It's truly epic.

Beautiful, remote rain forest trails are everywhere in Fiordland.

Lake Wakatipu in Glenorchy.

Paradise, New Zealand

Deserted beach in Abel Tasman National Park.

Rolling farmland just outside Matamata (near The Shire film set).

Google Maps would have made Christopher Columbus pee his pants.

This link takes you to a really cool site called Google Maps tips for life. It’s a user-friendly page that navigates you through all the cool things that Google Maps can do to help you find local businesses, addresses and directions. It also shows you Google Maps’ cool features like the Virtual Walking Tour, My Maps and Map Maker.

As our world gets smaller and online tools evolve, it becomes easier to explore the amazing places around us. In my humble opinion, Google Maps is one of the coolest Internet sites to come into existence. And it’s only getting better.

Slimy movie villains don't get much better than Julian Assange.

Hello world! The Blue Helm team is finally back from New Zealand and much, much tanner, so everyone wins. Now a look at some interesting news of the day:

– Apparently Julian Assange, founder and chief-defender of the notorious WikiLeaks website, got the crap beat out of him in high school and is now taking his pent-up frustration out on the people of the free world. Just today WikiLeaks released a long list of locations of highly sensitive pipelines, communication and transport hubs vital to United States national security. (Merry Christmas, terrorists!) That’s in addition to last week’s release of thousands of useless diplomatic cables that did nothing but embarrass world leaders, many of whom are American allies. But don’t worry. All of this is just to pursue the cause of free and transparent government! Or, according to the Wall Street Journal, is it to undermine the American government/people and create world anarchy in a twisted personal vendetta that Assange has with the CIA or George Bush or Santa Claus? Here at Blue Helm we support internet transparency and free speech. But we also think Julian Assange is a weasel that doesn’t really care about free expression. WikiLeaks will no doubt hurt innocent people, and Assange will have the American people (a.k.a. Chuck Norris) to answer to when that happens.

– Bill Gates is injecting some chaos in the Apple-Microsoft War of the Worlds…apparently the Microsoft chairman released a photo featuring a Mac computer and an iPod on his blog with the title, “What’s been on my mind lately.” Of course the tech nerds and consumer analysts are probably reading too much into the photo (Gates was writing about access to technology in classrooms), but it’s still noteworthy when the King of Microsoft is subconsciously (or consciously?) promoting evil Apple products on his personal blog. It’s as crazy as spotting a Red Sox cup holder on the late George Steinbrenner’s coffee table.

– This is an older story (12 days is very old in the social media world) but a good one: apparently an Australian journalist has been getting emails for a few years from a Florida family inviting him over for Thanksgiving…the problem was the emails weren’t really for him. They were meant for someone else. But that didn’t stop James West from creating a web series about how much he would like to experience an American Thanksgiving with the Tran family in West Palm Beach. He finally asked if he could join them and they happily accepted his offer. Ah yes, one more member of the international community that could revel in the glorious gorging, over-sleeping and endless football games that make up the greatest holiday ever invented by hungry Indians and Pilgrims.

Stay tuned for more news and tips from Blue Helm on our nifty blog. And please comment below if you like our words of wisdom.

There are a lot of reasons, but one sticks out to me. Google wants to be in front of you all day. Google wants to be there when you wake up and look at your phone. It wants to be there when you turn on your TV. It wants to be there when you’re commuting to work. It wants to be in your face as much as possible.

Google’s main competitors aren’t Yahoo, Microsoft or Apple. Google’s competitors are activities like driving, watching TV, going to the movies or anything else that takes you away from their products. So what does Google do? They come up with ways to insert themselves into the areas of your life they don’t yet have access to. Genius? Yes.

I love that Google has invested in making a car that drives automatically. Getting stuck in traffic no longer becomes a source of much rage, but becomes a time to catch up on work, to read, to talk to old friends, to plan a date, to think of a new business, to innovate, to relax, to catch up on sleep, to be free.

So keep it up Google. Keep innovating and trying to insert yourself into my life. If you make an awesome product that solves a problem in my life, then I’ll buy it.

So this post comes down to the real question: Is Google trying to take over the world?

Ghostbusters is one of my favorite comedies, and Halloween is a great time of year to watch it. Here’s the classic scene when our phantasm-fighting threesome get their very first call to action.

I love, love, love this Steven Spielberg horror classic. Spielberg takes adventure elements from Indiana Jones and the “ordinary family under extraordinary circumstances” narrative from E.T. to create Poltergeist, a ghoulishly fun ghost story set in the scariest of all nightmares: Suburbia.

Disney’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow tells the favorite tale of Ichabod Crane and his fateful encounter with the Headless Horseman.

Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark? used to terrify me back in the 90s, but I watched it anyway. I even made my little brother, who was probably more terrified than I was, watch it with me. The clip below features some of the spookiest villains in the series.

Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall provide us with truly Oscar-worthy performances in The Shining, the horror movie of all horror movies. It comes on TV all the time, so I would highly recommend watching this excellent film.

A woman cheated out of trick-or-treating is a dangerous prospect, as Linus learns the hard way in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

No commentary is needed for this next video clip. A Halloween classic, pure and simple.

Homer Simpson gives demonic minions more trouble than they bargained for in this “Treehouse of Horror” clip.

And finally, my favorite Halloween movie of all. Before it became over-commercialized and popular with emo-goth teenagers who like to pretend they’re dark and depressed, The Nightmare Before Christmas was an obscure, light-hearted holiday treasure to me and my family. Without fail, the song “This is Halloween” is stuck in my head throughout October. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Well I hope I scared you silly with my chilling clips. Happy Halloween to all!

Is Steve Jobs tweeting? Investors beware!

I co-own a social media agency, so I obviously spend a lot of time encouraging business people to use social media to market their products and services in an effective way. Profit is the bottom line, so professionals need to understand how to incorporate social media into their overall marketing efforts.

And sure, that’s essential for marketing, PR and advertising teams, small business owners and any individual or group that’s responsible for promoting their company.

But what about CEOs of large corporations? They’re ultimately responsible for the well-being of their company. Shouldn’t they jump into personal Facebook accounts, Twitter feeds, LinkedIn profiles and blog posts? Shouldn’t they use social media to interact with their customers and shareholders?

Well, probably not. A recent study suggests that “64% of CEOs at the world’s 50 largest companies aren’t engaging with social media.” I think that’s okay. Here’s why:

1. A CEO’s words create too much volatility. He or she can’t just jump on Twitter and mention that the company is merging with Microsoft. And it’s going to be so much fun! What antitrust laws? All under 140 characters. The CEO of a huge company using Twitter or Facebook or a blog to spout off personal musings about the company is a PR and shareholder nightmare. No bueno.
2. You’re the CEO of a multi-billon dollar conglomerate. You should be too busy to use social media. You have scores of marketing and advertising and, well, social media experts to do all the online marketing for your company you need. And these people can’t very well run a personal page for you, because that runs the risk of sounding phony. And phony is bad for business.
3. If it’s a public company, the FCC’s Regulation Full Disclosure states that anytime a CEO speaks, a current or potential investor must be able to hear it. One CEO explains that the FCC has “not yet defined whether Twitter is at Reg. FD or the blog is Reg. FD or if Facebook is Reg. FD. They have said at times it is or sometimes it isn’t — it’s still not fully defined.” So a CEO must be cautious with regulatory rules before jumping on the social media bandwagon.
4. No one expects such a CEO to be using social media. (At least not now.) No one is criticizing Rupert Murdock or Steve Jobs or Robert Iger for not updating their personal Twitter account in three days.

Of course, the above blog post does not apply to the CEO of all CEOs, Her Majesty Winfrey. All hail.

You might think I’m just saying Chrome is faster when I mention speed. While that may be true, that’s not the kind of speed I mean. This is not about Chrome or Internet Explorer per se. It’s about Microsoft.

Microsoft is a great company. It’s full of genius people creating marvelous new technologies and products. But why is Internet Explorer losing market share? Why is Apple, a major competitor of Microsoft, growing so quickly? Why are people projecting that the Windows mobile operating system will be all but gone within the next 4 years? The main problem is Microsoft’s lack of company speed and disconnect from the consumer.

Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about: About nine years ago Microsoft started developing a revolutionary technology now known as Microsoft Surface. They were developing the first multi-touch multi-user computer! This was before cellphones where being used by the masses. At this point only cool people like Zack Morris and his Dad had them. This technology was unheard of, and is still really cool. Click here to check it out in this 2008 video demonstration.

That video is two years old! So what the heck happened? Why is Apple the golden child of phones, tablets, and MP3 players? Because Apple released their technology quickly and in a format where average customers could consume it. Microsoft had the technology, they had the money, they had plenty of smart people around, but they just didn’t have the foresight or the speed to be the first to come out with a product that could be used by the masses, a.k.a. the iPad.

This brings us to Internet Explorer and the recent reports of its continuing loss of market share. Internet Explorer has been around for a long time, and for a while was the only real browser you could realistically use, which resulted in a poor product. Now we have Firefox, Safari, and Chrome (my favorite) which have improved on an otherwise slow and annoying experience. Internet Explorer 9 may have improved its speed and a few other issues, but it’s too late. The brand is broken. People who have abandoned Internet Explorer, like myself, have left IE forever and will convince as many people as they can to get away from it. Why? Because Internet Explorer only improved when it had to, not because they cared about developing a quality product. If they were connected with the consumer they would have improved their product long before other browsers corrected the problems.

The point of this post isn’t to rail on Microsoft. The point is to drive home the importance of understanding the consumer and getting your products or services out as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality. If you don’t provide what people can use when they need it, then you will lose sales to your competitors. It’s simple economics.

Until a couple of months ago my father worked as Director of Compensation at a large hospital in Florida. When he discovered LinkedIn over a year ago, he recognized the potential it had to help him network with other business professionals, even though he already had a secure job. He created a LinkedIn profile and began connecting with dozens of people. He joined LinkedIn groups that brought others from his profession together. He took a few minutes each day to grow his online network, never allowing his profile to lie dormant. He made sure his resume on LinkedIn was current, professional and creative. He used language in his profile that detailed specific talents he possesses and professional victories he’s achieved, avoiding generic or clichéd terms. For example, under his “Specialties” category on LinkedIn, he wrote:

“Compensation structure and design, competitive pricing analyses, HCROI and HVCA human capital metric to strategy analysis, executive compensation and long-term incentive plan design, annual salary and bonus planning process, performance appraisal process, M&A workforce integration, compensation statistical analysis, benefit plan design, funding arrangements, contribution methodologies, cost containment strategies, 401(k), 403(b), and 457(b).”

Now I don’t know what the heck any of that means, but the executives at a large railroad holding company in Florida did, and they were impressed. A recruiter, looking for an expert in Compensation, stumbled upon my father’s LinkedIn profile and introduced him to folks at this railroad company. They offered him a higher-paying job as their new Director of Compensation, which he just accepted. It was an unexpected blessing for our family.

All thanks to social networking. The moral of the story is that it’s silly not to take advantage of tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or blogging, especially to build your brand as an individual or business. But you can’t just use them, you must use them well. Create online profiles that are detailed, charismatic and that accurately portray your professional skills. Like a good resume, it should stand out and be accurate. Even if you currently have a job, you should be growing your social networks.

As our friend Whitney Young said, “It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.”

One thing I’ve heard a few times is that Twitter is trying to be like Facebook. If that’s true, I hate to break it to you Twitter, but you’re not Facebook. That’s ok! You don’t want to be Facebook. We already have a Facebook. Twitter is valuable the way it is. Really this conversation boils down to what Twitter and Facebook are.

Facebook is a network for friends. It’s a much more intimate network. In general, people don’t want to be friends with complete strangers. On Facebook people are more willing to share personal updates and expect to converse with those they’re close with. Yes, Facebook has features like pages, questions, and the public posts feature that allows your posts to be seen by the world, but in general people on Facebook want to be more private.

On Twitter people can connect with pretty much anyone. They can connect with industry leaders, celebrities, random bloggers, and anyone else you can think of. You may have a conversation with a complete stranger or even someone you admire that otherwise you would never be able to connect with. It’s a wonderful way to network, get your name/business/project out in the open, to promote yourself and your product and to connect with the world. Twitter provides opportunities that, at the moment, are impossible on Facebook.

In the end, I really don’t think Twitter is trying to be Facebook. I think Twitter is finally trying to get their product up to snuff. Don’t forget how far Facebook has come over the years.

I love Pat’s face at the 44 second mark.

This is probably my favorite one