An Aborigine selling Titleists

Thanks to Tom Dunne at out-and-back.net for editing and posting my story of a golf trip to wonderful Royal Melbourne and New South Wales. Golf "Down Under" is quite an experience. You can read it here. The picture is the 5th looking down towards Botany Bay.

Always great to win an award...or two!

It was fun to open the mail today and find MacDuff Consulting had won 2 Hermes Awards from the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (let's just call them the AMCP). The awards were for the Callaway Golf iMAG and the categories were E-Zine and Web Animation. The real work was done by Paula Story and Jim Wise, so congratulations to them for some long days and nights.

Seriously, you gotta love Phil!

...sorry about the ad at the start - it's a small price to pay to hear how specific Phil is about his donut intake!

Seth Godin's Top 25

This great post distills the wit and wisdom of Seth Godin into one place. Here are the first few.
1. Have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets. Seth says — “Life is like skiing. Just like skiing, the goal is not to get to the bottom of the hill. It’s to have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets.”
2. Be remarkable. Boring is invisible. Remarkable products and remarkable people get talked about. Seth on remarkable — “How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?”
3. Success is a skill. Seth’s philosophy on success is — “it’s possible to enjoy your job, to do the right thing, to be transparent, to give more than you get and to be successful, all at the same time.” It takes work. Surround yourself with people who are succeeding. You become who you hang with. By surrounding yourself with people who are succeeding, you’ll learn what’s working and what’s not. You can model their success and open doors that you might otherwise not see. Seth on successful people – “”Successful people rarely confuse a can-do attitude with a smart plan. But they realize that one without the other is unlikely to get you very far.”
Read them all here. Seth has been a major contributor to management thinking in the last 10 years and great supporter of entrepreneurs. He is one of the best business commentators of our generation.

It's Earth day...what day?

Come on be honest, you have no idea what Earth Day is either. We told our kids it was the day we celebrated earth! By doing what exactly? Pretty much the same as we did yesterday! Well, here's what Wiki had to say

"Earth Day is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment. It was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in held on April 22, 1970. Earth Day is celebrated in spring in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere".

So, there you have it and it's a good excuse to show a great picture. More here.

The New iPhone is found...in a bar

Great story about the next generation iPhone, that was lost in a bar near Apple HQ and acquired by gizmodo.com for $5,000. Read it here. Was this really the story or just another great way for Steve Jobs to generate millions of dollars of free publicity?

Google Cloud Print Reveals the Future of Printing

Those google guys are at it again with a simple and brilliant idea. Print your documents and content from your iPAD, laptop, phone to any printer, anywhere. Now, that is a great idea. No, it's not ready yet and I'm sure there are a number of technical issues to overcome, but that has never stopped them before. Read more about it here.

5 Dumb Design Mistakes That Crush Copy (And How to Fix Them)

Great piece by Pamela Wilson from one of our favorite sites, www.copyblogger. Content is king, but it has to be in context and in a well designed environment. Read more here in this fun and very constructive piece.

Phil wins the Masters

An emotional weekend for Phil and Amy as Mickelson shows true class in winning the 2010 Masters. The event was riveting from the moment The King and The Golden Bear teed it up on Thursday morning.

Westwood didn't back off and confirmed his world class status with his third top 3 in the last 3 majors. Phil had to come on strong on the back nine to beat the Englishman. Has there been a better shot in golf than his second on the 13th? - a 6 iron from 200 yards off the pine straw, out of the trees, over the water to 4 feet. Unbelievable!

A big win also for Callaway and the FT Tour driver, X Proto clubs and Tour golf ball.

11 Smart Tips for Brilliant Writing

Copyblogger.com is a great site - simple, easy to read and great information. Another terrific piece to read here about great writing. I recommend you add the site to your daily blog list.

iPad is here

So, did you get one? No, me neither as much as I covet one. I am waiting for iPAD 2.0 with camera and more memory. It launched well with 500,000 units minimum, which is kinda incredible and Jobs has built an amazing content platform that guarantees revenue through books, movies, TV shows and all manner of other aps. Quality content remains the key to success and the coming months will be fascinating as the major media and publishing players jostle for position and the wanna be iPADs launch - good luck launching one of those!