Blue Helm

Bloggers around the world are raising awareness this week about the importance of travel and tourism to New Zealand, especially in light of the devastating earthquake in Christchurch last month. Visit the Blog4NZ Facebook page for more info.

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).

Yes, I am oddly obsessed with Google Maps. I’ve always been a geography nerd, so Google Maps is like some sort of drug that satiates my permanent desire to inspect topographical anomalies, extreme locations and the earth’s antipodes. But Google Maps isn’t just for weird geo-addicted goobers like me. Google Maps is for everyone. And if you’re using any other map service online, like MapQuest or Yahoo! Maps, you should definitely convert to Google.

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.

Google is an internet giant, duh. They have dominated the online world for quite some time. So if Google is so deeply entrenched in the Net, why is it making televisions? An even more intriguing question is why in the world is Google making cars that drive themselves?!

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?

Ah, it’s that glorious time of year when grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize. I absolutely love Halloween, so I decided today is the perfect day to post nine clips from some of my favorite spooky movies and TV shows. Enjoy!

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!