Craig Tracy Body Painting : How the leopard got its body?

If you like the Rudyard Kipling story about how the leopard got its spots, you might like to take a closer look at this painting, and try to spot the human body.

I came across this picture and story in London's METRO newspaper (Nov 2, 2009). The artist in question, Craig Tracy, from New Orleans, specialises in painting and merging the human body into a background. Tracy opened a studio in 2005 in his hometown and accepts volunteers who travel from all over world to be incorporated per se into one of his painting.

Have you spotted the body yet?

Restaurant and Tarte Tropezienne of choice in St Tropez

Among the slew of restaurants that line the port of St Tropez, it is a roll of the dice to find the right address -- to avoid the overly expensive tourist trap, with slow or snobbish service, etc.  Having entered and exited the smokey and hyper-touristic (if extremely well located) Sénéquier, we finally settled on L'Adresse. Run by Jerome and Faty (expatriated from the Parisian suburbs), this was a gem of a spot. Set to an ever present background lounge music, we enjoyed it so much we went twice.

The food was refined.  From the reasonably priced (14-16E) suggestions du jour, we enjoyed the Lamb and Veal Chops, as well as some tasty Gambas and Plaice fish.

L'Adresse, which you will, of course, find among the first references in any yellow pages thanks to its AD, is a top spot -- not to be mixed up with the local L'Adresse real estate agent. Its address? Officially, it is 4 Quai de l'Epi (83990). But, you need to find l'Esplanade du Nouveau Port (on the far port [left hand] side of the port).

Nice touch: check the Adresse logo where the A and D combine for the jib and mainsail of a sailboat.

Telephone: +33.4.94.56.10.73.  Read here for the QYPE writeup or on their own MYSPACE site.

For deserts, however, given the fine 20-23C weather, we could not resist hitting the gelateria. Specifically, at the famed Sénéquier where the ice cream stand was run by a charmer. And, if the Tarte Tropézienne was invented in 1945 by the Pole, Alexandre Micka, (read in French the history of la Tarte Tropézienne), the Tarte Tropezienne offered by the Patisserie of Sénéquier is a far finer affair.  If you want to order the tart from them, you had better call the evening before (04.94.97.00.90).

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - 2 examples, one good, one bad.

We received, this week, two digital messages that grabbed my attention in the way of customer relationship management (CRM).

The first example came from our children's dentist, based in Neuilly (outskirts of Paris).  Partly because their telephone answering service is so poor, we suspect, this dentist has invested in a service to send SMS reminders to us about our upcoming rendez-vous.  The text message states the patient (my son in this case), the time of the rendez-vous along with a reminder of the address.  Easy to copy and paste into your agenda.  Great idea.  A value-added service as far as the customer is concerned and a way to limit the number of late or no-shows.  It's truly a wonder that all restaurants do not do the same.  If a dentist office is able to do this, I suspect that all businesses with a reservation system (hairdressers included) should also be doing so... slowly moving into the 21st century.  It simply takes capturing your client's mobile numbers systematically and paying for a service which automatically sends out the messages.  The investment is absolutely worth it as far as I am concerned.

A second message I received (jpg below) was a "personal invitation" from Lancôme.  The email was quite surprising in that the personal invitation didn't even include my name.  The invitation was as impersonal as could be.

I don't mean to pick on Lancôme as I have received other similar "blanket" messages from other companies; but, I have to believe that mass companies are going to need to get better at interfacing with -- and attracting -- their customers.  If a dentist is able to send me a personalised message, the larger 'impersonal' companies should take stock and hone in on a proper CRM strategy, especially since the message can so easily be personalised with a little bit of client database management.

In the interim, I vote by unsubscribing.

Note2be : la notation des professeurs de retour en ligne

Voici une bonne nouvelle pour les amateurs de la liberté d'expression ... surtout dans le milieu de l'Education. J'ai reçu aujourd'hui un message email qui me faisait comprendre que le site note2be revit encore. J'avais écrit sur ce site en février 2008 (lire ici).

Le site affiche que, dans le mois de juin, la Justice allemande a validé la notation des professeurs en ligne par Spickmich, un site équivalent de note2be en Allemagne. Voici la nouvelle relayée par Netlex France et de CIDAL. Comme le dit l'article de CIDAL, "[l]a décision de la BGH [la Cour Allemande] ne s'applique pas à l'ensemble des portails d'évaluation en ligne," donc ce n'est pas encore gagné pour tous. En tous cas, les sites semblables aux États-Unis continuent à marcher, tel que RateMyTeachers qui affiche maintenant 11 millions de notations (sur des écoles en GB, Irelande, Canada, Australie et NZ aussi) où RateMyProfessors qui a 8 millions de notations (+2 millions depuis fév 2008).

Je suis curieux de savoir si la communauté d'étudiants en France se sont (re-)mis à noter leurs professeurs avec ferveur... Note2Be affiche qu'il y a 165,000 inscrits. En tous cas, je l'espère! Et si jamais, je me retrouve devant des étudiants, j'en parlerai. Et puis, comme le fera l'Angleterre pour les médecins, je pense que ça serait une idée formidable pour la France de faire pareil ici. Un véritable "check up" voire révolution.  Si jamais ça se faisait, ça n'arrangera pas tout de suite la pénurie de médecins actuellement en France (selon Challenges Oct 22, 2009), plus de 600 postes de médecins généralistes sur 3300 offerts cette année sont restés vacants.

Qu'en dites vous sur la notation des professeurs et des médecins?

Measuring Quality of Life - A review between France and USA

As part of my Franco-American profile, I am naturally drawn to reading about comparisons and competition between France and the US. I came across this May 2009 article, France Beats America, which describes France's epicurean passion for "living it up" in terms of eating, sleeping and holidaying. On the eating front, as much as obesity and over-eating might be America's bête noire, the French make more time for eating. According to this article, "[t]he French spend more than 2 hours a day eating, twice the rate in the United States, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)..." The French spend 135 minutes per day eating versus 74 minutes for the Americans and 66 mins for Mexicans (69 mins for the Canadians). The Turks (#1) actually out-eat the French (#2) by an half hour each day! According to the OECD report, the French top the list for average number of hours slept at 8h50/day... marginally ahead of the equally surprising 8h38/day for Americans. Koreans and Japanese sleep the least among OECD countries, and an hour less per day (7h50) than the French (the OECD average is indicated as 503 minutes or 8h20/day). And, if you are thinking that not sleeping enough is bad for your health, the Japanese lifespan expectancy (86F.79M) outlasts France (85F.77M) and far outstrips the US (80F.75M) which is below the OECD average (82F.76M).

Finally, when you add that the French take on average 7.0 weeks of holidays per year versus 3.8 weeks for the Americans, it does add up to a lot more "living it up." I would tend to argue that the pendulum should swing back for the French, to work just a bit harder ... not just any how, but by adding more pleasure, humour and emotion in the work space. And in the US, I would argue that the focus should be on eating better (not necessarily longer).

Meanwhile, among the countries included in the survey, it was reported that men have more leisure time than women. "This gender gap is largest in Italy, where men top women by 80 minutes per day. The gap is just under 40 minutes in the United States, and smallest (less than 5 minutes) in Norway." France's gender gap on the criteria of leisure time is 34 minutes (in line with the OECD average of 35 minutes). Is there any real correlation between a reduced gender gap on leisure time with equality of the sexes? That is far from certain. However, to the extent that women are generally at work and have the lion's share of the responsibility for taking care of the family, clearly women will continue to suffer in terms of having their own leisure time if the burden at home is not appropriately shared. Below is the OECD report (data from 2006, published in April 2009) regarding the leisure time gender gap.

While life is about good food, good company (including on holidays) and a good night's sleep (& good health), the issue is about creating a sustainable model, i.e. (a) making the 45-49 weeks at work more agreeable and liberating; and (b) finding ways to allow women to have as much leisure as men. Quality of life should, considering how many hours are put into work, include the quality of life at work and we all need each other to be in "top" shape!

Your thoughts please!

How to Keep Hard Cow Cheese Fresh ?

Have you ever struggled to keep your hard cheese fresh? Then, here is the answer, and it comes with proof.

We did an experiment whereby we cut a wheel of Cornish Yarg (a delightful cow cheese that is wrapped in nettles) into two slices. We wrapped one slice in a cloth and put it in the fridge which was our usual way, up until now. A week later, the cheese looked as such (photo 1 below). You can see that is cracked from being too dry, although it remained as yet edible.

Photo 1. Cornish Yarg after a week in the fridge wrapped in blue cloth

The second slice, we put the cheese in a tupperware with a couple of cubes of sugar. This advice was given to us by the cheesemonger, Maitre de Comte, Gabriel at La Fromagerie on Moxon Street, London. And it absolutely works. You can see in Photo 2 the second slice, cut and stored at the same time as the slice in photo 1. Fresh as a daisy after a week! Not only that, but as of the writing of this post, the cheese is still as fresh three weeks on (although you have to add more cubes and occasionally rinse out the tupperware).

Photo 2. Cornish Yarg a week later after being in a tupperware with sugar

The question is how does it work? Unfortunately, I am not exactly sure, but I thought I would provide a photo of the sugar cubes to find the clue. The cubes (white sugar in this case) dissolved and turned brown. One can assume that the sugar absorbs something (humidity?) which might otherwise render the cheese dry (how does humidity dry a cheese is a trick question, no?). Yendi's hypothesis: the tupperware retains too much humidity (from the cheese) which is carefully extracted by the sugar!

Photo 3: Dissolved sugar cubes that saved the Cornish Yarg

Whatever the process, the trick works. So, go ahead and put your sugar cubes to good use (rather than in your coffee or tea!) and, henceforth, place a couple in with your hard cheeses in a tupperware.

Drop in your comments if you try this and/or have any other food tips!

The MSM Media Challenge -- Some more ideas of improvement

Here are some more ideas for the mainstream media (MSM) to kick into high gear with their online community.

With media titles dying or falling fallow on a daily basis, the MSM crisis seems just now to be hitting full stride. The number of recent closures has been drastic. In August, Condé Nast closed Portfolio, followed in October by the announced closure of Gourmet, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride, as well as a parenting magazine called Cookie. As reported by WSJ, "Ad pages at 14 of Conde Nast's 23 print publications fell by more than the industry average of 29.5% in the second quarter, according to the Publishers Information Bureau." Of course, the more startling statistic is the -29.5% for the industry...

But Condé Nast is only amplifying a trend that started with Hearst and Time Warner. And as Strategy and Business suggested in their recent article, "McGraw-Hill is said to be close to a sale — or closure — of Business Week.

So, as mainstream media continue to tackle the issue of the right internet model, below are three thoughts that complement and/or update my other posts on the topic (see here: Mainstream Media: Recommendation from a reader's perspective and The Future of MSM).

1/ Cross-referencing with links. How is that online media (newspapers, magazines. etc.) rarely, if ever, link out to help readers understand the references in their articles? Not even a site like Wired!

Take this BBC's article randomly taken from today's news about how Russia's economy will decline by 7.5% in 2009. As is their custom, they wrote the entire article on line without any links whatsoever.

"Russia's economy will shrink by 7.5% in 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev has said - but claimed Kremlin intervention had prevented a worse decline.

Russia, which is heavily reliant on oil exports, has been hit by the sharp fall in energy prices. Mr Medvedev said the decline was "very serious" and admitted the government had been surprised at how severely Russia had been hit by the crisis.

However the predicted slide in GDP was less than earlier predictions. "The real damage to our economy was far greater than anything predicted by ourselves, the World Bank and other expert organisations," Mr Medvedev told Russian television."

I have re-contextualized these first three paragraphs for how they might have done it differently:

"Russia's economy will shrink by 7.5% in 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev has said - but claimed Kremlin intervention had prevented a worse decline.

Russia, which is heavily reliant on oil exports, has been hit by the sharp fall in energy prices. Mr Medvedev said the decline was "very serious" and admitted the government had been surprised at how severely Russia had been hit by the crisis.

However the predicted slide in GDP was less than earlier predictions. "The real damage to our economy was far greater than anything predicted by ourselves, the World Bank and other expert organisations," Mr Medvedev told Russian television."

The links I have chosen for these few paragraphs are sourced from a variety of sites, including Wikipedia and Google Maps, of course. By choosing certain words to hyperlink and the source of the new link, there is a new form of editor to invent. Naturally, such hyperlinking takes more time, but in this research for links, two things are going to happen. First, the very act of researching the links to make sure the content is viable is a form of value-added research for the reader/consumer. Secondly, the outgoing links will create synergies and link-love, bringing in more readers over time.

2/ Get more knowledge of your reader, gaining trust and, therefore, more opportunities for engagement. Too often, when you read and/or sign up for a news site, there is no effort to exchange in a give-and-get (i.e. a win/win) approach. News organisations need to find ways to have readers impart their personal information which can be used to enhance the reader's experience. For example, they should view their readers as word-of-bloggers... begat from the word-of-mouth era. This is being done by the New York Times rather well with the "which articles are being blogged about" section.

Just as Amazon has a section of "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought...", so readers of an article could have "Customers who read this article also read ..." Better yet, as the newspapers ramp up their database management system and get to learn who their clients are (intelligent CRM), they can refine the recommendation and suggest even more aligned follow-on articles to read. I would like to see some adaptation of the iTunes Genius or the brand new Genius Mix, for example, which could provide an intelligent 'playlist' of articles to read.

3/ Add the text-to-speech function... Every morning, I read the news online as I am surfing. Sometimes, I listen to podcasts or videocasts which allows me simultaneously to continue doing my online morning activities. As per the Readspeaker service I have included in this blog, there are several -- and fast improving -- read out loud services which can help, not just the visually impaired, but also the ordinary iJoe... to provide an easier experience for reading on the computer screen for us all. A few examples of available services: ReadSpeaker (the one I use), Natural Reader, Ultra Hal, Odiogo and Talkr.

What do you think? What should online media be doing to improve the readers' experience?

And does Murdoch have a chance with his pay-for news scheme (read this great November 2009 article in Vanity Fair by Michael Wolff)?