Vodka may be one of Russia’s international icons but it is actually whiskey that young Russians drink when they out on the town at night. Whiskey with Red Bull is probably the most popular combination nowadays. When whiskey was first introduced it was whiskey and apple juice but that combo is kind of “girlie” and it’s been a while since I’ve seen a grown Russian order it.

What is important to know when ordering whiskey in Russia is how much (skoal-ka) and whether with ice (sal-dome) or neat. Russians order their liquor in precise amounts of either a small shot at 50 ml (pee-dee-siyat) or a large shot at 100 ml (stowe). Most Russians (87%) know how many milliliters they can drink of a certain alcohol in a night. So should you if you expect to engage in an evening of good old fashioned Russian drinking with the boys. On average, I can (now) drink about 400 ml of whiskey in a night before going off into the land of drunkenness. I say, “on average” because there are a number of factors which can either increase one’s whiskey quota (e.g. a plate of spaghetti carbonara at Minami restaurant or 12 hours of sleep the night before) or decrease it (e.g. your wife will be awake watching CSI “whatever” when you stumble home).

The “magic” quota number in the more serious circles of Russian drinking is 1,000 ml- known simply as a liter (i.e. the whole freakin’ bottle). This level of drinking performance is the cultural equivalent of an American who can drink a case of Budweiser by himself. I, fortunately, have achieved neither.

So, anyhow, the reason I even started this post was simply to repost a creative YouTube video produced by the Johnnie Walker whiskey company. Since we live in a global age it’s fitting that a Hungarian friend of mine sent it to me, an American, here in Russia. I want to compliment the JW company’s marketing department, or whoever the heck thought of the idea, for creating an fun and whimsical 5 minute little “documentary” of the history of Johnnie Walker, the drink, and Johnnie Walker, the man.

Since whiskey is the single most fashionable liquor nowadays in Russia, I also want to suggest to the folks responsible for the “ad” to hire an interpreter and add Russian subtitles. The ad could then be used in the various promotions Johnnie Walker organizes in the nightclubs of Russia (there’s a lot by the way).

Take a couple minutes and watch the video.

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While back in Boston last month for holiday, I kept getting asked the question by friends, and even by my family members, “Do you like living in Russia? What’s it like?”

My answer was, “Once you get settled into your daily routine, life in Russia is pretty normal. I have my friends, work, and family. Life in Russia really isn’t that different than life in Boston, Miami, or St. Louis.” I’m not quite sure everyone believed me because what Westerners think they know of Russia is based mainly on what they read in the Western press. Even those folks who have traveled to Russia still only come away with a tourist’s perspective.

So I was pleased to see that there is a new project called Colours of Russia (see video below), which like the coffee table book from 20+ years ago called, “A Day in the Life of the Soviet Union” seeks to give outsiders a glimpse into the everyday life of Russia. I have watched the 5 minute slideshow and I think the producers have done a pretty decent job of capturing the nuances and juxtapositions of modern Russia. I urge you to take a couple minutes and watch the film. I think you will find that you come away with a new appreciation for the Russia that I call home.

Here’s how the photographer Michael Hockney described the project:

..This was only the beginning. A country the size of Russia cannot be realistically exemplified with a few thousand images. It will take hundreds of thousands. Colours of Russia has been released on the foundation studies in order to begin the long road of visual redress. What is important to understand is that the images are designed to meet the curiosity of non-Russians from a non-Russian perspective. It is not meant to be a bible on Russia, that I cannot do because I am not Russian. That I leave to my truly gifted Russian colleagues. What many Russians do not understand is that outside of Russia all we are presented with is negative imagery. I was asked by a Russian colleague, “why did you take a picture of a telephone booth”. He did not understand my reasoning. Vladimir, I said, where I come from people think crime is everywhere here and that there are big social problems. That is what they are told. So I take a picture of a pristinely clean telephone booth in an average place to demonstrate it is not vandalized. If it is not vandalized that tells people something…..ah, he said, now I understand. Often the simplest picture can destroy years of misrepresentative images.

I just returned from a wonderful holiday back in Boston and while going through my Google Reader, I kept seeing indignant blog posts about the latest controversy in the Russia-Watcher blogosphere concerning GQ magazine and the Conde Naste’s corporate lawyers apparently killing a story about Putin and the apartment bombing 10 years ago in Moscow. No surprise there. Every week there’s another brouhaha of some sort or another concerning Russia.

What caught my eye was that the NPR correspondent, David Folkenflik, who broke the story “Why ‘GQ’ Doesn’t Want Russians To Read Its Story” was a highschool classmate of mine at Phillips Exeter Academy. So I decided to dig a little deeper.

After reading David’s piece, three thoughts come to mind:

First, David’s reporting on the Scott Anderson story and Jerry S. Birenz’s, a Conde Naste corporate lawyer, efforts to bury the story implicate the publisher not the Kremlin. Sure there is the insinuation that Conde Naste ordered the American issue of GQ not to be distributed in Russia because it feared the possible repercussions should the story upset the Kremlin. While it is true that journalists in Russia have been murdered due to things they have written, there still remains no proof that the Kremlin, and in particular, Putin had a hand in any of the murders.

I know that many of you in the West believe that Putin is guilty but what you may believe, based on what you have read, is a far cry from actually having proof. The reality is that Russia is still dangerous place when you cross powerful people. There are many powerful people in Russia and most of them are not in the Kremlin, which leads to my second thought.

Namely, the primary source for Scott Anderson’s story is the former KGB (FSB) agent, Mikhail Trepashkin. As Matt Taibi points out, “Trepashkin has ties to gazillionaire mob creature Boris Berezovsky….”

Well now, this one fact sheds a whole new light on the story. In almost every unsolved case of murder of a Russian journalist, one name always seems to pop up. There is nobody better at the Western “perception management” game then Berezovsky. Mr. Berezovsky has successfully spent the past ten years proactively shaping Western opinion and the result is that Putin has been painted in a very unfavorable light amongst Western Russia Watchers. Unfortunately, the Kremlin has been either unable or unwilling to engage in this PR game.

However, and this is my third thought, this story presents a great opportunity for the Kremlin to go on the offensive and disprove one of the major allegations against it. Specifically, there is a belief in the West that the Kremlin is authoritarian and will not tolerate any unfavorable treatment of itself in the Russian press. While I would admit that Putin is a bit touchy and certainly not very patient when criticism comes his way, I would argue that the Russian press is much more free and robust than you may know.

It should be pointed out that nothing in this GQ story would be news or unknown to any educated Russian living in Russia today. Somehow there is this idea that Russians live in a media vacuum. Nothing could be further than the truth. First of all, the fact that a couple of the state-controlled Russian TV channels don’t report  much in the way of dissenting opinion is a non-sequitur. How many Americans only receive their news from ABC, NBC, or CBS? Not many is the answer. The same holds true for Russians. All educated Russians have access to the internet and read news from many sources both inside and outside of Russia.

Therefore, by acknowledging this GQ story the Kremlin loses little. However, the Kremlin could gain a lot by publicly condemning Conde Naste’s decision to censor the story in Russia. Were I advising the Kremlin on this controversy, I would suggest that the Kremlin spokesperson release a statement to the effect that while the allegations in the story have no basis in fact that the story itself should be run in GQ magazine. The spokesperson should go on to talk about the tragedy and the investigation that followed. The spokesperson then should mention that the primary source for the article is a disgruntled KGB agent who still holds a grudge against the Kremlin. Lastly, the spokesperson should say that it has spoken with the management of the Russian edition of GQ and told them that they are free to run the story as they see fit.

In this era of the internet, social media, and very short news cycles, the best way to handle bad news is to confront it directly and pro-actively. For too long the Kremlin has let others frame the issues and portray it in a negative light. There is no reason why this misguided policy should continue given its lousy track record. This controversy surrounding the GQ story would be a great place to start.

UPDATE: Sean’s Russia Blog examines the facts behind the Conde Nast screw-up and arrives at a similar conclusion. See Sean’s blog post here.

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Image via CrunchBase

Here’s the beginning of Robert’s blog post and then my comment, which I left on his blog. This is a fascinating issue with ramifications in a number of other areas of the internet (e.g. OpenID). Be sure to click through to Robert’s full blog post before reading my response.

*************************
BLOG POST by Robert Scoble

So, now, Tr.im’s parent company, Nambu, has announced that the URL shortening service known as tr.im is turning off its service and that links will stop working after December 31. Here’s the news on Techmeme.

What will this do? Well, first of all, any stats are gone. Bam. Second of all, all Tr.im URLs will stop working at the end of the year. Bam. (In an email to me, Nambu’s CEO said that links could be extended past December 31, but he wouldn’t guarantee it).

OK, most of you probably never have used tr.im to shorten your URLs so they fit into Twitter. But I did. I liked the URL better than bit.ly, which is the service that Twitter has “blessed.” Oh, how I hate Twitter’s “blessing.” This is a company that is building a channel for celebrities, bots, spammers, and a few of other types who like to tell each other short sweet nothings but really wants to be a platform for the world’s people, APIs, devices, etc to talk with each other.

***********************
COMMENT by me:

Here’s 2 potential solutions:

A.) What if the short URL companies offered two additional features:

1. As a premium feature let customers use domains, which they already own as the base domain for the short URL. For example, instead of bit.ly producing a short URL such as:

http://bit.ly/hksl

you were able to substitue the based domain (bit.ly) with your own domain (scobleizer.com)?

http://scobleizer.com/hksl

2. Short URL companies opened up “the walled garden” by offering an export option. The export would include the short URL with your domain, which wouldn’t need to change even if it were imported into another service and the destination URL, which should also remain the same.

You already own your domain and with a simple export file you then own the data. It shouldn’t be too hard for a new company to create an import feature which would “relink” the short URL with the destination URL.

Now you have peace of mind. As with most of these issues, the key variable is the the web services is built using a domain which you already own.

The short URL companies could partner with domain registrar’s and create a new revenue stream by selling domains to people.

B.) Twitter, itself, were to create a new domain, such as .twt. Based on what Jason Calacanis said on TWiT, I would not be surprised to see Twitter try to either create or buy a domain for itself.

Were this to happen, users would have the option of keeping their standard http://twitter.com/scobleizer username or they could purchase their very own domain, such as http://scobleizer.twt

As Jason hypothesized, Twitter wants to become the phone book of the internet. In order to do that each users needs to have a unique identifier. Your telephone number served that function, obviously, in the “old world.”

However, users of Twitter are going to be very suspect and reticent to use Twitter’s own domain as their unique identifier. For the very reasons Robert highlights in this post, such trust by users would be foolish.

Therefore, the only true solution would be for user’s to own their unique identifier (i.e. domain). Twitter would be smart to become a registrar as soon as possible or at least do a deal with the folks that own the .tel domain

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I watched this video last night and thought that all of you would enjoy it as well. See below for the video player. If you are not familiar with TEDTalks then you are in for a treat. TED is an annual conference which originally focused on (T)echnology, (E)ntertainment, and (D)esign…. hence the name. TED has grown into an institution of idea and learning. There are now multiple conferences throughout the year around the world focused on various topics of interest.

TEDTalks are now even translated with subtitles in Russian. If I were advising the Sochi Forum organizers, I would suggest to them that they try to do a partnership with TEDTalks.

I do warn you that TEDTalks videos are addictive and if you’re not careful you’ll find yourself, like I did last night, up until 1:00am saying to yourself, “This is the last video I can watch tonight. Really!”

Enjoy

***************************************

Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure — and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work.

If you use a web app like Twitter or a social network, like Facebook, you probably already know about URL shortening services (here’s the Wikipedia entry explaining URL shortening). There are literally hundreds of URL shortening services available today. For proof, see this article on Mashable.com from this past January.

Like most people, I started with TinyURL.com and all I cared about was that the long ungainly URL was sufficiently shortened so I could copy/paste it into Twitter.com and not waste too many of the 140 characters that Twitter limits each tweet (i.e. sms message). I eventually added a browser javascript bookmarklet to my browser bar so that I could even more quickly shorten a URL of a website I wanted to share. This is how things stayed for about a year and a half. Then recently, I began to hear about additional URL shortening features, such as analytics, and I made the switch to bit.ly.

Bit.ly analytics feature is great when you want to go back and check-out which URLs, and by definition tweets (I tend not to gum up my FB account by sharing links), have been clicked by readers. Additionally, I also began to find myself wanting to add website page links (shortened URLs) to multiple Twitter accounts (I have over 10 right now) and it became a nightmare to create multiple TinyURL accounts for each Twitter acount. Bit.ly gives you the option of registering as many Twitter accounts as you need.

I have been using Bit.ly now for a couple months and thought that I would stick with it for a while longer but a new URL shortener just came across my radar screen and it has a killer feature. The new company is called su.pr and it was created by the guys over at StumbleUpon.com. StumbleUpon, itself, is an interesting web service, which I had completely forgotten about until earlier this year when I kept noticing that it was the third most popular source of referals to this blog in my Google Analytics.

Every week when I checked my Google Analytics report I would scratch my head and wonder what’s up with this StumbleUpon. While I had signed-up for the service ages ago (I think in 2004), I had hardly ever used it. The last week I was listening to my newest favorite podcast called Net at Night with Leo Laporte and Amber McCarthy and they intereviewed Garrett Camp, the founder of StubleUpon and just as I was about to fast-forward to the next episode they started talking about su.pr. I’m sure glad I didn’t hit the fast forward icon!

Su.pr literally just opened up its beta up to the public and while it still is a bit rough around the edges, it lets users do something amazing. Specifically, su.pr users can now use their very own domains as URLs with which su.pr will shorten a URL. What this means is that instead of a URL like su.pr/fjsk, I can use my own domain (timothypost.com) and the URL will display as timothypost.com/fsjk.

Here’s the full explanantion on su.pr’s website. Also, here’s Tim Ferriss’ review of su.pr (I assume he’s an investor, which is cool since Tim is one of my favorite Web 2.0 “celebrities”) By the way, if you haven’t yet “discovered Tim Ferriss, I highly recommend you start to follow his blog and Twitter account.

Obviously, my own domain is 14 characters versus su.pr’s 4 characters so it slightly eats a bit more of the Twitter “real estate.” Nonetheless, as far as I know su.pr is the only URL shortener to offer this custom URL option. Please note that many services offer a custom path (the suffix after the .com or dot whatever) option. However, a while a custom path on a shortened URL is easy on the eyes it is not the same as a custom domain.

There’s a couple very good reasons why you might want to sacrifice brevity (i.e. 10 characters) for a custom domain. The first is basic security. Today when you see a shortened URL you don’t know who created it and it can easily point somewhere where you don’t want to go. When you use your own domain readers can be sure that it’s really you and if they already trust you then they can also trust the URL you have created.

Secondly, even though you are using your own domain as the shortener, su.pr still uses a 301 redirect so the original link is the one Google, or other search engines, use in their rankings.

Third, it offers you or your clients the opportunity to install the Wordpress plugin and it will automatically create a shortened URL for your blog post or article with which readers can use if they share it with others.

Fourth, it helps you promote your content by automatically submitting each link into the StumbleUpon community and also you can activate a feature called, Promoted Website, within your su.pr Dashboard. What that does (see Tim’s video below also) is when someone clicks one of your su.pr shortened links a small sidebar will appear within the browser window on the page you send them to and it will give people the option of clicking through to other related articles you designate.

While the URL shortener space is still very fluid and while it is possible that I will be enticed away from su.pr in the future, at the moment I am loving su.pr and suggest that you give it a spin to see if it’s right for your needs.

Here a short video of Tim Ferriss’ talking about su.pr:

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Believe it or not, each week I receive a couple emails from people interested in Krasnodar. Some are tourists, some are interested in investing here, and others are moving to the city to live. I really enjoy sharing my knowledge of Krasnodar and helping people to discovery why Krasnodar is one of the nicest regions in Russia.

Over the past two years I have spoken with well over a 100 different people about Krasnodar. As you might expect, I find myself answering many of the same questions over and over again. Therefore, I thought it might make my life a bit easier and be more helpful to new visitors if I created some forums where I could answer people’s questions publicly.

The forums are located at http://forums.timothypost.com (see menu item “Forums” in top right of website) and are broken into three broad areas- Visitors, Expats, and Investors. I welcome input from others who also have knowledge of Krasnodar and want to share it with others. If you, yourself, currently have a question about Krasnodar, Russia, Sochi 2014 please feel free to register and ask your question.

Can you image if 12 million people around the world saw your wedding. Nope, neither can I. But that is exactly what happened to Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz, a young couple from Minnesota, after they posted their wedding processional video to YouTube. The processional is non-traditional (understatement) and set to Chris Brown’s song “Forever.”

Perhaps the happiest person of all is Chris Brown, who found himself in PR hell after he plead guilty to a charge of felony assault on his girlfriend, singer, Rihanna. While Brown recorded and posted his own video, apologizing to Rihanna; it is the JK wedding video which may ultimately change the public’s perception of him. Regardless, the JK Wedding Entrance video is the hottest viral hit of the moment and if you haven’t yet seen it…. take a look. It’ll make you smile.

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Note: Click images before reading

This morning, my wife, Natasha, forwarded to me an email she had received from my mother who had received it from my step-father. The “forwarding chain” for this email stretched back through hundreds of people. By the time it reached me, the email was beaten up and a complete mess. But when I scrolled down below the fold I saw four breathtakingly beautiful photographs from Clark Little, a professional photographer from Hawaii.

Clark Little is probably very well known to surfers around the world. I bet my friend, Andy St. Onge, who lives and surfs in Hawaii has known of Clark Little for a while. But…. I had never heard of him and if not for that ugly email perhaps neither would you. So, I was a bit surprised to see that Clark has an old school slide-show tour planned for this Summer. A slide-show tour? Why bother?

There are so many tools now available for free or for little cost that it just seems crazy that Clark would feel the need to stuff himself in an airplane and travel thousands of miles to share his passion and art with a real live audience in a dark theatre. The thing that really drove this point home for me was the following video:

I understand the perceived economics of how Clark Little, and other professional photographers, make a living. Their product is reprints of their photos for high prices ($450). There is nothing wrong with this revenue stream but rather than build the whole business around it, I would suggest that there is a lot more money to be made by selling derivative products. Five products come to mind immediately:

computer desktop wallpapers
posters for a wall
screensavers
Twitter background image (already formatted correctly)
iPhone slide show app

While the price point of each of these four products is much lower than a single reprint at $450 the potential volume of sales is in the millions and the total revenues from this add-on revenue streams much greater than the traditional ones.

Clark Little could be, himself, out there in the Web 2.0 world creating buzz and building a much more authentic business. I would guess that Clark is a person with a passion for surfing, the ocean, photography, and nature. The traditional business model pulls him away from these passions and requires him to sell his art to folks who may have money but not necessarily a passion for the things he cares about.

I would love to see Clark using Twitter much in the same way as did Lance Armstrong so that people can “tag along” with him on his photo shoots. Clark does have a Twitter account but, like David Beckham’s, it’s a bit stale and displays none of the passion found in his art. Clark Little’s video on YouTube is awesome and inspiring but ultimately, too little. I want more.

As a fan of his photography, I want Clark to create a community around his art where I can be part of the conversation and actually, Clark’s Facebook fan page is proof that he could be making a lot of money off the derivative revenue streams. Check out his FB fanpage here and you’ll see that he’s got over 8,000 fans!!!! That is really really powerful and needs to be better leveraged.

Clark Little is a dream client for a social media agency!! Enjoy his photography and share it with your friends.

Lately, I have had a lot of fun playing around with Twitter and learning how this new communications channel can best be leveraged. In the past week, I have created two new Twitter news wires:

@nytimes_wire

@insidesochi2014

For the New York Times news wire I took the RSS feed from the Times Wire webpage and “fed” it through TwitterFeed.com. This service takes the content from any RSS feed and redirects it to a Twitter account(s) you designate. Obviously, you need to “own” the Twitter account you redirect the content. TwitterFeed has continued to improve over the past year since I first discovered it and I’m hoping that Mario, the Founder, will consider using Yahoo! Pipes API to add a auto-translate feature. I know that I could create a “pipe” over at Yahoo! but I have found that the output isn’t that clean and reliable.

For the Inside Sochi 2014 Twitter news wire, I am using Bit.ly’s excellent new feature for multiple accounts. I have been using Bit.ly as my URL shortener of choice for a while but was reticent about setting-up separte accounts for each Twitter account I wanted to send tweets. So it was a very pleasant surprise yesterday when I saw that I could add a bunch of different Twitter accounts and still use a single browser bookmarklet. As a side note, I am attempting to demo CoTweet.com but due to some rendering bugs related to foreign language fonts, it’s not working well for me. The guys over at CoTweet.com say a fix is on the way and so I’ll be interested to compare it to Bit.ly.

I am particularly excited about this news wire for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games because there is currently a dearth of information, in english, for the event and I am hoping that this Twitter account will grow into something larger and more official. I purchased the domain www.insidesochi2014.com last week and I am planning to build some more social media goodness onto that domain. It’s a bit disappointing for me that the official Sochi 2014 website uses so few social media communications channels. If you can believe it….. they don’t even have an RSS feed for their News section. On the other hand, I am interested in working with the Sochi Olympic Committee so this may actually be an opportunity.

…and lastly, I am very proud of my newly developing skills with Fireworks CS4 (Photoshop’s sibling). I created the Twitter icon at the beginning of this post on Wednesday night. I did a bit of research and found the correct “Twitter font,” downloaded it, and then copied over the right hex color. The I added a bevel and a white Stroke to each letter.

It’s great to be able to design web graphics yourself because they play such an important role in setting the right tone for a website. For a couple more examples of my graphic design see the three round icons at the top of the left-hand sidebar. The coolest feature is the ability to make the backgrounds transparent. (By the way, if you are viewing this webpage in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 browser, then you REALLY need to update it immediately. I can’t emphasize enough how much one’s web experience sucks on IE 6. Thanks to Christian Olofsson (who, by the way, is eagerly looking for Twitter followers – click link to see why) who showed me last night why IE 6 is the bane of web designers everywhere (I happily use Apple’s Safari browser and the Firefox browser both of which are compatible on Windows and Macs) and for the life of me can’t understand why everyone doesn’t also). Here’s the link to update to IE 8

I hope you enjoy these two new Twitter news wires as much as I enjoyed creating them. If you have any suggestions for more Twitter accounts I should create, please let me know.

Have a great weekend and I’m hoping that a little of the sunshine here in Krasnodar can find its way to Boston, where Summer still hasn’t really arrived.

PS: Installment #2 on Istanbul Notes will be coming tomorrow and it will look at lodging options on the European side.

PPS: I almost forgot…. my “main” Twitter account is @timothypost and if you STILL have not signed-up for Twitter, come on over and discovery why, “Twitter is fun.”