I earned a graduate certificate with honours designation from Centennial College in Corporate Communications and Public Relations yesterday.

Part of the program required students to complete an eight week work placement. I interned at Habitat for Humanity Toronto – finishing last month.

There, I solicited nearly $15,000 worth of gifts-in-kind, wrote an advertorial for a nationally distributed magazine and produced much of the content for its annual report.

I also helped facilitate the strategic development and execution of the launch of Canada’s largest Women Build. This included, media relations, event set up and tear down, and the PhotoShop production of distributed promotional material.

My past employment experience is varied, extensive and relevant – I’ve worked as an ESL and grade two teacher, a project manager and most recently, a communications intern. My diverse abilities – forged on three continents and three regions of Canada – are many and proven.

I’m a low risk, high reward employee. I excel in fast-paced environments, multitask with tenacity, and research, write and present well. I have strong interpersonal skills and show thoughtful initiative.

My ideal job nurtures my growth as a communicator and provides for professional development. It encourages strategic input and allows room for advancement. I could work in corporate, non-profit or agency environments in marketing or public relations – I simply want to be challenged, have an opportunity to learn and work towards something I believe in.

Finally, Centennial’s PR program is renowned for its early adopter reputation and it hasn’t missed a beat when it comes to exploring social media. I was part of its first Online PR class and am actively involved in Toronto’s social media communications community.

To learn more about me and why I might be a good fit for your organization, read more of my blog, check out my del.icio.us tags and peruse my LinkedIn profile.

I am going to France this evening for the wedding of two of my university roommates – it’s being held in a small town in the Alps next Saturday.

Sandra, my lady friend, and I, are arriving in Paris a week before the celebration to travel our way through the country. Of course, we have no money, so we’re doing it on the cheap – renting a car and couch surfing from the capital to Orleans, Dijon, St. Etienne, Marseille and finally to Embrun – the latter a sleepy little alpine town with cheap wine and great cheese – the site of the wedding.

CouchSurfing is a social application that allows strangers to arrange accommodations with each other. It’s like Facebook, but with a more singular purpose – to bridge cultures, encourage dialogue and provide places to sleep.

It’s really quite a phenomenal social experiment. I hope our own experience will serve as testament to its idealism. Either way, I’ll let you know how it goes.

We are staying with an art teacher in Orleans because Sandra’s an art teacher and artist. We are visiting a man in Dijon whose couch surfing profile acclaims him as a good cook and connoisseur of wine. We then intend to visit a young family in Saint-Etienne before arriving in Marseille – where we’ll visit an English teacher and her boyfriend.

We’ll then retrieve my other university roommate from the airport on our way to Embrun for the wedding – where we’ve rented a home for the week. We conclude our trip with an overnight drive to Paris for our flight home.

Can knowing less be helpful?

As I start out in my career as a PR professional, I am trying to position myself as a credible authority on social media – a source of information to such questions as:
• What the hell is it?
• How can it be used?
• How has it been used?
• Is it measurable?

I’m not an authority yet, however. For one, I haven’t even broken into the profession. For two, I’m not convinced the technological proficiency of certain targeted audiences is sufficient to warrant such methods.

Communicators are not in the business of selling/teaching social media innovations, but in using them to convey key messages. Insisting on a social media solution then, risks being a futile exercise of preaching to the converted.

True, I am not an early adopter of social media, but I do know of Twitter and Seesmic, for example, and I am not yet convinced of their usefulness on a wider or even long tail scale.

It is this latter admission of reacting to trends, rather than leading them, that makes me well positioned to effectively demonstrate their application. If I don’t use, or feel comfortable using, an online tool to gather information and make choices based on that information, how can I argue an advantage to it over traditional media?

More versed experts are at risk of assuming an audience knowledge that isn’t there. Here, my ignorance is an attribute. I am a barometer of average understanding of online tools.

To truly claim the experience of a city as your own, you must first live through one of its winters. I moved to Toronto in September, 2007. I earned my T.O. patch this past winter - when the season’s old man put me in a half nelson and gave me a noogie.

In fact, it was the worst winter I’ve ever experienced. Worse than Edmonton, where it snowed near Labour Day; or Seoul, where acid would literally fall from the sky; or Sarajevo, where fog would persist in the valley city like a glacier for weeks on end.

I live in the attic of a nineteenth-century row house on Bathurst with my partner Sandra. We share about four hundred square feet of space. Our bedroom smells like stall smoke and cat pee. It fronts a 24 hour street car line – making it too noisy to keep the window open at night, but too ripe to keep it closed.

Thankfully, our overpriced pad has a prized patio. It’s reached by a metal door opening out - it’s also our fire escape. Only because of my brutish strength, did the season’s first snowfall not totally block our exit.

I phoned the landlord and asked if I could have a door that pulled in. I then asked what exactly our fire route was – as there aren’t any stairs that lead from our apartment to the ground.

He talked about the door needing to open out to meet fire regulations. Our fire route? Go out on the wooden patio and wait to be rescued. Apparently, it’s designed to withstand fire for the unspecified amount of time it would take for the firefighters to get us down.

He also assured us there wouldn’t be another snowfall that big all year.

He was right; there were two - and they were bigger. I dug us out each time with a metal dustpan. Sandra and I resigned to the fact that if a fire did occur, we would jump to the nearest fire escape three metres below.

We’re safe… for now… and moving in September.

* Two youths (15 & 16) have been arrested for the Alma College fire. Read this Globe and Mail article for details.

It’s a sad day for St. Thomas

A fire that started just after 12:00 p.m. on Wednesday quickly engulfed Alma College, reducing the former girls’ school to little more than an empty shell of its former glory. Smoke was visible as far north as downtown London and as far south as Port Stanley.

The timing of the fire came less than two weeks after the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) agreed to the combined City of St. Thomas and George Zubick (Alma’s owner) request to demolish Alma College. Early Thursday morning, Constable Anders Nielsen said “with the help of the Fire Marshal’s Office, we have determined that it is arson.” Alma College is now a crime scene.

Ironically, at the same time that fire fighters were battling the blaze in St. Thomas, petitions to save Alma College were being delivered to Ontario’s Legislative Assembly in Toronto.

Elgin-London-Middlesex MPP Steve Peters took time from the afternoon question period to lament the passing of this historical treasure.

The following text can be found online at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario’s website. Peters said:

I need to seek the indulgence of the House for a moment. I recognize that I’m probably out of order and I can’t rule myself out of order, but I lost a really good friend today, and it was a heritage building. Alma College was a historic school in my community that towered over the city. I could see it from my backyard and from my office every day. Tragically, it burned to the ground at noon this afternoon. I trust that if it was arson, they will find the culprits.

For me, Alma was a special place. First, it was incorporated by this very chamber in its beginning, and it stood as a monument for a long time. I worked at that college 20 years ago when I was a university student. It was a special thing to have a girls’ school and being the only guy that could walk through the front gates of that school and not be arrested. I say this because there have been community citizens for over 20 years who have actively tried to find a new use for the building. And in over 20 years, we’ve had various governments.

I needed to make the statement for myself and to say thank you to the people over the years who worked so hard to preserve this building. I just ask that we remember that. I hope it’s a lesson to all of us that our heritage is precious and that we need to collectively do what we can to ensure that we preserve our heritage for future generations. Once these buildings are gone, they’re gone. You can’t ever bring them back.

If nothing else, I hope that this fire today at Alma College-that all the work everyone has done over the years hasn’t been in vain, that we can learn collectively that it’s incumbent on all of us to make sure that we stand up and preserve our heritage and find ways of developing new and unique partnerships to make sure that these symbols will remain for generations to come. I thank the members for allowing me this opportunity.

Peters’ official statement is posted in the comments section below.

Reports from earlier:

AM 980 reported that “[Alma College] is literally falling down before people’s eyes. Many people are distraught... Fire crews [now] have the fire under control. The whole building was engulfed in flames.”

There was a morning event at Alma College by high school students protesting the OMB’s decision.

Sarah Miller of the Facebook group Eerie and Endangered: Celebrating the Beauty of Alma College has posted several photos of the fire.

This last photo was taken by Melissa Ravenek and posted on the Facebook group Remembering Alma College.

Nothing now remains of Alma College save its chapel and a pile of rubble.

The St. Thomas Times-Journal has posted a comprehensive series of photographs documenting the fire.

Mike Whitman produced an excellent video tribute to Alma College.

The Alma College fire was picked up by the Canadian Press and Sun Media. Stories and photos were published in the Timmins Daily Press, the North Bay Nugget, the Sarnia Observer, the St. Catharines Observer, the Woodstock Sentinel-Review, the Edmonton Sun, CBC’s National, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail.

For more information on Alma College click here. This is a list of news articles on the school.

To read the OMB’s May 16, 2008 decision click here.

I’ll be updating this post as more information becomes available.

In the meantime, have your say and comment below.

This is such a since you didn’t ask post. I present to you, Paul’s eight tips to office success - with a PR bent.

1. Try to keep most of your e-mails to 30 words or less. It takes longer to do at first, but it sharpens what you say.

2. Say yes to every task you’re assigned. I babysat 18 square feet of sod a few weeks ago as part of my internship at Habitat for Humanity Toronto.

3. Say less and act more. By taking advantage of the opportunity to learn you improve your productivity and demonstrate your value to the organization.

4. Step three, of course, requires knowing what needs to be done. I reviewed the business plan, marketing and communications plan, and asked questions of all department staff. I then took responsibility for the submission of 50 grant proposals.

5. Type quickly and write well. I was asked to craft a thousand word advertorial on garage organization to deadline.

6. Be amiable. It’s your responsibility to get along well with people. Participate fully in relationships with all colleagues. Remember names and interests, and be aware of office culture and multiculturalism.

7. Don’t underestimate the importance of maintaining and growing your professional network. Identify your talents and the talents of your peers - and then share them.

8. Make ethical decisions and be tough. It’s all about you – don’t be stubborn, but don’t compromise core values.

In the summer of 2004, I pushed a small outhouse on three wheelbarrow wheels, with an inside to hold a cooler, through eight Canadian cities selling poopsicles – frozen, fair trade, organic bananas coated with dark chocolate – for three dollars each.

I used the poopsicle project to say to as many people as possible, “excuse me, I’d like to be heard.”

It worked. I made front page in a regional version of a national newspaper, was pitied in a Montreal editorial and told to grow up and get a real job by a writer of an Edmonton daily. I was on TV – the news in Edmonton and Calgary, and MuchMusic’s Speaker’s Corner.

My key message was simple, consume crap.

Nobody understood what I meant, though. I forget to say what’s in it for you.

The poopsicle project had so little stickiness in our collective conscious, I’d be surprised to find anything except for this blog entry on Google about the topic. Believe me, I’ve checked.

What I had wanted to say is your consumption of media, materials and meat controls the fate of this planet we’re all flying on. Tough shit, my friends, you have to monitor your consumption:

1. Learn the bias of mainstream media, whatever it is – the responsibility of opinion is that inevitably, it’s all propaganda. So, be aware of those who hold your attention.
2. Learn who sews the underwear ridding up your bum. As earnest as it sounds, you have a responsibility to those making the pieces of our material world.
3. Learn where the food’s coming from on its way to your belly. This includes: food miles, farm practices and family partnerships.

The clincher is, because you are aware of this responsibility, you will now and forever, feel a little guilty the next time you make a stupid decision like considering Fox, news; shopping at Wal-Mart; or, eating slave-grown bananas.

I made fifty poopsicles each time I pushed my prone to tipping poopmobile through the streets. I sold out my first day in Ottawa – the only time on tour – during gay pride.

I drove to Montreal and slept in my van in an area popular with crack addicts, adjacent to where I once lived. I was police-escorted off Mont Royal the next day to chants of poopsicle! poopsicle!’

I wheeled around Toronto’s city hall, the Queen’s park and street, but no one was there – except for my family.

I went to my hometown, St. Thomas, and was interviewed by the National Post.

The poopsicle project made appearances at Portage and Main in Winnipeg, Whyte Avenue in Edmonton and the Red Mile in Calgary. I finished in Vancouver with high expectations, but made little connection with the city.

I then stopped, packed the poopmobile in the back of my minivan, my home for the summer, drove across the Rockies with failing breaks to Edmonton, and put it in the corner of my apartment for two years. Its current home is a suburban garage.

Of course, I had grand designs for a poopsicle world tour, but the project simply didn’t have the legs to go viral.

I’ve often wondered, why? What prevented people from whispering poopsicle to each other? Why didn’t they bother to spread the implications of my message and its call to action?

The answer is three-fold:
• I had a lousy web presence,
• Not enough money,
• And, never fully explained the idea until now.

The Poopsicle does America, 2008? One million dollars and I’m in.

You can support the poopsicle project in three ways:

• Become a Poopsicle Pal
• Tell your friends about the poopsicle project (talk, call, e-mail, Facebook status update, link)
• Monitor your consumption.

1. The three best cities in the world, in order: Montreal, New York and Dubrovnik.

2. I always feel like I need a bath after I ride the TTC.

3. PR = networking with all known media to as many audiences as you are able to identify.

4. Stephane Dion’s no Jean Chretien, but c’mon, Stephen Harper’s a bigot.

5. Alma College is as impressive and historically significant as Casa Loma – and a test case for every heritage protection law in Canada.

6. Toronto is the greatest social experiment the world has ever seen.

7. Why are “conservatives” the first to deride government interference in their own lives, but the first to use it to interfere in others?

8. My neighbours are crazy.

9. The three best Ontario beers in no particular order: Steam Whistle pilsner, Creemore Springs lager and Mill Street’s Tankhouse ale.

10. More quality Canadian beers: Granville Island’s Kitsilano Maple Cream ale, Big Rock’s Traditional ale and most rouge beers from Quebec.

11. I make the best hamburgers in the country.

12. The underbelly of Facebook is between the navel and where it permits the digital organization of people spewing rewritten history.

13. The next best three cities: Toronto, Sarajevo and Hanoi.

14. The San Jose Sharks are going to win the Stanley Cup.

15. I have a Canadians for Obama poster in my attic apartment’s window. If the world could vote, it’d elect the man, Americans should too.

16. This past winter was the kind every kid dreams of – I’m glad it’s over.

17. Three events I’ll go to no matter what: the 2010 Olympics, the next World Cup of soccer Canada’s in, and Toronto’s next Stanley Cup.

18. The five websites I visit the most: Globe and Mail, NHL, Gmail, Facebook and WordPress.

19. LinkedIn is too passive. Shouldn’t it encourage active networking or am I using it wrong? Any ideas?

20. Rounding out the top ten: Bangkok, Paris, Shanghai and Vienna.

Twitter is a digital social application used to write really short blog entries. Posts are restricted to 140 characters. There is a debate going on in the Toronto PR community as to its usefulness as a trade tool.

I recently received an e-mail from Ontario’s Minister of Culture, Aileen Carroll - more specifically, from her Orwellian titled, “Correspondence Unit.”

Apparently, “Minister Carroll would be pleased to respond to [me] in writing.” I received this message 12 days ago and am still waiting for her letter to arrive in the mail. I bet her penmanship is stunning.

The tardiness of her response, however, has convinced me that her request for my address was just a way for big brother to better track my agitating actions. When her words arrive, rest assured, they’ll be posted.

As I am still intent on saving Alma College and the readers of my blog, for the most part, are in PR, I was hoping I could ask for you advice.

You see, the preservation of Alma College is in the interest of all Canadians - it’s just that most of us don’t know that. The only way to reach an audience this diverse is through mainstream media.

My question is, how would you go about getting the needed media attention?

I know you’ll all now rush to read my previous posts on the topic to inform your own comments, but a fresh perspective is always helpful. As such, I’m pasting an article below by Catherine Nasmith from Built Heritage News. You can also check out the Alma College articles I tagged on del.icio.us.

I have my own ideas on how to proceed, but I want to hear from you.

Years of Failed Heritage Policy Come Home to Roost at Alma College

Readers of Built Heritage News are aware of the ongoing attrition of Canada’s architectural heritage. Even with the vastly improved Ontario Heritage Act that gives municipalities the power to stop demolition, fires, development pressure, and weak municipal councils continue to chip away at the stock.

The case that most clearly illustrates the impact of 30 years of failed Ontario heritage policy is the impending demolition of Alma College in St. Thomas. Even with the will to save the building, which the municipality clearly had, without some kind of funding to assist with restoration costs, the project is not viable for the private owner.

Ontario and Canada have failed miserably in providing the kind of routine support for property owners that is normal in the United States, Britain and other parts of Europe. Ongoing property maintenance keeps heritage buildings from becoming casualties. Maintenance money is not very sexy, but simple things like making sure the windows are painted, the masonry is pointed, eavestroughs are in place and the roof doesn’t leak will keep 19th century buildings in use indefinitely. They were built to last.

Even in a state of relative dereliction Alma College is spectacularly beautiful, rivaling University College or the Connaught Laboratory building at the head of Spadina Avenue in Toronto. If Alma College was in a larger urban centre it would be getting front-page coverage in all the major media outlets, but in St. Thomas it is off the national media radar screen.

Designed in 1877 by Hamilton architect James Balfour and opened in 1881 the building has suffered demolition by neglect since it was sold by the College. St. Thomas Council stood by helpless pre-2005 unable to force the owner to keep the building in a good state of repair. If they had attempted to use their powers, the counter move by the property owner would have been to apply for a demolition permit and the building would have been lost after six months. One developer stripped the property of its interior, intending to redevelop for housing. The project didn’t go forward, but not before massive damage had occurred. The next owners, the Zubick family did not take even the most basic preventative measures. What was repairable has become very expensive to reverse. Yet this is not a building that can be lost.

For the last couple of years the Zubick family and St. Thomas Council have been fighting it out in court with the town trying to use new powers to force repairs, the owners overturning in court the local heritage maintenance bylaw. The province sent in members of the Ontario Heritage Trust to try to mediate, but put no money on the table. Finally, in a behind closed door decision on the eve of the final Ontario Municipal Board hearing, the Town and the owners agreed to demolish all but the front entrance, possibly including the tower. Without a party to offer any expert testimony in favour of saving the building, (The Alma College Foundation was denied party status by the OMB) the OMB had little option but to accept the agreement put forward by the parties before it, the Town of St. Thomas and the property owners.

Alma College IS front and centre for heritage preservation groups. It is on both Heritage Canada’s and the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario’s most endangered lists. Both organizations have written to the Minister of Culture to intervene to save it following the recent OMB decision that accepted the deal struck by the property owner and the municipality to permit demolition.

The last hope to save the building sits with the current Minister of Culture, Aileen Carroll. Because she has the power to intervene, if she fails to act the anger will be focused on the province. The Minister of Culture, Ailleen Carroll indicated that she would not comment or act until such time as the OMB appeal period has expired. It is discouraging that the standard response from the Minister of Culture to letters from the public pressing for action has been “I respect the Ontario Municipal Board’s judicial process and the challenges faced in issuing a decision on Alma College” as well as ” Staff from the Ministry of Culture and staff from the Ontario Heritage Trust worked with the owners, the City of St. Thomas, and other heritage stakeholders, including the Heritage Central Elgin committee to encourage dialogue to find solutions that would save Alma College and integrate the building into any new development”.

Talk will not be enough to save this building.

The most important request to Minister Carroll came from Steve Peters, MPP following a meeting with resident Dawn Doty, Dr. Robert Burns and Lara Leitch of the Alma College Foundation. In his letter to the Minister, he said “As a result of this meeting, and the many email messages, letters and telephone calls my constituent office and other MPP offices across the province have received on this issue, I felt compelled to write this letter.” He goes on to request the Minister to issue a 60 day stop order should a demolition permit be issued, and to request an evaluation by the Ontario Heritage Trust of “whether or not Alma College may be eligible for provincial designation”.

The Mayor of St. Thomas, Cliff Berwick in a letter to constituent Bob Foster cuts to the heart of the matter. “In all my correspondence with the province and private individual, including the Zubicks no one has offered any money……municipalities can not afford to be the sole financial supporter to maintain heritage.”

Dawn Doty, the neighbour of Alma who has gathered 3000 signatures on a petition to save Alma can’t get a meeting with the Minister of Culture. She reports that in conversation with the Zubick family, the Zubicks would love to save the building but can’t afford to do so. She doesn’t understand why the province pledged 7M to save the Lister Block in Hamilton yet offers nothing for Alma, or why the province got involved in the Moore farmhouse in Sparta, but ignores pleas to intervene in Alma. Good questions.

The province’s respect for municipal or OMB process looks more like abdication of responsibility. It is not realistic for the province to expect a small municipality like St. Thomas to be able to deal with such a legal and financial challenge. The building’s value is clear to anyone, yet the province has hung back far beyond the 11th hour.

I am still dreaming of a press event on the lawn of Alma College, with the premier and the Minister of Culture declaring never again, Alma College will be saved, the time has come to end demolition by neglect–the 30 year period of mismanagement of our heritage resources is over. Instead we may get the nightmare of watching this fine building reduced to rubble.

Keep those cards and letters flowing.

Editor’s Note: I am also the President of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario.

As such, media relations takes the stage. There has been some discussion of holding a protest at Queen’s Park, but I don’t think that hook alone will be enough to generate and sustain the necessary interest to save this piece of our country’s heritage.

The Globe and Mail reported last week that bloggers don’t create news; instead, they opine on news published by mainstream media. This seems to suggest that bloggers editorialize rather than produce fact-based reporting of their own. That assertion is both ridiculous and offensive.

In other news, the Canadian Press reported Tuesday that women are increasingly outblogging men - in quantity, at least. The blogs I regularly read are mostly female written - although, this is more a symptom of my profession than the opinions available in the blogosphere - roughly 80 per cent of the students in my PR program are women.

Was anyone else getting a bit sick of last Saturday’s Earth Hour? Kudos to Tara Wood (a Centennial grad) and the WWF for their successful promotion of the event itself, but what were the key messages? Turning off the lights is a good idea? Symbolism is necessary to show public support for climate change initiatives? What exactly was I supposed to have learned because of the darkened hour?

I have many opinions concerning the TTC and its labour dispite, but I’m not going to share them now. Instead, I’d simply like to observe that the colour maroon is a poor brand choice for an organization dealing with claims of chronic filth. Maroon looks dirty even when it’s not. If cleanliness is next to godliness, then the TTC’s maroon dress has turned it into the devil’s mistress.

I went on a build for Habitat for Humanity Toronto last Friday in the exotic locale of Scarborough. It was great fun and I’m not just saying this because I’m doing my internship at the non-profit. I got to hit things - like nails and my thumb - saw things, crow bar things and pick up nails with a super magnet attached to a stick.

March was social media month in the Wall Street Journal, which I discovered by randomly picking up a section of it in the Tampa airport on my way back from Florida over reading week. When I tried to follow its content online, however, it was restricted - to paying readers.

Both the Wall Street Journal and the Globe and Mail should follow the lead of the New York Times. The latter publication recently returned to offering its online content free - much like the Toronto Star has always done. I’m all for some well placed capitalist greed, exploitation, what have you, but media have a legitimate and necessary role in any truly functioning democracy. In other words, media have a responsibility to keep citizens informed so that the decisions that are made are based on fact.

Why does Google’s spell check insist that there is no ‘u’ in colour? I can’t be the only one who gets penalized for spelling colour, honour, centre, metre and doughnut correctly. C’mon, Google, get it together.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that my efforts to save Alma College (see some of my previous posts) are complicated by internal failures at the Ontario Municipal Board. It issued approval for the demolition of Canada’s most endangered heritage property based on the type of research I’d have been failed for submitting back in my undergraduate days at McGill.

Last Friday, the Toronto Star reported that the city of Aurora is “slamming a decision by the OMB not to hold a special joint hearing with the province’s environmental review board.” Interesting. Alma College’s fate was sealed when none of the groups actually interested in preserving the school were allowed to have a say in its fate.

The OMB has a new website. I couldn’t find its mandate or mission anywhere. Go figure. Even Toronto urban designer Ken Greenberg is grumbling about the dominance of the OMB. Referring to the proposed construction of suburban box stores in the city core, he says, “The sad truth here is that the OMB has become the de facto planning board for Toronto, a role that it was never set up to fulfill.”

Coming home on the subway today I was assaulted by an advertising campaign for Gillette Mach3 Disposable razors. Its eco-insulting tagline - “enough said.” Really? I mean, really!? At a time when western consumers are being encouraged to minimize their consumption, is it absolutely necessary to promote a product that’s the personal hygiene equivalent of an SUV?

Finally, Statistics Canada released 2006 census data this morning that accurately expresses why Toronto is such a unique and exciting city - it’s one that belongs to the world. Nearly 43 per cent of Canada’s largest metropolis is a visible minority. Eat your apple, New York City!

(original blog art by Sandra Poczobut, 2008 - available for commission - sandra dot poczobut at gmail dot com)