While I’ve used Google a number of times for self gratification by googling Kendall Card or my alias “powstash”, it’s surprising when I’m not looking for myself that I find myself.

Case in point:  I was getting ready to write a blog post for a client, Utah Vacation Homes, about the many outdoor stairways/walkways that can be found in Park City, I did a Google image search for Park City Main Street Stairs and then one for Park City Utah.  As I was looking through the images on page 1 I spy this photo which looks all so familiar:

The reason being, is that there is me!  The photo is probably 6 years old taken by my friend and photographer Erik Seo one morning on Murdock Peak at – ready for this – The Canyons!  Which technically  isn’t in the town of Park City.

So yea, I found myself when I wasn’t even looking.  Anyone else had that surprise?

All day?  Yep!

I’m currently at Word Camp Utah (being held at Novell) which if you walked into the room would look like a ‘geek’ conference.  I know this because when the asked for programmers and designers to raise their hands I almost rose my hand so that when they asked for “others” that I wasn’t the only one.

But it’s been really cool and time very well spent.  $20 for this conference with a T-Shirt, a hearty lunch and snacks = I SCORED!

So far I’ve heard from:

1. Matt Mullenweg – Co-founding developer of Word Press.  Lots of great things coming, including a new version of WordPress (2.7 due out in November)  with a new dashboard that is customizable.  Matt did a demo of it and I’m really stoked for this.
2. Richard Miller – He spoke about using WordPress as a CMS tool.  Really interesting stuff here and some great examples of how some sites use pages and others use posts.  I personally prefer posts since they are fed through RSS while pages don’t have that advantage.

3. Cameron Moll – I would have paid $20 to just hear him speak.  His presentation was entitled Good vs. Great Design. One of the biggest take aways from his presentation was this idea (from my notes) 

   Homogenecity vs. Heirarchy:  What is the visual heirarchy of your site/page?  Let the prominant stuff stand out and the secondary stuff follow.   Try this with your next web/e-mail design:

   1. Grey scale your web page/document
   2. Blur it in photoshop
   3. What stands out?
   4. This will tells you about where people are looking and what is the real focus of your site/e-mail.
   5. Adjust your design accordingly to make the most important elements stand out or draw the eye.
4. Thom Allen (currently speaking) – Thom is in the above image as he introduces his topic of Podcasting.  Good stuff for sure.

2 more speakers to go, one who is talking about SEO for blogging and the last one about writing plugins.

If WordCamp comes to your city and you do anything with blogging and in particular Word Press, you NEED to attend.

The desktop on your computer is a great example. Why is it that it’s organize the way it is?  Icons, all the same size, general colors, etc.  Here is my desktop below. It’s a mess isn’t it? Part of it is “organized” by groups of things I need to work on (like blog posts or images to resize) and some of it is left over from doing the “arrange by type.

(image by Grant Gunderson)

To organize it (which isn’t all that often) the options are:

RIGHT CLICK – Arrange Icons by – Name, Size, Type, Modified.

What about importance or MUST get done today!?

Enter BumpTop.  Watch this!

This type of fresh approach to the ordinary and continually accepted “way it is done” can be applied to many things around us and the results could be very lucrative, not to mention challenging.

As we headed out to lunch Shawn grabbed his Flip Ultra Video camera, a really cool little gizmo that not only takes internet ready video but has an easy USB plugin built in along with some basic video mix software. Here’s the result of flipn’ in Salt Lake.

This article on wikipedia.org basically sums up what it is that I do when I get around to doing work stuff. The coolest part is that I love doing it. To quote Jack Black – “My life is good“.

Then said athlete would put together a three-ring binder with the images and any articles or advertisements that featured the athlete. If they really wanted to impress they would have it bound in something more permanent than a three ring binder.

A few years ago some athletes started to use digital images in their portfolio and some went above and beyond by actually creating a web page to host said images rather than including them in an e-mail proposal. But the reality is 99.9% of all the athlete sites I’ve seen are sub par, leaving me wanting more.

I think more has arrived. Meet Landis Tanaka, a 15 year old skier from Alaska put this promo video together and hosted it on Brightcove. Sure, I’ve seen better skiers (not to say he doesn’t have skills) but I’ve never seen a better promo video or “portfolio” ever. Nice job Landis.

If you’ve got a blog you’ll know that comment spam is getting out of hand. True to form Seth Godin saw it coming back in March of 2005. Good guys keep improving comment moderation tools and bad guys keep creating more innovative ways to screw up the good thing that is the ability to comment on a blog, thus spending your hard earned 2 cents.

But the bad guys are scared so they hide behind anonymous names and servers.

One of the blogs I manage is the Backcountry Blog, which posts Backcountry.com customer adventures, gear reviews, outdoor industry fodder and anything outdoor related that I care to discuss. Recently a company called CouponAlbum.com has been comment spamming the blog with offers for a competitor of Backcountry.com – Dick’s Sporting Goods. At first I laughed about it but after the 4th or 5th comment I moderated I wasn’t laughing.

It got me thinking – does your company have a comment spam policy? I’m sure it has a privacy policy which it likely created after the need arose. What about creating a policy, taking a positive position before the need arises? Your company may not even have a blog yet, like Dick’s Sporting Goods or CouponAlbum.com, but they should have a policy about comment spam.

So I dropped the folks at Coupon Album a note. They said they welcome it.

Dear Customers, we always welcome your feedback and suggestions. Your inputs help us in providing better offers / deals to you.

Although I’m not a customer they weren’t really a reader of the Backcountry Blog. Here is the message I left them.

I see that you have a privacy policy for your customers which protects their privacy and information. But do you have a blog comment spam policy? You need one.

I manage the Backcountry Blog (http://backcountryblog.blogspot.com) and I would appreciate it if you’d stop comment spamming the blog with deal offers. Since I have moderating enabled it’s NEVER going to get published!

What’s most ironic is that these offers are for a competitor of Backcountry.com who owns the Backcountry Blog.

You bring shame to internet marketing by your back door attempts. Do something remarkable not something repulsive.

Yours in the web,

Kendall

If you know of a company that has a blog comment spam policy I’d love to see it. I haven’t heard of one yet and the need for one has definitely arrived.

One of the age old concepts of business is customer service. According to Seth Godin, customer service is an arm of marketing and quite likely it’s your least expensive way of going about it. If you’re looking at customer service as an expense then it’s time to be different.

Bluehouse Skis, who I recently wrote about, is going about customer service different when it comes to getting skis out to their customers. Be certain, if you order some skis, they are out the door pronto. But the opportunity arose the other day to be different and I think it will pay off.

BluehouseSkis.com

While the 360 Flex Conference was going on in Seattle a group of guys who were attending the conference got together and donated their time to create a new flex application for Northwest Harvest. Northwest Harvest is a non-profit food program that provides food for nearly 300 food banks. The application will help them have a virtual food drive where anyone, anywhere can donate and will dramatically change the way they can operate.

I see some really cool results of this effort that are worth mentioning.

1. The code is open source and is available for any other food bank to use. It never ceases to amaze me how the “pay it forward” idea can snowball when you work within an open source platform
2. When people think of donating the first thing that comes to mind is opening the wallet. What’s more unique about this effort is that they donated a skill set that is finely tuned and hone.
3. As you watch the video, more than once it is said that the programmers who donated their time came away with more skills, new knowledge, new associations and expanded horizons. Time and time again I’m reminded of this in life – the more you give the more you receive. It’s a timeless law of humanity, one I believe in and one I hope to embrace more often.

Be sure to watch this video – click the image below

Thanks to my friend Jason Mitchell for passing this along.

Here is a collection of tags that I found on a recent blog post at HighSnobiety.com

Of the 38 social tags below (don’t mouse-over them and cheat), how many can you recognize and name? I recognized 8. I suck.

social bookmark now: lt="Ma.gnolia" />

In the spirit of social status I present the Social Scorecard:

1-5 : You are still in the 1980’s.  It’s time to awake

6-12: You’re a wannabe.  You really think you are on top of your game.  News flash – you aren’t.

13-20: Take a bow.  Although school work wasn’t your deal you’ve been paying attention elsewhere

21-29: The FORCE is strong with this one.

30-38:  You are a social tag master.   All others must bow and worship your internet prowess.

If you dare to share, comment below with the number of tags you recognize.