Okay, so I admit, this is borderline narcissistic, but when I saw Kris’, I couldn’t resist.

Here’s what you do: go to www.myheritage.com and try out their nifty face recognition tool, and build your self a collage (the site is remarkably easy to use, if you want to have some fun with this).

Anyway, here’s who I apparently look like:

So who do I look more like, people? Dirk, the mighty German or Alicia Silverstone?

Via the Blogaholics, these wind powered moving structures have word of mouth written all over them.

Update: Embedding YouTube videos still isn’t working, so click the link above to feast your eyes on these great ads from South Africa.

At BarCamp this weekend, I sat in on a half-hour presentation on what the presenter, Jason Billingsley (can’t find his name on his site he dropped by to comment, below) called Seo and the Long Tail (with a nod to Chris Anderson).

His message was pretty simple: You have access to only a few meta-tags and description for SEO, so make them count for you. Then, fill in ALL of the gaps with content, by becoming an expert on the topics that are related to your business. And wherever possible, those that are unique to your business. An example he used was that a search time like “digital camcorder” would be impossible (and extremely expensive) to rank #1 on, but a “long tail” term like “the best digital camcorder for scuba diving” will not only be easier to own, but will convert better than the more broad terms.

Just to explain that really quickly, the concept is simple: If someone searches for “digital camcorders,” it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what they want, so there is a snowball’s chance in hell that the first site they look at will have what they’re looking for. Whereas a search term like “how do I get people to tell ten friends about my company” is several steps closer to being a perfect match for the searcher. (Heheh)

At the presentation, there was much discussion among the brains there about the science of SEO, but I think his point was to not lose sight of the “art” of search: use words, publish relevant content, and people will come.

A few examples:

My Alabama buddy Mack Collier is #1 for the search term “why companies should blog.” Lucky devil.

Here’s some terms people used to find me this week:

1. “breakfast social networking toronto” -Huh? Qu’est-ce que c’est?

2. “meet pr guys” -Okay, this one is cool, and proves my point some.

3. “need glasses myspace” -They were searching for a video, and found me. Who knew?

4 “tell friends about products through myspace” -Not a topic I’ve covered, but certainly words I’ve used.

5. “friends of katherine mcphee” -I can’t help but think this one has more to do with my friendship with JD than anything else, (I was a closet Soul Patrol member, after all) which reinforces the importance of links too.

Anyway, I think you begin to get the point. Speak, dear friends, and the world will listen. And I do mean the world. This week, my humble rag saw traffic from Meeandah, Rome, Istanbul, Contern, Theux, Wolfsheim, Alameda, Brittania and one of “the other” Surreys, just to name a few. And I’ve never heard of most of those places. If you’re reading and you hail from any of these wonderful locales (or something equally obscure to a West Coast Canadian), leave a comment and tell us more about your corner of the earth. We’d love to hear from you.

Update: Andre took better notes from Jason’s presentation than I did, and Jason has done a follow-up on his blog as well.

I’ve seen this little tool making its rounds of the blogosphere, and vowed I would waste a minute or two with it as soon as I had a chance. The Monday morning coffee hasn’t kicked in yet, so instead of thinking, I used this to build a new Web 2.0 logo. Tell Ten Friends already has a slick logo built by Rob, so rather than blaspheme his work, I built this one for YoboMedia, the company my wife and I started last year for our various small media projects:

After all this time, we’re still in beta! I saw Sean had tried it last week, and this week it was Joe Thornley who gave it a whirl, and so I figured it was my turn. If your image needs a makeover and you have a $0 budget, why not use this?

People will think you paid a branding company a small fortune for it!

Estimated time to build: 7 seconds.

Well, here I am at BarCamp Vancouver. After some difficulties getting wireless access here at Workspace, (great spot, in Vancouver’s Gastown) we are now live to the world. First I quickly uploaded some shots to flickr, and then I got busy writing. I feel like I’m back in my days as a reporter, taking pictures like crazy and jotting notes to later file my story, except that now the process is instantanious.

(Back of BarCamp Vancouver T-shirt)

It is 11:30, and my friend Nathan is doing a presentation on Ruby on Rails. I’ll give him the attention he deserves and update again in a bit.

And…publish.

12:00 lunchtime, and I’m typing away quickly so I can get up and meet some more people.

A few notes about last night: There was a BBQ at bryght, where I finally met Kris Krug, end enjoyed some free beer courtesy of Adhack. (Thanks James) The count so far: Free beer, free wireless, free t-shirt, free food and free open source presentations from very informed people. Not bad for a suggested donation of $20…

12:30- Back on again. I met Kate! Her blog, mynameiskate.ca is also on the Top 20 WOM blogs in Canada. I thanked her for the link, and she thanked me for the click-throughs she got from mine! (then we joked about how we’re both addicted to our site stats) It’s cool to say thanks for that kind of thing in person, and put a face to the blog.

1:00- SEO and the Long Tail. This is the stuff! Didn’t get his name, but he was preaching the idea of publishing fresh content to access the “long tail” of internet search. In short: blog, and thou shalt be found. Sound familiar?

2:30- Back-to-back-to-back presentations, loved the “Tagging for World Domination” chat. Picked up some great social bookmarking tips, and got a quick demo of ma.gnolia.

Update: At about 4 pm, I started to feel a bit tuckered out, so packed up and headed for home. Wireless was intermittent, and I am only just finishing this post now.

(me at BarCamp, taken by Nathaniel Brown with my camera)
It was great day, and I can’t wait for the next one. Learned too much to be able to process it all, and met come cool “internet folks” like Andre Charland (who was sitting behind me when I saw a picture of him come up in kk+’s feed. That was good for a laugh. Also met Roland Tanglao (whose pics of the event are many), Darren Barefoot and James Sherrett, among others. I have had quick email exchanges with them all, and read “behind the scenes” in the Google Group for the event organizers, so it was neat to introduce myself to the people behind the blogs, the pictures, etc.

(Roland Tanglao photo)

I’m hooked. When is CaseCamp again?

Here’s one of me skiing, taken by Rob Masefield.

I’ll upload more in a few days to my flickr account.

Just one sleep until BarCamp Vancouver. (The Barbecue part at Bryght, anyway) Should be an action packed weekend, and there are 120 Vancouverites attending. Not all will get a chance to present, so I expect to contribute by asking lots of questions and finally doing my first live-blog.

Watch for that, should be fun!