We had an amazing trip to Utah. Bill Tai (@KiteVC) and Susi Mai (@SusiKite) hosted their annual snowkiting MaiTai Trip. The event consists of a bunch of VCs, Entrepreneurs and Kite addicts who hang out, kite and talk tech.

The conditions were amazing. Although the first day brought light wind and whiteout conditions, the rest of the trip was mostly blue skies and solid 12m conditions. I had such a great time riding and meeting some very interesting people! Remi and I scored some killer shots that you are sure to see in the coming months!

Here are a couple iPhone photos from the trip:

Related posts:

1. SLC ’09 Snowkite Trip Day 3
2. SLC ’09 Snowkite Trip Day 2
3. SLC ’09 Snowkite Trip Day 5

Utah has been amazing! It’s great being back in this beautiful state. The conditions on the mountain have been great with blue skies and good snow. We also got to watch my cousin Henry in his ski race. The light was pretty poor but he did great at the race.

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Kiteboarding Magazine ran a couple shots in their January 2012 Issue. Most of them were storm photos from Cape Hatteras, NC. The action shot is of Brian Smith, who was just added to the Liquid Force Team. Congrats Brian!

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Best Kiteboarding’s Rich Sabo scores the cover of Kiteboarding.eu kite magazine. Rich has been working very hard over the past few years. He has joined the BEST Kiteboarding team, traveled with Brandon Scheid, Brian Smith and Sam Medysky to Brazil and continues his pursuit of great sessions!

This was one of those great Cape Hatteras Sunset Kite sessions with the crew in The Slick. Congrats Rich and thanks for the 12th magazine cover!

Related posts:

1. Cover Shot of Kite-boarding Magazine
2. Kitesurf Magazine Cover
3. Scheid Cover on Kitesurf Mag.

Update: SOLD OUT!
Canvas Prints are available to the first 15 people starting NOW!!!

Details:
- 16″ x 20″ – Size
- 1.5″ – Deep
- Gallery Wrap
- Includes Free Shipping – Continental US

The photo printer is having a sale. Therefore, I can pass the savings along to you. Now is your chance to get your favorite Cape Hatteras or Kiteboarding images on your walls. Detailed examples of what canvas prints look like can be found HERE and HERE.

There may be a longer than usually production time. So if you want new art and don’t need it asap now is the time to order!!! Limit 2 per person.

Directions:
1. Send an email
2. Subject: I would like a canvas print!
3. We will confirm with you if you were one of the first 15 emails.

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A few months ago, I went to the Ann Arbor Tech meetup that showcased 5 new startups in Michigan. One of them was Are You A Human, which aims at making the web authentication process of the past more engaging and less annoying. They do this by having a user solve a puzzle to prove that you are in fact a human (and not a robot). I thought this was great and it would solve the near traumatizing experience that one may encounter while trying to solve an original CAPTCHA or similar word puzzles.

I believed Are You A Human had a great idea, so this must be the way of the future. That was until, I watched a TED Talk from Luis von Ahn, who was on the team that developed the first CAPTCHA. Their newer project reCAPTCHA takes CAPTCHA and turns the idea around for a good cause, and I bet you had no idea! When you solve a reCAPTCHA you are working with Google to “digitize textual documents”.

Answers to reCAPTCHA challenges are used to digitize textual documents. It’s not easy, but through a sophisticated combination of multiple OCR programs, probabilistic language models, and most importantly the answers from millions of humans on the internet, reCAPTCHA is able to achieve over 99.5% transcription accuracy at the word level. See for yourself!

Needless to say this Ted Talk changed the way I looked at those annoying CAPTCHs.

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We spent the day in Leelanau, MI. We drove around to great spots overlooking Lake Michigan. It was a little chilly and overcast, but we had a great time hiking around. Here are a couple pictures from our adventure in Northern Michigan.

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Trusted Waters’ debut album was released earlier this year. They featured 2 images in their album artwork. The first of which is the Serendipity House at Sunset during a Storm(seen above) and an image of professional kiteboarder and kite designer Julien Fillion kitesurfing in Maui. They also released their first music video so check them out! trustedwaters.com.

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I’m excited to share a project I have been extremely busy working over the past few months with my friend Rob Wolfbrandt. We have spent an enormous amount of time making a product/service that we use and hope it works for you too.

What is SessionAlert? SessionAlert is the mobile app that lets you plan and find Kiteboarding sessions, and share real time riding conditions publicly or privately with your friends. All on an open platform, no downloading needed.  It’s for any web enabled device (including Android, iPhone, iPad and Desktop Computers)

Why use SessionAlert? It always seemed difficult to find out where your friends were riding, when the wind sensors arn’t always working properly, and getting innundated with text messages, emails and phone calls trying to organize a session was a pain! So, it was time for change! The best part is that its great for everybody, from the Pros to the rider just finishing their first lesson. The Private SessionAlerts are what I’m most excited about, which is the ability to create a group of your closest riding buddies and only send the alerts to them, when the conditions are at their best.

How it works? You sign up at SessionAlert.com. Under Settings set your home location. This will set the center point from which your alerts will be generated. Next, set the distance in which you want to get alerts (ie. the distance your willing to travel to go ride). Choose how you would like to get the alerts, either Text Message/SMS or Email. You can also add your Facbook, a profile picture, local public riding locations and create a friends list for Private SessionAlerts & messages. So now that your all set up if you find your way to the Feed tab at the top, this houses the SessionAlerts and private messages. To create a SessionAlert click on the +Alert and fill out the conditions and submit. Only people who want to get the alert will be notified based on the setup in their profile settings. The more of your group that uses it the more beneficial it will be to everyone.

Rob and I hope you enjoy this as much as we do. We are constantly updating so please send your feedback to let us know how its working for you and your group of riders. You can follow on twitter: @sessionalert

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Instagram has been the rage for quite a while now. If your like most people you don’t walk around with you camera all day. But when the opportunity for taking a shot arises you do have your cell phone. REALLY? Yes really! Instagram is a great way to share these photos easily with your friends and family. Here you can check out some of my Instagram photos Best of all there are some really cool way to get these photos offline.

Here are my four favorite ways:

Hatch Craft – Wood shadow frames from instagram photos
Teeny Tile – Ceramic Tiles printed from your instagram photos
Prinstagram – My favorite! All kinds of posters, books and stickers
CanvasPop – Print photos on canvas prints to hang on your wall.

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