I visited my folks in Kalispell, Montana over Thanksgiving and convinced them to sign up for broadband cable Internet – amazing thing is, this town of like 20,000 now has as many choices as anyone for hi-speed internet: DSL, wireless, and cable. My mom, who has never touched a computer in her life (even though I grew up with them all around) finally went online yesterday, she said. She was checking out Cold Water Creek, which is a clothing store for women based out of Sandpoint, Idaho, where I was born and spent the first 5 years of my life without electricity or a toilet in the bathroom. (sorry to digress) She said the site was easy to use and she found her way around quite nicely. BTW the company has a bunch of positions listed on monster, including Senior Designer. If you want to live near the great outdoors, that’s the place to be.

The photo? That’s Big Mountain, a ski resort in Whitefish, Montana… Vann’s, which is an electronics retailer based in Missoula, is offering a ski trip contest which you might like to enter. It seems they’ve now got one of the best ecommerce stores for electronics online, and even partner with amazon.com. One more note: my first web job (at 17) started in a home office on a cliff overlooking Whitefish Lake, visible in the photo. Even though the startup only lasted a few years, it’s good to see others are succeeding in tech from semi-remote locations like this!