Response #11 December 2, 2009

The International Front

For this week’s class assignment we are suppose to “explore the international landscape of the internet and bloggers from around the world.” So many countries that begin with the letter A……. so I think I’ll explore the blogosphere of ARUBA. I personally have never visited there, but my sister just got back from her honeymoon in Aruba.

Browsing around Global Voices Online, I immediately noticed many posts on topics such as weather, tropical storms, tourism and elections. Arubagirl discusses the recent elections in Aruba and her opinions of newly elected officials and the election process. She is also into photography and has posted some really cool landscape photos on her blog. Global Tastes & Travels is a great resource for authentic Caribbean recipes, culture and spice. If you are looking for a recipe for banana mango tarts then check out this site. Janine Mendes-Franco has blogged about the tropical storms in the Caribbean and includes photos of storm damage along with witness accounts in her blog. Aruba Real Estate Updates (Real Estate Agent’s blog from Aruba) showcases properties for sale and activities that are going on around Aruba. This windsurfer’s blog has a category solely dedicated to Aruba, where his posts discuss topics such as windsurfing, competitions and  surfing conditions in Aruba. Flickr has AWESOME photos of Aruba (almost 200,000 of them), definitely worth checking out too.

Interested in traveling to Aruba or tourism? There are many travel blogs on Aruba and on this site you can scroll through many pages of them and see other traveler’s thoughts, pictures and recommendations.  The Aruba official tourism site (90,000 friends you haven’t met yet) has a forum that let’s people discuss anything Aruba. Topics such as; beaches, weather, airfare, accommodations, shopping, nightlife are just a few but there are many more. You can also view photos in the community gallery.

There’s a lot of good stuff out there on Aruba and good internet presence. There are many good sites that people can find, if they are interested Aruba, planning a trip there or just want to look at some amazing landscape photos. I thought that there would be less but I was pleasantly surprised.

                                                                                 ohhh how I wish I was there right now!!!

Response #5 October 28, 2009

Google, love it or hate it?

I have always loved Google, I mean what’s not to like? There’s google maps, gchat, gmail, alerts, google earth, reader, google chrome and the list goes on and on. There seems to be an application for just about everything including mobile applications. The enormous entity that is Google, got me thinking about it’s potential dominance over the Internet and it’s ability to know exactly what we do when browsing the net.  Like many users, I use google for the majority of my searches and use google maps for just about anything requiring directions and gmail daily of course.

Personally, i’m in awe of Google. To me and many other users out there, Google has become an integral part our our daily lives and culture. It almost seems like we wouldn’t be able to function without it, which is kind of a scary thought. It just proves how invested our culture and Internet users are in this brand. Google’s mission “to organize the world’s information and making it accessible” is closely tied to its success and continuous innovation of tools/ applications. In order to keep up with its mission, google has to be on top of its game and maintain its status as a front runner in technology and innovation.

Sure, it’s scary to know how powerful google is and the dominance that they have over the web but i think that if it wasn’t  google then it would be someone else, it’s just the age that we are living in. The Internet is changing daily and users are curious and more than ready for new applications and tools. Google in a sense is satisfying the user’s urge. As users, we also need to know that nothing that we do online is private and that google knows more about your friend’s interests than you do! You take that risk by using gmail and google having access to those emails on their server. Even if you delete your emails or searches, it’s still always there on their server. And those ads, conveniently placed on the right hand side, have always freaked me out. Here is am writing an email about plans for Sushi night and there on the right hand side is an Ad for a local Sushi restaurant. Kinda weird and has always freaked me out.

I don’t think we need to be afraid of google right now but who knows about the future, it may be best to proceed with some caution