I love the Internet!

I wanted to drop in and make a quick, irrelevant to Peace Corps-Paraguay post.

I'm toying with the idea of dropping interesting finds from the Internet that may or may not be related to the main content of this blog. I also may start a different blog in the future detailing my career journey and life experiences, in which I will share resources and insights so that people in similar situations can benefit from. I'm pondering this because I have been reading some amazing blogs that I have learned a lot from lately.

Anyway on to today's post...

I love exploring on the Internet, and it's something I regularly do even though I'm in Paraguay, which may not seem exactly well connected from an Internet standpoint. This is simply not the case in my circumstance...I have Internet access almost every day. Most Volunteers in Paraguay have at least occasional access to Internet. You can even buy a usb modem and monthly internet service from one of the popular service providers (Tigo, Claro, or Personal) and connect from anywhere, anytime. What's best is we can easily afford the service with our monthly stipend. Tigo's unlimited service is 180,000 Gs ($36), and Claro's is 140,000 Gs ($28).

Exploring the Internet is a great way to keep up with news and trends, it can be very educational, and most certainly highly entertaining. At any one time, I'll have about 10-15 tabs going. My tabs may look something like this...twitter, Business Week, meebo (where I can chat with friends across multiple platforms), Harvard's, or another Top MBA program, site, random blog post I somehow discovered with interesting photos or content, Gmail, Wikipedia (where I was just researching something...most recent example: what does Avant-garde mean (it was mentioned in the controversial magazine covers I link to below), site/blog/forum on GMAT/MBA, The Economist, CNN, Facebook, and a Youtube video I found through some source.

I highly recommend using Google reader to subscribe to some blogs, magazines, websites, etc...that you like. That way you only have to visit one place to catch up on your favorite sites, and it indicates when new content is available. I enjoy using twitter and igoogle in a similar fashion. With twitter, you will get linked to so many interesting resources and articles. Just follow people and organizations you have an interest in. It's a really easy way to follow breaking news. Just follow CNNbrk. Some other examples of organizations/people I follow include: The Economist, Harvard Business School News, The Mckinsey Quarterly, The Wall Street Journal, a few CEOs including Jack Welch, and even Ashton Kutcher (who is the King of Twitter and actually posts really interesting content). I am in the process of finding some other people/organizations to follow who provide really interesting/funny/educational/entertaining content.

With igoogle you can personalize your google page with stuff, and then check it daily. A few examples from mine include a GMAT question of the day, a motivational quote of the day, top stories of the day, a spanish word of the day, articles from Freakonomics, various business blogs/articles, a sacred place of the day photo, and of course the weather, date/time, and a things to do list, among other things.

If you take a little time to explore the Internet each day, you'd be amazed at what you will find and learn. There are a ton of new ideas and things to discover at your fingertips!

In fact, there is a site dedicated to helping you randomly "stumble upon" interesting things on the Internet related to your interest. It's called stumbleupon.com and you can install the stumble upon button on your toolbar and press it when you want to see something new. It will take you to a site, which you can check out and then let stumbleupon know if you liked it or not. Over time, it learns from you and tailors the results to your preferences. It even stores the sites you like in a special subsection of your bookmarks.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

Another site for exploring blogs and websites of interest to you is alltop.com. This site is amazing, and I highly recommend checking it out. Just enter some search terms of topics that interest you. Then once you find some specific blogs or sites you want to follow on a regular basis, either add it to your Myalltop or subscribe to it using your google reader.

Myalltop enables you to create a personal, online magazine rack of your favorite websites and blogs. You can create a personal collection from over 32,000 information sources—if you’re interested in something, they probably have it covered.

http://alltop.com/

Below, I'm going to describe and link to a sample of some of the most recent interesting things I've discovered on the Internet, which aren't Business/GMAT/MBA/Consulting specific, (which I spend most of my time researching, and which most likely isn't of interest to you).

Bill Clinton's Global IQ Test

A donor has pledged to give $1 for every quiz completed to support the work of the Clinton Foundation. I urge you to take this short quiz. It is only 10 questions, and has some interesting, eye opening information about global problems. I tip my hat to Bill Clinton, and the work he is doing to help solve some of the world's largest problems. To take the quiz and do your part in helping address problems such as AIDS, Childhood Obesity, Climate Change, Poverty, among others, just click the link below.

President Bill Clinton Global IQ Test | William J. Clinton Foundation

Most Controversial Magazine Covers of All Time

This is a link to the 29 of the most controversial magazine covers of all time. It includes TIME Magazine's cover featuring Hitler as Man of the Year, their cover portraying OJ as dark and menacing, and The New Yorker's political satirical cartoon of Michelle and Barack Obama as a terrorist and Muslim respectively. I found it really interesting and now I'm passing it along to you.

http://tinyurl.com/n5reus

Meebo

Meebo.com is a really cool online platform where you can simultaneously see and chat to all your friends from different chatting platforms such as Facebook, Myspace, AIM, MSN messenger, G chat, etc...

http://www.meebo.com/

Cute Amazing Fun

Cute Amazing Fun is a blog that posts cute, amazing, and funny pictures. I subscribe to this blog from my Google Reader.

http://cuteamazing-fun.blogspot.com/

Some finds from the past:

Videos You HAVE TO WATCH!

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2477636/everything_is_possible/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5zlf2cxj98

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BudhFVnN2o0&feature=player_embedded

News Map

News Map is a giant visualization of current news that is displayed as an interactive news feed, which puts news in smaller or bigger sizes depending on how big or important the news is right now.

http://newsmap.jp/#

For Music Lovers:

Musicovery:

Musicovery allows you to select a mood, and then it creates a web of music you can listen to that fits that mood. You can then select certain genres of music you want to listen to, set results to filter certain decades, explore hits, mark your favorite artists and songs to listen to later, discover less popular songs you may like, etc... It's an endless, interactive web of music!

http://musicovery.com/

8 Tracks

8 Tracks is a simple way for people to create or listen to a track listing of 30 minutes of music, traditionally roughly 8 songs. You can explore by genre and look at popular, recent or even random mixes. I've found some really cool stuff on here, and it's another great way to discover new music you like.

http://8tracks.com/

Fine Tune

On fine tune, you type an artist's name and they create a playlist of related music for you to listen to. You can also listen to professionally managed playlists in a radio station kind of format. I use it in order to hear songs off an album before I actually download it, as well as discover artists similar to artists I really like.

http://www.finetune.com/

Random

Unnecessary Knowledge

The title says it all!

http://www.unnecessaryknowledge.com/

Personal Finance

Mint.com

Mint.com is a free and effortless online money management system. You can get weekly emails of your net worth standing, account balances, etc... You can get alerts of bills that need to be paid, create budgets, analyze spending, etc...

http://www.mint.com/

That is all for today's post. Hopefully I've inspired you to explore a little more on the Internet, and maybe even made you laugh with some of the Videos from above. Stay tuned...I hope to write some blog posts in the near future describing events as of late, what my new life is like so far in San Juan, and maybe even a brief introduction to Paraguay.