Widget Gadget Paper 4

As a novice traveler, it might take a bit of experience, or research to discover that there's an abundance of local attractions that provide just as much entertainment as a tourist one would, with the benefit of being immersed in the local culture.After dealing with the frustrations of booking flights and hotels, I always put off the task of planning an itinerary. It's not that I don't get excited about compiling a list of places I'd like to see, or things I'd like to do, but often because I don't know where to start. This is where Joobili comes in, and it's quite possibly one of the coolest things I've stumbled on through the internet. Joobili is an events generatorand social network, and all you have to do is let it know what dates you're planning your trip around and it pulls up events related to an assortment of topics, like: culture, food, arts, sports, and more!

Jared Salter and Tomas Gabor of Joobili Timely Travel, conceived the idea after returning from a trip to Switzerland and learning that they had each experienced vastly different events (tourist spots and Cartier's Polo World Cup) at the same time. With the realization that timing is essential to travel, and knowledge of attractions that are off the beaten path, Joobili was born.

The site aims to match events with travelers according to their interests and travel dates, while connecting users to other travelers via a social network. Users are encouraged to interact with one another and build connections through comments and ratings of events. It's still in the baby beta stage, which means that it suffers from occasional spazfests if you try to navigate the site too quickly, but the creators seem keen to perfect it, and take all manner of feedback as soon as it seems the site isn't working. Joobili is definitely geared to the recreational traveler, possibly the budget oriented college student on their three month pilgrimage to all things arty in Europe, or a retired couple eager to break free from the trite and true sightseeing landmarks.

Here's a breakdown of how it works and the background information behind it: Joobili Prezi

Tour-tastic

I'll admit, I'm not totally tech illiterate, but I'm not completely up to date with the different types of technologies that continually emerge. Usually I tend to bookmark every single site I find compelling the moment I stumble on it, leaving me with loads of unsorted links that are frustrating to sort through. Sure, I do make folders to segregate them according to topics, but I like to have a visual because it's easier to remember things when I see them. My writing class comes in handy in this instance, we learn about a different service and some new web service every week.

Most recently, we've signed up for Pageflakes, which collects various links and allows users to arrange them to their liking on their respective pages. It's almost like a visual version of Diigo and Bloglines combined. Since this blog is about travel, and traveling as a student with a limited budget, you can guess what my Pageflake looks like. It has two columns to house my RSS feeds on the left, and annotated bibliography on the right.

RSS Feeds

In this column I've got a spattering of nifty widgets that keep me up to date on feeds that I usually check out at Bloglines. Only, this is narrowed down to feeds that solely pertain to travel. I've listed my social bookmarking soulmate's (jeanoid on del.ic.ious) bookmarks, as well as my own for reference. The neat thing about these widgets is that they're refreshable, so the content can be updated at any time. I have a feed to my own blog in the left column as well, which is helpful because I spend most of my time looking at the post window (and writing in here) that I forget what my blog looks like from a reader's point of view. I think it makes me pay more attention to certain entries when I view it outside of the editing "room."

Annotated Bibliography

Thanks to MIT and their awesome creation, Citeline, I can create bibliographies without having to hunt for all of the publishing information or do any typing! Actually, I have to include that last bit myself, seeing as this is an annotated bibliography and all. Check out the notes I've left for each of the sources I've found, I've got to spruce them up a bit, and make them a little more coherent, but they'll do for now.

Searching....searching....got it!

On the right hand side of my Pageflakes page, I also have several search windows, two for news and two for blogs. I've tested "travel" and "expat" as search subjects, but nothing that comes up has grabbed my interest yet. I'm still practicing my search tactics! Just above that I have a mini Google search, which I think it pretty nifty. It looks just like the Google web page, but it fits right into the little package of a flake! It's just as helpful (or not, depending on how successful I've deemed it) as the four little search engines below it.