The findingDulcinea Blog

Summer Spotlight: Slow Down and Read

You read more things on the Internet every day than you can possibly count. Every day we’re being told to speed up, sign on, log in. If you’re on social networking sites, you get hit with a barrage of links every hour. Maybe you just read headlines, or the first paragraph. After all, you’ve got to finish quickly so you can race on to the next thing.

As we move into the summer months, however, it’s a good time to slow down a little. Even though we live in a world where it’s essential to be tech savvy, it’s equally important to do some things the old-fashioned way. In short: It’s time for you to read a book.

Of course, books and the Internet are not mutually exclusive. In fact, if Google’s new deal with book publishers gets approved by the courts, you might be able to read many books online through Google books. As a result, we’ll get access to out of print books, but we’ll also still be in front of our computers.

And that may be a problem, argues the talented and perceptive novelist and essayist Zadie Smith, who says that the Internet does so much damage to our attention spans that completing projects, especially writing projects, is practically impossible. She calls the Internet an “absolute disaster for writers.” But there are some studies that suggest the opposite: the Internet and other digital technology may actually be helping writing.

The Internet doesn’t have to be a "disaster" for readers, especially if you use it to research books or book events and then go explore in the real world. Start by choosing a great beach book; several are noted in our “5 Must-Reads for Summer” feature.

Then, consider sharing your renewed love of books with others by seeking out literary events in your area. Attending a reading or a book festival is a great way to share your love of literature, and get unwired for at least an hour. Happy reading!

Rachel Balik
Senior Writer

Sweet Sites | Swim the Web to Find Water Activities This Summer

It's hot outside; why not head to the water? We're continuing with last week's theme as we go in search of sites to help you find pools, beaches and water sports near you.

Swim.com will help you find a pool, public or private, in your area. The site contains entries from around the world and offers detailed information about each pool, including the pool's shape, whether it contains chlorine and if a lifeguard is on duty.

Keep your kids safe in the water by signing them up for swimming lessons. If you've never learned how to swim yourself, it's never too late to start. Swim.com also provides a database of swim instructors, listing name, years of experience, reviews (if any), rate and distance from you.

If you long for sand between your toes and the splashing of waves, Dr. Beach has just the right prescription for you. Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman provides a beach overview by U.S. region, and also issues a yearly list of the nation's best beaches.

Have fun (mostly) above the water with GORP's Paddling page, which offers resources to plan your next canoeing, kayaking or rafting trip, including information about where to go, what you'll need and how to improve your paddling technique.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

Find your own "eureka!" sites using SweetSearch.

Consult our Travel Guides for sites to help you with more location-specific fun this summer.

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All I Need to Know I Learned from Social Media Boot Camp

For a long time I resisted buying into the whole social media hype. Facebook? Why would anyone want to see who my friends are? Twitter. Please. I really don’t care about the Pop-Tart® you ate for breakfast.

Eventually I learned that social media is more than posting photos of your weekend or sharing the contents of your meals. It has a future and if you want your career to have a future, you can either hop on the truck or watch it bounce by with all those (gasp!) happy, chatty strangers.

So I gave in. I opened a Facebook account, then a StumbleUpon account, then Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Reddit. And last Thursday, wonder of wonders, I participated in a thing called Social Media Boot Camp, a generous project designed by Chris Heuer and Howard Greenstein, founders of Social Media Club, who normally charge much more for the advice they give.

As a social media pioneer, I’m not claiming guru status. I’d like to pass on what I learned at the camp from its founders and other savvy advisors:

1. Whether you’re looking to market a Web site, a product or another service, Chris Heuer advised audiences to identify their best customers. “What characteristics define them? Find those characteristics and try to recreate them.”

2. Howard Greenstein, also a founder of SMC and a columnist for Inc., advised the audience to realize we’re working in a “gift economy.” If you learn something valuable or discover a new tool, share it with others. And for journalists and other bloggers, he added, “Find and write great articles that help people.”

3. Dan Zarrella researched the nature of Twitter and explained “How to Get ReTweets.” A tweet is a message you send on Twitter, a retweet is a message that someone else sends and you share with your friends politely, marking the tweet with a "RT" to note it wasn’t your own thought. The most common word seen in retweets is “please,” as in “please retweet.” According to Zarrella, if you want people to share an article you’ve written or discovered, all you have to do is ask.

4. In another discussion group, Larry Aronson and E.B. Moss asked participants, “What can you do to humanize your company?”

They cited the example of charity: water. When Scott Harrison turned 31, he asked all of his friends skip buying presents and donate $31 to help build wells in Africa. As a thank you, he sent them photos of villagers staring at fresh wells with amazed faces. The next year, others took up his cause asking their friends to do the same thing.

5. And lastly, Chris Heuer reminded, “Serve your market.” While it may seem obvious, a lot of people get caught up in meeting their own needs and forget to listen to their customers. “Help people, save time, make money, get more done, be happy, find meaning, connect with others and find greater satisfaction.”

Thanks for reading and good luck putting these suggestions into practice.

Shannon Firth
Senior Writer and former technophobe

Live Blogging Beyond Facebook: How Will Today's Students Use the Web of Tomorrow? | Internet Week NY 2009

Students are at the forefront of a rapidly changing Internet, which is posing significant questions for how universities, Web businesses and employers will adjust. To explore this further, findingDulcinea is hosting and moderating a panel of leading student-focused startups who will discuss how students will find the best information online, how they're tailoring the Web in unique ways to fit their varied interests, how new Web sites will fulfill students’ needs, and ways in which businesses can better serve the 16-22 age group. We’ll also ask for audience participation as we share goals and forecasts for the Internet of the next five years. Our panelists are:

• Ariel Aberg-Riger, Creative Development & Marketing Manager, Fourth Story Media
• Jordan Goldman, Founder and CEO, Unigo
• Kate Hillis, Co-Founder & Partner, NextNext Entertainment, Chat the Planet and Qwidget
• Mark Moran, Founder & CEO, findingDulcinea and SweetSearch, Moderator
• James Rohrbach, Founder & CEO, GulliverGo
• Michael Staton, Founder & CEO, Inigral

Follow the event here, or on our Twitter account. Follow the discussion using the Twitter hashtag #gmfb.

What I Didn’t Know About Tiananmen Square

Photo: Elizabeth Dalziel/AP

In the spring of 1988, I traveled to China with a small group of other high school students and a much larger group of older adults. I’ve always liked to say that I learned more about American tourists during that trip than I ever learned about the Chinese. There were the two ladies who refused to eat anything but white rice. The woman who had to keep purchasing new luggage to fit all the souvenirs she was buying. Her daughter, who was so focused on videotaping everything, that she never seemed to look at anything with her own eyes. The man who thought it was funny to kick the back of my seat on every short plane flight, and who apparently decided that the very real machete fight that we inadvertently witnessed and which left one man with serious head wounds was light entertainment put on for his benefit.

That’s not to say that I didn’t have any encounters with the people who actually lived there. Unlike my trip the previous year to what was then the Soviet Union, no one tried to block us from making contact. The other students and I talked with young people on the streets of Shanghai who were anxious to practice their English, waved to an adorable, rosy-cheeked kindergarten class who chanted “Good morning! Good morning!” as we passed, ignored the desperate vendors who tried to sell us trinkets through the windows of our bus and watched an elderly woman with bound feet painfully limp down a flight of steps in the Forbidden City, leaning on the arm of a soldier.

Although my high school friends and I felt that we were obviously better behaved travelers and more open to truly experiencing the country than the adults with us, that did not mean that we ever really had a clue about any of China’s most pressing political issues. One peaceful evening in Beijing, we lay in the middle of Tiananmen Square and sang “You Can Call Me Mao,” parodying a song popular at the time, Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.” A little more than a year later, that spot was overrun with protesting students, tanks and soldiers firing on civilians.

It was deeply upsetting to me that a site I associated with a silly memory became associated in the eyes of the world with such horrifying bloodshed. It’s equally upsetting that in the 20 years since, the Chinese government has made significant efforts to obliterate all recall of that terrible event, and have forbidden people to commemorate it in any way. During the days leading up to the anniversary this year, authorities have tried to block discussion about it on the Internet.

Learn more about what happened in June 1989 by reading findingDulcinea’s Web Guide to the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

Live Blogging MediaBistro Circus | Who's Got Your Back? The Important Role of Relationships in Getting Ahead

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Sweet Sites | Use the Web to Find Summertime Fun, Wherever You Are

The temperature's warming up and you've got some free time, but you have absolutely no idea what to do with this glorious opportunity. Here are some sites that can help you with this high-quality problem.

Festivals.com allows you to search for U.S. events by region and type, including fairs, sporting events, crafts expos and motor shows. The site is particularly strong on music events; find out who's playing where in a variety of genres from alternative to zydeco.

Whatsonwhen offers information about intriguing events happening across the globe. Search by keyword or browse by destination or event type to learn more about a wide range of activities that includes both the North American Sand Soccer Championships in Virginia and the Baby-Jumping Colacho Festival in Castrillo de Murcia, Spain.

If your summer simply must involve a screaming tour of a roller coaster or a spin on the Ferris wheel, consult Theme Park Insider for help planning your next trip to the amusement park. The site offers reviews, park safety news and advice, tips to shorten your wait on ride lines, hotel information and more. 

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

Find your own "eureka!" sites using SweetSearch.

Consult our Travel Guides if you're looking for sites to help you with more location-specific trip-planning.

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Bing, Google Wave…Recapping an Exciting Week of Tech Hype

A screenshot of Google Wave

The new iPhone and its 2009 computer cohorts haven’t been unveiled yet, but the Internet is abuzz with news of several other exciting innovations coming soon to a Web browser near you (or better yet, into your hands). A promising search engine, Microsoft’s Bing, and an all-encompassing communication tool, Google Wave, are two of the most discussed.

Google Wave

Google Wave is an as yet unreleased product from the folks who brought you your (likely) favorite search engine and the groundbreaking Gmail. To learn more, look no further than Mashable, which presents lists, guides and analysis on social media topics—the world of Twitter, Facebook, the iPhone and any other tool that helps us communicate digitally.

Seasoned contributor Ben Parr explains that Google Wave, launching later this year, “combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client.” Read more and see some screenshots here. Then decide for yourself whether Google Wave sounds like a tsunami threat or gentle ocean surf!

Bing

It may call to mind Chandler from “Friends,” but one can assume Microsoft’s new search engine is referring to the sound you hear when someone gets an answer right on “Jeopardy,” or the theoretical sound of a light bulb going off in your head. As Miguel Helft suggests in The New York Times, “bing” may soon be a verb punctuated with a capital ‘B,’ just like Google. That would make Bill Gates “a happy billionaire.”

For those who didn’t know, Microsoft actually has a search engine called Windows Live Search. So is Bing merely a new name, or a new product? It appears to be a new product. In a guided video tour on the site, Bing’s people say, “It’s not just a search engine, it’s a decision engine.” Bing focuses on big topics like health and travel and ensures future users that results are credible and of high quality. Take the guided video tour to find out more. Reuters noted yesterday that Bing hasn’t launched to the public yet. The news source also summed up some early reviews of the search engine from tech heavyweights.

But wait…there’s more

Google and Microsoft are like the Brad and Angelina of the tech world, but this week there were hints of more tech excitement to come (from other companies—companies you may not have heard of). Plastic Logic’s future e-book, a proposed Amazon Kindle competitor, has so far been heard but not seen. But at The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital Conference in Washington, D.C., the device was unveiled and described as “ridiculously thin” in The New York Times’ Bits blog. Unlike the Kindle, it has a touch screen. It is slated for release in 2010.

For those who aren’t into the iPhone, the Palm Pre is edging its way in as a competitor to both the iPhone and the Blackberry. Palm has been in the shadows for several years, but anticipation of the Pre is hot. TechCrunch reported this past week that the Pre will have an iTunes sync function (only of DRM-free music, however), as well as a Twitter search function. The Pre will also allow you to “run multiple apps at the same time, and integrate third-party apps with other apps on the device such as the calendar. For instance, if you buy a movie ticket through a Fandango app, it can make an entry on your calendar.” The Pre will be available through Sprint starting June 6.

Browse our Web Guide to Technology for sites that will help you find more technology news, research specs and comparison shop products like e-books, smartphones and a host of other gadgets and software.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

Kicking Off the Summer on a Positive Note

Memorial Day may have started as a tribute to war veterans following the Civil War, but in modern times, it also marks the beginning of summer and is often celebrated with cookouts, parades and general warm-weather revelry. Although Weather.com says it’s expected to be rainy “for much of the nation” this weekend, that won’t stop millions of us from taking day or weekend trips to visit family, or explore new or familiar getaway spots.

This summer, we're in a recession, but that needn’t make us any more glum. Recent polls encouragingly suggest that money isn’t strongly tied to happiness. One poll by the Associated Press and mtvU shows that a higher percentage of college students are happier this year than they were last year. Many people are stressed about the economy and job market, including college students, but there is also evidence that those with higher incomes aren’t necessarily happier than those who aren’t. Education level more strongly correlates with happiness, says a study by Britain’s National Literacy Trust, so take some time this summer to feed your mind.

The recession “may actually be good for people,” as our positive news columnist Anne Szustek wrote earlier this week. Follow the lead of New Yorkers, who are reportedly volunteering more, shirking their “self-insulating” stigma. For families, summer is an especially active time, and it shouldn’t be any different this year. Sticking together and sharing experiences is even more important now. Find affordable alternatives for your family to enjoy this summer.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development