Social Media
Posted in Kewl Stuff, Travel Technology, web technologies on Nov 3rd, 2008
I would guess most readers of this blog are familiar with social networking sites like Facebook or Myspace. There are other sites that help people to network for purposes other than socialization. All these sites and services fall under the description of social media. One of the services I use is called Wesabe. It is similar to a service called Mint. They are both financial management sites built around a community schema. In plain English, they analyze your financial transactions and offer advice from a community of users.
Both Wesabe and Mint require access to your bank accounts. When I first signed up with Wesabe and I saw this I was like “whaaaaat!” I looked them up on Google. My judgment is that they are as safe as Paypal or Amazon. I’m also someone who works in IT and I know that proper practices and procedures, data can be safer online than in the physical world. Think of all the times that you give your credit card to a server in a restaurant. You don’t know these people from Adam yet you trust them with not just your card number but the card itself. During the few minutes they are gone they could easily swipe your card through a scanner and take down all your data. They will also have the security number on the back and the card. The cherry on the top is a copy of your signature.
I’m not trying to make you paranoid about going to restaurants. I’m just trying to illustrate that the online world is not inherently more insecure than the physical one. That being said, please do your own research on Google before divulging sensitive information to anyone.
I’m a huge believer in the ability of the internet to allow us to organize and manage our lives and therefore make us more productive and efficient. I’m passing this information along because I have an open-source mentality and I believe that sharing information is in, most cases, a win-win scenario.
So what does all of this have to do with Travel? Well, it takes money to travel and maybe these websites can help you have more coin for your trips.
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