Post # 1000 - One Web Day

This is, quite frankly, a really good opportunity for me to celebrate and do some good at the same time. It's great multitasking in action.

First, this is the 1,000th post that I have written - little did I know four and some years ago that I would make it this far. Luckily, the fact that I've made it to 1,000 posts is a great milestone. Just ask Rich.

And yes, the Internet has made a definite impact on my life - it's granted me relationships that I never had before. It's allowed me (ironically) to open up socially, moving from the introverted loudmouth in high school to...a slightly less introverted loudmouth in real life. Building social relationships online has helped enable me to work on those offline as well. In fact, thanks to heavy internet use, my current job (which has little - if anything - to do with my professional training) has led me to working with some like minded people.

But one of the important things about the Internet that has helped me is that it's made me become a better informed citizen. As many of you are aware, today is One Web Day - a way to bring awareness to the impact of the Internet on our lives. In fact, one of the best ways is that it has helped me learn a lot more about politics - and coming from a health-policy obsessed person like myself, it has been an aid. However, I would like to share more about that - so, just in time, please feel free to listen to this special podcast which goes into slightly more detail. You'll thank me for it later.

And as promised in the podcast, here are some resources for you to use. Enjoy!

• CounterSpin (Non-partisan analysis of news stories)
  
• News Hounds (or, "Fair and balanced" criticism of Fox News)
• Roger's Constitution Giveaway
• Toluu (RSS Feed Sharing)
• Chicago Net Tuesdays
  
• Netvibes (RSS/E-mail Organization)
• Feast of Fools (podcast)

And now, I gotta wrote post # 1001, which will be, as the teenagers say, "covered in awesome sauce"