So I was just introduced to social bookmarking tools (Diigo, Delicious, Digg, Stumbledupon, Trailfire, etc.), and boy, they are really handy in terms of finding cool articles and material! First, I made an account on Diigo (where you can download a toolbar to make bookmarking and organizing easy) and searched “Hawaii Economy”, since I was looking for blog inspiration. However, there were no specific articles listed under that tag, only under “Hawaii” and “Economy” separately, which gave articles about the best tourist spots on the islands and the world economy in general.
I then moved on to Delicious, which you can conveniently link to Diigo and share all of your bookmarks between the two sites. When I searched “Hawaii Economy” in Delicious, the same results came up as in Diigo, however, there were suggestions for other tags to click right underneath my search. I clicked the tag “Hawaii Economy Tourism,” and the fun began.
Delicious is such a helpful tool to help find relevant articles to your personal topics of interest. My search pulled articles from major news sources such as CNN and the Honolulu Star Bulletin. The best part about the search, I thought, were the articles and posts from websites I didn’t know. I stumbled across a blog about Hawaii (whose most recent post, “Prices in Paradise”, discusses the hits Hawaii’s economy has taken in relation to the rest of the nation) that I would never have found if searching on my own in Google. I found another blog that discusses different energy options that had one post about Hawaii and oil.
The first blog I found from Delicious, Hawaii Blog, is written by Ryan Ozawa (you can read more about him at this website that is all about him). He posts about Hawaii and lots more, including a bunch of posts about the television show “Lost” (filmed in Hawaii), local events (“Free Admission on Museum Day!”), and economic issues similar to what I like to discuss (“Prices in Paradise”). In the latter article, Ozawa uses a familiar item, milk, to compare the effects of inflation on Hawaii and other mainland states. He brings up a valid point that as a local, paying $7 for a gallon of milk seems normal since that is the only price we see. But as a college student at USC, I buy my gallon of milk from Ralph’s for only $2.50. People tell me all the time that the economy is hitting everyone hard, but it’s apparent that a $5.50 price difference for a gallon of milk is quite a stretch. This inflation not only effects locals—tourists must also pay extravagant prices when visiting the islands. This is bad news because they will spend less and be discouraged from visiting, which doesn’t help our economy any more than the high price of living.
Another article that was very relevant to my blog was from the Honolulu Star Bulletin which presented a convenient bar graph of tourism rates through 2008 (and trends only continued into the current year). Hawaii saw June tourism rates drop 14.5% in 2008, and the percentages only rose this past summer.
Using sites like Diigo and Delicious help to find relevant articles quickly and painlessly. Blogs like Hawaii Blog would have taken me hours to find on Google, and the millions of articles from the Star Bulletin would have taken a lot of time to weed through as well. I would definitely recommend these sites for those researching, in need of inspiration, or if you’re just bored. Shoots cuz, we go.
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