There is a class at Stanford University dedicated to creating engaging Facebook Applications. For those of you who are not familiar with Facebook, it’s like MySpace with toned down design.

For those of you not familiar with MySpace - get out more! Internet social Media is reaching over 200 million people. It’s changing journalism, shopping, funding, careers and more.

Strong social networking delivers a great experience to its users. Then people come back for more. Then the site makes more advertising revenue. Just like TV shows. People spend time online, people spend time watching TV. There are ads. It’s very simple.

So this class at Stanford studies Facebook, its users, interactions online. Why? “The psychology that drives Facebook relates directly to other online success stories, including those Internet blockbusters yet to be invented.”

If you plan to go to college in California sometime soon, you can learn more about the Stanford course here.

My oh my…are we busy!!! Sorry my posts have been so few and far between. Aside from having our days packed with vocational, cultural and social events, it has been hard to come by a good internet connection during our travels. Here is a quick update of what we have been up to:

We spent a week in Kingston, Jamaica. As has been the case on all of our other stops, we were welcomed into the homes and lives of the most kind and generous group of people there. Our vocational days were a bit different in Kingston - we all attended each of the vocational trips as a group. The visits we made on my behalf were to The Gleaner Company (the oldest newspaper in the western hemisphere) and TVJ (Jamaica’s major TV network). We had a blast at both places, and our trip to Gleaner was covered in the paper the following day. We also spent loads of time doing fun cultural things like going to the Bob Marley Museum, The National Gallery, Hellshire Beach, and a Blue Mountain Coffee processing center. As a group, I think the favorite stop was going to the Kingston YMCA and meeting an amazing women named Sarah Newland-Martin.

We also got some time to spend at some of the Kingston Rotary Club’s service projects.

Daphne, David and I were lucky enough to take a day trip to Ocho Rios and climb the Dunn’s River Falls. Thank you to Dassy’s hosts, Locksley and Pauline!

Then we came to the Nassau, Bahamas for the Rotary District Conference at the Atlantis Resort. It has been a crazy couple days full of fun events and chances to meet up with all of the new friends we have met along the way. We finally got a few hours here and there to relax together and do things like tubing down the rapids, riding the water slides, and hanging out at the beach. I did not really take any pictures in our short time here, but will hopefully get a few from the team down the line.

We are scheduled to fly back to Jamaica this afternoon, but just found out that our flight is already delayed by 5 hours (until 1130pm!). So we may be stuck here another day.

Happy Mother’s Day to Raffi and all you other mom’s out there!

More words from the road soon…..