I'm supposed to be studying but I've spent the past four hours browsing.  But at least I don't regret doing it - at least not entirely.  I've been doing a lot of out of classroom studying online and visiting lots of websites.  My bookmark list has increased dramatically list; with websites from lessons on Probability through a Harvard blog to Ghana sites.  Somehow, I have managed not to add facebook to my list.  Why??  It is already addictive without it being on my bookmark list.

Talking about facebook, I think it's probably my site of the week.  It's simply addictive!!  I sign in every little time I have to see what's going on.  The crazy thing that I found out is that facebook was founded by two undergraduate students from Harvard.  And then I found out that Mozilla firefox was also designed by an undergrad from Stanford. I already knew that Bill Gates started his microsoft while a freshman at Harvard.  Then there's the case of youtube that I didn't even know existed (yeah, right) about being sold to google for a whooping $1.6billion.  That is so crazy!!!  It's not like I'm making a case for the Ivy League schools or anything of the sort.  What I'm more interested in is that young people are doing fantastically wonderful things.  It makes me wonder what I'm doing???  Hmmm, tell me, what should I do??

Apart from those sites, the other one that has got me addicted is ghanathink.  This is a great website that is sort of a think thank for Ghanaian students founded by Ghanaian students to stimulate the discussion of ideas that would eventually lead to the solution of some problems in Ghana.  So at least, Ghanaian students are also doing something.  Yay!!!  There is another website that has caught my attention recently GhanaUnite.  Honestly, this site has caught my attention because the founder is one of the big giants from my school.  You know, one of those high school heroes.  Interestingly, all the major Ghana websites that I've been surfing feature prominent guys from my high school.  Once I went to the crazy extent of going through most of the Ghanaian schools that are listed on facebook and realised that guys from my school, Presbyterian Boys Secondary School - Legon (PRESEC), had one of the biggest representation and no of students going to top schools.  That is open to debate but statistics always have question marks don't they??  I was thinking about it once and realised that the US really does a good job of attracting some of the best talent to it's soil.  And I'm sure that is one of the main reasons why the US is prospering.  The role that international students play cannot be downplayed at all. 

The other sites that I visited this evening were drupal, mambo, and joomla.  I'm yet to learn more about them but they are basically free source websites that can help one in creating very good websites.  I'm trying to create a website to help Ghanaian students who want to come to the US to study.  I was going to try bravenet but I realised that there are several other options that are free out there, probably offer better options and there are no annoying ads.  What I did was to first do as thorough a google search as I could to make sure that there was no site that was doing what I was thinking about doing.  There wasn't.  Even though a few that were similar but did not represent my aim of helping Ghanaian students with the application process.  Then I went shopping for how to design the site at minimum cost and maximum functionalities.  Now, I have to learn everything about webdesign and database manage and especially that whole thing called open source software.  That's a lot of work.

One last thing before I sign off.  There is some incredibly fantastic news.  Some of you may know but for those of you who don't, let me share the good news with you. You can MAKE FREE CALLS and not pay a dime.  Well, it's sort of limited to the US but it's still good news.  That means a huge cut on phone bill.  The money can always be used for more important things .  Just download SKYPE and start talking.  It's a promotion that ends on 31st December this year. 
I also just came across this website http://www.gizmoproject.com/index.html that promises free callsto about 60 different countries - landline and cellphone.  I can't say much about the site or software because I haven't tried it yet but if it works then it'll be very good for some international students.  Unfortunately, it doesn't offer any free calls to Ghana.  Aaarrgghh!!!  It's so not fair. 

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