Today as I sat in Miami, making calls across the US without worrying about my long distance bill and writing blog posts in my living room, I started thinking about how the Internet and technology in its current state has really changed my life. We all know that so much has changed in the past 10 years in this respect, but I thought I’d take a few minutes to discuss what it has meant for me personally.

Back ten years ago, I was a freshman in college taking a computer course, and I received an assignment to find some information on the internet. A guy at the help desk told me about a cool search engine called Yahoo!…I was fascinated by the name alone, and later by what I could find.

Now we switch to current day, where I spend my days in the “blogosphere” talking and working with many people, none of which I have ever met face-to-face. Also, I utilize wireless internet so that I can walk around my house without worrying about cables and connections.

In my home in Miami, I have Vonage as a telephone provider, which allows me unlimited long distance calls across the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico for $25 a month. I also pay another $5 a month to have a “virtual” Mexico City phone number, which means our family can call us without spending a dime (or a peso, I should say). To talk to people in other countries, or others online, I use Skype, which also helped me call family and friends in the US while I was living in Mexico.

Being new to Miami, I still don’t know where everything is, so I’m about to look up Publix grocery stores online to find one close by. And when I was house hunting from afar, Google Satellite Maps teamed with Craigslist posts were invaluable.

So basically almost every part of my life has been affected by this change…I would say for the better. For one, I have been able to be closer with my family; not worrying about long distance bills, we talk every few days instead of every few weeks. I’ve also entered in to a completely different arena “career-wise” than I ever would have imagined.

For Latinos in the US, these technologies can be an incredible way to keep ties to family that remains abroad. Now there is no excuse not to keep in touch!