I’m going to expand this blog a bit to things I find interesting online – but that still have some relation to the events, tradeshow and new media space. Here is my first such post.

Two days ago I went on to Orbitz.com to search for flights from Orange County, CA (John Wayne Airport) to Sarasota, Florida for some meetings I have in May. Then today I was reading an article at the San Francisco Chronicle website and the two ads for Orbitz that popped up around the article mentioned special rates from Orange County to Sarasota.

I knew this technology existed, of course, with browser cookies and such, but this was the first time I had seen it work this way – a customized ad on a totally unrelated website based on information I had searched for on the advertiser’s website a few days earlier. It made me a bit uncomfortable, but at the same time, I’ve never been a big privacy hound and actually find it useful to know that the rates for the flight may have been updated.

It hit home for me big time today that my steps really are being tracked all over the Internet. It’s fascinating and unnerving at the same time.