Kick ‘em when they’re down

Talk about adding insult to injury… Katrina Victims at Risk for ID Theft, Experts Say

Online confusion over Katrina help sites

Although the Internet makes it simple for people around the world to help out with disaster relief, all the well-intentioned but largely duplicative people-finding efforts have led to confusion, frustration and wasted time.Duplication Rife in Online Relief Efforts

Apple Rokr phone and new iPod Nano announced

As expected at today’s press event in San Francisco, Apple’s Steve Jobs introduced the ROKR E1 phone - which holds 100 songs and works like the iPod Shuffle. As with the Shuffle, you can choose the songs you want to sync or let iTunes choose them for you ? autofilling your phone with a random selection from your iTunes music library. Music is transferred via USB. The music stops if you get a call while listening. It works with both Macs and PCs and costs $249 with a two-year contract from Cingular, the exclusive U.S. provider.
Jobs also announced an update of the iTunes music program and a brand new iPod, the super slim iPod Nano to replace the iPod mini. It works with flash memory, instead of a hard drive and that’s why it’s so slim. It’s about the width of a pencil. The nano comes in two versions. The 2 GB version (500 songs) costs $199, a 4 GB version (1,000 songs) $249. It has a color screen, too.
For complete coverage of everything Jobs had to say, check out Macworld: Apple Special Event announcements.
Weigh in under comments with your thoughts on these announcements.

MacMove is back

After a brief hiatus, MacMove is back… with senior editor Seth Dimbert expertly running the operation. The site is aimed at Mac newbies and those interested in all the Mac platform has to offer. MacMove

Apple announcement filled with speculation

Is it just the iPod phone or does Steve Jobs have more up the sleeves of his black turtleneck? There’s lots of rumors and anticipation ahead of today’s big press announcement in San Francisco. MIKE WENDLAND: Music to your ears: Apple likely to unveil iPod phone combination

Wild bicycle rides streaming video

My NBC-TV High Tech Talk report this weekend features a Web site with video of some daredevil bicycle riding. This is sure not the Tour de France. Wild bike rides.

iTunes phone seems pretty limited

So maybe this iTunes phone isn’t such a big deal after all? MercuryNews.com | 09/05/2005 | Two-part harmony

The Internet has become media source #1 for many

Just how important the Internet has become as a news source was brought home for me this morning by my wife. We’re down in Albany, GA, this Labor Day Weekend, visiting our son and daughter-in-law and the grandkids. “Whatever happened to the newspaper?” asked Jennifer as she saw my daughter-in-law and me, seated on opposite sides of their family room sofa, both on our own laptops catching up on the latest on Hurricane Katrina.
The TV was on, too, with CNN, I think. But both of us had seen all the images before.
On the Net, we were surfing different sites. I was chasing down reports of gas shortages as we need to head home tomorrow night. Lauri was reading accounts from refugees (Did anyone ever think we’d hear the term refugee referring to our own countrymen?)
A little earlier, she had received an e-mail from her Sunday School class at church. About 80 refugee families from the Gulf States had arrived in Albany and churches were coordinating via e-mail clothing and food donations.
My son’s family doesn’t subscribe to a newspaper. Their TV shows more kids programs than anything else. But I believe Scott and Lauri are probably better informed than most people. The Internet is pretty much their exclusive news source. They like the freedom it gives them to dig deeply into stories that interest or concern them and they want the immediacy of not having to wait for news to be delivered the next day in a printed newspaper or to show up on a TV news show. And with so many sites now offering streaming broadband video reports, there is no need to suffer through all the TV commercials.
I suspect they are not alone.
Oops. I’m typing this from the shade of the back porch, underneath a big fan that stirs the hot and humid Deep South air, accessing his wi-fi network.
Scott just IMed me. Time to head inside for a glass of lemonade.

Gas price check site

Now, more than ever, we need this site.
I’ve driven 1000 miles south on freeways over the past couple of days. Average prices seem to be around $2.99, except for Michigan ($3.08 or so) and arond Atlanta, Georgia ($3.34 or so). I paid $2.99 for three fillups and just topped off north of Dawson, GA for $2.89 a gallon.
I head home Monday and am seriously thinking of visiting the Albany, GA, Loews and buying some five gallon gas cans, which I’ll fill and carry in the back of the truck.
There’s a lot of talk around the fuel pumps at the stations I’ve visited that things are going to get worse.

Katrina e-mail scam emerges

The depraved people who spread viruses and Trojans have wasted no time in trying to exploit the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Websense Security Labs has issued an alert on an email scam exploiting Hurricane Katrina, directing users to a fake news site that will drop a Trojan downloader onto their machines. Details and screenshots are available here.

Caravans of relief on the way South

As I type this, my wife is driving and we’re on I-75 north of Atlanta on the way to south Georgia for a family visit.
I’m hooked up to the Net by a Verizon EV-DO wireless broadband card. But all the way down - through Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee - we’ve seen a steady stream of relief vehicles heading for the Gulf shore: A five vehicle search and rescue team from New York, a caravan of electic repair vehicles from Pennsylvania, church groups towing trailers loaded with portable generators, National Guard trucks near Chattanooga.
Help is pouring in.
Listening to local AM radio this morning, the Appalachian stations were buzzing with talk on how local people in the hills and hamlets of Kentucky could help. Donated clothing was being gathered up outside city halls, water was being collected by volunteer fire departments, and church after church was coordinating special help projects.
America is responding. And even at 70 miles an hour, driving through this big swath of country makes it clear that we are a caring, compassionate people and the nation is coming together to as only a tragedy can bring about.
The politicians may try to exploit this but the people are foccused and rising to the need.

Internet coordinates Katrina relief efforts

The Internet community has quickly responded to the heartbreaking tragedy of Hurricane Katrina by organizing relief efforts, online donations and special forums to help find missing relatives.
Scores of other sites are collecting survivor stories, posting camera phone images of the devastation and spreading news on emergency help.
With presses unable to run, New Orleans?s largest newspaper the Times-Picayune, published a Web-only edition.
There are more than 1,000 postings seeking information on lost or missing people on a New Orleans Lost and Found area of Craig?s List .
Another site has pages of pictures of missing people.
Thousands of Web sites, blogs and discussion groups formed to raise money for relief but officials cautioned about the inevitable scams that are already circulating from crooks and con artists through spam e-mail.
A good clearinghouse for reputable charities is the Network for Good, which has an extensive list of organizations providing hurricane help.

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