Yesterday, in the Blogging Academy brownbag and podcast, we talked about Citizen Journalism, and how you can get news, information, stories, and photos about current events from the internet that you otherwise wouldn’t see through traditional media. In that spirit, I want to share some links to some sources of information that have been keeping me up to date on the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and the aftermath (especially the flooding in New Orelans):
There are tons of other first hand and other useful accounts out there - most are just a search away. These are some of the most useful ones I’ve found. If you know of another good resource, feel free to post a comment. I may eventually move this my wiki if warranted.
NOTE: Reposted from my internal Intel blog. These thoughts are my own, and don’t represent Intel in any official way.
I know the obvious answers, like donating money and blood to the Red Cross, etc., and I wholeheartedly support those ideas. But I’m thinking about types of help that we, as a giant technology company, are more specially suited to. Remember after September 11, how Intel helped out with telecommunications, internet access, etc. for both the victims and rescue workers? I’m wondering if there’s not something we can do along those lines.
I just can’t believe that a major U.S. city is practically completely submerged under 20 feet of water. Millions are homeless, and will be for weeks, if not months. Basic service infrastructure is wiped out, as well as most communications. Can we do something with WiMAX here, to get VoIP and internet access to the area? Information about loved ones, evacuation routes, emergency services, etc. are in extremely high demand right now, and there’s no way for most people in the affected area to get any of it. The geeks of the world are trying to put their heads together to come up with ways to help.
Not that I have any specific ideas, but I’d love to see Intel come up with something to help, similar to what we did with 9/11. While the loss of life is nowhere near other disasters that have happened (9/11, the tsunami, etc.), the magnitude of this disaster is huge. Almost incomprehensible to me. Let’s put our heads together and come up with some ways that we can help where perhaps no one else can…
Blogging Academy: Blogging Academy Podcast #4 - Citizen Journalism
I just posted up the podcast for the Blogging Academy brown bag session I did today at work:
Our topic this week: Citizen Journalism. We talk about how bloggers are becoming a better way to find and follow news events than the traditional media. Example at hand - Hurricane Katrina. We go over several sites and services that bring you the real human stories that make up news events, rather than what the TV news decides to show you, or what the newspaper has room to print. Go to the Citizen Journalism page on the wiki for all of the links and sites that we talked about today. I’ll be updating that page with more links and info, and if you know of a great way to get news using the blogosphere, feel free to post a link on the wiki page.
I’m kind of proud of the response the site and podcast have been getting over there, so if you haven’t already, go check it out, and let me know what you think. And if you have any friends, family, or coworkers that you think might like the Blogging Academy, help them subscribe to the feed and/or podcast. 
Technorati tags: blogging, howto, podcast
Server Error
I know it’s nothing compared to the outages and suffering of those affected by the hurricane, but this is the longest GMail has ever been down for me - going on over two hours now:
Server Error
Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.
*cry*
EDIT: It’s back now, after almost 4 hours of being gone. Whew! Anyone know what happened?
Technorati tags: gmail, down
Opera Browser: FREE! (Chris Pirillo)
You know, that title sounds like spam. But it’s really not. Opera, that “other” browser, is giving away free licenses for its product in honor of their 10th birthday/anniversary. Find the details in Chris’s post, linked above.
The fact that you have to pay for Opera has been the Number One reason I haven’t really tried it out yet, but I know a lot of people swear by it. Even if you’re perfectly happy with IE or Firefox, you might want to jump on this. Heck, free is always good, right? I’m pretty in love with Firefox these days, but I have an open mind, and I’m always looking for something new and cool.
Also, you might have noticed that there are Technorati tag links below. I’m trying out a new BlogThis! bookmarklet called XBlogThis, which lets me easily add tags/keywords. We’ll see how it goes.
Technorati tags: free, opera, browser
Here’s this week’s show. You can download the MP3 file directly (right-click, save as), or subscribe to the TinyPodcast RSS feed in your favorite podcast aggregator to get the show delivered automatically to your computer and MP3 player. This week’s show is about 23 MB, 45 minutes, as usual.
Brian and I are together in person for the first time in weeks! We catch up on all sorts of geeky stuff. Tablet PCs he got to play with on his last trip, camping stories, Google Desktop Search 2.0 and Google Talk, the Creative Zen Micro Photo, cool stuff announced at the Intel Developer Forum, and lots of other stuff. Too much to remember right now - this show is chock full of good stuff! Maybe I’ll come back later and update the show notes. Either way, we hope you enjoy the show! It’s good to be back together for a change.
As always, we love to get feedback! You can email us at tinyscreenfuls@gmail.com or call our voice feedback line and leave us a message - 206-339-TINY. Let us know how we’re doing - good or bad.
Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed!
700mUsers.com :: Index
Marshall emailed me about this a long time ago, asking me to mention it. It lay buried in my inbox until today - sorry Marshall!
Anyway, he’s started a forum/community for Dell 700m laptop users. Since some of the most popular posts on this blog are the ones I have written about my 700m, I figured some of you might be interested.
Head over, and have a look. Hope it’s useful.
Over lunch the other day, I was in a conversation about podcasting at Intel, and how it could be used for training delivery, etc. It was observed that my Blogging Academy podcast is Intel’s first official podcast (audio content delivered via RSS enclosure).
That’s pretty cool. Are there any other podcasters at Intel? If so, let’s hear from you, and get some community started.
PSP 2.0 US is now available for download - Topic Ars OpenForum
After long delays, Sony has finally released the 2.0 PSP firmware for the U.S. (the one that adds the web browser and some other tweaks).
I’ve been running the Japanese version since it came out (which works perfectly, and is fully in English), but I thought I’d apply the U.S. 2.0 update, just to be official.
Turns out that my PSP won’t accept the U.S. update, because it says I’m already at version 2.00. I guess I really shouldn’t care, though, because apparently the US and Japan versions of the EBOOT.PSP update file are identical, according to binary and MD5 hash comparisons.
So my question is, what the heck took Sony so long to release this in the U.S. if it’s the exact same freaking update that they released in Japan (and Korea) weeks and weeks ago?!
*sigh*
Oh, Sony. I have such a love/hate relationship with that company…
List of Jabber Clients
Google only released their “Talk” application for Windows, but Mac and *nix users aren’t left out in the cold, because the service is based on the open Jabber/XMPP IM protocol. Non-windows users can just configure their Jabber-capable IM apps to use the talk.google.com server.
I had big lightbulb moment when I realized what this means for mobile devices, like Windows Mobile Smartphones, Pocket PCs, and other wireless devices. There are tons of Jabber clients out there, for all platforms (see the link at the top for one list). That means I can get one for my Smartphone, or whatever wireless device I’m using, and use my Google Talk IM service without having to wait for Google or someone to write a client specifically for my platform (as is the case with MSN Messenger, AIM, Skype, etc.). Sweet!
I haven’t tried it yet, but I intend to. Anyone have a recommendation for a good Pocket PC or Smartphone Jabber client? Do any of them support the Voice Over IP function?
Suddenly, Skype just got some competition in my life for the role of my cross-platform text/voice IM client…
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