More good searchable stuff:
Database software company AskSam, of Perry, FL, is adding more searchable political databases to their Website. Here's a Database of all the speeches at the national conventions (RNC and DNC) this summer. You just have to download the free AskSam viewer and the database. Also on this site: the Bush/Cheney Agenda for America and the Kerry/Edwards Our Plan for America, as well as the Patriot Act and 9/11 Commission Report. (There's also a database of the Bible.)

Small business blog:
Blogger links today to a blog from a New Hampshire sign company, Signs Never Sleep. It's a wonderful example of what a blog can do for an organization of any kind. And this company just happens to have had a significant event this month, nicely documented.

Blogging the debate:
Students at the University of Miami are blogging the first presidential debate, which will be held there on Thursday. Herald.com is hosting the student blog, arranged by Prof. Tsitsi Wakhisi and the U. Miami News Service.

Skewed news?:
The motorcycle aficionado in my house has been telling me about the buzz in the biking Websites on whether the recently reported 205-mph ticket given to a biker in Minnesota could be true. Not so, say most of them, that bike would never go that fast. AP writes about the buzz, and has a link to the ticket on Smoking Gun. The discussion on Motorcycle.com's forum.

Heading right for us:
But Hurricane Jeanne will probably leave this part of western NC alone again. Meanwhile, more great coverage from The Miami Herald, including reports from Haiti and the Bahamas. Sure hope there's no more news in Florida the rest of the year. Those folks deserve a rest.
More coverage at Storm.herald.com.

Weekend update: Other things found this week:
I've been updating the Blog on the Miami Herald site, and have started a new photoblog, Southern Highlands Cam, with photos from the mountains. I've also been pretty busy with hurricane deaths reserach so haven't been able to add much here. But this week's list is longer than it has been in awhile....

More links....

Reference :

The Ultimate Citrus Page covers the industry in all the citrus growing areas in this hemisphere.

Cruise Ships: a directory and history from the UK.

Cyber Hymnal looking for words? or need to hear the hymn? Nearly 5000 hymns here.

Preliminary Medical Examiner Reports of Mortality Associated with Hurricane Charley --- Florida, 2004 from CDC.

Experiencing War: Stories from the Veterans History Project from the Library of Congress. Soldiers' (and their families') real stories, from WWII to Vietnam.

Backyard Wildlife Habitat from Natl Wildlife Federation.

Stadiums of the NFL.
Tools:

A9.com: Amazon's search engine, now out of beta. Lots of cool features remember and categorize your searches. If you sign in with your Amazon ID you get a discount for using A9.

FURL: this tool, for saving/searching/sharing/accessing things you've found on the Web, has just been bought by Looksmart.
People:

400 Richest Americans: latest list from Forbes.

Who2 is a good biographical resource. They've added several compilations, including a list of 'celebrities mauled by lions' and killed in cars, serial spouses...

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, just published, provides a 'today's life' and archived biographies of the week.
Statistics:

Safety belt use in 2004: latest report from NHTSA.
Journalism:

Bill Moyers' speech to SPJ: worth reading.
Governments, Politics:

CoolGov: a Weblog of interesting government press releases.

Secrecy in the Bush Administration: new report from Rep. Henry Waxman.

Guide to health care issues and the candidates' stance on them, from Kaiser Family Foundation.

African Americans, Voting Machines, and Spoiled Ballots
A Challenge to Election Reform: report from the Century Foundation.
Business:

Corporate income tax in the Bush years: a new study from Citizens for Tax Justice.

Airport passenger screening audit, Sept '04 from Dept of Homeland Security.
News:

LexisNexis Campaign 2004 news: free access to stories by category from Nexis.
Florida:

Analysis of Charlotte County building damage from Hurricane Charley in Sarasota Herald-Tribune, finds new buildings fared better than old ones (opposite of Miami Herald's Hurricane Andrew findings).
Public Records: no links this week.


Some Interesting stories/Weblogs

Progressive Blogs by State: a directory from American Street.
Fun/Entertaining:

The Onion 2004 Election Guide for a change of pace...

It just continues:
Amazing story not much reported elsewhere: Haiti death toll from Jeanne at 1,000, and related stories in the Miami Herald. Also, Jeanne is now pointing directly at the central east coast of Florida. What a season!

More great maps:
An email from Fairdata reminds me of Fairdata constituency maps: detailed maps of Congressional districts with lots of demographic info. Useful stuff, especially the voter registraton (and non-voter, by ethnic group) data: Here's Florida.

New to me:
The folks at AskSam have republished an article from NICAR's UpLink magazine on AskSam in the newsroom. A good report on what this text database software can be used for.

The Guardian's Weblog has been replaced with a neat new Newsblog. Very nice.

Weekend update: Other things found this week:
A shorter list than usual this week, probably because I'm still not quite back to schedule. Some very useful things here, though....

The links....

Reference :

World Oil Market and Oil Price Chronologies, 1970-2003 from DoE.

Rock 'n' Roll Timeline from the Hall of Fame.

Cliffs Notes now online for free.

Religion and the public schools, a policy page from Dept of Education.
Statistics:

MapStats: new resource from FedStats lets you get quick demographic facts on a state, county, or city. This is very cool, just like the Census' QuickFacts, but down to city level.

Criminal Victimization Characteristics: latest DoJ report.

National Mobility Studydone again by Texas A&M's mobility center, rates traffic congestion in 85 U.S. cities.
Journalism:

Tom Fiedler's Rock Concert Credibility Blues, commentary by Jay Rosen on The Herald editor's prohibition on attending political rock concerts.
Governments, Politics:

U.S. Government Manual, 2004-5 latest edition of this incredibly useful resource.

Slashdot Politics: see what the techies have to say.

Campaign Radar 2004: from Intelliseek's Blogpulse, which ranks blog postings on political topics.

Election Comparison Engine from the shopping comparison site PriceGrabber, this database compares candidates by money raised. You can choose candidates by many attributes and choose to see side-by-side bios, stances, and financing.
Business:

Pro Football Salary Database from USA Today.

Tools, People, News, Public records, Florida: No links this week.

Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

SearchEngineWatch Blog.

Mountain photos:
HighlandsCam has been launched. This is where I'll be posting photos of the mountains around here. Always wanted to do a 'Miamicam' but just didn't get out enough. Let's see if I can keep this one up.....

Trapped in hurricane hell:
Seems like I'll never get away. So Ivan did another terrible job on the Appalachians, particularly in the area of Western NC that took the big hit from Frances. The Asheville Citizen-Times is again doing a marathon job of reporting the damage, including reader-submitted photos. There are at least 7 deaths so far, and an interstate highway (I-40) closed.
Again, the storm didn't do much in this far western corner of the state (thank heaven), but we haven't had power for much of the last three days and no word on when it might be restored.
So posting is limited for now. I have a little battery time on the laptop, but don't want to use it all up. Back again in a day or so?

Speaking of Ivan, The Miami Herald is covering the devastation in the Pensacola area, including another interstate closure (I-10).

Following the storm, and more:
Great links to Ivan coverage from the Washington Post's Digital Filter, including an Ivan blog from the Biloxi paper.

Money and Politics Blog from the Western Knight Center.

100 photographs that changed the world: all from Life Magazine, at Digital Journalist.

Getting noticed:
Nice to see some veteran Net reseachers getting pointed to on Poynter's Website. Last week Sree Sreenivasan wrote about Gary Price, and this week he's linking to Tara Calashain. Both of these have been providing useful Web links to researchers for years. It's time journalists discover these great resources.

The posting on Gary Price focused on his new service, Docuticker, which catalogs new government and thinktank reports. It's a great resource that I have been meaning to add to my lists.

Storm coverage:
Here in western NC, serious flooding in the Asheville area destroyed a high school stadium, a great arts and crafts gallery, a huge antique market, and closed hundreds of businesses, as well as damaged water supplies for thousands of people. Frances' reach was huge. The Asheville Citizen Times' Website has done a great job of covering the storm effects.
The Miami Herald's Website suspended registration for the duration of Frances and I expect they will keep it that way as Ivan approaches. Lots of coverage there. The Herald staff has been non-stop covering hurricanes for the last three weeks. Hang in there, guys, you've all been doing a great job.

It's over:
One of the hardest weeks I ever experienced. Moving is hard enough, without having to do it in a hurricane. But it's done, except, of course, for lots of organizing. Now I'm sitting here on a hillside, thinking about those folks in Florida, having to face another bearing down on them.
At least this time I won't be posting any fallen-trees-in-Turnpike-service-area photos, as I won't be going down that road again. At least not for awhile.
Despite moving to a new state, I'm still in the news research business, but part time. This means I'll have more time for blogging, and hope to make some changes to make it all even better.
Expect regular postings starting next week, after I get this new house in some kind of order. (It's coming along.)
For those of you who don't know, we have moved to Cherokee County, NC, in the far western corner of the state (10 miles from Tenn and Ga). We are south of the Smokies and north of the Blue Ridge, in a chain of TVA lakes. Despite lack of DSL or other broadband here (so far), I get a fast dialup connection (faster than I had in Miami), so will be online nearly as much as before.
My Herald.com column will continue as well, and I hope to be posting lots more photos to a new blog starting soon.
See y'all here then!

We made it:
Hurricane Frances tried real hard to keep us in Florida. But, about 3-4 days late, we made it to the mountains this afternoon. It is pouring rain here in Western NC, as it was all the way from around Ocala, Fl. We sat in line for gas, slept in a parking lot in Tifton, Ga. All the Floridians who fled the other day were still in all those hotel rooms, I guess. We endured torrential rain for many hours, were buffeted by high winds. Just south of Lake City Fl, we saw 3 or 4 cars in the grass off the road that looked as though they'd just been blown there. South of Tifton, we hit a tree in the road. It was a hard hit but doesn't seem to have damaged either car, the motorcycle or the rental truck. We expect rain all day tomorrow so don't know when we'll unload the trucks....but we're here. And our cats, who endured several days in a strange house with strange cats, a ferret and a bird, then spent hours in cages on the road and parked. They are happy now. As are we.

Utility trucks and others going south on I-75 in North Florida, there was a constant flow of traffic. Hardly anyone going north. 

Our convoy: That's my car on that trailer. Power company trucks moving south on the Turnpike. 

Yet another Florida Turnpike service area damage photo. 

Sunday afternooon:
Although the warnings have been lifted for South Florida, we are having the heaviest rain so far, and still some wind, although it's diminishing as evening comes. Who knows? On the road tomorrow?

Dixie Highway in South Miami, this afternoon. 

Storm coverage:
The Miami Herald is blogging! Several reporters are contributing to "On-the-scene" reports at Herald.com.

Jim Morin, as usual, has the feeling in Florida captured:


More Florida newspaper blogging at TBO.com (Tampa); Orlando Sentinel; Sun Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale).

Meanwhile, also, The Herald's J. Albert Diaz has gotten what I think may be the ultimate Frances photo:


Debwire has a list of Florida bloggers blogging Frances (via Florida Blog).

Thank you Frances:
We are homeless. Well, we have a home in North Carolina, but we can't get there: Trapped in South Florida. A moving truck full of our possessions is sitting in front of our old (empty) house. We and our cats are staying with relatives. We were ready to leave Thursday afternoon but the stories of terrible traffic and no gas in Central Florida made us stay. Now we wait for Frances to pass. This will take awhile: we hear the traffic jams are still affecting Georgia all the way to Atlanta (the route we take). Meanwhile, we boarded up and now are watching lots of rain and moderate wind.....yesterday the power was out several hours during the day. So far so good today.....

Saturday morning in South Miami-Dade (Perrine) 

Boarding up...
This house, in Perrine, was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew, as well as most of the neighbors. So no chances being taken here.