Housekeeping, and other comments:
Yesterday I noticed the photos at top and bottom left hand column weren't displaying. Since they're stored on my website at Earthlink, I assumed a temporary glitch, but when they still weren't there I checked and turns out the site has been accessed too many times this month so has been shut down until the 1st. That means the research pages aren't available, either.

Annoying, but since I have been slack at updating the pages lately, not a huge loss. But I can't understand why this happened since it never has in the nearly 5 years I've had this site. Some phishing or spamming program? Someone linking to my photos?

So if you've wanted the links on left and couldn't get them, apologies. I'll investigate other options, and meanwhile the pages should be available Saturday. If there's something someone really needs now, email me.


Nora Ephron, covering a panel discussion on blogging:

"...that would involve reporting, and I learned this morning at the panel on blogs that when you are a blogger, you are so busy blogging that you don't have time to report.
...what actually happened this morning? Nothing? Anything? Something? Everything? That depends on how you look at it. Which, by the way, is, to me, the point of blogs, and it's what makes their relationship to the truth so interesting.
...I happen to think the Internet is a cosmic, seismic, amazing change, unlike anything that's gone before. Way more than television, it's changing the culture, it's changing the way people think, it's changing the way their brains work, it's changing pretty much everything. Although it doesn't seem to have changed panel discussions."

Read it. Nora Ephron is always funny.

Yesterday I posted a link to Tim Porter's First Draft blog, where he has had some amazing things to say in the last couple days about the future of journalism. The posting failed and lost the quotes I had copied. Nevermind. Just read him.

A Great Resource:
There's news in my newsletter from The Virtual Chase that there's now a new TVCAlert website. You can still get the newsletter by email -- or phone, or PDA -- but I like having a web page to go to.

I've found lots of useful resources from the Alert, especially in the area of public records, court files, etc., but it's always been one that I couldn't list because it wasn't a URL. Now I can.

Library Thing:
(Is that anything like 'Wild Thing'?)
At any rate, this gets my vote, aside from any others, for best name of a new service....
Check this one out. Library Thing says it lets you create your own book catalog online (200 books free, or you can get a lifetime membership for $10 with unlimited catalog).
Here's A sample catalog from Library Thing creator Tim Spalding. Note it allows categories, shared listings, and comments. Here's Spalding's profile. It looks a lot like a Wiki. Note it even has comments!
The book information comes from the Library of Congress, but it also searches Amazon.com, too. (Note the Amazon bookmarklet that lets you catalog directly from an Amazon.com search.) There's also a Library Thing blog.
Wouldn't this be great for a small news library? I have never thought of cataloging my personal book library but I am tempted, this is so neat.
(Via Dave Weinberger.)

Weekend update: Other things found this week:

Well, now the hurricane recovery links include two hurricanes. Here are some more Hurricane Katrina/Rita things gathered last week:

• Hurricane Katrina Response from EPA.
  
• Climate of 2005: Hurricane Katrina from Natl Climatic Center.
  
• Congressional Research Report on FEMA flood insurance payments, issued this summer, says repeated payments to older houses in coastal areas take the largest part of the funding.
  
• Essential Facts on the Victims of Hurricane Katrina, from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
  
• Al's Morning Meeting had good links for coverage of Hurricane Rita in Texas, and here.
  

Again, more hurricane links collected on my Infomaniac blog on Herald.com.

The other links:

Reference:

National Listing of Fish Advisories from EPA.

The Milken Archive of Jewish Music

FBI Research Reports on the KKK, collected by The Memory Hole. Note much Florida history here.
Tools:

Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents from Reporters without Borders. This should be interesting.

Searchable version of Macbeth from AskSam, just download along with the free demo Ask Sam reader. How easy to create an Ask Sam database? A 9-yr-old girl did this one.
Statistics:

Public School District Finance Peer Search from NCES, lets you compare finances of one school district with others similar.

Methamphetamine use, abuse, and dependence, 2002-4, report from HHS.

Oil Company Windfall Profits Tax/Energy Attitudes Survey from Civil Society Institute.

Memo to John Roberts: The Gender Wage Gap is Real from Women's Policy Inst.
Journalism:

J-Learning: How to do community journalism, new site from Inst. for Interactive Journalism from U-Md's J-school.
Governments, Politics:

Presidential Determination on Major Drug Transit or Major Illicit Drug Producing Countries for Fiscal Year 2006
Business:

Forbes 400 (2005), latest edition.
Florida:

Public Utility Research Center at University of Florida.
Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

Public Eye is CBS News' blog.

ABC News blogs, all new.

Covering Rita
I'm sure most of you have your sources lists lined up, but for those who need quick hits to best places to find information about Hurricane Rita, the area it will hit, and impact, some people are gathering them together:

Al's Morning Meeting had good links in Wednesday's column; Lots more today.

More good links on Resourceshelf yesterday (scroll down).

Wall St. Journal's Storm News Tracker.

The 1900 Galveston Storm

Rigzone: Gulf of Mexico interactive mapping shows hurricane paths and effect on oil and gas rigs.

List of Houston-Galveston blogs from Pensacola Beach Blog.

I'm posting links to more on my Infomaniac blog.

Weekend update: Other things found this week:
Here are a few more Katrina recovery resources gathered this week; this will probably be a recurring theme for some time:

• State of Louisiana Katrina recovery site.
  
• Historic documents on water management and weather in Louisiana.
  
• New maps:
  
• Hurricane Katrina Disaster Viewer from ESRI/Arcview.
  
• Katrina Flyover, from MSNBC, combines satellite images with GoogleMaps.
  
• DMC International Imaging: unique new satellite images of disasters; Katrina image.
  
• Katrina Job Search from America's Job Bank. Main page.
• Hurricane Katrina Timeline Wiki
  
• Hurricane Katrina timeline, Timeline of Katrina military deployments, from Brookings Inst.
  
• NIEHS response to Katrina, from Natl Inst. of Environmental Health Services.
  
• Potential toxic sites in New Orleans from OMB Watch.
  
• Health Coverage and Hurricane Katrina from Kaiser Family Foundation.
  
• Aid for journalists affected by hurricane katrina, list of organizations from Cyberjournalist.
  

Much more hurricane links, discussion, controversy, etc. my Infomaniac blog on Herald.com.

The other links:

Reference:

Report on hurricanes and global warming in Science mag (PDF). (Story about the report.)

Bookrags: collection of online books, research materials online.

Agripedia, lots of great reference materials on agriculture from University of Kentucky.

Digital Library of the Decorative Arts, includes scanned antique books of drawings, art, design.

The Clinton Global Intiative, holding its first meeting this week.

National Science Foundation Award Search.

Chronology of failure to stop genocide in Darfur, from Africa Action.
Tools:

Census data on Google maps.
Statistics:

What it costs to live well in the U.S., a Forbes special report.

Alligator Attacks on Humans in the U.S., a report covering 1948 to 2004 (15 deaths, 376 injuries).
Journalism:

Media Link, a Canadian directory of experts.

Homefront Confidential: How the War on Terrorism Affects Access to Information and the Public’s Right to Know, new report from RCFP.

Society of Environmental Journalists report on FOIA says it's getting more difficult to get info from Feds.

Some Interesting stories/Weblogs:

20 things (about computers) they don't want you to know, from PCWorld.

Blogging the Roberts hearings, from National Journal.

Cubanology

Here's something else remarkable:
Every issue of the New Yorker from 1925-present, available on DVDs for $100. Scanned, all issues, every page. Wow.

Blogger search:
Old news, since I wasn't around to post this yesterday, but just in case you missed it: Google has finally started to search blogs. You can do it through the Google site or thru Blogger. It's in beta, haven't tried it yet, but Jeff Jarvis thinks the search is a little strange so far. Seems it finds a lot of Blogger spam blogs. SearchEngineWatch discusses the search.
To see what bloggers are saying about this, of course it's worth a Google blog search (suggested by Dave Winer).
Speaking of Blogger spam, I started getting comment spam on my Blogger photoblog within the last week. I enabled a keyword comment login that should eliminate it. No sign on this blog or the other blogs yet, although I think it may be showing up on the obsolete Herald blog.....

New Memeorandums:
For those of us who have enjoyed using Memeorandum to get a quick idea of what bloggers are saying about topics in the news, a welcome announcement: Memeorandum has gone thru beta testing of a new version and has released two new Memorandums: Memeorandum (politics) is the same service, but redesigned. There's lots more news on the page now. Now there's also Tech.Memeorandum, with same style, covering tech news.
One difference noted is that the related blog postings don't show quotes or a long list of links; but note if you hold cursor over links a plus sign appears; this leads to more links.

Creator Gabe Rivera also posts to a Memeorandum blog with this useful posting today, Why does Memeorandum exist?

(Via Scripting News.)

Weekend update: Other things found this week:
A few more Katrina recovery resources:

• Hurricane Resources from Society of Environmental Journalists.
  
• Free Nexis news on Hurricane Katrina.
  
• Cuba: Weathering the Storm, report from Oxfam America on Cuban disaster planning and recent hurricane recovery (68-page PDF).
  

Much more hurricane links, discussion, controversy, etc. my Infomaniac blog on Herald.com.

The other links:

Reference:

National Portrait Gallery Portrait search (over 12,000 records).

The Numbers: free box office data, plus other movie/star information.

Tire ratings database, lookup ratings of over 2000 tire brands/models; from NHTSA.
Business:

The A-List from American Lawyer, lists 200 law firms.
Tools:

Latitude/Longitude coordinate calculator.

Chicago Manual of Style, latest edition. Register for free search access.
People:

GenWed: links to marriage record searches around the country, plus UK and Canada. Here are places where Florida marriage records are searchable. (Several counties, mostly historic, not in Dade or Broward).

Actors' Agent Search from Association of Talent Agents. Thanks to a posting on NewsLib.

Brainy Quotes: an interesting collection. It has lots from Dave Barry.
Statistics:

Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the U.S., long Census report.

We the People: Black population of the U.S. from Census.

Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 2003, latest edition.
Florida:

The Haitian Community in Miami-Dade, new Brookings report.

Jeb Bush's Calendar for today.

Finally! Editor blog
The Miami Herald's editors are now contributing to a new blog. So far a few postings from Executive Editor Tom Fiedler. Go editor bloggers!

And more...
Note, also, more new hurricane recovery stuff posted to Resourceshelf and a special collection at Librarians Index to the Internet.

Weekend update: Hurricane Resources and Other things found this week:
I'm sure you've all seen most of these additional hurricane resources I gathered this week by now, but better late than never, for the record:

• Medical India has a page on flood-borne diseases.
  
• WHO factsheet on floods and communicable diseases.
  
• WHO handbook on environmental health in emergencies and disasters
  
• Volunteer Florida is collecting relief funds for Katrina victims.
  
• NASA's hurricane page has new satellite images, and a section on New Orleans topography.
  
• NASA's Earth Observatory's satellite shots of Katrina.
  
• Al Tompkins has links to relief agencies, charities.
  
• Guidestar: Hurricane charities, a special page for searches.
  
• FEMA's Photolibrary has lots of Katrina photos already.
  
• PR Newswire is collecting Katrina news releases. You'll probably have to register.
• Hurricane Insurance Information Center
  
• News Designer is posting front pages and links to papers publishing online.
  

And, of course, I linked to lots of discussion, outrage, message and information sites all week on my Infomaniac blog on Herald.com.

The other links:

Reference:

Elevations and Distances in the U.S. from USGS, has cities, states, highest, lowest points, circumferances and distance between longest points.

Farber gravestone collection has images of gravestone scupture on over 9000 old American memorials.

Office of Coast Survey has a great collection of historical maps and charts, including great Civil War maps. Also here, the database of wrecks and obstructions, lots more. (Thanks to Fletch at No Direction Home).

the Gospel of Slavery: someone has scanned an old book given to liberated slaves in the 1860s and posted it to Flickr.
News:

Number of uninsured in the U.S. now exceeds population of 24 states and DC, new report from Families USA.
Business:

InflationData.com on gas prices. Says gas is still cheaper in relative terms than it was in 1980.

The most expensive states to insure a home; report from Forbes.

Fastest growing Yellow Pages headings: things like tattoos.
People:

City Directory Archive: old directories being scanned and made searchable from cities around the country. None from Florida yet, though...
Journalism:

Reporters without Borders says More journalists killed in this war than in entire Vietnam war.

How St. Pete Times photogs got the Katrina photo of the day from Photo District Online.

History of Business Journalism, a new site from a UNC j-prof.

Fun/Entertainment:

The Bush vacation 404 error from Madeleine Kane.

More resources:
IRE/NICAR has enhanced their hurricane resource page with more tipsheets, stories, links to blogs, relief efforts and much more, for covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Finding people help:
I posted a list today to my Herald blog of places to go to find missing friends/relatives in the wake of Katrina. Note, included is the new FirstGov site for Katrina Recovery.
(Later:) Ooops! Somehow the link to the blog went to the NYT editorial. Fixed now.

Remembering journalists:
I hadn't realized that Jim Romenesko has set up a separate page on the Poynter site to archive all the media deaths he reports on his daily blog. As he points out today, many of them are young.....