Geni Certain

Helping each other through Katrina's shared misery

2005-09-02T14:57:00.000-05:00

As soon as Hurricane Katrina made its way as far north as Birmingham, it knocked over a tree which brought down a powerline which took the Anniston Star Online offline for a day and a half. Since we couldn't post news to our main site, we put more on our partner site, MSNBC.com, and that almost immediately began attracting e-mail from MSNBC.com readers. These messages appear to be directed to a general audience rather than specifically to northeast Alabama, but they do not exclude or exempt local readers. Some are pleas for help, others offer suggestions for how to help and some simply vent. Here they all are, with only slight editing. I will add to this list as new messages come in. Feel free to add your own comments.

I've added a new blog for Katrina stories and New Orleans memories. You'll find it here.

Wednesday, August 31, 2005 3:34 PM
Name: Kathy Menefee
Comments:
In no way do I want this to appear that I am trying to take advantage of the situation, but I want to help! My name is Kathy Menefee and I am a publishing consultant with Favorite Recipes Press in Nashville, Tenn. The victims of Katrina live in my territory and I want to help them on a large scale. I am aware that the Today show has partnered with Meredith Press to do a cookbook for the benefit of the T.J. Martell Foundation. I want to do the same; a cookbook put together very quickly (highlighting those areas cuisine) and sell it with the proceeds going towards relief and rebuilding. I want to raise amillion dollars or more! Can you help me? I need to find a person or organization to champion this project. Time is of the essence! God bless us all, Kathy Menefee Publishing Consultant Favorite Recipes (Contact Geni Certain at the Anniston Star if you need to contact this writer.)

Wednesday, August 31, 2005 9:35 PM
Name: Julia Williams
Comments:
Looking for Kae Smith of Slidell, La. She called an hour before Hurricane Katrina hit. She thought she was safe and had no evacuation plan. She used to work for the government. When I spoke with her Thursday (when it was apparent the storm was going to hit her) she responded with, "I just watched the news and the weatherman we all trust said we 'don't have anything to worry about'." I think that weatherman should be hung and then fired.

Thursday, September 01, 2005 8:22 PM
Name: Susan Wooten
Comments:
This past week we all have watched thousands and thousands of people lose their whole world. I am not just talking about homes, jobs, TVs, and DVDs, I am talking about their sense of well-being, safety, and belonging. Even though the survivors might have other survivors around them, they still feel like they are alone and might feel there is no future for them. The rest of the county has to step up and let them know they are not alone. To the people with the power or the strings to pull: Go to different cities and get the hotels to give a few free rooms, get the local restaurants to give meal cards or such for so many meals, get the local doctors to give heath care, get the community and business to help with other needs, try to get apartment buildings to give rent free apartments for 3 or 6 months (remind them of the tax breaks and good PR). The towns that will help can send buses to pick the people up. If not, there are people who would drive their own vans to pick the people up, plus there are people in every community who will open there own doors to the survivors. Houston has stepped up, but now the rest of the country has to. If what happened to the hurricane survivors happened to me, or the rest of the country, we would pray someone was there for me, for us. We must also show the rest of the world that we can come together and do the right thing, that not all of us are materialistic self-centered jerks, and that the U.S. isn't like the Wild West. We must do more, we have to do more than just sending money. If we don't, how can we talk about how great this county is and how great our lives are.

Thursday, September 01, 2005 10:47 PM
Name: Tony Nelzen
Comments:
I have some cousins that live in Slidell, La. Hal & Debbie Taylor. How do we find out how they are doing re: Hurricane Katrina?

Friday, September 02, 2005 12:05 AM
Name: Taryn Gregory
Comments:
www.hurricanehousing.org A great Web site for people who need someplace to go. There are currently over 1,200 households signed up who can accommodate 3-10 people. There are also some listings for 180 unit cottages within 500 miles from New Orleans — all being offered for free. If you get the word out, perhaps more people will volunteer & some of the people being turned away in Houston or those still in Biloxi, Gulfport & New Orleans can be partnered up with civilians willing to take them in. The media has the power to help.

Friday, September 02, 2005 7:44 AM
Name: Trudie Hurd
Comments:
The Associated Press and other media keep saying that people are looting and shooting ... albeit sometimes they also say "...it's out of desperation..." The wording should be changed, especially when the AP puts out a picture of an Asian (or person of color), and a Caucasian couple in the same article. They are both wading through the water in Louisiana, but the word "looting" is used when describing the person of color obtaining "bread"; where the word "finding" is used for the Caucasian couple. All of these people are experiencing a very difficult time. All of them are desperate, hungry, scared, thirsty and desolate! All of them! This makes me want to cry. I knew in my heart that it has been wrong for the media to focus more on the actions of the people trying to survive — and some losing their minds because of terrible trauma and watching loved ones, friends and even strangers dying around them — I knew it! It is a tragedy. Maybe the media should be asking for everyone's help more and asking for prayer and focusing on putting the microphones up to the people every chance they get to ask their names in case a loved one is looking for them, or wandering if they are alive. I will go on line to 7 on your site and tell them just that!

Friday, September 02, 2005 12:00 PM
Name: Yejoon Koh
Comments:
I haven't seen any mention of this on your site, and if it has been mentioned, it should be a lot more clear. The major immediate problem right now is that there are no place to put many of these people. shareyourhome.org and craigslist.org are filled with people offering their homes. PLEASE make this resource known to the people who need it. Also, transportation poses a problem as well. Would it be so bad to take a few school days off and use school buses to transport people to these open homes? Diesel fuel is economical.

Can I live without e-mail? No, but the phone's another story

2005-03-18T14:25:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I just have to wonder if the benefits of the Internet are worth the hassles. It seems that every new development that makes it more useful is quickly subverted into something bothersome, if not downright dangerous.

A message from reader Lee Flatt this week deflated my hopeful enthusiasm for VoIP, a rapidly spreading technology that lets you use the Internet to make telephone calls. VoIP, short for "voice over Internet protocol," promises to cost less than traditional phone service, especially for international calls. Before I've even had a chance to try it out, here comes the news that already it is being turned against us. Internetnews.com reports that telephone solicitors are moving offshore and using cheap VoIP to get around the U.S. Do Not Call list. So now not only can they bother us with sales calls, they can do it at a cut rate.

"If you thought spam was bad, you ain't seen nothing yet," one analyst said in the internetnews.com interview. He speculated that a business or household could get as many as 150 calls a day. And remember, this is from people using VoIP to call you on your regular phone. Whether or not you use VoIP will have nothing to do with it.

As if on cue, I've begun receiving telephone sales calls again. Probably unrelated, but as irritating as ever. "Doesn't your company abide by the federal Do Not Call law," I asked one caller. "I was unaware of that law, but I'll check into it," was the assuredly untruthful response.

It makes me want to yank out the phone line. I don't much like talking on the phone, anyway. I greatly prefer to use e-mail or instant messaging, now that I've reached a coping level with my spam. I forward my e-mail around to several different addresses, and among them, the various spam filters catch most of it.

The last time I swore off e-mail, it didn't last a day. About the only way I can get away from it is to leave the country, and even then an Internet café is always less than a day away.

I considered giving it up again this week, when a comment in a radio interview caught my attention. Donald Knuth, known as the "founding artist of computer science," was interviewed for National Public Radio's Morning Edition. Knuth, an efficiency expert with a love of programming, has been working on a seven-volume series of books, "The Art of Computer Science" since 1962. He's a fascinating guy, but it was this statement by the interviewer that really made me take notice:

"Knuth long ago gave up e-mail. It was too much of a distraction. He moves in general with a kind of steady urgency that seems to say, 'My time on Earth is limited and there is much to do.'"

Isn't that true of all of us? Perhaps we should dispense with e-mail and be done with spam forever. If the guy who's writing the book on computer programming can do without it, surely we can too.

However, when I visited Knuth's Web site , I found that while he personally does not use e-mail, he employs a secretary who sorts his mail, including messages from two e-mail accounts. These accounts are specifically for reporting errors in his books, and if the secretary prints out any superfluous messages, he uses them for scratch paper.

Well, I'm not going to hire a secretary to sort through my spam, so clearly I'm not about to give up e-mail. But if anybody figures out a good way to get along without a telephone, I want to know about it.

Pick your favorite pictures via voting

2005-01-28T17:22:00.000-06:00

I have marked the change of seasons for the past several years by closing down one online photo gallery and opening a new one. As one season fades gently into the next, changing galleries this way feels abrupt and arbitrary. I always experience a twinge of nostalgia for the season just past and for the pictures that have documented how we spent it.

Pictures are memories made permanent. I hate consigning them to a virtual desk drawer just because they are a few months old.

The contributors don't seem to mind. They know that even if I say it's autumn, they can still send pictures of flowers blooming and children swimming, and any summery thing their cameras find. When I decree that Spring has arrived, they'll still send me pictures of snow if they get a chance to photograph any.

Usually I add new pictures to whatever the current gallery is, in the approximate order that they arrive. When the time comes to change galleries, I create a new link at the top of the Gallery index and move the old one down on the page, so that all of the old galleries are still accessible. As that virtual drawer fills up, the earlier galleries get buried deeper and deeper. I rummage through the drawer now and then, enjoying the old pictures anew, and I hope that you do too.

For this year's galleries, though, let's go a step farther. Rather than let the pictures drift into a mostly forgotten pile, we shall each month choose our favorite picture from the previous month. I'll get the Star staff to pick five, and you can vote on your favorite from that group. At the end of the year, we will create a calendar using the chosen photo from each month.

We will make the calendars available for sale, and the proceeds will go to The Star's Newspapers in Education program, which provides newspapers for classroom use in local schools.

We are nearing the end of January, so I have set up an online poll that you can use to vote on the five January pictures.

I also set up a December poll. We will need the entire month next December to print and sell the calendars, so we'll have to use pictures from December 2004.

You may vote in the December and January polls through Feb. 28, and I will open a new poll for February pictures on March 1.

The polls are in the Community section online, and the picture chosen each month will appear on the Community page of the newspaper. Instructions for submitting photos are in both places.

I think this will be fun. It will keep our favorite pictures in front of us for another year, and it will put newspapers in the hands of more of our children.

You send me ... links

2004-12-16T17:09:00.000-06:00

I've been getting a bunch of fun links in my e-mail lately, and I like them. I am compiling some of them into a list to be added to our soon to be new and improved Newspapers in Education section of The Anniston Star Online. My intention is that teachers can let their students visit the linked sites without worry.

To make this list, a site has to be fun, appropriate for kids and (shhhhh!) educational. Here's what I've got so far:

Seasonal
Build a virtual snowman
Make a virtual snowflake
Create your own snowflake (a different site, in some ways better) from Helen Maddox, Weaver
Deck the House — Decorate a house for Christmas from Jerry Turner, Heflin
Reindeer Games

Games:
Fun ways to tie your shoelaces
Discover Ancient Egypt
Matchstick puzzles
Boobah — Simple and colorful games from Johanna Wood, Gulf Shores
World of Seven Wonders
Goofy Gopher

Helpful sites:
Convert between English and metric units
Learn about music with San Francisco Symphony's Kids' Site
They Made America — PBS series on American innovators
Calculate your body mass index — Determine your best weight
Nutrition information — Find out about the foods you eat
Auburn University helps you identify plants

Dictionary sites:
One Look
Merriam-Webster Online
Encarta Dictionary

Here are a few links that I probably won't put on the NIE site but that you might like to try:
Zoom Quilt — How did they do that? from Brandon Wynn, Oxford
Virtual reality panoramas (requires QuickTime) from Brandon Wynn, Oxford

If you have fun, educational or interesting links, send them to me and I will add them to this list.

My lexicological lust is fed by online word lists

2004-12-10T15:52:00.000-06:00

Those who know me well know that my oldest and most enduring love is for words. You might think I'd have lots of company in that passion, given my line of work — and I do. But a few years ago, when two new dictionaries came out at about the same time, I was the only one I knew who got really excited about it.

My enthusiasm apparently left a mark (perhaps a scar). A few days ago, a colleague who remembered my dictionary review asked if I still had the Encarta dictionary. Unfortunately, I did not.

The last time I looked for it online I learned that it was out of print, but I did another search today and found that it has been revived in several editions. I'm not in the market for a dictionary, but, as often happens, the search turned up something interesting for online use.

A Google search found "MSN Encarta Dictionary" at the top of the list. This turned out to be a site where you can type in a word and get the Encarta definition.
I was already a heavy user of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary site and was familiar with Dictionary.com and a few other word-lookup sites, so this was a chance to repeat my dictionary review experience online.
What a treat! I learned two new words in the first five minutes, and I was reminded what I liked so much about Encarta definitions — they give a clear sense of how each word currently is used and brief, pointed etymologies. I spent some time looking up the two words in different online dictionaries, and if I hadn't been facing a deadline, I might be comparing them still.
I was mostly switching back and forth between MSN Encarta and Merriam-Webster, but for really hard-core comparisons, try OneLook.com. It will search for definitions in 981 different dictionaries, including Webster's, Encarta, The Phronteristery and the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, the free version of the much revered OED, which is available online only by subscription.

While it is educational to compare definitions across dictionaries, count on Microsoft to add useful automation. The MSN Encarta Dictionary offers a downloadable right-click link that lets you right click on any word on a Web page and get the Encarta definition. When you right click on a word, the familiar right-click menu opens. "Encarta definition" appears in the penultimate panel. Click that and a small window opens showing the definition of the word. It only works in Internet Explorer and only on Windows machines — it is Microsoft, after all.

Merriam-Webster Online also offers right-click definitions as well as a right-click thesaurus, but you have to type in the word. They are part of a package with Merriam-Webster's more useful downloadable toolbar, which lets you type in a word from your Web window.

With Encarta's right-click dictionary, you don't have to type the word, but you do have to make two clicks. With Merriam-Webster's toolbar, you can copy and paste the word into the toolbar, so it's about the same effort.

Back when I reviewed the new print dictionaries, I decided the Merriam-Webster would remain on my desk, the Encarta would be shared with the reporters, and the OED would be my Christmas gift. In this updated, online version I can have all three at my fingertips.

Tech news with no bull

2004-11-30T10:52:00.000-06:00

One of the most useful tech newsletters I get has the catchy title, "BullGuard Newsletter." It's published by BullGuard software*, a company that markets Internet security products. I stumbled across the site awhile back, looking for statistics on spam, trojans and viruses. It was one of those serendipitous finds that characterize Web surfing. The newsletter is free and I always find one or two useful links in each edition.

Recently, the BullGuard Team added "Curiosities," a short list of fun links that have nothing to do with Internet security. Among the most recent Curiosities are:

OnlineConversion.com ,a site that converts measurements from one system to another, miles per hour to kilometers per hour, for example

Go Ask Alice, a Q&A health site hosted by Columbia University

SFS Kids, the San Francisco Symphony's site that introduces kids to music

Make A Flake, my personal favorite. This is an interactive game that turns your cursor into a pair of scissors, which you can use to make cuts in a virtual sheet of folded paper. When you've made enough cuts, you can unfold the paper and see the snowflake you've just made. If you like it, you can save it. If you make a miswhack, there's an undo button. I did a little backtracking to find out who's responsible for Make A Flake and found that it's LookandFeel.com, a new media company. This a site that's worth exploring, and that's all I'm going to say about it.

*To sign up for the BullGuard newsletter, scroll down their homepage and click on one of the news items at the bottom. There's a sign-up form for the newsletter on the right side of the news page.

Playing catch-up: Where the Internet meets the telephone

2004-11-26T13:58:00.000-06:00

It's the day after Thanksgiving, customarily a slow day at the newspaper and a good time to catch up on things left hanging for the last couple of weeks — like e-mailed newsletters I've been meaning to read. It's sort of like panning for gold. There's a lot of junk, a fair amount of valuable particles and now and then a nugget that makes the effort worthwhile.

Here are a few keepers:

Google has launched a service to provide information by phone, the Boston Globe reported Nov. 15. It's not for everyone, including me, but those of you who are comfortable with text messaging on your cellphones might try it out and let me know how you like it. You don't have to have a fancy phone, but it does have to have text messaging capability. You dial 46645 (GOOGL) and then send a short question. The Globe story suggests "pizza" plus your ZIP code to get a list of pizza restaurants. You can look up phone numbers, get price quotes, even have words defined. You can get some results from a Web search by texting "g" for Google and a short query. It's in beta testing now, and it's free from Google, but you still have to pay the phone company's fee for test messaging.

The Weather Channel and its online counterpart Weather.com have launched a similar service that lets you get weather forecasts on your cellphone. Dial 42278 (4CAST) and text a ZIP code or city and state name. This service costs 75 cents.

If spam makes you so mad you could spit, you're going to choke when you read this. The latest intrusion into your Internet experience is spam via Internet telephony — you got it — SPIT. It's not much of a problem yet, USA Today reported Nov. 9, but as more people begin using the Internet to make phone calls, it is sure to grow. "Marketers can program their computers to send 1,000 voice messages a minute over Internet-telephony technology," the story says, quoting a rep from Quovia, a company seeking a patent to stop spit.

Internet telephony, or VOIP (voice over Internet protocol), is faster and cheaper than traditional calling, and if you aren't using it yet, chances are good that you will be within five years, unless spit kills it before it gets established. An estimated 1 million people will use it this year, more than seven times the number who used it last year, and by 2008, the number of VOIP users is projected to reach 17.5 million, according to the USA Today story.

Phish or cut bait: The Washington Post in mid-November had an excellent two-day series of reports on phishing, the practice of sending fraudulent e-mails to gain usernames and passwords for e-commerce Web sites, Social Security numbers, credit card numbers and bank account numbers, and the identifying information necessary to use them. I see these scams every day, and I can tell you they are getting more and more believable. Still, I thought I could recognize phishing when I saw it and know what was a legitimate e-mail and what was not. That confidence was shattered by The Post's "Catch A Phish" quiz, which I highly recommend taking. I was wrong about three of the 10 examples when I first took the quiz and missed one of them again today. Fortunately, I guessed that a legitimate e-mail was a fake — my philosophy about phishing is "when in doubt, doubt double." Read the series, take the quiz and never, never, never reveal any personal or financial information by clicking a link in an e-mail message.

Why can't we all have Bill Gates' spam filter? The Microsoft Inc. chairman gets 4 million e-mail messages a day, and most of it is spam, according to an AP story in the Washington Post, Nov. 18 . Gates' right-hand man Steve Ballmer says the boss has special technology just to filter his e-mail. If it's good enough for Gates, it's good enough for me. So c'mon Microsoft, let's have it.

If it's, Delf-HA, don't answer. I don't use my cellphone much, and I have enough fingers to count the calls I've received on it in one pass. But I've heard enough phones ringing in stores, at concerts, even in the class I teach at JSU to recognize that I'm reeling in the wake of a fast-moving cultural behemoth. After reading a Nov. 9 story on cellphone spam in PC World, I don't think I'll be increasing my cellphone use any time soon. Hackers somewhere in this wide world have written a program that allows them to use hijacked personal computers — yours and mine, perhaps — to send unwanted advertising messages to cellular phones. Delf-HA is a trojan horse that is sent over the Internet to infect PCs. Once infected, the computer sends e-mail messages to cellphone numbers generated at random. So far, it has only targeted Russian phone networks, but give them time.

That's not everything, but I've reached the limit of my tolerance. I'm getting depressed about the fight between those of us who want to use the Internet to exchange safe and useful information and those who want to use the technology to hurt us.

Live Wire

2004-11-16T10:29:00.000-06:00

I'm testing a new service from the Associated Press that posts live updates from the wire service. I have two pages set up so far, one for Alabama news and one for national and international news. If the test goes well (and it has so far), I will create pages for sports, business, religion and possibly other news categories.

The news on these pages is updated continuously, so as soon as AP has a story, you can read it.

I don't know yet how this will affect the afternoon update, Since This Morning. The AP service rarely has local stories for this area unless they come from The Star to begin with. Whenever we have breaking local news we'll put it online as soon as we can, so the afternoon update may become unnecessary.

I would like to know your thoughts to the AP news feed and how it compares to Since This Morning. E-mail me or post a comment here.

***

AP also makes some cool interactives available with this service. Two that moved this week are a Flash graphic called Fighting in the Streets and a photo gallery from the war. I have included links to both in the list that appears at the bottom of stories in the At War In Iraq section of The Anniston Star Online site. Click News, then look at the links in the left menu. At War in Iraq is the last link in the News section.

Best shots revisited

2004-11-12T13:31:00.000-06:00

The Anniston Star's chief photographer Trent Penny has agreed to help choose the best photos from the online galleries. We are working out a plan to have readers vote for their favorites from each season to narrow the field, and then have The Star's professional photographers select the best three from each group.

I want to create an interactive page that will make the voting easy, and that will take a few days since I don't know exactly how to go about it. When it's ready, I'll post a link to it prominently on the front page of the site. Voting will be open to everyone, not just subscribers, since the galleries are part of the site's free content.

Maxx Headroom delivers the weather

2004-11-11T13:21:00.000-06:00

There's a new feature on Accuweather.com that's interesting technologically and has some entertainment value. You can not only read your local weather forecast, you can hear it and see it delivered by an animated newscaster. To see it, click the weather icon on the front page of The Anniston Star Online, then click Live Forecast (or just click this link).

First you choose an area of the country, then click on a dot marking a city. In Alabama, you can choose Birmingham or Montgomery. Well, Birmingham, anyway. When I clicked Montgomery, the word "Montgomery" appeared, but the forecast delivered was for Jackson, Miss.

The animated character's mouth moves approximately correctly to say the words you hear, and his eyes follow the cursor around. (I didn't check enough areas to see if any of the readers are women). It gets old in a hurry. After checking the forecasts for Birmingham, Atlanta and Montgomery, I found it more interesting to put the cursor on his chin and make him cross his eyes.

To see ourselves as others see us

2004-11-09T10:41:00.000-06:00

This link came from Van Allen. It's Forbes Magazine's take on the PCB litigation in Anniston. Not pretty.

Take your best shot

2004-11-08T11:03:00.000-06:00

Jason Cash of Coldwater suggests having readers choose their favorite pictures from the Anniston Star Online galleries. I think that's a great idea. I get several hundred pictures for each season, and most of them are quite good. Readers could choose three favorites from each season and we could create a calendar from them.

We have separate galleries for the work of the staff photographers. We could have voting on those too.

Some of my own pictures are in the seasonal galleries, but I would remove them from contention. I use my photos primarily to get a gallery started and then to fill out a row of thumbnails. Occasionally, I will post a sizable group of my own pictures, depending on how active the gallery has been in the past few days.

I'll work on setting up an interface for voting on the galleries. More to come ...

A penny 'saved' is deception

2004-11-05T17:38:00.000-06:00

Every so often, Almus Thornton, a friend of mine here at The Star, brings me a stack of ads and preaches what he calls his "sermon." The ads are for all kinds of products, and the only thing they have in common is that the prices of the products all end in 99 cents.

"Here's a tractor for $5,999.99," he began the latest version of the sermon. "Now I ask you, are you more likely to buy that tractor at $5,999.99 than at $6,000? Does one penny out of $6,000 make a difference to you?"

I had to smile. I'd heard it many times before, and I could never argue the other side. I'm the choir for his preaching.

He looks at it from an accountant's point of view and contends that his job would be much simplified if merchants would just go ahead and charge the extra penny. I take his word for it — he's the accountant, not me. It seems to me that by the time the tax is added, the final cost is as likely to end in 17 cents as 99 cents, but apparently that is not an accountant's concern.

I look at it from a consumer's point of view: The penny makes no difference in whether I buy the product, but I am offended at the attempt to make the price look less than it is. And as someone who has set a lot of type, I begrudge the extra keystrokes necessary to type all those .99s.

Part of the sermon is always speculation on why merchants price things at 99 cents and how it got started. His theory is that it began during the Great Depression, when the difference of a penny might really determine a person's ability to buy an item. Almus was a teen-ager during the Depression, and he remembers the first store in the area that began 99 cent pricing.

I couldn't confirm his theory. I tried an Ask Jeeves query, but all I got was a long list of stuff for sale for 99 cents. A Google query gave me a lot of interesting articles on the difficulties of handling micropayments in e-commerce, whether to include shipping in the cost of a product and the travails of third-party payment processing. I didn't find anything that addresses
Almus's question.

The practice has become so ubiquitous that we just take it for granted, and it's no different in e-commerce than at a tool sale at the airport. Tunes for your iPod are 99 cents each. In September, Major League Baseball began selling video game clips for 99 cents. eBay and Overstock.com are littered with items whose prices end in .99 (and some with .88 — whose brilliant idea was that?).

Almus wants us all to rise up in protest of this senseless 99 cent pricing. He's got about as much chance of winning the battle as of defeating a windmill with a lance. But in this quixotic quest, I'm a willing Sancho Panza.

So lead on, Good Knight. I've got your back.