Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Houston Chronicle report on the aftermath of Katrina. 

NY Times: "Rescuing New Orleans will be a task much more daunting than any city has faced since the San Francisco fire of 1906." 

An active blogger in Slidell, a New Orleans suburb.  

The moment the magnitude hit me was when I heard that the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway had been destroyed. To put that in perspective, it would be like saying the George Washington Bridge in NYC was gone; or the Bay Bridge in San Francisco.  

Consider that as many as a million Americans may be homeless. They tried to repair the broken levee and failed. The flood water in New Orleans is rising. The situation is getting more out of control.  

Terrorists could have destroyed the New Orleans levee at any time. New Orleans was always totally vulnerable. 

A second hurricane on the gulf coast would kill countless people. 

Yesterday I said that New Orleans had averted disaster. It wasn't so. The disaster people have been worrying about for decades has happened. The governor of Louisiana, interviewed on Larry King, has no idea what to do. This problem is out of reach of spin.  

American Red Cross RSS feeds. 

What can we do to help Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama? 

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has switched to weblog format for breaking news. Brilliant. It's inevitable that all news organizations will make this switch. They also have an RSS feed for breaking news.  

Blogs of New Orleans natives: Wes Felter, Ernie the Attorney. 

Seth Godin explains RSS.  

Ziepod is an "easy-to-use toolkit to reach and manage audio-based content published through podcasts." 

Scott Rosenberg: "There's something to be celebrated about a small Norwegian software company that sticks to its guns, stares down the giants and keeps improving its product." Indeed. 

OPML at Harvard? Waaah, I wish I was there! Between you and me, this is why I wanted to go to Harvard two years ago, to help bootstrap exactly what the Berkman folk are doing now. Maybe we can find a way to team up Harvard and the University of California?  

According to the mayor of New Orleans, 80 percent of the city is under water, as deep as 20 feet.  

NY Times: "Apple Computer and Motorola plan to unveil a long-awaited mobile phone and music player next week that will incorporate Apple's iTunes software."