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The WHAS Crusade for Children provides year round support for needy children throughout the Kentuckiana region.  Visit http://www.whascrusade.org to make donations online.

 

Vol. 5, No. 35                                          

 

A natural disaster anywhere in the world always brings out the best in Americans, especially when that disaster hits right here at home.  Hurricane Katrina is no different in that respect, but it is different in how our native concern and generosity is displayed.

 

We have the obvious examples, like www.redcross.org and www.salvationarmyusa.org, who have long and honorable histories of helping victims of disasters both large and small in every country on Earth.

But both of these organizations operate all year every year and they are expected to respond.

 

Something else we’ve seen before are telethons like the local Crusade for Children (www.whascrusade.org) and the upcoming Muscular Dystrophy Association Labor Day telethon (www.mdausa.org), which will redirect $1,000,000 to Katrina disaster relief this year).  Again, excellent charities and we here at The PC Gurus are obviously huge supporters of the WHAS Crusade, but this is normal.  There are also many telethons planned by various TV networks specifically for Katrina victims, just as there were following that horrible day in September of 2001.

 

What’s unusual about this relief effort is the response from the Internet community. With the explosion of broadband access across the United States and the world in the last few years I guess it was to be expected, but this is the first major US catastrophe since that high-speed availability became ubiquitous.

 

Bloggers are a prime example of this new breed of concerned citizens trying to help.  www.truthlaidbear.com organized a Blog for Relief Day today and over 1,100 bloggers participated, including our own Matt Dattilo.  Each blogger picked a charitable organization and posted a story with links to it today.  Matt chose http://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/news/katrina.cfm.

 

The list of sponsored charities is lengthy and includes organizations from nearly every religious order, animal rescue groups, gay and lesbian organizations and food banks.

 

Another charity listed, but asking for donations of an entirely different sort, is http://katrinahomes.billhennessy.com/.  These site and many like it are aggregating lists of people willing to house Katrina refugees.  You plug in contact information, how many people you can handle in your home or on your property and in most cases whether you can take pets, will house smokers and various and sundry other information.

 

Strangely enough, according to The Christian Science Monitor (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0830/p01s02-ussc.html?Feature), our friends over at www.fark.com may have started this effort.  I’ve read through several forum threads there in the last few days with all kinds of offers of shelter and one member, Rod Edwards, set up a site for the same purpose (http://www.katrinahome.com/). 

 

As I always say, give if you can, help in other ways if you can but be careful.  While disasters bring out the best in most of us it brings out the worst in some of us.  Scam websites are out there, scam email donation requests are out there and judging from today’s news some of the refugee’s coming from New Orleans aren’t people I’d want anywhere near me so be careful when you help. 

 

You can check the veracity of donation sites with things like the Netcraft Toolbar (http://toolbar.netcraft.com/), don’t trust any links in emails (type the parent site into the Address Bar manually) and try to screen folks you offer to host in your home to make sure they haven’t been shooting at rescue helicopters or looting plasma televisions.

 

Let’s face, the folks in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama need all the help the rest of the country can give so don’t be afraid to help, just check things out a bit to make sure you’re actually helping and not being ripped off…

 

On a happier note I would like to announce that our resident cartoonist, Terry Wise, has been added this week into the professional ranks of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (www.editorialcartoonists.com).  Congratulations Terry!

 

Be safe out there folks, and keep those in the Katrina ravaged sections of the country in your thoughts and prayers…

 

Kevin Mefford, Editor

pcguru@microdome.net

 

 

 

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

 

Tech News of the Week

 

In its bid to acquire the entire known universe, Microsoft has bought
a VoIP startup company.  Picture an icon labeled "My Calls" in your
future:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/31/ms_gets_into_voip/

If you're a Cingular customer, you will be in the first group able to
bask in the goodness of an iTunes-compatible Motorola cell phone:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4200540.stm

The teen-aged co-creator of the Zotob worm has been busy---police
suspect he may have had a hand in writing over 20 different variants
of worms:

http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=170101991

In an effort to keep up with the overnight success of GMail and its
cool search features, Yahoo! Mail is rolling out an e-mail search
update:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/76912/yahoo-announces-phased-rollout-of-new-version-of-mail.html

Copy us on the good stuff ;-)

Matt Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.opaquelucidity.com

 

Web Site of the Week

 

Since I mentioned the possibility of scam charity sites up top I thought it appropriate to us www.snopes.com as this week’s featured site.

 

We’ve talked about this treasure trove of information before but usually in relation to specific hoaxes, like the infamous “teddy bear” virus hoax that continues to pop up now and then.  This site comes to mind because I’ve gotten two emails so far this week warning me of the new cell-phone 411 service and how those numbers will soon be listed for telemarketers to exploit.

 

Those emails had kernels of truth but were riddled with untruths.  Any time you get an email, especially one that urges you to forward it to EVERYONE YOU KNOW, please search Snopes for that email content. Odds are you’ll find it’s an outright hoax (AIDS infected needles taped under gas pump handles) or just plain misguided (the great gas-out of pick-a-year).

 

Email Question of the Week

 

Q:   I have a laptop that I got about 4 months ago and was just wondering
if I should take out my battery since I use it mostly as a desktop
computer.

 

A:  It's an excellent idea to remove the battery if you only use the laptop
as a desktop computer.  The problem lies with the issue of the battery
charging.  If the battery doesn't de-charge and recharge over a period
of time, it will eventually get to a point where it will not be able to
charge itself at all.  I've personally seen this happen in many business
laptops, and recommended the same to employees who left their laptop at
work.

On that note, you DO need to completely charge and discharge the
battery once in a while so that it will keep it's ability to charge.

Hope this helps!

Ed Engelking II
ed@thepcgurus.com

 

Contact info and legal stuff

 

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