With Hurricane Rita making landfall in Texas and Louisiana tonight, I’ve been scouring the Web for everything and anything to shed more light on what’s going on this instant. Thought I’d share some top picks for tracking the storm and its effects in case others in Net land were in the same proverbial boat.
The National Hurricane Center and Accuweather provide some of the greatest detail and most up to date information available. Go there first. If you’re looking for a reliable site year in and year out for hurricane updates but find NHC and Accuweather a bit difficult to parse (both are very data dense), try CNN’s Hurricane site. It provides fairly up to date news and tracking information. Just about everything you find on air on CNN, you can find on their site. A bonus feature: A “storm names” section at the bottom of the main page which shows all Atlantic and Eastern North Pacific (i.e. possible US) named storms.
Next up, WeatherServer.net’s Hurricane Center is providing live video from TV stations and audio from fire scanners in the landfall areas (Houston, New Orleans, etc.).
Examples: Click here to watch three Louisiana stations simultaneously or here for Houston ABC affiliate KTRK channel 13. If you want the latest, on-the-ground developments, this is your one stop shop.
Prefer to track things in your aggregator or feed reader? Ask and ye shall receive:
- Accuweather headlines and community weather blog
- Google News’ RSS feed with latest on Hurricane Rita (Atom feed here)
- Yahoo’s Hurricanes and Tropical Storms feed
- Flickr RSS for photos tagged with “hurricanerita” (Atom feed here)
Finally, in the “truly amazing even if you understand how it works” category, I’d highly recommend checking out the latest imagery, predictions, sea temperatures, and more compiled and overlaid on a 3D Earth from the hard working members of the Google Earth Community. Visit the Community’s Current Events board especially the Hurricane Rita data compilation post. Power user Frank Taylor has collected some of the best Google Earth Rita links in a recent blog post. Get Google Earth if you don’t already have it, then click here to load Taylor’s compilation. Be sure to experiment with turning the various Rita tracking info, satellite photos, and other layers on/off, clicking on the many embedded links for additional information, etc. Truly an incredible tool!
Wherever you are and however much attention you’re paying to Rita coming ashore tonight, say a prayer for the people in southeast TX and southwest LA. And then visit Redcross.org in the coming days to find out what help, if any, is needed after the storm.
For anyone wanting to cut to the chase rather than read the Reuters/Yahoo blurb on busy signals as Hurricane Rita approaches: Cell voice connections are usually harder to get in emergency situations than a connection to send an SMS.
The next time you’re getting out of Dodge, text somebody. Gives a new meaning to “Let your fingers do the walking”…
WAP support for BillDay.com is up and running again via GaMerZ’s “WP WAP” hack.
Click here to access BillDay.com via WAP. Same functionality as before, nothing fancy.
I’ve also installed the Search Docs plugin recommended by WordPress installation docs. It give you quick access to all the WP Codex docs from every page in the admin interface. Nice!
There are a bunch of other plugins I’m considering. Let me know if you have a favorite I should be sure to check out.
It’s been a long time coming but I’m finally getting around to upgrading my WordPress installation to 1.5.2.
Right now I have things running similarly to my pre-cutover site. I have made some minor tweaks here and there (new “bubble” style blockquotes, some color change experiments, rerrangement of edit link and permalink to end of each post, etc.), and I’ve also broken a few things (such as WAP access) which I’ll be fixing in short order. I’m looking forward to exploring the various WP plug-ins and all the new features they enable, too.
Watch for additional changes and features in coming days.
Googler’s have been blogging for a while now, so it’s about time they have a Google Blog Search. Besides the basic search form, you can also click to conduct an advanced blog search or read the FAQ here.
Of course Technorati and others have been slaving away at this for a long time, but better late than never, right?
Leave me a comment to let me know what you favorite blog search tool(s) is.
Nokia has joined the Eclipse Foundation as a Strategic Developer and Board Member.
This should come as no surprise given Nokia-Eclipse news over the last year or so. Nonetheless, important stuff for wireless developers to note concerning future tool trends, methinks.
Nokia has announced a Music Pack to further sweeten the MP3 player capabilities of compatible Pop-port enabled handsets. Visit the Music Pack homepage or read the specs and FAQ.
What you get in the pack:
- Nokia Audio Adapter AD-15 (lets you plug in standard 3.5mm headphones)
- Nokia 256MB MMCmobile card MU-9 (you can up this yourself to 1GB RS-MMC if you need more space for tunes)
- Nokia Stereo Audio Cable CA-72U (converts the Audio Adapter output into RCA connectors to plug into a stereo system)
- Nokia USB MMC/SD reader DD-10 (an MMC and SD card reader, for loading tunes onto the RS-MMC card)
Music Pack has apparently only been announced for EMEA availability so far, but marry the pack with a 1GB RS-MMC and a 6630 or 6682, though, and you’re getting awfully close to what I believe a successful cellpod needs.
Is this a carefully timed response to ROKR E1 destined to be available in other geos too sometime soon? You be the judge.
Following up on my ongoing love affair with cellpods:
Apple and Moto recently launched the ROKR line of cellpods with ROKR E1, the world’s first iTunes enabled cellpod.
This much anticipated gadget promises basic iPod playback functionality built into an entry level but functional GSM-based, Bluetooth-enabled cellcam. On the surface this seems to be a great opportunity to converge two of the devices you might be lugging around (cell phone and MP3 player) into one smaller, svelter luggable (cellpod). Before I jumped in to buy one, however, I revisited the criteria I’m looking for from a cellpod. From my earlier “What cellpods need” post:
- simple external music controls
- reasonable music fidelity
- at least 1-2GB storage available for songs
Although ROKR E1 does provide an iTunes button making music access fairly straightforward and has reasonable sound quality both with the built-in speakers and provided earbuds, it fails on available storage. No matter how much flash memory one might have available in the phone, E1 is currently limited to 100 songs maximum. 100 songs maximum…I have more than 100 songs just from U2!
This seems crazy to me. Why limit the number of songs so severely? I suppose Apple and Moto are testing the ROKR waters with this first model, but with tiny dedicated music players such as the simultaneously launched iPod Nano able to store up to 4GB of music (my entire MP3 collection is under 3GB), why would I bother with ROKR E1?
My recommendation: Wait for a future ROKR model with Nano-like storage before jumping on the iTunes cellpod bandwagon. (If you just can’t wait, however, Amazon has a pretty good deal on E1 with new Cingular activation.)
Here ye, here ye, wireless developers: RIM and Handango are holding a game development contest for BlackBerry.
Prizes include money, Handango promotion of winning apps, and BlackBerry devices along with plaque, other promotion, etc.
Heck, it might be worth winning just to get something with that witty BlackBerry pith helmet logo on it. 🙂
(Thanks to Eric Giguere for calling this to my attention)
It’s been a long strange road these last five months, but I’m finally back online blogging on BillDay.com.
During that time I’ve been sick at Breckenridge, camped through a downpour at Buffalo National River, hiked in southeastern Oklahoma, flown out to California to interview for a remote work position that was a dead-end, been to zoos and aquariums and wildlife expos and powwows, and celebrated a number of birthdays and family firsts.
All of that, of course, pales in comparison to Katrina. Many needs are still acute. Please help however you can.
BillDay.com 