Seemingly anytime there’s been a major disaster in the world, amateur radios have been used by emergency officials to communicate and coordinate response. Because of that, the Logan, UT Police Department and Logan City School District are teaming up to install ham radios in each of the city’s nine schools.
Read (The Herald Journal)
I tried to get Google Desktop to index my shared documents folder. I tried adding to the list of folders that get indexed. It said it was indexed, but it wasn’t.
I then tried mapping the shared documents folder to a drive letter and then adding the new drive letter to the list of folders that get indexed. That worked! Yes!!
Morgue workers are using RFID chips — either implanted directly into the corpse or placed in the body bag — to keep track of the scores of unidentified remains as the hunt for relatives continues.
Read (AP via WTOP)
Organic farms don’t have to be in bucolic settings. They could stand alongside skyscrapers in the middle of Tokyo or Los Angeles, if a Delaware company has its way.
Read (Wired)
A nuclear engineering professor wants to develop a way to identify a bomb from 200 yards and detect roadside explosives without having to stop. The goal is to protect troops from improvised explosive devices.
Read (AP via Wired)
Energy-efficient cars from 10 countries started the World Solar Challenge on Sunday, a 1,190-mile race from Darwin in Australia’s north to Adelaide in the south.
Read (AP via WTOP)
Inventors show off machines that climb walls, change shape and chase people around the room. But a new report finds U.S. funding for civilian robotics research is dwindling.
Read (Wired)
Dratted technology forces sandwich and ice cream franchises to discontinue their customer-appreciation programs. What’s a card-carrying customer to do?
Read (Wired)
Modifications can give some cars 50 to 60 gas-free miles after a night’s charging. With gasoline hovering near $3 a gallon, several companies are beginning to back the idea of plugging cars into the electrical grid.
Read (Christian Science Monitor)
Computer World has a 3-part series about how Ham Radio is being used to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
[Part 1](http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/technology/story/0,10801,104446,00.html): Ham radio operator heads south to aid post-Katrina communications
[Part 2](http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/recovery/story/0,10801,104476,00.html?SKC=recovery-104476): Volunteer radio op coordinates equipment donations
[Part 3](http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/technology/story/0,10801,104536,00.html?SKC=technology-104536): One volunteer sleeps next to his radio
With Hurricane Katrina having knocked out nearly all the high-end emergency communications gear, 911 centers, cellphone towers and normal fixed phone lines in its path, ham-radio operators have begun to fill the information vacuum. In an age of high-tech gadgetry, it’s the decidedly unsexy ham radio that is in high demand in ravaged New Orleans and environs.
Read (Wall Street Journal)
As gasoline prices vault to well over $3 a gallon in many parts of the United States, some gas retailers are turning customers away because their pumps can’t be set above $3.
Read (Reuters)
The government is calling on the American Red Cross to take on a technological challenge the dimensions of which it has never before confronted. The Federal Emergency Management Agency told the organization to set up Internet kiosks in nearly 200 shelters scattered across the hurricane-stricken Gulf Coast, many of them still without power. It must put in a phone system so that people displaced by the storm can report that they’re alive, and it is expected to create a digital mortuary to gather the names of the dead.
Read (Washington Post)
Emergency workers in Louisiana are scrambling to restore communication outlets into the devastated regions. NPR reports on what officials are doing to help victims contact loved ones and why wireless devices have stopped working in the region.
Read (NPR)
Ham radio still works.
The levee that gave way and led to the flooding of New Orleans was part of an intricate, aging system of barriers and pumps.
Read (New York Times)