“If you work for The Sun Herald, please contact the paper to let us know where you are.”

After some difficulty, the paper has posted aerial photos of Biloxi. And then there’s this editorial, with that classic Southern outrage: “We are not calling on the nation and the state to make life more comfortable in South Mississippi, we are calling on the nation and the state to make life here possible.”

A new online service that lets borrowers download free digital audiobooks at home using their West Palm Beach Public Library cards is keeping librarians online, on the phone and on their toes.

From July 1, when the service became available to library users, until July 19, only 77 users took advantage of it, Collins said. But since a Palm Beach Post article highlighting the innovation appeared Tuesday morning, another 77 borrowers have downloaded titles in the next two days alone.

And librarians have answered more than 160 phone calls from people wanting a library card, said research librarian Marsha Warfield.

Even better is that the WPB library will issue a library card to anyone in the world who provides a valid ID. Only down side is that the audiobooks, which are usable for 21-day periods, don’t play on iPods. Yet.

West Palm, where I lived from 1995-1997, also has free public Wi-Fi access downtown.

I rarely got spam on an e-mail address that I generally protect from Internet exposure. I’ve had that address for five years. Several weeks ago my daughter e-mailed me links to two New York Times articles, using that address. Instead of manually cutting and pasting the URLs for the articles, she used their “Send This Story To A Friend” link.

I now get a dozen spam e-mails a day at that address. The bastards.

Interesting reading: Why China can’t invade Taiwan for 10 years, by Michael O’Hanlon.

The Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers (NFL), Phoenix Suns (NBA) and Arizona Diamonbacks (MLB) all have contributed soft money to national political parties this year. All teams from smallish markets, except maybe the Eagles. And the Diamondbacks just needed to borrow $20 million to meet operating costs. It does make you wonder.

By the way, found that on Ed Zuckerman’s new EditorsWeb site, which gathers press releases from federal government agencies and Congressional offices. It’s in testing now, but should be officially launched soon. I just hope the poor guy isn’t building the list of links by hand!

The fact is that nearly all of us have done this either to our friends or colleagues at some point. We cuss, maybe we change email programs (I use Poco now) and we move on. Backup and move on.

“Prime ministers and presidents do not need to know how to write Java code, but they must have the basic familiarity with technology that comes from using computers and the Internet in their daily lives. Bosses whose idea of using e-mail is to get their assistants to provide printouts are ill-equipped to lead the transformation of their firms into e-businesses. They do not know the right questions to ask, and lack credibility with employees. The same applies to senior politicians.”

The notion of a federal Yahoo!, as it were, isn’t a bad one; the feds have even tried to do it before. But until the government can attract and retain good IT employees and streamline its various systems and processes into a workable load, a bunch of links is about all we can expect.

What a relief.

Those of us who have actually followed the stumbling of this company since 1995 should only be surprised that Lycos finally realized that since it wasn’t doing such a bang-up job, maybe it should just stop. At one point, around 1997 or so, the company had a pretty cool search engine and a Java-heavy interface that produced some interesting (if not always accurate) results. Since then the dedication to the original technology (and even the idea of being a true search engine) has fallen aside while portal-mania has grown. At least now Lycos can blame someone else if the engine sucks.