Monday, January 03, 2005
Tsunami videos on the Internet
Hello good morning and welcome to the very first Cybersurf of 2005! Yes your very own weekly web site review program is back on the air and full of energy for the New Year.
As the year begins, many of us are still reeling from the shock of the earthquake and the subsequent tsunami that claimed the lives of so many thousands of people just after Christmas. It is impossible to celebrate a new year when so many families are mourning the loss of their loved ones, or trying to stay alive amid such devastation.
The Internet has been extremely useful in helping people come to grips with the disaster and to understand what caused the immense human tragedy.
There are scores of sites that try to coordinate relief efforts, that disseminate news about the catastrophe and that try to explain what happened.
I am not going to be able to give all the addresses here on air, but I will post this script, together with many relevant addresses on the sabcnews.com site and the cybersurf blog – which you can find at cybersurf.blogspot.com.
Personally I have spent many hours watching video clips online of the tsunami battering various coastlines. Many holiday makers have put their home videos online to show the rest of us the incredible power of the waves that destroyed so many lives.
However, video clips generally use quite a lot of bandwidth and as bandwidth in South Africa is so restricted and expensive it takes quite a long time to download a two or three minute video clip.
On the other hand, some people who have put video clips on their personal sites have suddenly been hit with huge bills for bandwidth costs. One particular site – punditguy.com – has collected videos from several other sites and then allowed them to be downloaded from one place – Punditguy then got hit with a one thousand dollar bill for bandwidth costs.
He has subsequently put up an appeal on for donations – he says – he will use half of all the donations to cover the bandwidth costs and the other half he will send to the Red Cross relief effort.
A well-known tv and new media site called the lost remote has even made an appeal to ISPs to give discusounts to blogs and web sites that have been showing tsunami videos.
The best scientific explanation of how the earthquake caused the tsunami is on the US Geological Survey Site – you should type in www.usgs.gov let me repeat that one usgs.gov.
It is truly a fanstastic site with all you could ever wish to know about earthquakes and tsunamis. It has a special section, including an FAQ and an animation about the December 26 mega thrust earthquake.
The site also has several, up-to-the-minute lists of all earthquakes taking place all around the world, and it is quite scary to learn that since the big one there have been dozens of after-shock earthquakes in the Sumatra region measuring more than five on the Richter scale.
So as we close off today’s Cybersurf, let us hope that future editions will deal with happier issues.
And remember that I will post this script together with many useful links about the tsunami on Cybersurf.Blogspot.com and on SABCnews.com.
Thanks for listening and till next week, remember to keep on surfing.
As the year begins, many of us are still reeling from the shock of the earthquake and the subsequent tsunami that claimed the lives of so many thousands of people just after Christmas. It is impossible to celebrate a new year when so many families are mourning the loss of their loved ones, or trying to stay alive amid such devastation.
The Internet has been extremely useful in helping people come to grips with the disaster and to understand what caused the immense human tragedy.
There are scores of sites that try to coordinate relief efforts, that disseminate news about the catastrophe and that try to explain what happened.
I am not going to be able to give all the addresses here on air, but I will post this script, together with many relevant addresses on the sabcnews.com site and the cybersurf blog – which you can find at cybersurf.blogspot.com.
Personally I have spent many hours watching video clips online of the tsunami battering various coastlines. Many holiday makers have put their home videos online to show the rest of us the incredible power of the waves that destroyed so many lives.
However, video clips generally use quite a lot of bandwidth and as bandwidth in South Africa is so restricted and expensive it takes quite a long time to download a two or three minute video clip.
On the other hand, some people who have put video clips on their personal sites have suddenly been hit with huge bills for bandwidth costs. One particular site – punditguy.com – has collected videos from several other sites and then allowed them to be downloaded from one place – Punditguy then got hit with a one thousand dollar bill for bandwidth costs.
He has subsequently put up an appeal on for donations – he says – he will use half of all the donations to cover the bandwidth costs and the other half he will send to the Red Cross relief effort.
A well-known tv and new media site called the lost remote has even made an appeal to ISPs to give discusounts to blogs and web sites that have been showing tsunami videos.
The best scientific explanation of how the earthquake caused the tsunami is on the US Geological Survey Site – you should type in www.usgs.gov let me repeat that one usgs.gov.
It is truly a fanstastic site with all you could ever wish to know about earthquakes and tsunamis. It has a special section, including an FAQ and an animation about the December 26 mega thrust earthquake.
The site also has several, up-to-the-minute lists of all earthquakes taking place all around the world, and it is quite scary to learn that since the big one there have been dozens of after-shock earthquakes in the Sumatra region measuring more than five on the Richter scale.
So as we close off today’s Cybersurf, let us hope that future editions will deal with happier issues.
And remember that I will post this script together with many useful links about the tsunami on Cybersurf.Blogspot.com and on SABCnews.com.
Thanks for listening and till next week, remember to keep on surfing.
Links:
Relief Agencies:
Video Material:
Earthquakes:
All about Tsunamis:
- International Tsunami Information Center
- Tsunami Research Program
- Tsunamis - Technical Hazard Sheet - Natural Disaster Profile - World Health Organisation
Areas affected:
