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Pending Doom for Analog Television
Wilmington, NC TV Market Debuts Switch to Digital TV
Five local stations begins broadcasting only digital signals at noon on Sept. 8.

FCC Mandates Feb. 17, 2009 as Shutdown Day for Analog Television

The Clock Is Counting Down to a Digital TV World
Keep Abreast of the fast moving world of HDTV with HDTV Magazine
The 2009 deadline will not affect the vast majority of Americans who already subscribe to cable or
satellite TV. But households relying on an antenna to receive "over-the-air" analog broadcasts must
acquire a digital tuner to continue receiving TV shows.
 

As Seen on TV:
www.dtvanswers.com

www.dtvtranstion.org

               

Starting Jan. 1, 2008, all U.S. households will be eligible to request up to two coupons, worth $40
each, to be used toward the purchase of converter boxes. Consumers will be able to apply for coupons
through a website, via a toll-free phone number, or by regular mail. The NTIA is expected to begin
mailing out the coupons in mid-February, 2008. The coupons must be redeemed within three months
of receipt.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is responsible for
administering the Converter Box Coupon Program (Coupon Program).

Do You Still Have Digital TV Questions?
This website has answers.
 

Websites of the Month
November
Earth911
Yep, we're still looking at green sites. This month's home page features composting for your garden
which I've been doing for years. But what is really interesting is in their "In The News" section are
various items of interest especially recycling electronics programs. As most of you folks know, I'm
into electronics and this article explains how it's easier than in the past to recycle old electronics - not just PCs and monitors but also printers, LCD screens, digital cameras and even those old video
game consoles. It's easier now to help keep these and other toxic products out of the landfills and
this site has links to sites to help you keep our earth green. Reduce, reuse and recycle.
http://earth911.com

Environment-Green
This site basically explains the facts and benefits of recycling as well as other areas of knowledge
not included in earth911 above. So if you're not convinced to recycle, do the earth good by visiting
this site.
http://www.environment-green.com

Newseum
Yep! That's a new word and a new museum. Read historic headlines, read today's front pages, there's
even a virtual tour you can take. Looking for Pulitzer Prize photographs? Well, this place has it. Even
ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos airs every Sunday from the Newseum. If you are
in the DC area, you really need to make the time to visit this museum.
http://www.newseum.org

October
BOINC (
means compute for science)
You think I mean BOING? No, I said BOINC. You think I meant BOEING, hey...or BOOING. No...BOINC!
Ok, so what's the deal, you say, eh? Yep, it's BOINC time for your PC. When you have your PC on to
do a little work, the CPU is idling more than it's working. You know your PC is idling when you walk
away from it or even when your PC screensaver kicks in. Believe it or not, when your PC is on, it is
sitting there waiting to do something while it is using or wasting your electricity. So, make your
idling PC do something useful, like doing something for mankind. This is where BOINC comes in.

OK, I bet you have seen seti@home sometime within the last 5 years or so. BOINC is actually an
an interface or program that is an 'ambassador' between your PC's idleness and research. In this
case, BOINC was started by Berkley University's seti@home project. It's a free download.

SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)...namely radio noise, more organized, like earth's TV signals
beamed to satellites.

During the initial set-up, you sign up and select the projects you want your PC to research on. All 3
of my PCs run seti@home and one of the 3 also runs einstein@home, which BOINC alternates every
hour. Another PC also researches orbit@home although there's no tasks available at the moment.

If you use more than one PC, be sure you use the same e-mail address and password in order to be
counted as one but receive all credits from your PCs.

On two of my PCs, I have BOINC as the screensaver. On my 3rd PC, which is a Linux, BOINC runs
but right now the screensaver section hasn't picked it up yet. So until I figure that out, stay with
BOINC without Linux. There is a BOINC for Apple/MAC, you'd have to click here and scroll down to
Mac OS X and go from there. For detailed work, I can't help you, but if you want to add your experience here, please do so.

For 5 years, yes, 5 years I've been meaning to research seti/BONIC and feature the application here,
so now you have it.

September
The presidential race created new "voices" which makes you wonder why these environmental
folks did not actually run for President or even be chosen as a running mate:
T. Boone Pickens
Now this guy makes a lot of sense...common sense about getting us off of foreign oil. I don't
care what party he is affiliated with, I want him as President.
www.pickensplan.com

We
No one individual is featured here nor one is mentioned on this site. This website has the same
ideals as the Pickens Plan above. Their ads didn't run as often as Pickens but it generated just as
much interest.
www.wecansolveit.com

August
Go Green
See green, grow green, be green, and read green...read all about being green, nowadays everyone's
talking about helping the environment. This is mostly a eco-news site...here's a few of the headlines
to give you an idea: Did We Really Drive 9.6 Billion Miles Less In May Than Last Year?; MSN Releases
Its List Of Top Hybrid Vehicles; Local Company Donates Energy Services for “Extreme Makeover”
House.
In the recycling section, here's what I found: How Does This 1980s Truck Go 150 Miles On
Just 50 Cents?; Al Gore’s Challenge — Can America Meet It?; Recycling Electronics; Online Group
Swaps Items To Save Landfill Space
and they even have a Tip of the Day section...although some of
the articles are related for the Research Triangle Area, you should be able to find similarities by
googling these subjects for your area.
http://blogs.wncn.info/green/

Italians vs the rest of Europe
John sent this in and we thought to share this because of the kind of humor and art work displayed.
Hilarious!!! http://tcc.itc.it/people/rocchi/fun/europe.html

Photo Sharing on the 'Net
Last June, Lee and Mary Beth went west and took extensive photos of their trip. She had this great
idea to post these pictures on the web herself without any problems. There are several photo
sharing websites out there but shutterfly is the one Mary Beth choose. Shutterfly has the true
benefit of photo processing. Select the pictures you want in prints and go to Target and pick them
up...free! Go to Mary Beth's page to see her collection. She put in a lot of interesting pictures of
her trip.
 

If you have a favorite website, please e-mail them to  with the
subject "Website of the Month" and we'll check it out and post them here. Please no commercial sites
unless it's really interesting.

Previous Websites of the Month can be found here.

Check back often!
This page is a work in progress, which means, the internet is always changing and expanding,
therefore, this page may have links added, updated and/or deleted. I am hoping that this page will
grow with input from you so that you can use this page as a reference.

I used to say that I'm surfing on the net with two PCs simultaneously, but now I have modified my
setups so that I am using two monitors on each of my workhorse computers. One computer is used
for webmastering, graphics, surfing, researching, e-mailing, etc and the other is for audio work, such
as archiving audio tapes, recording music files, archiving data files, burning CDs/DVDs, recovering lost
data off of other people's dead hard drives as well as helping me to repair other folks dead PCs.

So I'm going to take advantage of this page and help ya'll be savvy with your own PCs and internet
surfing. Oh, by the way, don't let me do all the work, send me your favorite websites!

Hurricane Katrina
has impacted just about everyone in the United States especially us Deafies.
We need to prepare ourselves for these dangers. Trudy Suggs offers suggestions to help you prepare
in the event disaster strikes in her Cultural Perspective article in i711.com. To view these and other
articles you must register, free, on i711.com.

TDI (Telecommunication for the Deaf, Inc.) has appointed Trudy Suggs as National Public Relations
Specialist for Community Emergency Preparedness Information Network Project which is funded by
the Department of Homeland Security and coordinated by TDI. (Click here to go to the CEPIN
website). Trudy wanted to share the first issue concerning emergency kits. Please click here to see
News and Updates as well as to download the "Are You Ready" newsletter in PDF format.

Note to ALL VRS Users:
On January 26, 2005, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released public documents
that make clear that video relay providers may no longer use certain marketing and call handling
practices to try to get your business. Click here, to find out what is now prohibited...

ASL Sites:
There are many web sites devoted to the ASL as a language; here are a few of them:

Take me to the ASL Browser
This is an excellent site to learn ASL. Click on the link "Take me to the ASL Browser". This page has
in alphabetical order a list of words which you click on and it shows a video clip of how to sign that
word. Needless to say, the page also has video clips on signing the alphabet.

The FAED Eagle website has been shutdown and while researching for it's new location, I found
this site. It has tons and tons of ASL and Deaf links.
Grab a cup of coffee and do click on http://www.aslclub.org
(BTW, FAED's site was shutdown on, 08/01/03).

This is another page with links to ASL sites:
http://babel.uoregon.edu/yamada/guides/asl.html

The Talking Hands ASL website is kinda nifty. The homepage has a sign langauge toolbar that
you can download. Their product page has a bumper stickers promoting ASL and Deaf Pride, as
well as cards and a coffee cup promoting ASL. At the bottom of their pages are links to download
ASL wallpapers and more Deaf links.

Deaf Websites:
There are about 185+ Deaf websites out there. Some are now down, some are
in the process of re-work, and some now charge a fee. What I've done here
is listed the most informative ones, in no specific order:

NCSD Museum

DeafWebsites.com a comprehensive listing of Deaf websites.

National Theatre of the Deaf: www.ntd.org

The USA Deaf Sports Federation
(USADSF) Website:
www.usadsf.org

Deaf Life Magazine: www.deaflife.com

Everything You Wanted to Know About Deafness - DEAF-INFO Web Site. ...
What will you do? The Deaf Employee. ... Home to a mailing list about deafness,
as well as information and links to other deaf resources:
www.zak.co.il/deaf-info/old/home.html

Extensive directory to just about every aspect of deaf culture, including education,
schools, reference...www.deaflinx.com


An internet shopping mall for the Deaf!
www.deafmall.net

Promoting Equal Access in Telecommunications and Media for People Who are Deaf,
Late-Deafened, Hard-of-Hearing, an national organization engaging in
telecommunications advocacy for deaf and hard of hearing people:
www.tdi-online.org

Welcome to DeafZONE:
www.deafzone.com

Closed Captioning Faq
, an extensive information site about closed captioning
on television, HDTV and the internet. As of January 2008 "FAQ" page has been converted to a website
http://www.captioncentral.com/

To quell the rumors: Captioning Is NOT Going Away:
http://www.robson.org/gary/captioning/rumor-killer.html - this page is not available on this site as of
June 2004.
Webmaster's Note: This was originally posted in August 2002 and was featured as a Website of the
Month selection for February 2004.

For a list of Schools for the Deaf in the USA
http://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu/InfoToGo/schools-usa.html
Thanks to: Berry & Martha Hamrick

AOL's Hometown
pages has over 200 individuals/groups with their own web pages relating to
various areas of Deaf cultures ranging from personal pages, various Deaf clubs, services for the
Deaf, etc. You'll have to make time to visit these pages. There's a lot of stuff out there. Type in
deaf in the search & explore box in this page:
http://hometown.aol.com

Here's two that I found interesting:
http://hometown.aol.com/cculber007/myhomepage/deaf.html

Lanny's Brown Eagle Page: Bottom of this page has additional
links to deaf sites:
http://hometown.aol.com/lepickering/eagle.html

National Association of the Deaf's website
http://www.nad.org

Berry has found a search engine with a tremendous wealth of Deaf related websites:
http://bigtome.com/big/page?search=deaf

Of course, just keying in www.deaf.com will take you to the owners of the Deaf Life publication
site giving you a choice to go to 6 other websites.

And www.deaf.net is "just getting back online".


Deaf Expo is a show where venders and companies selling equipment and items for the Deaf get
together inside a large building so Deafies can see what's for sale that would enhance their everyday
living. These shows are located in California and due to organizational restructuring there were no
shows produced in 2005 and no shows are planned for 2006. This group is not associated with The
DeafNation Expo mention in the next paragraph below.
Click on http://www.deafexpo.com/ for further updates.

The DeafNation Expo website marvels the community with:
-  Video Clip News/Sports coverage are done in Sign Language
-  Countless Special Coverage at events that are now history
-  Hosting the DeafNation Expo at 12 different cities
-  Sponsors are clearly visible on the web
-  And even better, the audience has been paying attention to every step they make…
http://www.deafnation.com
And don't forget the DeafNation Expo in Greensboro on February 23rd.
                                                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Video Relay
Convenient, reliable internet & video relay service 24 hrs a day, 365 days a year through Sprint at:
www.sprintrelayonline.com & www.usavrs.com

Free online text and video relay calls are just a click away.
Simply go to www.att.com/relay and start calling.

2003 Bad Year for Deaf Football Teams
The 2003 football season seems to be bad one for the football teams at Gallaudet University and at
some residential schools for the deaf.
 
Kentucky School for the Deaf has dropped this sport. 
 
Indiana School for the Deaf played one game and suspended this sport for the remainder of the
season.
 
Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf , also dropped due to not enough players, shut it down for
the season.
 
Also Phoenix Day School for the Deaf has made  it a two-game season, forfeiting the rest of their
scheduled games.. 
 
What about Gallaudet University? Every year  turnout 50-55 players had signed up. This season only
have 40 players to play....
 
Hope 2004 season will be much better>>?????????????
 
From: DavnCher@aol.com
Sun, 30 Nov 2003 19:47:29 EST

Internet:
Dsl Reports tests and compares your internet connection. Cable modem users, please be aware
that your speeds may fluctuate wildly depending on where you live and time of day during test:
http://www.dslreports.com/stest?loc=2

Do your part in stopping e-rumors by visiting these sites:
http://www.truthorfiction.com
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org

This is a very interesting reading about e-mail viruses that I want to share:
http://www.worldstart.com/guides/virus1.htm
 

PC Tips:
For an excellent source of computing and internet tips, check out:
www.worldstart.com
 
Check out free and free to try software to download:
www.zdnet.com

Ye Ode Webmaster's Own PC Tech Files
I can brag big time, only because I can. I have a PC tips website because lots of folks asks me about
how to do this and how to do that, what's the best way to do this and what's the best way to do that.
So, after accumulating a large number of e-mails over the past 10 odd years advising these folks how
to maintain their computers, I decided to funnel all my tips to this website. It's still being updated every
now and then when I'm not working on NCSD1970, but still, it offers a bunch of tips to enjoy your PC
without any outlay of your hard earned $$$$. How kewl is that?
http://www.latkowski.info/techfiles.htm
 
Got chat? AIM? MSN? Yahoo's? How about IRC? ICQ? Fills up your desktop, doesn't it? Well,
roll your own. Roll it all together into one chat messenger and save your PC's resources at the
same time. Get Trillian instant messenger. Once you have it set up, all your instant messengers
are online at once and controlled by one program with the same if not more features than your
old chat messengers. Well, don't let me explain the details, hop on over to
www.ceruleanstudios.com and check it out! Kewl, eh?  Click on the link and then click on
Downloads. Then click on Download Trillian Basic and start saving your desktop resources.

And for Mac OS X, take look at Fire here: http://fire.sourceforge.net/
The best thing - both programs are free!
 

Tech Tip 1:
Do you want to be alerted of any type of emergencies such as Severe Weather Warnings,
Homeland Security threat level upgrades or downgrades, natural disasters, health alerts, etc.? Tired
of the special reports coming on TV and having to get someone hearing to tell you what is going on?
Worry no more. Go to http://www.emergencyemail.org/ and sign up for email alerts to be sent to
your email or your wireless device to be alerted 24/7! This service is free.

Tech Tip 2:
Ever get frustrated that your computer beeps to get your attention? Both Windows XP and Mac
OS X are deaf friendly. They know how to get your attention if you are unable to hear the system
beeps, but you need to turn this feature on first. To enable this under Windows XP, go to Start,
then Control Panel, then Accessibility Options. Click on the Sound tab, then make sure the box
next to "Use SoundSentry" is checked.

You can select the type of visual warning you want in the drop box on the next line. When you are
done, click on the "Apply" button on the bottom of the window.

For Mac OS X, you will need to open System Preferences, then click on Universal Access. After
clicking on the  Hearing tab, make sure the box next to "Flash the screen whenever an alert sound
occurs" is checked. You can test it using the button on the next line, "Flash Screen".
Ryan Layton - DeafTECH Editor:

Webmaster's Note: The above Tech Tips are but two of the many Tech Tips that Mr. Layton
contributes to the DEAFDIGEST weekly newsletters. He has his own website featuring his reviews
of wireless technology for the Deaf.
                                                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am in the process of splitting this page in two, but it will be an ongoing process, the other half
is here.

Websites of the Month Archives
2008's Websites of the Month can be viewed
here.
2007's Websites of the Month can be viewed
here.
2006's Websites of the Month can be viewed
here.
2005's Websites of the Month can be viewed here.

2004's Websites of the Month can be viewed here.

Please report any dead links, your comments (hopefully good, but I will welcome and accept any
criticism, with the right to reprint your comments, elsewhere on this website) to make your webpage
the best class website on the web. Email to:

Links to other sites do not necessarily represent endorsement by NCSD Class of 1970 or Latkowski
Web Design. These pages look best when viewed on my computers over at my house.



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This page was last updated on 11/11/2008.

                                


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