The recent terror attacks in New York and Washington produced unprecedented demands on the World Wide Web, as millions around the world turned to the Net to get the latest news about the terror onslaught.
Unfortunately, many got something else, as well: rumors and urban legends, packaged and distributed as news. A lot of those rumors just added to the fear that washed across the nation.
A site that has taken the lead in separating fact from fiction on the Web has set up a special page to deal with the countless stories that have circulated since the attacks.
On the Urban Legends Reference Pages, you’ll learn the truth about the guy who reportedly floated down from the top of the World Trade Center on a piece of debris. You can also read about the origins of the popular, but untrue, story that CNN faked the video footage of Palestinians cheering the destruction.
From the main page, click on the link to information about the bombings. And while you’re visiting, check out the sober, interesting treatment of all kinds of urban legends and rumors. It’s at www.snopes2.com
Also check out TruthOrFiction.Com for a similar collection of attack-related rumors, at www.truthorfiction.com
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If there’s one thing Jewish cyberspace has in abundance, it’s sites aimed at improving outreach to teens and those just past their teens. Unfortunately, most of them — designed and written by outreach professionals — are a snooze for savvy kids.
Teen to Teen is different — a somewhat amateurish but interesting site in Israel that uses the writings of teenagers themselves to foster an international sense of community.
The site is built on the familiar e-zine format. An opening page is a kind of table of contents, pointing the way to a number of feature articles.
A recent issue included a “journal” entry by a Canadian teen detailing his feelings about the recent World Trade Center attacks, an affecting story by the son of a mixed marriage who was taking the “Long Road to Judaism” and a guide for teens who want to become active in the effort to win freedom for Israeli MIAs.
There’s also a cute submission about golfer Tiger Woods and about his sport as a model for life, and a modest jokes section.
The difference here: the lack of the usual preachy tone. The peer to-peer quality makes for a direct, personal quality that probably magnifies its impact.
Only one complaint: the exceptionally irritating music that loads when you arrive at the home page. Give it a rest, guys.
Teen to Teen is at www.ttt.org.il
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One of the miracles of the World Wide Web is that it provides a partial antidote to the rootlessness of our world. Search engines make it relatively easy to locate the people we’ve left behind; e-mail, in so many cases, makes it possible to re-establish contact.
Now there’s a Jewish search engine designed to help reconnect people. But there’s a catch: The only people who will turn up when you search on a name are others who have registered.
JewishGEO is designed primarily to help Jews around the world locate lost family members.
To use JewishGEO, you have to go through the free registration process, which puts your name and vital statistics into the database, so others can find you.
To search, you simply enter a name and any other identifying information you may have, such as year and town of birth or “keywords” people have entered in their registration profiles.
Once you locate people through the JewishGEO home page, you can send them e-mail, using an internal mail system that protects your privacy.
There are also “memory boards” that let you share your memories about the people and places in your past — and read what others have to say.
The site is well designed and easy to use; the registration process is relatively painless, and it lets you choose not to get promotional material from the site owners — always a good idea if you don’t want a clogged mailbox.
Let’s be blunt; this is a service with tons of potential, but realizing that potential will require building up the database fast. If you like what you see, register and spread the word. If enough people do that, the site will reach a critical mass that will make it genuinely useful. If not, it will be just another dead-end on the Information Superhighway.
JewishGEO has a long way to go. A recent search on the surname “Cohen” turned up only four names worldwide. A phone directory in almost any city in America could do much better than that.
It’s at www.jewishGEO.com