mapping

Today's the big day. Whether you're looking for help with last-minute research on local races, or need help finding your polling place, read on for a guide to the best online resources available.   We'll also tell you what to do if you run into problems at the polls.

First off, do your homework - it's not too late! While your local paper is a great place to start for information on races beyond the presidential campaigns, you can also find a host of information on local races and ballot initiatives at the Project Vote Smart Web site. For a complete list of newspaper endorsements big and small, check out Editor and Publisher's tally.  more

One week ago tomorrow Hurricane Ike slammed into the Gulf Coast, knocking out power for over 4.5 million people in the Houston and Galveston, Texas areas.

As Hurricane Ike was slowly crossing Houston I checked HoustonPBS's Web site to see what the station was doing (I have family who live in Houston so I was looking for any and all information I could find). HoustonPBS had already put up a banner at the top of their site linking to a small Web page full of information and resources for their audience. more

Two political encores of interest this week, both released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License that allows users to share and remix content, giving attribution and sharing the newly remixed work with the same license:more

In recent weeks, University of Brighton professor Tara Brarbazon has described Google as "white bread for the mind," bemoaning students' inability to vet online sources found in search engine result lists.

Brabazon's concern is that every piece of online information seems equally valid to her students, who are, she more