Gustav’s effect on Baton Rouge could be messy

A direct hit or near hit on Baton Rouge from a powerful Hurricane Gustav would not be catastrophic, though it would be a mess, says Dane Dartez, a research associate with the LSU Hurricane Center.

The Capital Region, being more than 60 miles from the coast, doesn't have to worry about a storm surge, though the Mississippi River would rise because of pressure on the river from the south, while homes in low-lying areas would flood from heavy rainfall. Dartez particularly cites development along the low-elevation Maurepas Swamp region in Ascension Parish as being vulnerable to flooding. The likely scenario for the Baton Rouge region could be similar to the drenching Tropical Storm Allison delivered in 2001, but with stronger, damaging winds. Expect downed trees and power lines, and the inconvenience of being without power, possibly for several days, if Gustav strikes the Capital Region.


—Steve Clark
:: Baton Rouge Business Report :: Daily Report

Will History Repeat Itself?

National Guard troops stand ready, batteries and water bottles are selling briskly, and one small-town mayor has spent a sleepless night worrying. The New Orleans area is skittishly watching as a storm marches across the Caribbean on the eve of Hurricane Katrina's third anniversary.

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Hurricane Prep: Get a Game Plan

Get A Game Plan - www.getagameplan.org

Louisiana Gov. Jindal urges residents to prepare for Gustav

During a news conference in Baton Rouge on Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Bobby Jindal shared that concern and urged Louisiana residents to start preparing for the worst. Jindal emphasized that although there is still a lot of uncertainty in the track Gustav could take, it’s not too early for families to make sure they’re prepared.

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Never Lose an Email Again

From the Official Gmail Blog: How to find any email with Gmail search

The sight of someone scrolling through hundreds of email messages trying to find a specific one is like fingers on a chalkboard for me. With a few tricks, you can use Gmail to find the exact message you're looking for, without all the scrolling.

If you don't get a ton of mail, just typing in the words you're looking for usually does the trick. I can just type lisa in the search box and get all of the messages from my friend Lisa, southwest to bring up my ticket confirmations, or "bank statement" to help get my finances in order.

But the real power of Gmail search lies in search operators -- words that help modify your queries. Search operators work pretty much the same way within Gmail as they do for Google. So, if I want the email Lisa sent me with her flight information so I know when to pick her up at the airport, I type from:lisa SFO. Likewise:

• A link from my co-worker Michael: from:michael http
• A photo from my mom: from:mom has:attachment
• That last chat I had with one of the Gmail product managers: keith is:chat
• All messages from ebay that aren't outbid notices: ebay -outbid (the hyphen tells Gmail to return all of the messages that don't contain the word that follows it)
• The messages in my inbox sent directly to me that I haven't read yet: to:me is:unread in:inbox

You can limit the scope of your search to a particular subject (subject:) or label (label:) as well. And you can get pretty fancy. Recently, I was trying to remember the date of my friend's April birthday. I always send her a birthday email, so I searched to:maya (birthday OR bday) after:2007/4/1 before:2007/5/1. It's the 19th.



If remembering operators isn't really your thing, that's ok. There's a "Show search options" link to the right of the search bar at the top of your inbox.



Clicking that provides you with text fields you can fill in to get the precision of advanced search. Start there, but after a while you'll probably find that using operators is a lot faster.

Top 10 Gmail Tips

Gmail blog turns 1: Looking back at our 10 most read tips

Thursday, July 03, 2008 1:28 PM

Posted by Robby Stein, Associate Product Marketing Manager

When we launched the Gmail blog exactly one year ago, our goal was to provide you with new feature announcements, insight into how the Gmail team works, and tips on how to become a Gmail ninja. We hope you've enjoyed reading our posts, and to celebrate our birthday, here's a look back at the past year and a recap of our 10 most read tips:

10) Have Gmail do your laundry - How to suggest new features for Gmail. We always like hearing from you.

9) Tips for importing old email to Gmail - A post on how to make the switch to Gmail as seamless as possible.

8) Edit contacts right from your chat list - When we released the newest version of Gmail, it came with some new bells and whistles. This one will help you clean up your chat list and change contact information quickly.

7) 2 Hidden ways to get more from your Gmail address - You can insert certain characters to your email address to get additional names out of it -- all of which still make it to your inbox.

6) How to find any email with Gmail search - To take the best advantage of Gmail search, we explain how to use search operators so you can find any email the first time.

5) 5 little-known Gmail features you may not yet know about - When we released the newest version of Gmail, there were a bunch of really useful features people didn't yet know about. So we told you about them.

4) Top 10 little known Gmail features (and Part 2) - In this post, we explained ten Gmail features that people generally didn't know about. From "custom from" to creating events in Gmail, this post goes over key features any serious Gmail user needs to know.

3) Getting Gmail anywhere: IMAP versus POP - A lot of people choose to get Gmail on mobile phones and destkop mail clients, so we went over the two most popular ways people do so and showed the key benefits of using IMAP -- which we've provided for free since the fall.

2) 3 Gmail Labs features that will spice up your inbox - This post covers how to enable and use the most popular Gmail Labs features: Superstars, Pictures in chat and Quick Links.

1) 9 reasons to archive - From the sophisticated to the snarky, these tips fueled the most viewed post in Gmail blog history. If this doesn't get you to archive, then we don't know what will.

Thanks for reading this past year, and we hope to provide even more tips this year -- so stay tuned.

AdSense for Feeds Rocking Google

Legendary blogger, John Chow explains Google's Adsense for feeds. Chow says he has "already made more in one day with AdSense for Feeds than I made in a full month running the now dead FeedBurner Ad Network." Chow explains the migration process in this informative post.

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I dreamed my whole house was clean...