The online world has been following the New Orleans tragedy and helping out in a small way through the amazing aerial and satellite photos served up through Google Earth.

Go on to Google, download the programme and then the thousands of images, most of them government issue. However the tragedy has inspired the online community to create something more out of the photos.

Though the efforts from individuals, NASA, Carnegie Mellon University and Google (earth.google.com) have worked to crate overlays for 3228 post-Hurricane Katrina images provided by the Remote Sensing Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (noaa.gov).

The images have allowed those who escaped the mess to find out whether their houses have been destroyed or are still standing. Google Earth lets you zoom in on any address for an aerial view combines satellite imagery, aerial views and maps.

Using Google Earth, a broadband, 3D application, viewers can switch to before and after images, seeing transformed neighbourhoods, houses ? ground level. You will need Windows 2000 or Windows XP and the right 3D graphics card.

Google Earth Pro, the commercial version, costs $400. Go to the Google Earth top ten sites and you?ll find a nice aerial view of Bermuda. It comes in at number seven. Although we?ve seen lots of photos of Bermuda from the air, the detail still seems incredible to me. Go spot your house!

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The University of Manchester?s Neuroscience and Psychiatry Unit has put up a website calling for volunteers worldwide to take part in a global study of depression.

The full questions will be posted to you once you signup at www.newmood.co.uk . However parts of the test are available online so you can get an idea of your personality type. The test involves identifying the emotions on people?s faces and taking a gambling test on your risk-taking abilities.

Anyone f can take part,whether depressive or not.

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Has anyone seen the Nokia N90. It is the latest smart phone to hit the market. Its design smells of a high-performance machine, the next step up in the handheld multimedia market. Or so they say.

This is for folks who want a flashy cell phone that hey-presto, transforms into a 2-megapixel camera and video with a flip of the cover. We?re talking about a $950 spend here folks. The phone was released this month.

At 173 grams it?s heavy enough to be used as a weapon in battle. The phone camera comes equipped with swivelling Carl Zeiss optics and a built-in flash at the point of its hinge.

The phone?s screen swivels to double as a viewer for the camera. ?An epitome of compromise, the N90 shows that Nokia is still capable of delivering products with cutting edge features that can?t be beat,? raves InfoSync magazine.

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The big news this month for Windows Server 2003 users is the Microsoft release of Candidate 0 of Windows Server 2003 R2.

This is an updated operating system,which the company expects to deliver in whole by the end of the year. The beta release is aimed at getting feedback from you, the end users.

According to Datamonitor, R2 will have a selection of new features designed to improve usability in branchoffice management, storage management and identity management.

The new OS will also introduce an Internet security system called Active Directory Federation Services. It?s a specification for passing security assertions about users? identity and access rights between applications on different Internet domains.

Using the system will allow users to sign on to the system with one login. R2 also has a new feature called Storage Manager for SANs. This allows administrators ?to create and manage the logical units (LUNs) that are used to allocate space on storage arrays in both Fibre Channel and SCSI environments?.

Microsoft said the R2 software will be available on two CDs. One will have the new features, allowing companies to upgrade their existing Windows Server 2003 deployments without having to go through the pain of a fresh install.

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