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TECHNOLOGY.Navigation: Main page Author: Kerkman, Leah Section: MANAGINGNEW BOOKS
Web Site for Volunteers Focuses on Disaster Aid Learning from the difficulties of coordinating the activities of volunteers following Hurricane Katrina, the Points of Light Foundation, in Washington, announced plans for a new Web site to match volunteers with appropriate tasks following national disasters. The site, which will become available on April 29, will request that volunteers submit a profile with their hours of availability and their skills, such as construction experience or current certification in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Such information can then be used following a disaster to quickly place volunteers with charities that need their help. Katherine Watier, director of sales and marketing at 1-800-Volunteer.org, an online database of volunteers run by the Points of Light Foundation, says the Web site will also provide information about how to become a trained volunteer for rescue charities, such as the American Red Cross, and how people can find local volunteer opportunities. Since Hurricane Katrina, the number of volunteers registered with the organization has climbed from about 45,000 to about 103,000. TO GET THERE: Go to http://www.helpindisaster.org. Internet Address Fetches $200,000 DonationThe Boston Foundation received an unlikely gift from Tom Bird, a Boston-area entrepreneur: the domain name farm.com. The gift ended up bringing in $200,000 for the foundation when it sold the name to Pets United, an online pet-supplies company. Roger Collins, president of Afternic.com, which brokered the sale, says he believes that charities can expect more gifts like that, as owners of high-value domain names begin to treat them like other assets that have appreciated in value, such as stock or real estate. "Kind of like the painting up in the attic you didn't know you had," he says. "Because the Internet is relatively new, there's probably more people that are surprised about the value of their domain names," says Mr. Collins. "They may have registered a name in 1995 or earlier and never thought about how much the value has increased." Mr. Collins's company contacted Mr. Bird after a would-be buyer approached Afternic.com saying it wanted to buy the farm.com domain name. Once he realized the name's value, Mr. Bird decided to give the rights to the name to the Boston Foundation. And Afternic.com agreed to donate its usual 10-percent fee for brokering the transaction to the foundation as well. ~~~~~~~~ By Leah Kerkman in the Fair Use guidelines of the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act. info [at] singlearticles.com Powered by CommonSense |
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