When entrepreneurs start thinking I'm more important than Walt Mossberg I know the world is just a bit nutty. Thanks to Munjal Shah for the ego boost, but really Walt is still far more important to launch a business than I am.

My coauthor, Shel Israel, couldn't believe it either and writes about the experience of being hired by Munjal here.

Anyway, it's still most important to get Walt, at the Wall Street Journal, or John Markoff, at the New York Times, or Steven Levy at Newsweek to write about you. But thanks for the compliment!

By the way, Walt's columns are available free online (some of the only content from the Wall Street Journal that is on a consistent basis).

Staci Kramer just posted two posts about Hurricane Katrina. Since I talked with her today and urged her to blog these, thought I'd link to them specifically:

Hurricane Katrina: Grasping the Concept.

What can we do?

She spent two months covering the Mississippi River Flood of 1993, so has a bit of experience with disasters, so her perspective is interesting.

My friend Brian Bailey is writing a book titled "the Blogging Church." Of course, he has a blog where he's talking about that with his coauthor and podcasting too. They give me credit for getting them into blogging. It was my visit to their Dallas Church a while back that got them to see the power of the blog.

I was just there to get some evangelism ideas from the pros! ;-)

JD Lasica: "Andrew "hatchet job" Orlowski of UK's The Register is at it again."

"Will we see a correction? Not from the likes of Mr. Orlowski."

Marketwatch: Microsoft buys VoPI provider Teleo.

Ahh, this is the tool I saw at Demo and I said it's a potential Skype killer.

It hasn't turned out to be that yet, but this sure is interesting news. I didn't know about it, by the way. I have some inquiries into our mergers and acquisitions department to see if they can tell me more.

All day I've been hearing bits and pieces about the devastation in New Orleans and surrounding areas. It makes me sad. New Orleans is our (Maryam and mine) favorite city. Being in Preservation Hall, for me, is like going to church.

Staci Kramer called me today and we talked a long time about ways we could make it easier for people to learn about localized situations. We need a new kind of search engine.

Actually, Dan Gillmor or Larry Larsen at Poynter Institute should be talking about this stuff. How can we make it easier for people to get localized information during disasters? Did my house survive? Where is government assistance best sent? Anything I can do to volunteer?

And tons of other questions.

But, those are best worked on another day. Right now an entire region is in deep pain. What can the rest of us do to help? Give to an appropriate charity is my answer. Poynter has a list of good places for post-hurricane charity.

Staci told me she's covered disasters before but has never seen anything like this. Her OPML blog is linking to some good Katrina stuff.

My heart is out to all of those suffering Katrina's wrath. I'm working inside Microsoft to help out too. I'm sure we'll hear more on that soon.

Update: Phil Windley, former Utah CIO, talks about "turning hopeless victims into smart mobs."

Ernie the Attorney got out of New Orleans finally and is blogging through a friend (he can get SMS's out, but not much else).

MSNBC has tons of videos and other reports linked off of its home page (which reads "City in Misery."

Glenn Reynolds: In praise of old media.

WWLTV in New Orleans: Updates as they come in on Katrina.

Michael Totten: Lake New Orleans.

Craig Newmark, the guy who started Craigs' List, blogs about how people are using Craigs' List during the Katrina disaster to find people and news.

JD Lasica links to a stunning video done by citizen journalism storm chasers.

Memeorandum has the top headlines and blogger reactions.

The Channel 9 guy is partying in Australia. Wish I could be there. But I live vicariously through the nine guy. He gets to go to all the fun geek events.

Thomas Friedman, the famous New York Times author, was on campus today and 1,000 people showed up. Whew, I'm glad I slept in, I would never have gotten a seat. Instead I watched it on our intranet while encoding videos on another machine and planning more interviews on another. Anandi has her recollections. The talk pretty much followed the book and was excellent. Turns out that Craig Mundie built a friendship with Thomas and worked with him on the book (Bill and Craig heard him give a separate talk and challenged him on some of his assumptions and Thomas took them out to dinner to learn more).