Al's Morning Meeting

Nationally, food prices rose 3.9 percent in April compared with the same month in 2006, and the outlook is equally chilling wherever you shop. It is happening for many reasons: inflation, drought, freezing weather, even the rising cost of corn -- highly sought after not only as ingredients for thousands of food products but also to make ethanol.

Food prices in 2007 are increasing at their highest rate in years.

"We are going to see grocery store prices show one of the most rapid increases in the last 15 years or so," said Patrick Jackman, an economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Just click here and select, for example, the tracking tables for bread, ground beef, eggs, apples, tomatoes, frozen OJ and fresh oranges. (Keep in mind, however, that these prices are not adjusted for inflation.) To adjust for inflation, you might try this calculator.

You can get local by going to this page and clicking on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' interactive map.

By way of comparison, here is a Web site that lists some historic food prices. It is interesting stuff. You know, a Hershey bar pretty much cost the same 5 cents from 1921 to 1968. The size of the bar changed a little, but not much.

Nine Ways 2007 is Like 1974

It is not just the record gas prices. A lot more is going on that makes this year eerily like 1974. The Boston Globe's Web site did a very clever job with this one. The site says it got tons of traffic on this one when it went up. A real "talker."

The Value of a Domain Name

I will not pass judgment on what this means. I just report it to you.

This week, an investment group paid $9.5 million for the domain name Porn.com -- the second-highest amount paid for a domain name. Last year, Boston firm Escom paid $12 million for Sex.com.

Domain names sell all the time on auction sites like this one. There are even appraisal companies that will tell you how much they estimate a domain name is worth.

The Los Angeles Times says:

The Porn.com deal is one of many in the last two years in which common nouns were exchanged for uncommon money. Cameras.com sold for $1.5 million and Scores.com fetched $1.2 million. Like Porn.com, they were sold by domain broker and manager Moniker.

It might be worthwhile to look at cyber squatters and domain speculators.

Several years ago, PCQuest explained:

Simply put, cyber squatting means the registration of a domain name in violation of a trademark or business name or other intellectual property of its owners. This includes the registration of a name deceptively similar to such business name or trademark. Usually, domain squatters register these domains before the company does and offer these domain names to such business houses at a premium. In some cases, domain squatters unscrupulously divert traffic to their sites and use their site for profiting illegally or for posting objectionable and defamatory messages. In other cases, a misspelling of such trademarks or business names is used to confuse the end user. This constitutes domain infringement or cyber squatting and makes the illegal occupant liable for eviction.

U.S. Judge Berle Schiller gave a precise definition of cyber squatting or cyber piracy as "the deliberate, bad faith, and abusive registration of Internet domain names in violation of the rights of trademark owners."

Domain speculation is the registration of generic domain names, which do not infringe any trademark or company name. Such generic names are generally descriptive in nature, like cheapflowers.com, houses-for-sale.com and getyourcomputershere.com. Speculators register generic names in the hope that a business house may wish to buy them for their commercial use. While cyber squatting would constitute domain infringement and make the delinquent liable for eviction and penal liabilities, domain speculation may not attract any harm. The difference lies in the motive of registration and the mala fide intention of the squatters.

How are domain-name disputes settled? There are several ways -- personal negotiation, courts and arbitration. You can also try using the policy explained here if the domain has been registered "in bad faith."

Here is a listing of the jillions of disputes that have settled using this policy. In some cases, as you will see, the squatter loses the domain. This is a great way for you to get local.

Did Falwell Really Say That?

I wanted to pass along a question to all of you journos. Al's Morning Meeting reader Frank Lockwood, religion editor at the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, sent me a thoughtful note wondering if he could trust the quotes attributed to Jerry Falwall from a site I linked to.

It got me searching for more attribution for what might seem to be an especially strange quote attributed to Falwell: "Billy Graham is the chief servant of Satan in America."

In articles about Falwell this week, there are 121,000 references to this quote using a Google search alone.

However, accepting Frank's challenge, I searched hundreds of these references yesterday, and I can tell you that not one column, article or site that included that quote about Rev. Graham says the location, the date or the circumstances under which Falwell allegedly uttered that line. Not one article included first-hand knowledge of anybody hearing that quote.

While it may well be that Falwell said it (I mean he was a quote machine), it could just as easily be true that it is some legend or slime job by Falwell haters. If any of you can help point us toward a first-hand reference for this quote, please post it in the reader feedback section to this column.

By the way, Snopes.com, the Internet myth-busting site, says the quote seems to be everywhere, but there is not direct confirmation that Falwell ever said it. Yahoo Answers says the same thing.

Al's Morning Multimedia: Memories of a Lost Town

The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle is making good use of reader-contributed photographs, forums and multimedia in covering the tornado that leveled a small town and killed a dozen people on May 4.

I like this photo essay on faith in a Greensburg church's tent meeting.

The paper smartly has been keeping a daily collection of pictures sorted by date. Imagine how many people have not had access to online or have been so busy surviving that they have not had time to see all of the images. This is a nice idea.

Leverage your digital assets.

Forums help people find help and find lost loved ones. One writer asks, "Where's my barber?" while another is looking for family members.

There is a useful microsite for people who want to offer help to victims.

There is a Q&A site -- the kind of place where one person asked where displaced cows and horses are being taken.

There is a separate guestbook page for each of the 12 who died in the storm.

Until last week, reporters kept a daily blog.

To preserve the memories of the town of Greensburg, lost in a tornado, the paper is posting before and after photos of the town sent in from readers. I love this passage from a reader attached to a photo of the town's water tower crumbled on the ground:

How will the children in Greensburg know when it is time to go home? The whistle on the water tower blew at 7 a.m., noon, 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. all of my life, until May 5. We didn't all have wrist watches when we were growing up. We didn't need them. We had the whistle. Our folks would tell us to come home for lunch or dinner "when the whistle blows." It was the same for all the neighborhood kids. Up for school at 7 a.m. in the winter. During the summer while playing we all knew when to break and head home for mealtimes. It was such a peaceful existence growing up in Greensburg.

Al on the Road and Online

Speaking of The Wichita Eagle, I will be in Wichita this weekend for the National Writers Workshop. I do hope I will see you there. It looks like an outstanding lineup of speakers, teachers and topics. I will be handing out 100 free CDs full of my favorite Web sites -- the same kind of stuff I will be talking about in my first live webinar on Monday. More than 200 individuals, classrooms and newsrooms have signed up so far. We can squeeze you in if you register right away. Registration closes today at noon eastern time. See you on the road or online! -- Al

Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.