This might be too general or too basic a question for Tech, but I figured I might as well start here:

Supposing one were part of a community activist effort about which a number of articles had been printed in the local press and statements made by the involved parties, some accurate and some rather less so. Press people are contacting members asking if there's a central website yet. There isn't, because most of the organizers are neophyte protesters and a lot of them probably don't own computers at all.

Nevertheless, a website to point press toward wouldn't be a bad thing. Nothing fancy, just someplace to post all the relevant links, docs and pictures, and notices about upcoming meetings and such. Also either free or cheap, because (a) most of the organizers are pretty poor, and (b) the hope is that this will be a short-term effort that won't need something big and sturdy and forever-lasting.

Google just burped out 83,000,000 references for "free website hosting," which is kind of a lot to sort through. Any recs on which of these 83 million are actually reliable, cheap and reasonably non-ugly?

The simplest thing would be something like a WordPress blog.

I agree with Ginger- in fact, go wordpress.com rather than setting up your own. Free hosting in the actual hosting sense tends to the sketch, wordpress.com can handle all the traffic the universe can possibly throw at it (I mean, they host the frickin lolcats!), and there's basically no setup other than getting your content up.

I would say the same, and unlike Ginger and amych I am a mere civilian in the technological world. I have set up a wordpress.com blog myself and it was very easy.

Ditto to all of flea's points.

In addition to the suggestion of wordpress, you may want to look into posterous. I have found blogging there to be incredibly painless.

I format posts in gmail (including adding pictures), and mail them to posterous and they show up.

seriously. that's it.

You might even be able to do it as a Facebook page, JZ.

I have a powerbook. Two weeks ago, the power cord went (I have had this for over 3 years, so not unexpected). I bought a new power cord. Now this power cord does not seem to be working. I only have an hour and 24 minutes left-- what the heck? Could I need another new cord? I have tried plugging it in in several plugs and restarting and I am stll on batter power and there is nolght on the cord where it attaches to the computer.

I know this sounds silly, but have you tried turning the end of the cord that plugs into the computer the other way around? Mine sometimes doesn't work if one side is up, but with the other side up, it works fine.

I didn't know it went the other way! But alas this did not work.

I am pretty irked because I have no other tv or DVD player, so I will be completely entertainmentless except gettng on the internet on my phone.