Faced with searing images of suffering and grief in South Asia, Americans are finding an instantaneous way to reach out to tsunami victims: on their home computers.
Like never before, people are turning to the Internet to donate money, the latest step in a revolution that has altered everything from shopping to presidential campaigns.
Read remarks from James Joyner, KJL, Jeff Jarvis, and Greg Ransom.
(memeorandum.)
10:56:47 PM
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Yahoo! News - SEA-EAT Blog Mobilizes Fast For Tsunami Relief
A blog with an ungainly name—The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami, or SEA-EAT—has emerged as the latest example of netizens' ability to form fast volunteer organizations.
The blog was started by Peter Griffin, a writer and blogger located in Bombay, India, soon after the tsunamis hit on Sunday.
"Peter though it up," said Rohit Gupta, one of three bloggers in Bombay running SEA-EAT. "His idea was that there has to be a clearinghouse of aid and information for the tsunami victims. There was no such resources at this time."
The three-day old blog has clocked 100,000 site visits as of Wednesday, noon PST. That's an extraordinarily high number; 1,000 page views in a single day is pretty good for most blogs.
The blog is open to anyone who wants to contribute, with over 50 people now providing content from all over south-east Asia.
A separate blog, ChienSansFrontiers is posting firsthand accounts from disaster areas, sent from the scene at hard-hit Sri Lanka via SMS, or cell-phone instant messaging.
"We're getting out information that traditional media has not access to," Gupta said. "Certain areas have been cordoned off to traditional media by the Tamil Tigers," or Sri Lanka police.
SEA-EAT provides information on where to send donations in cash or goods, volunteer, and information about the ongoing disaster. Recent posts include information about a new, dedicated web site set up by the Sri Lanka tourist board; hotline numbers to find missing people from India, the Maldives, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Thailand; a 24-hour helpline for missing persons from South Africa; and information on how Americans and Canadians can send assistance to Indonesia.
Several hundred SEA-EAT bloggers are sorting through the information on the blog and pouring it into a wiki on the Wikinews server.
In addition to contributors, SEA-EAT has people who function as editors. They're called "janitors" and "monitors." "The janitors are cleaning up the trash, and the monitors are watching," said Gupta. Janitors watch for redundant posts and duplicate information, monitors make sure people don't deface the blog. The system is self-organizing, people who want to contribute decide what role they want to play, and organize themselves to work in round-the-clock shifts; I spoke to at 2 am his time in Bombay; he was working the night shift.
Three people are overseeing the blog: founder Griffin and co-founders Gupta and blogger and marketing consultant Dina Mehta. They coordinate via cell phones, Instant Messenger conference room, e-mail and YahooGroups.
The organizers selected BlogSpot to host the blog because it was what they knew, said Gupta. Both he and Griffin re experienced BlogSpot users. Gupta runs five blogs, and Griffin runs three. Choosing BlogSpot made it easy to recruit contributors, because many people are already familiar with the Blogger software used on BlogSpot, and already have BlogSpot accounts that they can use to get started right away.
"What we did not expect is the kind of traffic we're getting," Gupta said. Their site meter stopped at 100,000 visitors, and the SEA-EAT organizers are concerned about going over their bandwidth allocation. Other bloggers have volunteered to host the blog, should it outgrow BlogSpot. The SEA-EAT organizers have been attempting to contact Google to coordinate their blogging efforts, but have been unable to contact anyone, although the Blogger homepage has a link to SEA-EAT, indicating that Google is aware of their existence, Gupta said.
In retrospect, blogging presented advantages and disadvantages, Gupta said. A blog presents information in reverse-chronological order, with the newest information at the top. A wiki can be better organized, more like a conventional web site, making information easier to read and find.
On the other hand, blogs give credit to individual contributors, whereas wikis are entirely anonymous, Gupta said.
"In the wiki, individual contributors are invisible most of the time," Gupta said. "Showing that you're contributing is a huge motivation factor in a blog. A natural step for us is to move onto a wiki, but I don't think that we could have come as far as we did on a wiki."
Mehta wrote on the WorldChanging blog on Tuesday: "On hindsight I wish we had set up the SEA-EAT (South East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami) blog on a wiki instead. It was such a quick and spontaneous decision that we just wanted to get on with building the resources rather than fuss about the platform."
She notes that the blogging format can make it hard to find information, As new entries come in, older entries scroll off the bottom of the page. Blogger doesn't even allow posts to be organized into categories.
She added, "As a result of tremendous traffic, requests for all sorts of things are pouring in. We've had requests to allow translations into different languages, requests to mirror the blog onto other pages, requests to set up pages for people who are looking for their loved ones gone missing.... This only reinforces my belief that a wiki might have been a much better medium - not only would these pages be separate yet part of a faceted collection and linked to each other, it might have been much easier for someone to navigate and jump in and post as well. Or to open a new page that they felt was relevant without checking back with admin. Moreover, the layers we might have wanted would be so easy to build. And few entry barriers about asking whether they could post or not. Owned by all - a true community."
In the comments thread to that post, a person signing their name as "Taran" suggests the Drupal content management system.
Gupta, 28, is a freelance writer who studied chemical engineering in college, who says he writes about a range of subjects from politics to science. Gupta, Mehta and Griffin first met on the Internet, through their blogs, but then met in person later on. There are all located in Bombay.
Mehta runs a research consultancy on brands, products and services. Griffin describes himself as a communications and media consultant.
10:52:45 PM trackback []
Om Malik on Broadband: Tsunami Help Campaign
“Yesterday a Muslim man came to me and asked, ‘Father, can I enter the church? Can I stay here?’ I told him that we are all God’s children. You are welcome to stay here. It is only because of my cassock that you can make out that I am a Christian. I cannot look at you and think that.” Father A Anthony Swamy, parish priest at Lazarus Church, Chennai 10:48:24 PM trackback []
Aceh Aid Bucket Brigade
Aceh Aid Bucket Brigade: “I note that the international media have little data on Aceh. We have LOTS here, and lots of footage being broadcast. It is horrendous. On the ground they estimate several hundred thousand displaced people, and far higher death toll than has been recorded so far. I listened to a doctor speaking from one of the hospitals in Bandar Aceh today. They have only generator power, and fuel is running low. Nurses are in short supply. Most of the hospital staff are missing and unaccounted for. They are running out of gloves. There are so many bodies around, nobody knows where to put them. He said you could smell the city from two kilometers away. The whole city has run out of shrouds and body bags. One of the main public hospitals is over a foot deep in mud. A tremendous number of small children and babies were drowned, and their bodies are just piled up or laid out in rows with their jaws tied shut with white strips of cloth. Most of the roads going anywhere are filled with debris from fallen buildings. Bridges are out. Roads are washed away. ” 10:44:35 PM trackback []
Scoble has a good roundup of news on the earthquake and tsunami.
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BBC NEWS | | Podcasts bring DIY radio to the web
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Reporter in Südostasien
Kevin Sites Blog: “Paradise Tossed” 10:26:51 PM trackback []
Search Engine/Blogosphere Response to the Earthquake/Tsunami
A quick roundup of the resources available for assisting the victims of the earthquake/tsunami that occured Sunday in Asia: Google -- Information and donation links at http://www.google.com/tsunami_relief.html . Yahoo --...
(ResearchBuzz.)
7:21:17 PM trackback []
Die Flutkatastrophe, Blogs und Handys
Die Zahl der Opfer steigt weiter - neben dem US-Stützpunkt Diego Garcia soll auch Burma nach Angaben des Militärregimes weitgehend verschont geblieben sein
(Telepolis News (26.11.2004).)
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Cheese and Crackers: Tsunami Video
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"related Tsunami/cell phone stories"
7:10:54 PM trackback []
ISS food problems blamed on previous crew
The food shortage on the International Space Station, which at one point threatened an evacuation...
7:09:37 PM
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Hi-tech dumpsite on Mars
NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Visits its Heat Shield Impact Site (Photo gallery)"NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity gained this view of its own heat shield during the rover's 325th martian day (Dec. 22, 2004). The main structure from the successfully used...
(NASA Watch.)
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ISS Crew Unloads Progress
10:49:38 AM trackback []
NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Visits its Heat...
NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Visits its Heat Shield Impact Site
10:48:53 AM
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Digital Globe Image of Kalutara, Sri Lanka...
Digital Globe Image of Kalutara, Sri Lanka Shortly After Tsunami Arrival
10:48:07 AM
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Last update: 26.02.2005; 0:24:51 Uhr .
