A quick roundup of items related to the tsunami disaster. Image: mannequin in pile of wreckage in Thailand, shot by blogger and NBC correspondent Kevin Sites who is on assignment in Asia covering the story. (Link)
*Following up on a previous BoingBoing post, an anonymous Microsoft employee says:
Responding to this: "Reader J. Hahn says, "I am particularly impressed with Amazon.com's Red Cross donation counter that proves Americans are not 'stingy.' Also, as a Mac user, I was proud to go to the apple.com site and see not one product ad on their front page – just links to aid and donation sites, and Microsoft had not one mention of the disaster."
Most of Microsoft's efforts regarding Tsunami relief is focused internally. MS offers a dollar for dollar charitable donation match to all FTE, and is doing everything it can to expidite the process of trying to get the money to where it will do the most good.
* Tsunami Outreach: Bloggers Without Borders' first international project launched last night. Link (Thanks, Sean)
* BoingBoing reader Nicholas Bentley says,
"Hello Xeni, We thought you might be interested in passing on the news of one person's great efforts for tsunami relief. We wanted to donate to a tsunami relief effort with our funds in a PayPal account but had difficulty finding an agency that took PayPal. Eventually we found Kevin McDonald's site where he is doing a fantastic job of collecting PayPal contributions and passing them on to AmeriCares (AmeriCares disaster relief has a 4-star rating from Charity
Navigator.) Kevin has even persuaded AmeriCare's webmaster to see about accepting PayPal transfers direct in the near future."
*BoingBoing reader Chris Cummer says,
Family members of a close personal friend of mine are still missing in Thailand. Her father and brother have flown there to try and find them, as this Globe and Mail article details, but the help of the blog community would also be greatly appreciated. I've posted a request for help on my blog at Missing in Khao Lak, Thailand. Hopefully someone might have some information for a Canadian family that's been living on the edge of grief for five days now.
Related: see this "missing persons" wiki page (Link), and a blog devoted to linking missing persons with their loved ones: Link. And the Red Cross has launched a "Family Links" web page where family members can search for missing relatives' names: Link. "The information is not verified or tracked by either the ICRC or the American Red Cross but is offered by the ICRC as a stand-alone internet tool for inquirers to use on their own."
* Reader Roberto says, "Every year at this time, I empty my jar full of loose change. But this year I discovered I could donate to the Red Cross (among other charities including UNICEF) from a Coinstar machine at my drugstore. And big kid that I am, I had fun playing with the machine." Link.
* Reader Chris Holland says,
I stumbled upon Austin's Blog who's done a fine job of gathering more videos. So earthlink homepage servers don't get creamed, I've created this torrent gathering 5 of the videos from his blog that weren't already covered in the previous torrent which is still available here. Remember, the more people click those torrent links, the easier and faster it is for everybody else to download them too. And try to keep the torrent opened for as long as possible even after you're done downloading. Big Kudos to prodigem's very easy-to-use torrent service. Link
* Andy Carvin says,
I've just set up a tsunami news digest using the news aggregator Kinja.com. The page contains latest news feeds and first-person blogs related to the tsunami disaster from around the globe. I'd like to see others add their own tsunami-related feeds to the site. If you have a news feed or blog that's focusing on the tsunami, or are reading one that you'd like to add to the digest, please visit the website and log on with the following info: login: tsunami-info / password: southasia. Once you've logged in, you can add a news source to the digest by pasting it into the "Add a Favorite" form field in the right column. Or, you can follow this shortcut.
* Among the many first-person accounts appearing on blogs: Sanjiva is an IBM employee from Sri Lanka, who is trying to build information systems to aid in locating missing persons, and help with medical resource logistics. Link.
* Stuart Ian Burns tells BoingBoing:
This del.icio.us tag is offering good links to information about the Tsunami. There is also a tag at flickr: Link. And The SEA-EAT blog have begun a profile to collect photos of the missing: Link.
Link to related BoingBoing posts.
