From the category archives:

Social Tools in Disasters

Kids for Mumbai

December 5, 2008

Priyanka Kargupta is an 8 year old living in Maryland, USA. She’s set up Kids for Mumbai – to help those affected by the Mumbai Terror Attacks.  I personally don’t know her, just got an email from her, and would encourage you to assess it for yourselves before donating.  She’s provided links to her Dad [...]

Read the full article →

Are we asking the right questions?

December 3, 2008

A whole lot of questions are being asked about whether the Twitter #mumbai feed was citizen journalism or not. Many ’sides’ are emerging in this debate. I found this post (thru’ a tweet by @MaryHodder) which asks How Should Journalists Use Twitter? I’m not so sure it’s the right question to be asking … [...]

Read the full article →

Mumbai Bleeds

November 27, 2008

{updated: 28 November 10.30 am IST}
Some helpline numbers:
List of Injured and Deceased
JJ Hospital +91 22 23739031
St George’s Hospital – +91 22 22620240
Mumbai Police’s Helpline Numbers
Taj helpline numbers for info about people stuck inside – +91 -22-66574322, +91-22-66574372, local toll free 1-800-111-825
Trident Hotel Helpline : 011-23890606, 011-23890505, 9810956888 | Dir Corp Comm, Oberoi Hotels
For Info [...]

Read the full article →

The Paradox of the Wisdom of Crowds

November 7, 2008

I rediscovered this TED talk by James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds.
James Surowiecki pinpoints the moment when social media became an equal player in the world of news-gathering: the 2005 tsunami, when YouTube video, blogs, IMs and txts carried the news — and preserved moving personal stories from the tragedy.
. Thanks to [...]

Read the full article →

Web-based volunteer efforts around Hurricane Gustav

August 31, 2008

Volunteers on the world wide web are getting ready to help as Hurricane Gustav gathers fury heading towards the Northern Gulf Coast. I was alerted to this through tweets by Andy Carvin, (@acarvin) who’s coordinating these efforts:
* Gustav Information Center is up
* Follow live updates on Gustav at Twitter – search for #gustav
* IRC [...]

Read the full article →

Jaipur Blasts

May 14, 2008

Rohit Gupta is updating us on the real situation from Jaipur on Twitter.

Read the full article →

It takes disasters …

May 13, 2008

…. to break my blogging hiatus. How helpless we are under the force of nature’s fury. Myanmar Cyclone 28,458 deaths & 33,416 missing. China Earthquake almost 10000 dead & mounting. All of this in less than 10 days.
There’s been a huge load of blogging and tweeting live as the earthquake and its aftermath [...]

Read the full article →

Somewherein using SMS to raise funds for Sidr Victims

November 23, 2007

Aparna Ray, in a post at Global Voices Online links to several blogs that are trying to garner aid and resources to help victims of Cyclone Sidr. [Image on right courtesy BBC News]. Towards the end of the post, she shares this simple yet cool use of SMS to get people to donate:
Bangla blogging [...]

Read the full article →

Panties for Democracy

October 22, 2007

Send your panties to Burmese embassies as a sign of protest for the atrocities being committed by the Burmese regime. A new wave of activism, Panties for Peace – a manoeuvre meant to embarrass and insult the Junta:
“The manoeuvre is a calculated insult to the junta and its leader, General Than Shwe. Superstitious junta [...]

Read the full article →