Transcending Technology – Michael J. Russell

As of Thursday evening, much of Southern California, Arizona and Northern Mexico remain in darkness due to an apparent, tripped 500k volt power line near Yuma, resulting in major power outages.

Friends and colleagues in our Crisis Commons community are already swinging into action, coordinating a variety of online resources – being updated in real time – for mapping areas with power, and in darkness.

Below is a curated list of real-time streaming and other links to coverage of the Japan earthquake and Tsunami. Many thanks to Crisis Commons community friends Sophia Liu (@sophiabliu) at the University of Colorado, and Toronto’s Heather Leason (@HeatherLeson) for the heads-up on these. UPDATE: 12:55 EST (17:55 GMT) A embeddable, multilingual instance of Google PersonFinder is now available, as well.

2010 Young Innovator – David Kobia, 32 Long reach: David Kobia’s Web programming helps communities facing catastrophe around the world.  Credit: Yvonne Boyd Multimedia Learn how Ushahidi tapped into crowdsourcing to become a powerful crisis-management tool. The Ushahidi project brings crowd­sourcing to bear on some of the most desperate situations people face around the world. [...]