I’m going to be on MSNBC at 8:15a Sunday (yes, that early on a holiday weekend, it’s entirely possible that I have a bigger audience on this blog) to talk about the means for families to find the missing online. There are many good-hearted souls creating ways for people to find each other … too many, perhaps. I won’t even list the actual lists; these are just the metalists:
* About.com has a great list on its hurricane package, which also has much more useful content. (Full disclosure: I consult there).
* Yahoo list
* Online Journalism Review list, maintained by Staci Kramer.
* Homeland Security’s FirstGov list
* Rex Hammock is maintaining a good list and here’s another
* Nola.com’s missing board
* Nola.com’s I’m OK board.
* Here is a data base for the National Institute for Urban Search and Rescue.
* CNN’s list
* WWL’s I’m OK board
* WWL’s missing board
* WDSU’s missing board, by neighborhood.
* Yahoo’s boards
* MSNBC’s
* National Next of Kin Registry
* The Red Cross
* Earthlink
* Katrina Help
* Gulf Coast News
* WeblogsWork
* Hugh
* New Orleans Network
* And here is an already-crowded representation on a Google map.
There are already a few dozen of these. Clearly, that is not efficient. One solution is to try to get everything in one data base. But another is to tag and scrape these notices wherever they occur on the distributed internet.
See also Staci Kramer about tagging all this.
By the way, I have no intention of hosting the definitive list of missing lists. That should go to big sites like Yahoo.
