Wandering around the blogosphere, I came across Google's blog (yes, even Google has one!)

They've created something very cool – it's called the Google Crisis Response Team. It was put into place in response to the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010. Google decided to put in place a full-time team that would be responsible for providing people with important information during and following disasters.

One feature that I found particularly clever is Person Finder, already used during the earthquakes in Haiti and New Zealand.

It went live within an hour after the earthquake in Japan, and more than 600,000 contact entries have been made since.  Person Finder has new features such as email notifications, automatic translation and phonetic name matching, all of which have been helpful in facilitating response efforts.

Kudos Google!