Letter to Google - How you can help Hurricane Katrina survivors

I just emailed this to the Google Blog:

Just an idea I thought Google could help with.

Currently the Google home page has a link to Google News coverage of Hurricaine Katrina. Something that might help survivors and family members is to have a link to a site or sites with information about finding/notifying family members who have survived. Another idea is to link to a Google map of the area affected. Links to charitable organizations would be great too, but a basic web search turns those up quickly enough.

With thousands feared dead, a huge effort will be spent trying to locate familiy and friends in the area who have been displaced or injured. Traditional communications are majorly crippled, and people aren't in the locations where they can normally be reached. Online locations and addresses are more persistent for people the "real" ones. Google is as close to an Internet home page or "town square" as it gets, so you would be able to help a lot.

Please pass it on to those who might be able to help within the Googleplex!


More Information:

- Wikipedia Hurricane Katrina - Excellent information so far, and improving constantly!
- WDSU - New Orleans
- WDSU Page for Messages From Katrina Survivors - helps people let others know they are safe or try to find missing people

Muji - the Un-brand
BusinessWeek: The Serious Cachet of "Secret Brands"
"Muji certainly has made a business case for saving marketing dollars on brand building and plowing that money into better design at affordable prices. Its executives believe a brand name or a logo is extraneous and doesn't bring a specific benefit to consumers except to satisfy their ego. "Muji can focus on the basic essence of products instead of dedicating energies to the frills," says Hiroyoshi Azami, General Manager at Japan's Ryohin Keikaku, which owns the Muji stores."

[Via Web Globalization News]