Looking for friends and relatives who were affected by the recent 8.8 magnitude mega-quake in Chile? Google can help. The Internet search giant launched its Person Finder for the Chile earthquake over the weekend. The service, which allows users to request and leave information about people in both English and Spanish, is tracking 41,700 records as of Monday morning — up from 22,900 records on Sunday morning.
This isn’t the first time that Google has launched a Person Finder tool for a natural disaster. This past January, Google set up a similar tool for the Haiti earthquake, with listings in English, Creole, French and Spanish. That application is tracking 55,000 records as of Monday morning.
Even if you don’t have information on survivors, there are still ways to help out with the Chile earthquake’s aftermath. Google’s disaster relief page lists a number of organizations accepting donations, including Oxfam, Habitat for Humanity, and the Chilean Red Cross.
Via CNET
I would like to announce the two error-tolerant search interfaces
developed at UC Irvine for the Chile PersonFinder data.
The interfaces developed are available here:
* Search widget that can be embedded into any webpage:
http://fr.ics.uci.edu/widgets/chilepersonfinder
* Alternative to the PersonFinder search page:
http://fr.ics.uci.edu/chilepersonfinder
We are thankful to PersonFinder team for making the data available and
we hope the affected people will find them useful.