TOKYO: As Japan is facing a disaster unprecedented triple - earthquake, tsunami, nuclear crisis - the Web has given birth to creativity and innovation in line in the middle of a collective desire to alleviate suffering .
Once the magnitude of the disaster became clear on March 11, the online world have begun to ask: "How can we help?"
And for that, social media offered the ideal platform for good ideas to spread quickly, complementing the efforts launched by giants like Google and Facebook.
A teacher living in the city of Columbia Abiko, just east of Tokyo, is leading a team of volunteer bloggers, writers and editors producing "Quakebook," a collection of reflections, essays and images of the earthquake that will be sold in the coming days as a digital publication. Produced by the project will go to the Japanese Red Cross, said 40-year-old under the pseudonym of "Our Man in Abiko."
The project fully Twitter home began with a simple tweet exactly one week after the earthquake. In an hour he had received two submissions, which rapidly to 87 which now form the book.
Quakebook involves some 200 people in Japan and abroad, and the group is in talks to sell the downloads on Amazon.com. It was not long before others notice. Twitter itself has sent a tweet on Quakebook as Yoko Ono. Best-selling novelist Barry Eisler wrote the preface. The organizers, including Our Man in Abiko, will hold a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo Friday.
"I just thought I want to do something," he said in a telephone interview. "I felt completely helpless."
Another project, "World's 1000 posts for Japan" is an effort to convey thoughts from around the world. Framers can leave notes short on Facebook or by e-mail, where a group of volunteers then translate in Japanese . The translations are then posted on Twitter and the band's website.
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