One interesting tool they created in response to the disaster is an image gallery which shows how status updates spread in the hours and days following the earthquake and tsunami. The black dots show the high influx of updates.

These are three images from the set of ten. It’s interesting to see how the flow of Facebook took place in a span of 24 hours. Highly concentrated updates occurred earlier on the west coast, and within 12 hours the east coast became enveloped with Japan related updates.

Facebook has released this tool as a part of their effort to heighten awareness, and increase donations towards the disaster effort. They’ve partnered with Zynga, famed Facebook game developer, to take donations for ‘Save the Children’s Japan Earthquake/Tsunami Emergency Fund‘. If you’re an avid CityVille, Frontierville, or Farmville player, funds from virtual goods purchased in the series of games will go towards the joint Zynga/Facebook effort.

Lots of you heard a lot of hoopla about the OLPC project (er, One Laptop Per Child). This is a strange little machine that’s aimed at bringing computing to kids around the world. It’s been a while since I heard anything about it, other than they had started shipping with both Linux and Windows, which shocked a few people in the community who saw that as something negative.

So, here I visit the OLPC team and get the skinny from the CEO and then talked with the engineer who built its innovative wireless features (hint: dude is smart and the wireless features on the OLPC are truly innovative). Learned a lot and learned about the deal with Microsoft too.

Oh, and next month they are bringing back the popular “Give one, get one” deal where you can buy an OLPC for $400 for yourself and that’ll get one donated to a kid on your behalf.

Comments