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This is not a design or Japan related post, but it is so sad and touching that I had to share it with my blog readers. I came across is tearing slide presentation at SlideShare, about a mother protecting her child in the recent earthquake disaster in Sichuan China. Unfortunately the mother was dead because of the hard objects hitting on her. But the rescuer found out that there is a baby under her child and quickly get him out. The child was fine, thanks to his mother. Then the rescuer found a hand phone near the baby and on the screen, it says “My dearest child, if you are able to survive you must remember that I Love You”.

This is such a sad story. In the earthquake that struck last week, it already taken so many people’s life (40,000 and counting), and every life behind there is a family, and there is a story to tell. If there is no earthquake, maybe they are enjoying their life right now with friends and family. But the earthquake just ruined it all. I hope everyone can pray and hope for Sichuan so that everything will become OK. And my respect to all the rescuers and medics and many more unsung heroes who are restless and working hard to save more life.

China: Time to pray

Friday, May
16th,
2008 @ 21:42 UTC

by John Kennedy

One of our Chinese users, Oliver Ding has uploaded this slideshow , which is a call for people to help out the victims of the tragic earthquake that rocked central China’s Wenchuan County on the 12th of May, leaving behind thousands of dead. We deeply mourn the tragedy and would request our users to do their little bit in this regard. Please head over to these two sites - PledgeBank & CnReviews.com to learn how you could help out in contributing.

We also request everyone to join the China EarthQuake Group that Oliver has created. We have featured his pledge as the Slideshow of the Day.

How did I do that? Well, I was watching Twitter on Google Talk. Several people in China reported to me they felt the quake WHILE IT WAS GOING ON!!!

Over the next two hours I pointed at anyone who had info about the quake on my Twitter account.

It’s amazing the kind of news you can learn by being on Twitter and the connections you can make among people across the world.

I fear a large casualty loss. The epicenter was 50 miles from Chengdu, which has about 10.5 million residents. Already reports are coming across of buildings that have been knocked down.

UPDATE: Online Journalism Blog has a lot more details about what happened on Twitter tonight. From the Frontline blog has even more.

UPDATE2: Global Voices Online has links to videos and other Twitter and blog reports.

UPDATE3: here’s a timeline of what first Tweets looked like.

When I logged on to my desktop Twitter application (sad, I know) it was alive with Tweets about the earthquake in China. Most of them were from the celebrated technology blogger Robert Scoble, who is famous, perhaps notorious, for receiving a Twitter message every second of the day.

He is based in California, but thousands of miles away from the quake he was providing breaking news about it, linking to sites like the BBC and the New York Times, even providing a first picture - though how authentic that is remains to be seen. He now claims that Twitter had the breaking news even before the United States Geological Survey, which provides early warnings of seismic events.

Well said. Very quickly the story turned to Twitter/Scoble/beating USGS by 3 min. I also did not like watching how TechMeme rewarded a lot of A-list tech blogs and aside from Global Voices Online was not able to identify other great sources of English content on the Earthquake such as Shanghaiist or Danwei.

Another example of self-reflective narcissism at work. At least Jeremiah Owyang tried to use his bully pulpit of social media to ask people to have compassion and give to the Red Cross. Kudos to Jeremiah for that.

Posted by Elliott Ng on May 13, 2008 at 1:36 pm