Tsunami - Apple.com has updated their home page with links to Donation Sites...Microsoft next? Plus Indian Ocean Tsunami Satellite Pictures

December 29, 2004 9:36 AM Comments [5] Posted in Musings

Apple.com has taken mind-boggling severity of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and updated their corporate homepage to drive drive to donation sites.

It's a definite statement when a company chooses to remove products from their home page.

You can donate via Amazon.com which just takes a moment if you have your credit card saved with your account. Amazon has also updated A9.com.
Google has a Tsunami Relief site up. I hope Greg and my idea reaches there.
Nothing from Microsoft yet...I wonder when Microsoft.com will do the same?
EBay/PayPal has a Tsunami forum up, but PayPal hasn't change their home page to allow direct donations yet. That's a little disappointing.

The power of the Net with this disaster will be realized if it's made fantastically easy to donate money to legitimate charities.

Here's some photos that show you the before, recoil and push foward of the tsunami in Sri Lanka. There is an excellent PDF analysis here.

Typical Shot (2004-Jan)

Ocean pulls back 400 meters...(2004-Dec-26)

Tsunami arrives...(2004-Dec-26)

Comments [5]

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Wednesday, December 29, 2004 2:28:33 PM UTC

Looks like PayPal and Ebay are working up something for this...

"On behalf of eBay and PayPal, the eBay Foundation will be making a contribution to help with the relief efforts in Asia, and we are investigating other ways to help as more information becomes available and the needs of those affected become more clear. eBay’s Giving Works team is compiling a list of charities that have established special initiatives to collect funds for this effort that we will share in the next several days."
(via: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/marketing.shtml#2004-12-28135447)

Says that they will be making a list of charities that they will share in the next couple days.

Brian Benzinger

Thursday, December 30, 2004 12:54:32 AM UTC

Those satellite images are striking. I'm trying to grab the PDF you pointed to, but DigitalGlobe.com seems to be having trouble at the moment (perhaps its servers are swamped). Do you have a copy of the PDF you could share?

On the donation front, I notice that Yahoo (my employer) has dedicated some front-page space for donations as well. Not as dramatic as Apple's, but taking space that would normally be used for a paid advertisement is something.

Brian Cantoni

Thursday, December 30, 2004 1:30:20 AM UTC

You can disregard my last comment -- it looks like their site is now up again. It was weird; for a while the domain digitalglobe.com didn't even resolve to an IP address.

Brian Cantoni

Friday, December 31, 2004 5:13:04 PM UTC

amazing photos. FYI, the link to the middle photo is broken. 404.

Thanks for all you are doing.

Dave