This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Rudi Cilibrasi. Original Post: Katrina Hurricane Relief with Rails Feed Title: Esoteric Ruby Blog Feed URL: http://cilibrar.com/~cilibrar/erblog.cgi/index.rss Feed Description: A weblog made to explore some Ruby ideas in great detail and try to work out ideal solutions to real problems. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Rudi Cilibrasi Latest Posts From Esoteric Ruby Blog

I have been involved in a new Wiki to work together to assist the relief effort for Hurricane Katrina. We have been coordinating among all the various organizations, people, and communication networks to try to help people. We have gotten a lot of press from CNN, AP, BusinessWeek, NPR, and others. And we are getting about 300,000 hits a day at last check. Have a look at our website at http://katrinahelp.info/ (or http://katrina.internet2.edu/ if that name above doesn't work) We have a massive dual processor system for this project to take heavy loads. We have gotten an army of volunteer typists transcribing missing person records into a database. About a dozen people have written scripts to grab data off other sites and convert them to this XML/RSS format called PFIF, the PeopleFinder Interchange Format. The major importance of this format is that it is made for sharing info from the ground up instead of hording all missing person info in one central database. I have been doing a little Ruby scripting myself to convert to this. The problem now is one of final integration and front end work; I am not that good at XML yet but given we have more than 100,000 records already collected it would be a shame if it is only PHP and Java that works out. Are any of the Ruby masters available for saving the world? If so please check out our status on the website and see if you might enjoy saving people's live and helping them be happy during a very hard time. We can also promote Ruby a lot with this press and show how good Ruby is for this kind of thing just for Ruby. I would also like to have just a 1-screen dirt simple Rails app going and wonder if there is any wider interest in the community. I hope to see some of you on the website soon.