Several years ago when I was at The Social Times I wrote a blog post about how Twitter could save your life as a multi-channel messaging tool. If you take a second to look at the comment section of that post you can see there was some back and forth about the usefulness of Twitter (@Martin Ringlein).
Why am I bringing up an article I wrote almost 3 years ago? Today Susan Kinzie wrote a great piece about how innovative developers are starting to create tools to use Twitter as a method for finding people in distress. The article talks about an online survey the Red Cross conducted that reports that more and more people are using social media as a tool to find help.
While the article wraps up by saying that in an emergency the best thing to do is dial 911, it is great to see people starting to explore the ways in which multichannel tools can help out. Imagine tying in my Foursquare, Twitter, Ping.fm and Facebook page into some sort of Geo-Targeted/911 connection tool that would tell all my followers where I was, what was wrong and how they could help.
As an avid lover of tech it is exciting to see these developments coming to fruition. Do you have any examples of folks using social media or developing social media tools to help during a disaster? Let me know.
For the past five years, I've suffered with pain in my right wrist on a daily basis, despite regular treatment from an orthopedic surgeon. I was diagnosed with an LT ligament tear and told that my only surgical option was a partial fusion of my wrist - a treatment he did not yet recommend and I was unable to accept as a solution. At the time, I remember having a conversation with my father: "You hear about these ballplayers tearing things and coming back to play the next season," he said. "It seems like there should be a better solution than that." 
