日前，突如其来的日本大地震和海啸使传统的通信渠道遭到严重破坏。房屋被摧毁，手机通信塔台倒塌，人们被集中到临时安置所，还有更坏的情形不堪设想……在这种情况下，有系统地统计失踪人数是一件非常困难的事情。

    为了解决这个问题，谷歌（Google）推出了“寻人”工具。借助这个简单的工具，受灾人士和寻找亲友的人们可以创建资料，发布寻人消息或者向他人报平安。由于它采用的是开放标准，因此可以把在其它网站发布的消息复制过来。

    上个月新西兰克赖斯特彻奇地震后，这个工具就派上了用场，共采集了1.15万人的信息。它在海地地震中同样发挥了不小作用。

    它还是一款双语（或多语言）工具。

    “谷歌创意”（Google Ideas）是一个将创意变为现实的智囊团，他们研究的课题是拓展技术的应用范围，以便帮助人们解决各种各样的问题——“寻人”便是一个极佳的例子。

    用英文快速搜索一个常用的日本人名，我们得到下面三条搜索结果：

    译者：珠珠

    Natural disasters such as the EarthQuake/Tsunami in Japan last night disrupt traditional channels of communication. When homes are destroyed, cell communications towers toppled, and people taken to emergency rooms or worse, there is very little in the way of a full organized registry of people who may be missing.

    For this, Google (GOOG) deploys its People Finder tool. People Finder is a simple tool to allow people affected by the quake and those who are trying to communicate with them to register their status. It is built with open standards so other registries can plug into it.

    It was recently deployed for the victims of the Christchurch, New Zealand Quake last month which kept a registry of 11,500 people. Haiti too.

    The tool is bi-lingual (multi-lingual) as well.

    Google Ideas is a think/do tank that studies where technology can help solve the world's problems. This is a good example of such an endeavor.

    A quick search for a common name in English yielded three results: