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As a few others have noted, there are a few sites out there (e.g., Google's crisis response and Sahana) that seek to match people in need with responders.

If this were any other application, I would argue that competition is good, but I fear that the fragmentation of services for disaster relief ultimately puts more lives at risk. Why doesn't Microsoft through its support & resources behind a well-established, widely-adopted system for collective disaster management? To provide yet another service that is disconnected from all others seems to invite confusion and reduce the power of the network effect.

The only answer I can think of is that Microsoft (lacking the same philanthropic reputation as its competitor, Google) wants to take all the credit. How noble.

There are very good commercial reasons why open projects like Ushahidi and Sahana dominate the field, and why PR tokens from large private firms will always be just that.

More power to 'em, but if it costs a city from deploying a mature and well supported (not to mention free) platform like the two mentioned above, well fuck 'em instead - that's trading lives for PR.

http://sahanafoundation.org/

I applaud Microsoft's effort, but part of me thinks this might be more about PR than a genuine attempt to save lives.

Free & Open Source projects mentioned in the article:

Sahana: http://sahanafoundation.org/
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahana_FOSS_Disaster_Management_System

Ushahidi: http://www.ushahidi.com/products/ushahidi-platform
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushahidi

Sahana is more for coordinating disaster relief, Ushahidi more for quickly getting the message out and visualizing where the hot spots are in a chaotic situation, be it unrest or disease breakout.
They compliment each other.

Just like big pharm ignoring tropical diseases, there's no money in it so big software has ignored this domain, the UN is too big and bureaucratized to move quickly, and so frankly it's up to us. PHP, Python, RDBMSs or crowd-sourcing expert? They can use your help, and it's a bit more productive use of your time than playing video games.

The Sahana Team would love to have some more hands! http://agasti.sahanafoundation.org/

Both Sahana and Ushahidi are Free and Open Source projects, and like any non-profit org are always in desperate need of qualified helpers. Join the mailing lists, introduce yourself & explain what programming or other help you can bring, and I'm sure they'll point you to a list of 1000 waiting tickets in a bug tracker somewhere! It's a lot more productive use of your hobby time organizing resources & solving puzzles for real instead of sinking it into a video game ... !

2010 Summer of Code ideas links given as those are immediate needs the communities have prioritized.

http://www.sahanafoundation.org/
http://wiki.sahanafoundation.org/doku.php/foundation:sahana_gsoc10

http://www.ushahidi.com/
http://www.ushahidi.com/dev_team
http://wiki.ushahididev.com/
http://swift.ushahidi.com/extend/ideas/

fix a bug, save someone's life (or maybe 70 or 300.. it scales!) who wouldn't otherwise've made it... no joke. how often do you get that opportunity in your day to day? maybe we can't do f.all about leaking oil wells, but we do have the ability to do something here. which is pretty neat if you think about it.

Both Sahana and Ushahidi are Free and Open Source projects, and like any non-profit org are always in desperate need of qualified helpers. Join the mailing lists, introduce yourself & explain what programming or other help you can bring, and I'm sure they'll point you to a list of 1000 waiting tickets in a bug tracker somewhere! It's a lot more productive use of your hobby time organizing resources & solving puzzles for real instead of sinking it into a video game ... !

2010 Summer of Code ideas links given as those are immediate needs the communities have prioritized.

http://www.sahanafoundation.org/
http://wiki.sahanafoundation.org/doku.php/foundation:sahana_gsoc10

http://www.ushahidi.com/
http://www.ushahidi.com/dev_team
http://wiki.ushahididev.com/
http://swift.ushahidi.com/extend/ideas/

fix a bug, save someone's life (or maybe 70 or 300.. it scales!) who wouldn't otherwise've made it... no joke. how often do you get that opportunity in your day to day? maybe we can't do f.all about leaking oil wells, but we do have the ability to do something here. which is pretty neat if you think about it.

Sahana is another fine bit of kit.

"Sahana is a Free and Open Source Disaster Management system. It is a web based collaboration tool that addresses the common coordination problems during a disaster from finding missing people, managing aid, managing volunteers, tracking camps effectively between Government groups, the civil society (NGOs) and the victims themselves."

http://www.sahanafoundation.org/

volunteer coders welcome!