In echoes of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast, social media sites and small business websites in and around tornado-wracked Moore, Okla., are full of offers of help, questions about missing pets and loved ones, and evidence that neighbors are willing to reach out to help one another in a disaster. On a single Facebook group, there's a Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma City promising free meals to first responders or people hit by the tornado; a mother a few hours' drive from Moore offering to open her door for children who might need a place to stay; a resident sharing a picture of a found dog and contact information for the owner to get in touch. Read More

As of this writing, the most reliable reporting finds that 22 people are injured and two are dead in the wake of two blasts at the finish line of the Boston Marathon Monday afternoon. More can be quantified in Monday's tragedy, and in time the deluge of information might help understand how it happened. But for now, the best use of social media is to reconnect and reassure. Read More

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a new initiative called Code Corps in his State of the City address today, billed as the country's first municipal program that brings volunteer technologists to bear on city government's emergency and disaster recovery needs. Read More

The Internet didn't create the outpouring of citizen-to-citizen care that has so often beaten traditional relief agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Red Cross to Hurricane Sandy-ravaged communities all over the tri-state area - but it certainly helped to channel it. The rise of grassroots organizing channeled through online resources in times of crisis has been so profound that FEMA and the Red Cross aren't even pretending they can do a better job than web-adept citizens groups like Occupy Sandy when it comes to immediately moving people or supplies - or even that they are supposed to. Read More

It's summer, and that means we may be in for another round of freaky weather extremes. Hopefully that won't include the city of Joplin, Missouri, which was hit by an extremely powerful tornado a little more than a year ... Read More

On Code for America's blog, their communications director, Abhi Nemani, picks apart the use of crowdsourcing in New York City around Hurricane Irene and comes out wondering if crowd submission platforms, while they ... Read More

Map of flood waters from NOAA.gov data, rendered in Google Earth. Video of rising floodwaters and dramatic rescues haven't been hard to find in the wake of Hurricane Irene, but the bigger picture might have been lost as ... Read More

Virginia earthquake response map via USGS.gov It's been less than an hour since an estimated 5.9-magnitude earthquake shook up the East Coast with an epicenter about 27 miles east of Charlottesville, Va., and already ... Read More

Fast Company's Neal Ungerleider explores how people in Missouri used social media to communicate in the aftermath of a Sunday tornado that ripped the town of Joplin to shreds: Joplin is a mid-sized community of ... Read More