Google Australia’s blog highlights how the terrible fires in the country are permeating every walk of life.
Quite simply, they’ve built a Flash Map, which contains the latest up-to-date information about fire locations and their status from the Country Fire Authority.
Although nothing good can be said about this ongoing tragedy, Google’s reaction is an example of how offline can support online in a more humanised sense, away from ad-campaigns and ideas of marketing ROI. Equally, Google’s power online means that it’s making information more accessible to those who need it, as well as taking the strain away from other websites that are close to collapsing under massive volumes of traffic.
With an increase of recent catastophes, wars and events all being mapped through the internet, it genuinely seems to me that the internet really can call itself a global community… It will be interesting to see which direction this takes in the near future.
Digital Geek UK 