????日前，突如其來的日本大地震和海嘯使傳統的通信渠道遭到嚴重破壞。房屋被摧毀，手機通信塔臺倒塌，人們被集中到臨時安置所，還有更壞的情形不堪設想……在這種情況下，有系統地統計失蹤人數是一件非常困難的事情。

????為了解決這個問題，谷歌（Google）推出了“尋人”工具。借助這個簡單的工具，受災人士和尋找親友的人們可以創建資料，發布尋人消息或者向他人報平安。由于它采用的是開放標準，因此可以把在其它網站發布的消息復制過來。

????上個月新西蘭克賴斯特徹奇地震后，這個工具就派上了用場，共采集了1.15萬人的信息。它在海地地震中同樣發揮了不小作用。

????它還是一款雙語（或多語言）工具。

????“谷歌創意”（Google Ideas）是一個將創意變為現實的智囊團，他們研究的課題是拓展技術的應用范圍，以便幫助人們解決各種各樣的問題——“尋人”便是一個極佳的例子。

????用英文快速搜索一個常用的日本人名，我們得到下面三條搜索結果：

????譯者：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: