Thank you 99designs! Very generous. I live 20km west of Christchurch city and was fortunate to escape largely unaffected. My heart goes out to those that have

Thank you 99designs! Very generous. I live 20km west of Christchurch city and was fortunate to escape largely unaffected. My heart goes out to those that have lost Family, Friends, Homes and Businesses. The last week has been a surreal experience for myself and everyone here. It is a case of the haves and the have nots at the moment. There are still 20,000 homes without electricity tonight and 30% of the city remains without water and sewer. It's an incredibly weird and helpless feeling with many suburbs getting back to (relative) normality while other suburbs towards the east have been devastated. Everyone is on edge, each aftershock brings back memories of Tuesdays quake and for a split second everyone wonders if it could be another big one. From my perspective it has been fascinating watching the web and social media play a key role following the disaster. Immediately after the earthquake the news spread fast via twitter as you would expect. Photos and youtube videos of the carnage were being broadcast around the world within minutes. It has been described as one of the most documented disasters in history. You can look back at the first tweets using google realtime search http://goo.gl/40djD http://goo.gl/40djD Txt messages and Facebook were the two best ways to immediately check on family and friends, I can't imagine what it would have been like before these services. Knowing that your loved ones are ok within minutes is incredibly relieving. I could instantly inform my friends from all around the world that I was ok with a quick status update. And for those without internet access, their Friends who had made contact could post on that persons wall letting everyone know that they were ok. Facebook Groups have been a great tool to inform and mobilise various volunteer groups. Canterbury universities student volunteer army is the best example. Thousands of students were mobilsed through facebook and they have been helping to clear silt away from properties. Silt is a fine sand that bubbles out of the ground as a result of liquefaction. http://www.facebook.com/StudentVolunteerArmy http://www.facebook.com/StudentVolunteerArmy New Zealand developers have also volunteered their support with a number of excellent websites popping up in the days following the quake. http://www.quakeescape.org.nz http://www.quakeescape.org.nz http://www.trademe.co.nz/christchurch-earthquake-support http://www.trademe.co.nz/christchurch-earthquake-support http://eq.org.nz http://eq.org.nz http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/christchurch_earthquake.html http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/christchurch_earthquake... Also worth mentioning, a group of New Zealand developers have launched http://www.appappeal.co.nz http://www.appappeal.co.nz to raise funds. I'm sure your support and tweets would be greatly appreciated. It's late here, Hopefully I'll do a more comprehensive (and edited) blog post at a later date. Thanks for your support.