Bloggers in Japan Launch 'Quakebook'

The digital compilation of stories from Japan’s triple disaster will be sold to help fund relief efforts.

This sounds like a fantastic idea. A British teacher living near the Japanese city of Abiko is spearheading Quakebook, a project to help collect stories about the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis that struck the country three weeks ago. The unnamed man, who goes by the Twitter handle “Our Man in Abiko,” began the project with a tweet exactly one week after the disasters hit, and soon submissions were pouring in. The idea is to compile stories into a book and sell it within days to fund relief efforts, and the project now involves more than 200 people in Japan and abroad. The group is in negotiations to sell the compilation to Amazon.com, with all proceeds going to the Japanese Red Cross.