Here’s iron-clad proof that people should never tell me “hey, there should really be a web site that does X” at about 9 p.m. Because then I stay up until 2:30 a.m. making said web site.

So here it is: KatrinaCheckIn.org, a place for people to (a) say they survived the hurricane, thus lifting a gynormous weight off their friends’ shoulders, and (b) try to track down info on the missing.

For those of you with blogs, I would really appreciate a link to KatrinaCheckIn.org. The more people who are posting to it, the more useful and effective it will be.

31 August 2005



Comments

31 August | 2:08  |  Samantha

Consider it done.

31 August | 2:41  |  kelly

*nominates josh for sainthood.

31 August | 7:39  |  Ben

Bless you!

31 August | 11:54  |  Jessa

Posted to a message board I frequent, where there has been a lot of hurricane discussion, and several members from the area.

31 August | 18:42  |  

Thank you so much for making that site. However, just in case you're not yet aware, I wanted to let you know that it currently appears to be down due to the high volume of traffic. Not certain if there's anything you can do to fix it, but wanted to let you know. Thank you again.

31 August | 18:55  |  josh

Yes, it's been down for a couple hours now. Basically, all the traffic to katrinacheckin.org was melting the server it was on. Was heading for 84 million hits/day rate, which would mean a daily bandwidth bill of $18,000.

But it's not gone forever just yet. I'm working on some things and I hope to have some form of it back alive very shortly.

31 August | 19:17  |  

have you asked nola.com about hosting it?

31 August | 20:20  |  LisLei

Let me know if there's any way I can help with the site, financially or otherwise. And thanks for setting it up.

01 September | 15:30  |  robin

HI!

I was able to access katrinacheckin.org yesterday but can no longer get the site. I keep getting error messages. This has been since yesterday. Any idea what is going on? Is it just me or is it the site?



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Joshua Benton is the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, among other things. Before that, he was a staff writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News. (More.)

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