I just finished a productive day at Crisis Camp Boston, where local programmers and volunteers collaborated on IT projects to support recovery efforts in Haiti. My group created Tweet Triage, an app that uses auto-filtering and crowd-sourced voting to identify those needle-in-a-haystack #haiti tweets that actually have useful info.

Tweet Triage could be a great resource for many similar crises, though in the case of Haiti's earthquake, I left today's camp with two pressing questions: How many people in Haiti use Twitter? And is information gleaned from Twitter useful for and used by relief workers?

These reservations aside, it felt great to help out in some way other than sending a text message. I also learned something essential about the world: crises don't just destroy buildings and take lives. They also disrupt the orderly flow of information, so there's always a way for us network society folks to help out.