South Asia Quake Help has set up a blog that accepts posts from SMS phones. (For my futher thoughts on the potential of this, listen to my BBC interview aired this afternoon.)

We now have updates via SMS on a new blog, http://smsquake.blogspot.com. Anyone can post there. That means you.

To post to this blog, at present, you will need a phone that can send SMSes (text messages) to an email address. Send your updates to sms2blog AT gmail DOT com

We're working on a method by which you will be able to send updates to a cellphone number. We hope to have a number from Pakistan to which you can send your messages to be relayed to this blog.

Anyone who'd like to volunteer the use of their phone number for this purpose, please email quakehelp AT gmail DOT com.

A little later they posted this heartening update:

. . . we now have a cellphone number in place in Pakistan. So, to send messages that will appear on http://smsquake.blogspot.com,

You can mail sms2blog AT gmail DOT com

or

You can send an SMS to Imran Hashmi at +923008568418.

Please give your location and name in your message.

MEANWHILE, this is the letter I sent to the Public Editor at the New York Times this morning:

Dear Byron Calame:

This morning the BBC reports, "The UN says the Asia quake aid situation is worse than last December's tsunami and calls for a massive airlift." But the entire matter has fallen completely off the front page of the New York Times website. To scan down the NYT front page just now is to see a world in which the earthquake never happened.

Surely, the Times is aware of the severity of the situation? Some crucial line of communication between the NYT and the public is broken here. Please fix it.

Sincerely,

Kathryn Cramer

NYT UPDATE 10/21/05: This is a little more like it!

The story has since allen off the front page of the NYT web edition, butis featured prominently on the newstand print edition.