Big media has many advantages and disadvantages, but is at its best when pulling together the far-flung threads of a really big story. The New York Times has a good survey of how warnings from seismologists couldn't quite reach tsunami victims in time.

Even high-resolution satellite images tend to wash out details. You just don't expect to see individual wave crests in a satellite image. Digital Globe's tsunami gallery provides a glimpse of the destruction, but it's still hard to get your head around the idea that thousands of miles of coastline looks like these images.

Just because they're gorgeous. Norio Matsumoto's images of Alaska.

They're still counting the dead in South Asia. Some remote islands have lost all communications, and will remain out of contact until a helicopter or boat can get there. The latest report has more than 60,000 dead, more than 30,000 in Indonesia alone. With most water supplies contaminated, disease outbreaks could double or triple that number. Millions of people have been flooded out of their homes.

Doctors Without Borders sends teams of doctors to disaster areas and war zones, along with the equipment and supplies they need to set up hospitals and clinics quickly.

The Red Cross helps with basic needs like shelter, evacuation, and removal of dead bodies.

Either or both of these organizations would welcome as generous a donation as you can give. Cash donations are usually more helpful than goods, as the logistics of moving cash are easier.

There's a complete compendium of relief agencies and services here.

Corante interviews law professor Tim Wu, on the radical idea that copyright law should serve authors, not distributors.

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