The Ushahidi Web site is collecting a variety of information and alerts of the situation in Haiti in realtime including messages of people looking for friends and loved ones as well as reports of locating missing persons and needs of supplies and resources in specific locations.
 
According to the Ushahidi site, Ushahidi means "testimony" in Swahili. It is a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008.
 
Ushahidi's roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. The website was used to map incidents of violence & peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web & mobile phone. This initial deployment of Ushahidi had 45,000 users in Kenya, & was the catalyst for us realizing there was a need for a platform based on it, which could be use by others around the world.