This is really something that touches me: A guy is missing after he went alone on a boat trip, and some of his friends and family use the net to enable people to help searching him. This is not one of the usual “please help to find xyz” chain letters – this is something where everybody can help.

Well, it’s not just a guy – it’s Jim Gray, a computer scientist who played an important role in the development of technologies like databases and transaction processing. People were able to convince the NASA to include the area where he could have drifted to to be included in a satellite photo scan, and also being photographed by ER-2 aircraft. Werner Vogels has some technical details about what is being done.

Now the great thing actually is that you can help, too, and here is how it works: You log on to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service using you Amazon account, and you will be presented with one of the pictures of the area where Jim and his boat might have drifted to. You inspect the picture and see if it contains something that might look like a sail boat. Examples of what it would look like are given, so the average internet user should be able to spot the difference between plain water and an artficial object being on the surface.

Usually computer scientists are not seen as people that are involved with saving lives. But I sincerely hope that the internet community can play an important role in finding Jim. We are using technology he helped to invent, and now there is a chance that technology helps to save his live.

Update (2007-07-29): There is still no sign of Jim or his boat. Wired has a great article with much more background.