Here are some innovative and history-preserving resources and platforms people are using to commemorate 9/11 digitally.

1) Facebook teamed up with the National September 11 Memorial & Museum to create the Facebook 9/11 Memorial app that allows users to update their profile photos and status updates with a dedication to one of the thousands of people killed in the WTC attacks, Flight 93 and Pentagon bombing.

2) The September 11 Digital Archive contains a collection of electronic media presenting the history of the event. Users can contribute their own personal accounts of the occasion by uploading photographs and documents.

3) American Express launched the I Will Volunteer Facebook app for citizens to share how they’re going to be a part of the day of service. The app provides a list of volunteer opportunities for people who want take action in their local communities.

4) The 911Day.org site, featuring the “I Will” campaign, provides an outlet for people to submit text or video pledges stating what they’ll do this September 11th to honor it as a day of remembrance and service.. Developed by GOOD/Corps, the movement was designed to turn 9/11 into the day to do something good for someone else –not just on the 10th anniversary, but ongoing from year to year. Here’s the campaign’s PSA, highlighting citizen and some celebrity friends declaring what they’ll do to be of service this 9/11.

5) While the Internet has become the main platform for sharing memories of 9/11, TV was the primary outlet 10 years ago when Ground Zero became a reality. For this reason, one of the most comprehensive online resources for the occasion is the Television News Archive. The Internet Archive has gathered 3,000 hours of raw footage and international TV news coverage from September 11 – 17, 2001 to form a project called “Understanding 9/11: A TV News Archive .”

How are you commemorating 9/11 this year?  Sound off in the comments section. I’d love to learn about your local initiatives.

Thanks to the vast reach, transparency, and real-time dynamics of social media, consumers and brands are openly communicating for the first time about the importance of connectivity and moving forward as one community to trigger and perpetuate social change. Yes, a new level of social consciousness is among us. So how do we continue to grow this dialogue and instigate offline action? How do we ensure that hope for a greater tomorrow does not fade off into cyberspace like so many disaster-reactive-sparked causes do after a period of time?

We put the “We” before “Me”.

Full CBS News post here…

I’m a fan of the lingerie campaign for a number of reasons, the first being it celebrates womanhood on all fronts. As Veronica Webb says in the video below, ” If you put the money in the hands of women, everything changes. Children go to school. The sick are taken care of, and communities get built.” And as Mother Nature would have it, women in our culture are admired for their feminine power [as they should be], which is sometimes projected through glamorous images tied up a pretty red bow, or in this case a corset. Using sex appeal to fuel microfinance for women in need could be the greatest purpose for lingerie yet. Well, at least one of them.

EduCare’s Global Education Movement in India from EducateNcare.com on Vimeo.

Kathy is co-creator, with Julia Roberts, of “Mothers on a Mission,” a series about the power of mothers to transform the world, which will air on the OWN Network in early 2011, and “Prized Women,” a series with the Nobel Women’s Initiative about women Nobel Peace Prize winners. She is also exec-producing “Rock your World,” a series about young activists with 7ATE9. Kathy’s company is producing, with Julia Robert’s company, Red Om, “Journey,” a major feature film about her son, Dan Eldon, to be directed by Bronwen Hughes (“Harriet the Spy,” “Forces of Nature,” “Stander.”)

Photo Courtesy of Reuters Alertnet 2011 by Kyodo

Aftershocks continue to rock the country, and Tsunami waves up to four feet high pummel the South Pacific, as reports of  the largest earthquake to devastate Japan pour across the Internets. The 8.9 tremor has killed at least 300 people in Sendai, the northeastern port city closest to the epicenter, according to officials.

Immediately after disaster strikes, there is shock. There is panic. There is fear, and there is despair. There is so much noise crowding our thoughts and our Twitter streams that space for action seems inconceivable. But to our good fortune, organizations like International Medical Corps (IMC) laser their way through the noise to provide relief and continuous support to those in need as quickly as possible.

Just as I was about to call the IMC office in Santa Monica today, Jaya Vadlamudi, IMC’s Senior Communications Officer, sent me an e-mail with information about the group’s efforts. International Medical Corps is currently in contact with partners in Japan and other affected countries to assess and coordinate activities.

Here’s how you can help. If you’d like to donate, call 800-481-4462 or visit the International Medical Corps website here. You can also Text MED to 80888 from any mobile phone to give $10. The money is used directly for IMC’s emergency response programs worldwide – this includes emergency medical care and supplies. Ninety-two percent of all donations go directly to IMC programs. The remaining eight percent is used for operational costs.

In August, I  teamed up with Changents and Proctor and Gamble to bring clean water to the developing world.  For every vote that my blog post about the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Drop in the Bucket received, along with votes for several other write-ups, P&G donated a day of drinking water to someone in need.  In one month, a small group of female writers and I generated a total of 21,000 votes.  Today, 150 new women bloggers have joined this initiative with the ultimate goal of providing 100,000 days of  fresh H2O for people around the globe by the end of the year.

If the spirit moves you, please take a moment to vote by entering your e-mail address in the space below and confirming your vote after you receive an automated message.  You will not be spammed after taking this action, and you will not be relentlessly harassed by me to vote everyday (like you were in August), as this part of the campaign is not a contest.  It’s simply a click-of-the-mouse method to cultivating a cause-minded community that can reach the far ends of the earth.

Thank you for your support!

As soon as I got to my desk, I turned on all of the monitors to see what kind of action the international markets had seen.  Just as I was about to sit down and eat my morning yogurt granola strawberry parfait, my field reporter Jean called from NASDAQ.

“The World Trade Center is on fire!!!”  she exclaimed.

“WHAT?!”

I ran to the television and gasped at the sight before me.  Smoke and fire blazed from the top of one of the towers.  My news anchor ran to the set.  The bureau chief began making calls, while I phoned the camera crew to send them to down to Wall Street.

In what felt like attoseconds, a plane flew into the other tower.

“We’re under fire!” screamed my co-producer Jessica.

The phones sounded off like alarms, while the bureau chief began giving us all instructions on how to carry out the rest of the morning until our camera crew returned with footage.

Amidst all the panic and chaos, I suddenly realized that time had never been more on my side.  I remembered I had made plans to fly to San Francisco that day.  As fate would have it,  a few days prior to the tragedy I had rescheduled my flight for the following week.  I also paused to digest the fact that exactly a week prior to 9/11 I was at the World Trade Center interviewing an analyst.  Questions raced through my mind.  Where was he now?  And how many people did I know that weren’t going to make it out of the rubble alive?

The next morning, I walked to the bus stop on 75th St. and First Avenue to find only two other people waiting. The three of us stared at the dead calm street and recounted the previous day to one another. Before the bus arrived, I picked up the latest edition of The New Yorker. The cover was drawn by my favorite comics artist Art Spiegelman, who is in my book one of the all-time greatest graphic illustrators of gut wrenching emotion and loss.

And then it rained.  I don’t remember for how many days, but the sky fell hard in the days that followed.  The media, people on the streets, the heart of the City, they all grew more and more despondent as hope for finding any WTC survivors withered along with the remains of the once magnificent Twin Towers – former symbols of ambition, capitalism, prosperity and the Free World.  After the fall, if it hadn’t been for the heroic fire fighters and police officers of New York, nothing but death and destruction would have been left looming in the fumes.

The countless missing person signs that lined the walls of Grand Central and Times Square were almost unbearable to see. I lost my college roommate in a car accident earlier that year.  That had been one of my first tastes of death, and I wore it like an oversized wet cloak for a considerable amount of time.  I wondered how the great city that kicked my ass repeatedly would ever recover.

A few months later, I relocated to San Francisco only to return to Manhattan for another round a year later.  I remember being shocked at how many pregnant women I saw walking the streets.

“Is it just me or is everyone in New York pregnant,” I asked a friend one day, as we strolled through Central Park.

“It’s the new thing,” she replied. “Right after September 11th, a bunch of people got married, and now they’re all popping out babies.”

“Praying time will be on their side,” I thought to myself out loud.

Two years later, I moved to Los Angeles, which I now gladly call home.  I talked often about traveling to New York for a visit.  But for five years, there was always something that got in my way – until now.

I’m writing this blog post at 3:05AM September 11, 2010 in a New York hotel two blocks from the old TechTV satellite bureau, where I was the day the WTC was attacked.  My heart is big, throbbing, and red again.  And it feels good to be back in the city that taught me to stand tall, especially in the face of adversity.  The noise and crowds no longer feel like obstacles to obtaining peace and happiness.  They dawn on me in shades of awakenings and  opportunity.

I’ll always love you, New York.  How sweet it is to finally come full circle.  My heart goes out to everyone who lost a loved one on 9/11 nine years ago.  I am at your service.

I wrote the following passage last year as an ode to all I lost, learned, and loved while living in Manhattan.

NEW YORK

You made a woman out of me, Manhattan.  You – with your iron will, mammoth hands, and enchantingly unforgiving height.  It’s no wonder you were a soldier in another life, possessing the best and worst of times, purple triumphs, and the most lurid crimes.

Unwittingly, I fell into your fold twice when I most needed lessons in humility.  Fearless and unstoppable, I stomped through the hot heart-beating streets of SoHo with all my dreams in front of me.  Two months later, I lost my innocence on the corner of Broadway and Houston, where the offices were just dorm rooms dressed in corporate conservatism.

I have never been so tired and tireless.  I have never cried as much or ever been as humbled, surviving the dot com blood bath, and seeing the Towers crumble.

How I resented you and clung to you, Manhattan, for seducing me but not keeping me safe and warm.  Being with you was like being romanced by a rock star, exhilarating and exhausting, enticing and extreme, decadent and deadly, and oh so much fun.

You are one giant organism, Manhattan, a microcosm of the Universe itself.  The rats and cockroaches kept me company when I trudged along the subway tracks during the Blackout of ’03.  And Times Square was so still and magnificent, as we sped through traffic lights on the back of David’s motorcycle at 4AM.

I will always love watching the boys shoot hoops on W. 4^th Street, listening to the Sounds of Brazil, feeling the ghosts groove at Terra Blues, playing telephone through the secret passage ways of Grand Central, and smiling at my favorite fortune teller in Chelsea.  I still think about that rock I perched myself upon in Central Park, the day I sank into the ultimate pit of despair when missing person signs covered the City, and fumes from Ground Zero filled the air.

I cannot speak ill of you, Manhattan.  You – the greatest survivor to teach me to survive.  One day, we’ll come full circle because you brought me back to life.