To donate from France:

• Fondation de France
• Croix-Rouge

Moreover in France, you can get a tax credit up to 75% of your donation. Meaning if you are able to pay 100€ to help people, you can donate 400€ and it should cost you only 100€.

Donation:

• The Japanese Red Cross received $490 Million in donation.
• Public donates over $120 Million to American Red Cross to assist Japan earthquake and tsunami survivors
• JDC raises $2 Million, and setup a field hospital with the IDF – the first by any outside nation – in Minamisanriko, one of the many cities decimated by the earthquake and tsunami.
• You can follow on Wikipedia the status of the humanitarian aid.

1. American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
2. AmeriCares
3. Architecture for Humanity
4. Direct Relief International
5. International Rescue Committee

The American Red Cross is raising fund as well but is not the most efficient. According to Charity Navigator, they need to spend $17 to raise $100. As efficiency comparison JDC is spending just $1.

For whose working in large companies, contact your Communication department and COO to know what is the company solidarity plan with the Japanese people. Some company on top of given a substantial amount of money directly to some charities are matching the contribution of their employees, meaning your donation is much more efficient if channeled through your company. If no corporate donation is planned, gently remind the head of PR that it is part of the social responsibility of the company to stand by the victims and that your competitors are probably more generous. Here a list of the corporate donations.

Moreover the IRS allows you to deduct your donation from your income, meaning you can give more.

• Japan – Prime Minister office of Japan: information for foreigners
• Japan – Disaster Prevention and Nuclear Safety Network for Nuclear Environment
• Japan – Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency
• France – Autorité de sûreté nucléaire
• France – Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire
• United States – Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• International – International Atomic Energy Agency
• International – OECD Nuclear Energy Agency

March 11th 2011 at 14h46 JST, M9.0 Tōhoku Earthquake and the following Tsunami (東北地方太平洋沖地震) destroyed the coast line of Sendai. On top on that, the Fukushima nuclear plant has been badly damaged.

All my thoughts are with the families of victims. The 50 fighters at Fukushima which are risking there life are giving a lesson of courage to the world.

Peace on Japan.

Resources:

• Google Crisis Response: donation, transportation information, person finder, …
• Tenki.jp: Weather, Earthquake and Tsunami information
• Japan Meteorological Agency: probably information on new earthquake, Tsunami warning
• Wikipedia: Sendai Earthquake and Tsunami
• Wikipedia: Fukushima nuclear plant accident

Donation:

• American Red Cross
• American Red Cross by iTunes store
• JDC
• Save the Children

The price and currency rates used are the today ones:

• 1 USD = 94.22 JPY
• 1 EUR = 118.74 JPY
• 1 EUR = 1.26 USD
• 1 USD = 1.61 AUD

The bottom line:

1. If at home, use Skype on your Pc.
2. If in Wifi range, use Fring on your iPhone
3. If out of Wifi range, use PennyTel on your iPhone

You can look at VoIP-Sol.com for other solution.

Google will play soon in the playground of Microsoft and Mozilla with its new Web browser, Chrome.

Particularity of this new comer: it has been written from scratch for the today Internet, not for the requirement posted 10 years ago. They are stressing the fact that each tab of Chrome is an independent process, improving speed, memory usage and stability. A nice comics as introduction.

• iPhone camera resolution: 1600×1200 (72dpi)
• iPhone screen resolution: 320×480 (160dpi)
• iPhone contact picture display size: 64×64 (160dpi)
• iPhone contact picture display size on call: 320×270 (160dpi)
• Outlook import resolution: 72×96 (72dpi)

Yes Outlook sucks. You can only add into Oulook interface poor resolution image compare to the capacity of the iPhone.

The solution:

1. On your PC, resize the image contact to 320×320 (160dpi), knowing that 25 pixels on the top and bottom will be semi-transparent when on call. Or any size bigger with the same ratio, up to 1600×1600 (bigger is sometime not imported into the iPhone photo library)
2. On your PC, create a folder iPhone Photos\Contacts and move your contact photos inside
3. Sync the photos into your iPhone with iTunes8.0 through the Photos tab. Select the iPhone Photos folder as source.
   
4. Manually associated the photo to your contact on the iPhone (Edit ->Add Photo->Choose Existing Photo)
5. Sync back the iPhone with iTunes. The photos will be associated automatically into Outlook with the good resolution this time.

On my side, I’m using Outlook. Into My Contacts, right click and select New Folder … to create a new group. After in iTunes the new group will appear and will be synchronize on your iPhone.

Synchronization of contacts is simple on Mac, but could be a nightmare on Windows.

First of all, you need iTune7.7 to perform the synchronization. After plugging your iPhone, select your device and go into the Info tab of iTunes. 4 methods are offered to synchronize your address book:

• Yahoo! Address Book
• Windows Address Book
• Google Contacts
• Outlook

I haven’t test Yahoo! Address Book, but test the 3 other ones. The best result is obtained with Outlook.

I don’t use it for email (using Thunderbird), just starting to use it to maintain my address book.

First step, you have to consolidate your address book into one of the source supported by iTunes. It could be actually the most consuming task. I had some contacts on my previous phone and some in Thunderbird address book. My previous phone provided a soft to export the directory into csv. I made the merge into an Excel spreadsheet with the contact from Thunderbird.

Google Contacts is limited. There is no field birthday, and first name and last name are merge into the same field.

Windows Address Book doesn’t import properly csv file with unicode character.

Outlook as well doesn’t import properly csv file with unicode character. Actually the problem seems to be more the way Excel is generating csv file, but the result is the same. However, Outlook is able to import a binary Excel sheet. In our Excel spreadsheet, just select the area containing all the data and give it a name.

To keep in mind the Outlook email fileds are mapped on the iPhone:

• Email: work
• Email2: home
• Email3: mobile

An alternative to iTunes is to use a tiers software for the synchronization. Funambol for instance is available on AppStore on your iPhone and as plugin in Thunderbird and Outlook. Your contacts are fisrt uploaded from your PC  to a Funambol server, and after download by your iPhone from the remote server.