There was a post on the New York Tech Meetup mailing list this morning, copied below, seeking help to find Steve Fosset. It’s a great example of Web 2.0 applications and crowd-sourcing, and their potential to make a difference. To participate login to the Amazon Mechanical Turk here.

On Monday, September 3, 2007, Steve Fossett, the first person to fly a plane around the world without refueling and the first person to fly around the world in a balloon went missing in Nevada. An airplane he was flying failed to return.

Although no one has any idea where he is, through the generous efforts of individuals at several organizations detailed satellite imagery has been made available for his last known whereabouts, and the project hosted by Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. If you are interested in helping with the search effort and can contribute a little bit of time to do so, go to http://www.mturk.com/ and sign in (or create) an account. This is a race against time and any help you can provide will make a huge difference. Friends and family of Steve Fossett would like to thank you for helping them with this cause.