Geeks Spot Fossett?

Aviation adventurer Steve Fossett went missing while flying over Nevada a week ago Monday. The cops can't find him. The Air Force can't find him. (They did spot 6 other previously unknown wrecks, though.)

But maybe, just maybe, a geek sitting at his computer succeeded where the government failed.





Using an Amazon.com service called Mechanical Turk, web users have been scouring massive amounts of satellite imagery in an effort to assist rescue workers. And one of them may have spotted Fossett's plane, according to AVweb

Can Google Find Steve Fossett?

The search for missing U.S. adventurer Steve Fossett resumed on Wednesday as his friend, British billionaire Richard Branson, tried to find him through a satellite mapping service offered by Internet data provider Google.

Branson told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. he was worried that Fossett, who disappeared over the Nevada desert after taking off in a small plane late on Monday, had not activated the aircraft's emergency tracking beacon.

"I'm talking with friends at Google about seeing whether we can look at satellite images over the last four days to see whether they can see which direction he might have been flying and whether they can see any disturbances anywhere that they can pin from space," he said from Barcelona, Spain.

The company's Google Earth product offers a mapping service using satellite imagery.