To all our friends and fellow Flash developers in New York, Washington D.C. and anyone else effected by today's events, we here at Flazoom.com have you in our thoughts and prayers.

Interactive Relief and Rescue Map
FOX News has posted a fairly detailed map of NYC and how it looks after 9.11.01. There is a lot of information in this map and for people who are only familiar with the tourist spots in NYC, this map could help you to understand the impact of the terrorism on the rest of the city. I say could, because the interface for this map is appalling. By applying simple usability principles to this flash content the designers could made the information within much easier to get to. Instead it seems that their focus was on pacing in features instead of making them easy to use.

Article: Flash + Information Visualization = Great User Experiences
What makes the field of information visualization exciting for today's designers is the advent of graphical development tools like Flash, Active X, and Java. These tools can help utilize the latest advances of information visualization. Using them, developers can create interactive applications that deliver instantaneous responses to complex queries of large data sets.

Note: This article is not so much about Flash as it is about changing the way that web designers and user experience folks think about Flash. It shows concrete example of Flash's ability to improve the users experience. I think some of the anti-Flash camp will have to rethink their position now.

tributes
Newgrounds.com has postings from various contributors in their 911 section. Some are able to express their emotions, thoughts and opinions with great effectiveness. Others, such "WTC=WAR" use applicable music and imagery to show the shock and rage that is certainly building up in our nation. I cannot vouch for the tact of all the movies, but I am sure that you will find one to express your mood, whatever it may be. I appreciate those who use their talents as an outlet for showing support. Especially when a lot of us wish we could do more to help.

As a disclaimer, some of the files were over 2 meg, using multiple photos. Some were as small as 170K, giving a short effective presentation.

Terror in the sky
USA Today has an excellent use of Flash detailing the flight paths of the airplanes on Tuesday. You can see each flight on its own, or run all four flights in a simulation of the actual events (of course, it is sped up a bit). This use of Flash is excellent and I think it shows why Flash is such a powerful tool for communications. My only criticism of the Flash movie is that the Flashes for the explosions are a little too big.

The Guardian too...
The Guardian has less interactivity, but offer small movies, or better slideshows.

The usability is poor, you should use the tiny button left under.

However, people at the press offices work very hard and fast on these things, so I can only say I respect their efforts.

Information about the disasters
Interactive map
Some related flash material. I have no real comment about this other than that it's a pretty simple breakdown of what happened.

†
My condoleances to all relatives of victims.
I sympathize with the citizens of the United States and the rest of the world.
I'm extremely shocked.
Yuccazucci.
(note: this message as been edited. For the original post, see the comments.)