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Most of the time we only get one view of a disaster like the floods ravaging Queensland, Australia. Media organizations convey the news but seeing people in harms way posting reports for a crowdsourced map is a new form of reporting that gives immediacy, a sense of connection and a fast way to assess the magnitude of a disaster.

Over the past several weeks, the Australia Broadcast Corporation (ABC) has been doing something a bit different by using Ushahidi to create a data visualization of the Queensland floods that have left the region covered in water. The crowdsourced map is powered by people in the region and professional journalists covering the disaster. It's an encompassing view of the disaster, evoking a sense of real-time drama and a full context about the flooding's impacts.

ABC News Radio and StatusNet, the open-source microblogging service that serves as the foundation for identi.ca, have "unofficially" partnered to unveil a newswire for the radio service.

While the partnership may not be "official", it is yet another vote of confidence in the Twitter-alternative and the open Web.

The days when TV viewers did nothing else while watching their favorite shows are long over. Instead, many viewers now multitask while watching TV and browse the Internet on their laptops, iPads and smartphones. Now, a new iPad app from ABC (iTunes link) wants to bridge this gap and turns the iPad into an interactive companion to the TV network's new "My Generation" series (a fake documentary) that will make its debut next week. The app uses the iPad's microphone to listen for audio cues from the TV and then displays relevant interactive content as every episode progresses.

On the heels of a report which found that online ad revenues will likely surpass those of print ads in the next year, television networks are poised to increase the number of ads run during episodes of shows viewed online. Will Richmond of VideoNuze reports that ABC intends to double the amount of advertisements displayed when viewers watch episodes of ABC shows on the network's website after implementing a similar policy for its iPad app.

The online world is an imperfect place. Gmail goes down, chunks of blog posts disappear, and users are deceived on a regular basis. Most of us who spend time online are aware of - and have come to expect - these foibles and hiccups. But now, throngs of mainstream media outlets are entering the fray with a bit of naivete, rushing to use online services that may not yet be ready for prime time - literally. ABC News learned their lesson the hard way during US President Obama's address to Congress.

Ah, what a difference a caucus makes. In November, when ABC and Facebook announced their partnership for US political coverage we, like many other tech pundits, expressed skepticism. We noted that polls on the Facebook politics section were drawing just around 1,000 participants -- "a microscopic number" compared to the 17 million US members of voting age on the site (now over 18 million). But just over a month later, things seem to have turned around completely.