Oil spill hits 60th day

Saturday will mark 60 days since the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon and beginning of one of the worst oil spills in history. On Friday, signaling a shift in strategy to fight against the ruptured well in the Gulf, the Coast Guard began ramping up efforts to capture oil closer to shore. Adm. Thad Allen said an estimated 2,000 private boats in the so-called "vessels of opportunity" program will be more closely linked through a tighter command and control structure to direct them to locations less than 50 miles offshore to skim the oil. Allen, the point man for the federal response to the spill, previously had said surface containment efforts would be concentrated much farther offshore. Estimates of the oil being siphoned from the well a mile below the Gulf are growing. Allen said more than 1.2 million gallons was sucked up to containment vessels Thursday.

The Gulf Disaster Video That BP Doesn't Want You To See

Those damn BP liars are making things even worse trying to fix the catastrophe they caused. Their efforts are turning the massive oil flood into giant underwater clouds made of corrosive particles. Here's the underwater video to prove it.

The chemical dispersants that BP is using—trying to fix the gigantic mess caused by their reckless actions—are turning the thick black tide into titanic clouds floating underneath the surface. The clouds are formed by particles made of oil combined with the dispersants. The resulting chemical monster can burn the skin of any human or animal that gets in contact with it.

The commander of the International Space Station said that the oil flood looked "very scary" from space. After diving into one of these clouds, Philippe Cousteau—grandson of the legendary Jacques-Yves Cousteau—gets a lot closer to reality: "This is a nightmare... a nightmare."

Oil Reporter App Makes Sure No Toxic Sludge Goes Unnoticed

Oil Reporter isn't a public shaming campaign for BP—no, that'll take care of itself just fine, thanks. This iPhone app, which lets Gulf Coast residents record every oily bird and patch of ruined swampland, is about fixing things.

Oil Reporter isn't that different from any other crowd-sourced reporting app, technically speaking. I mean, in terms of raw functionality, it's not that different from, say, the app AT&T has its customers use to report dropped calls: Each report contains relevant information about the location, time and circumstances of the incident, which presumably help the recipient fix the problem.

Oil Reporter sends its decidedly more urgent reports to an organization called CrisisCommons, which is dedicated to aggregating massive amounts of crowd-sourced data to help NGOs, relief organizations and corporations and government agencies involved understand the scope and severity of a given problem. (And honestly, most stories about the Gulf oil spill are actually about changes in the known scope and severity of the disaster, right?)

Oil Reporter is free, obviously, and if you live on the Gulf Coast, or in any of the areas where the spill is projected to contaminate, you should be put off by its minimal set of launch features—CrisisCommons developed Oil Reporter first and foremost as a framework for other disaster relief apps, so features like native geotagging are on their way, hopefully (scratch that: probably) before the earth stops vomiting its blood into some of the most fragile ecosystems in the country. [iTunes via 148Apps]