Wired delivers a fascinating story about efforts to find backpacker Nicole Vienneau who disappeared eight months ago while traveling from West Africa to Turkey:

"...when Nicole, 32, failed to make her usual fortnightly phone call home in April, her brother Matthew's LiveJournal posts began to strike a grave note. Frantic and thousands of miles away, Matthew Vienneau typed out a desperate plea for help from readers in the region of Syria where she was last seen.

"Eight months on, remarkably, the site's daily updates have become the command center for a global search for Nicole. Manned by hundreds of helpers, the site has bridged the online and offline worlds and has come agonizingly close to locating the missing woman, whose birthday is Thursday. Hundreds of volunteers have interviewed witnesses, checked hotel rooms, translated documents and websites from both Arabic and English, and made heartfelt pleas to the media for coverage."

As the story notes, her birthday is today, and her mother has posted an entry tonight to mark the occasion.

(Thanks to Tom Sowa at TXT for passing along the link.)