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The Red Cross already does this. It's called Safe And Well. This is one place where we definitely don't need fragmentation. If you need to check on someone in
by DanielStraight 13y ago
The Red Cross already does this. It's called Safe And Well. This is one place where we definitely don't need fragmentation.
If you need to check on someone in Boston, I recommend Safe And Well. Just please don't go to the site unless you actually need to check on someone. The servers don't need the added load (which I guess would be a reason to want to use Google, but they aren't going to be on scene like the Red Cross will be).
- danso 13y agoThe Red Cross link: http://www.redcross.org/find-help/contact-family/register-safe-listing http://www.redcross.org/find-help/contact-family/register-sa... > Due to high volume, Safe and Well is experiencing slow page loads at this time. Please continue to check back. Edit: Also, I hate to bag on anything disaster-relief related, but it's not very useful even when it is working, as it returns results from what looks like the Red Cross's entire database of these records, rather than those scoped to today.
- sukuriant 13y agoThis might be a place where the Red Cross might be able to improve their services by creating an AppEngine or EC2 instance to handle the traffic?
- toomuchtodo 13y agoOr let Google do it. Google can scale much faster than the Red Cross can outsource it.
- nnutter 13y agoUntil Google decides to close it a few years from now in order to focus on what matters.
- jmillikin 13y agoThere is no need to run a person finder for longer than the duration of the disaster.
- jarek 13y agoWe've had wars that run for decades, a timespan in which it's definitely possible for a company to lose interest (or even cease to operate altogether). Thankfully this doesn't seem to be an issue as long as the company running it uses the open data format as pointed out by magicalist.
- magicalist 13y agoGoogle's Person Finder is open source[1] and uses the People Finder Interchange Format[2], which was designed after Katrina specifically so that disaster relief organizations can quickly share this data so that data sources stay in sync and new ones can be quickly revved up (if traffic overwhelms some or, I don't know, a company decides to no longer host one). Federation of this data is the most important aspect of it, because people use many different sources for news and information, and should not have to search for every possible database of missing persons to find the information they need. For example, after the 2010 Haitian Earthquake, CNN, the New York Times, the Miami Herald, and the Google Person Finder all shared data[3] so that if any one (or several) went down, all that information was still available from other sources. In any case, I don't know if you were trying to score free internet points or just being snarky, but it's generally a good idea to do basic research before repeating non sequiturs. [1] https://code.google.com/p/googlepersonfinder/ https://code.google.com/p/googlepersonfinder/ [2] http://zesty.ca/pfif/1.4/ http://zesty.ca/pfif/1.4/ [3] http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/100245/google-centralizes-haiti-people-finder-news-sites-share-data/ http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/100245/google...
- patrickaljord 13y agoAre you seriously taking advantage of this tragedy to bash Google for shutting down Reader? Wow, and I thought the Reader drama couldn't get any lower.
- sukuriant 13y agoBecause having ads for making funerals less expensive is exactly what I want to see when I'm searching for my loved ones that disappeared during an earthquake. I'd rather not-for-profits continue disaster relief, like they have been, and the for-profits actively choosing to donate to them.
- jiggy2011 13y agoThere are no ads on that page.
- sukuriant 13y agoVery true; and I trust that Google would have a heart to not do that. At least, I hope they wouldn't. My point was that if a for-profit company enters this space, they need a way to monetize their efforts, and it's a field ripe for exploitation. It's better if a non-profit does this, since their heart is more likely to be in the right place.
- shrikant 13y agoFrom Wikipedia: "Google.org is the charitable arm of Internet search engine company Google. The organization has committed over $100 million in investments and grants as of May 2010." As much as I like to rag on Google for their lip-service to "don't be evil", this isn't such a case. I don't think Google.org has a [direct] profit motive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google.org
- lemma 13y agoThe link is to google.org, google's not-for-profit arm.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sukuriant 13y agoIs there actually a difference between google.com and google.org? I sincerely figured that Google, wanting to not be confused or have their domain offended (whitehouse.com anyone? You couldn't go to that link back in the 90's). Edit: reading shrikant's response elsewhere, it appears that there is quite a difference. That is very cool, then :)
- kgermino 13y agoLink: http://www.redcross.org/find-help/contact-family/register-safe-listing http://www.redcross.org/find-help/contact-family/register-sa... Also the city is doing the same through the Mayor's Hotline: 617-635-4500
- tomkarlo 13y agoIt's not necessarily fragmentation, Person Finder is designed to federate information from multiple sources so that information isn't fragmented and sources don't get overwhelmed by the load spike. I don't know it the Red Cross system supports the relevant data exchange standard, although they seem to have been talking about it in the past with the Person Finder team. A finder that falls over under load isn't very useful.
- emddudley 13y agoGoogle has now added a link to Red Cross's Safe and Well.
- eliben 13y agoFor the sake of fairness, do a google search on "boston bomb" or similar and see what it shows (spoiler: there's a link to Red Cross too).