Xeni Jardin:
Following up on this previous BoingBoing post:
Problem — No effective system of mass, international alert existed in South Asia to quickly warn those in harm’s way of the tsunami’s approach.
One approach to a solution, created in the span of about 24 hours by an impromtu volunteer geek corps — A tech system called Alert Retrieval Cache (ARC) which collects, sorts, and routes SMS messages for the puposes of alerts and relay communication. An early warning system based on SMS, short message service.
Rohit Gupta in Mumbai (one of the folks behind DesiMediaBitch, excellent tsunami coverage in recent days) says,
When you need a genius, invent one. We are a genius. Last 24 hours we spent in creating a system of sending and receiving SMS messages through a network of relief people. Here is the page in progress — Link. These messages you see are SMSes, sent directly from Sri Lanka onto a webpage. ARC was created by Neha Vishwanathan, Rohit Gupta, Taran Rampersad, and Dan Lane.
Link to more on DesiMediaBitch.
Here’s a snip from the
…excerpt from: www.boingboing.net…