Saving The World, One Tweet at a Time
January 16th, 2008A Google.org funded project, Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster (InSTEDD), is launching Thursday. The project will use Facebook and Twitter to assist during public health threats and natural disasters. Social networking is one piece of the solution that will also use SMS and Google Earth to coordinate rescue efforts.
One such application will be the so-called Twitter bot framework, which bridges the Web service and phones with a location-detection feature that can link to a layer in Google Earth, Rasmussen said. That way, for example, Rasmussen could send a message about a patient with untreated symptoms in Laos (near Vietnam) via SMS on his phone, which might only have one signal bar of service. That message could then be broadcast to anyone subscribed to his messages, including aid workers at UNICEF or InSTEDD’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., which could show his location and note on a Google Earth map.
I am all for using social networking to make the world a safer place, but I sincerely hope that the often unavailable Twitter and the very slow Facebook are not the only links between me, my Avian Flu, and the Tamiflu to cure me.
The entire article is on CNET.
One Response to “Saving The World, One Tweet at a Time”
By Tom Whittaker on Jan 17, 2008 | Reply
Since Twitter went down during Steve Job’s MacWorld Keynote the other day because of too many Twitters tweeting during the vent, i would really love to see how it would stand up to a national disaster. As you know I am a huge fan of Twitter, but I think they have a long way to go and don’t get me started on the slowness of Facebook.