Fires in California - How Social Media is helping + Moblie Phones

October 24, 2007 at 8:32 am · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Corante, Debi Jones, Emergency, Enterprise 2.0, Flickr, KPBS, Mobile Messaging 2.0, Mobile Phones, NPR, News, PBS, Public Media, Social Media, Twitter, Wisdom of Crowds, security

If you live where I do 3,000 miles away from the fires, maybe pictures of the fires and interviews with people who have lost their homes might be interesting. BUT what if you live where the fires are? Surely then I would want to know in real time EXACTLY what was going on.

KPBS - a public TV Station is providing this service using Google Maps, Twitter & Flickr. They are also broadcasting on air and on the web! They have all the bases covered. I have suggested to some PBS/NPR stations that they should create an Emergency Plan - they have pushed back saying that they don’t do “News”. Here is a joint license showing that covering emergency well is surely one of the key “Public” tasks of such a station - showing also how by using social media - they can do this really well by accessing their community

Here is the Google Map - all the key detail is there - what is going on and where and when (875,000 views and counting this morning)

Here is the Twitter feed - note that the feed is operating on a minute by minute basis

Here is the link to Flickr

They are using the Comments Section on a blog as a tool to allow people to make local reports - see how it works here

They have got the full suite all cleverly applied

Update - In this kind of emergency - Mobile Phones are now the main link - here is a great post by Debi Jones on how this is playing out:

The disastrous fires burning in San Diego have initiated a service used by the city and county government to inform and update residents. Mandatory evacuation orders have been communicated via reverse 911 on both landline phones and mobile phones. The messages are prerecorded and as I’ve said, three messages have been received on my phone. The first was an evacuation order. The next message was a notice that San Diego schools are closed until further notice along with the instruction to keep children inside and restrict their activity levels (smoke and ash is so thick in the air that keeping it out of your house is impossible during large fires). The third message was information on evacuation centers that were still open as several are already full.

Regulation in the US for Enhanced 911 or emergency service which incorporates location data has resulted in a number of emergency related services that are unique to the US market when compared to other geographical regions like Western Europe or Asia. The reverse 911 system isn’t specifically a mobile service, but that it does include mobile phones is impressive and to see this system work in the case of a disaster saving time and lives is an important development. To this point, 262,000 households have received reverse 911 calls.

It is likely in a very bad situation that cell phone networks will get jammed - what we are learning though is that SMS tends to get through - so Twitter as a feed may be the core of a good plan

Advisories have been announced on CNN and local San Diego TV stations asking people to limit their mobile phone use as the networks are saturated. This is a common problem during emergencies as we’ve seen over and over. The one component that continued to provide communication during the London bombings, post Katrina flooding in New Orleans and now in San Diego is text messaging. Twice today my mobile calls have been rejected with the network reporting, “all circuits are busy”. And yet, I’ve continued to be able to send out SMS.

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Working around the IT Guys

October 18, 2007 at 6:29 am · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, CIO, Chris Anderson, Enterprise 2.0, IT Department, Social Media, barriers, security

One of the barriers for a 2.0 world in any established organization is the IT department. With some justification, they feel that they cannot allow any risk to core systems such as payroll, CRM etc. So they keep the 2.0 world out of the organization.

Chris Anderson Editor of Wired magazine has found an elegant solution. He has set up two Lans at Wired. The Tight Corporate one and the open 2.0 one. Feels like a good work around.  Here is his excellent short post on the topic

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Akamai provides new visibility into Internet comings and goings

June 8, 2007 at 9:17 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing, Web 2.0, security, videos

The browsing public can now get a free, real-time peek into the operating statistics for Internet network traffic, as well as monitor attack traffic and latency snafus, thanks to Akamai Technologies, Inc.

Akamai, which maintains a globally distributed platform to cache and accelerate online content, media and applications, this week launched its Real Time Web Monitor to offers three visualizations that give users a graphical picture of Internet health worldwide.

“It’s easy to take for granted that the Internet will always be on and always working,” said Prof. Tom Leighton, Akamai co-founder and chief scientist. “Reality shows us that there are many factors on any given day degrading the Internet’s performance.”

The three monitors, which users can toggle between with on-screen buttons, sport interactive settings, allowing users to customize data.

The new monitors include:

• Attack Traffic: Displays real-time attacks by geographic region — state, province, or country — based on data from scanning randomly generated IP addresses to chart the number of connections attempted and packets captured from Trojans and worms.

• Network Traffic: Monitors the amount of data being requested and delivered in any geographic region at any time, with online displays of the top 10 regions with the most traffic.

• Latency/Speed: Measures latency between major cities using automated tests, including the 10 worst cities, indicating absolute latency (current status) and relative latency (difference between the current status and the historical average latency).

As the old saying at the mission goes: If you’re going to eat the meal, you’ve got to listen to the sermon. A pull-down menu at the top of the screen will bring users to network performance monitors that show how Akamai can help work around the speed and latency, as well as lost-packet, issues and indicates this with a straight line connecting user-designated cities. Non-Akamai use is depicted with a curved line, marked with “X”s that represent lost packets.

Users can also view monitors that show Internet usage worldwide by interest area: retail, music, and news. This comes from data that is assembled by Akamai from its own Web monitoring. Another link to “Visualize Akamai” shows active streams, HTTP hits per second, and visitors per minute.

The new Internet health views come just weeks after a spate of attacks in the Baltic region caused concern over a possible ramp-up in strategic or militaristic web attacks.

Disclosure: Akamai is or has been a sponsor of BriefingsDirect B2B podcasts.

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