Writing this somewhere public enough that it might be found, though I am also forwarding it privately to some folks who have the contacts to make it happen.
There is a concerted effort underway to build a database of Katrina survivors and missing, centered around a standard data format called PFIF (People Finder Information Format). It lets a host of volunteers pull in data from the myriad of unstructured sites and do queries across them. That's all good.
A missing piece, though, is how to search all this data. If you have just a cell phone, and even if you have figured out SMS, there's currently no way to run a search over all this data.
The idea then is simple: an SMS to search gateway with a well-advertised number (use AM radio like WWL, or announcements in shelters, or whatever) to let people run queries from their cell phones. This would in some way force the issue of interoperability and consolidation of data efforts.
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I think there was a big problem in that people wanted to help, so they built what they could to help. I saw a lot of different places to find missing people: the Red Cross, Craigslist, even CNN (as well as a lot more). How many sites should people register at?
Instead, I'd like to see the Red Cross maintain a database, and provide web services to allow anyone to build onto it. Want to help? Provide a better interface to the database. Make an SMS bridge. Mash it up with Google Maps. Mash it up with Orkut.
People want to do something to help, the Red Cross should sure they can do something that actually does instead of splintering off.
Posted by: George Hotelling | September 11, 2005 at 12:02 AM