It was pointed out to me by my friend (who prefers to remain nameless…no really) that I have been neglecting Diggz.org lately. This is very true. I’ve been busy working on other things like Tropo.com, GWOB.org and traveling quite a bit for both. Here and there I’ve had the opportunity to play some piano.
One of my New Year’s resolutions is to get back into the habit of posting content to Diggz.org. In the spirit of that, I’ve recorded a new edition of Johnny Diggz Live. I hope you enjoy…
What is the future of voice, video, text and other real-time communications technologies? Where is the innovation happening? What does our communication future look like?
That was the topic of a video interview by Chris Pirillo between VoIP industry veteran Jeff Pulver and Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor. Conducted using a Google+ Hangout, Chris described on his own site what the interview was all about and then made the video available on YouTube:
GameSave is a 5-week competition in which teams build a demo and working concept for a game which addresses disaster mitigation.
Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot about games and their meaning. Can games be art? Can games be educational? Are they merely escapist? Regardless of the manner in which these matters are debated, and the examples cited, it really comes down to one answer to all of these questions: It depends on the game.
Good is relative. Sometimes, it’s “good” if games can be used to teach maths to a child who is struggling at school. Sometimes it’s “good” if games can merely provide a bit of distraction for an overworked assistant.
But what if we could use a game to mitigate natural disasters?
I was so inspired by the mythical tales of heroic network planning and design in Twilio’s post ,”Why Twilio Wasn’t Affected by Today’s AWS Issues“, I made this short animation to express the pure unadulterated seeping pile of awesome it represents. Kudos to the author, and thank you commenters for your inspirado.
When I was young, I loved the the movie “The Last Starfighter“…I loved the idea that some random suburban kid could backdoor his way into saving the entire galaxy by simply excelling at playing a coin operated video game (really well). Perhaps in retrospect, this was a bit of self-indulgent thinking…as I spent many a formative year dumping quarters into coin-operated video game machines.
My very first job was as a paperboy for the Philadephia Bulletin. I’d deliver newspapers on my bicycle and I’d collect tips. Many times tips came in the form of quarters. And I’d spend those quarters on video games…like Asteroids, Space Invaders, Defender… Galaga.
When The Last Starfighter came out in 1984, the Philadephia Bulletin had been out of print for two years. The Bulletin was just an evening newspaper published daily in Philadelphia from 1847 to 1982…no big deal. I was 13…my paperboy days were long gone. But when I saw The Last Star Fighter for the first time I thought it was the coolest thing ever, mostly because I could relate to the main character, Alex Rogan. Alex gets an opportunity, granted by “The Music Man” himself, Robert Preston, because he’s a smart geek. The opportunity is to save the galaxy using the skills he’s displayed by #winning the #highscore at a coin-operated video game near his local laundrymat called (appropriately) The Last Starfighter.
Well, today is my birthday and I have an opportunity to help out a very real version of this concept. It’s a project we’ve been working on at Geeks Without Bounds called “GameSave”… a competition challenging teams of game developers to create a game that teaches and trains players (in advance) in basic emergency relief and disaster mitigation techniques.
Ethan Zuckerman was a co-founder of Tripod.com – before The Facebook and Twitter, before WordPress and MySpace, Tripod.com was a place where you you could set up your own website for free…in 1995. Ethan later founded the Geekcorps, a non-profit organization that sends people with technical skills to developing countries to assist in computer infrastructure development.
It just so happened that Ethan was sitting in the audience at the 140 Characters Conference in San Francisco where I first opened my trap (publicly) about Geeks without Bounds. Before I had finished talking on stage, I had already received a message from him, and the ensuing advice he’s bestowed continues to guide GWOBorg today.
One of the first people he suggested I talk to was a guy named Patrick Meier. Patrick started a company called Ushahidi. Ushahidi is an open source crisis mapping platform. It’s been used in Haiti, Egypt, Libya, Japan…all around the world to help document and make sense of fast-moving crises. The platform allows reports from cell phones and Web-connected devices to be collected and displayed on Web-based maps. I ended up meeting Patrick, who invited me to be his guest at a conference he was hosting on crisis mapping, called ICCM.
The first time I actually saw Ushahidi demoed was on October 1st 2010…at the International Conference of Crisis Mappers. The above image is my actual Foursquare check-in at the auditorium at Tufts University in Boston where the conference was held. Thanks to the efforts of Heather Leson of Crisis Commons, she cornered George Chamales from the Konpa Group who demoed Ushahidi to me. Immediately I thought…man….this thing looks just like Tweet3po. AND it also reminded me of Foursquare. Even today, when a newbie asks me what Ushahidi does, I often say…”it’s like Foursquare, but instead of pinpointing what restaurant you’re enjoying dinner at, you’re pinpointing which restaurant just got washed away.”
So I guess it makes complete sense to find out that now Ushahidi is adding a concept borrowed from Foursquare and Gowalla…check-ins.
Tuesday, January 10
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GameSave is a 5-week competition in which teams build a demo and working concept for a game which addresses disaster mitigation.
