When I first started publicly talking about Geeks without Bounds, one guy immediately got my attention: Ethan Zuckerman.

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.

For more check out: Crisis Mapping Meets Check-in – Technology Review.

For more about Ushahidi, you can watch this:  How to set up your own Crowdmap Deployment

This is a peek at what happened this weekend at the First Gnomedex Tinkerstorm.

YouTube – Gnomedex Tinkerstorm.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to present Geeks Without Borders at Gnomedex in Seattle.

More about:

Geeks Without Borders
The Karaoke King
Tropo
Tweet3PO

So we have finished the first phase of Tweet3po with 9 neighborhood watch droids deployed, covering the bulk of Greater Orlando.

At present, we have the following neighborhood bots available for the City of Orlando Crime Watch / Citizen Reporter automated tweet bot:

• Baldwin Park, Orlando FL

• College Park, Orlando FL

• Colonial Town South, Orlando FL

• Delaney Park,  Orlando FL

• Downtown Orlando FL

• Lake Eola Heights, Orlando FL

• Lake Lancaster, Orlando FL

• Parramore, Orlando FL

• Thorton Park, Orlando FL

Anyone can subscribe to the Twitter Feed of the above Droids and they will receive Tweets of Orlando Police Department Dispach calls, creating a near-realtime online police scanner.  Followers who are Followed back by the Tweet Droid can send Direct Messages to the neighborhood Tweet Droid which will be Re-Tweeted automatically.

How do you get the Tweet Droid to follow you back?  I guess you just have to ask it?

Future plans include dashbord reporting console.   Dave and I were actually discussing this very feature in front of his house when 2 OPD cruisers approached the curb and asked if we had called them.  We hadn’t and Dave asked what address they were called to.  The officer said 850 E. Livingston.  Dave commented that there is no 850 E. Livingston.  And there is not.

But Dave was more concerned that he hadn’t seen a tweet for any calls to that address.  I confirmed I had not seen one either.  Had the great Tweet3PO system failed us right before our very eyes?

5-10 minutes after the OPD cruisers left, the Tweet finally did show up.  There’s a built-in 10 minute delay from the OPD Active Dispach Calls website reporting the data. But we have actual first-hand proof that it works.

We’re working on adding other cities now.  And reports.

I did notice this disclaimer on the city website regarding the Police Active Calls Data:

Disclaimer: Calls For Service are the result of a person contacting the police department and an officer would respond, but not necessarily complete a report due to the nature of the incident.  Reported Calls are those that the officer documented the incident as a criminal or possibly criminal act.  These reports are not all-inclusive and does not represent all types of calls. Due to public records laws; specific information may not be released.  However, if there are any questions or concerns, please contact the District 4 OPD Liaison Officer at james.young@cityoforlando.net.

So I was bored and playing around with Twitter search.  I type in “orlando” as my search term.  One of the results is this feed:

http://twitter.com/orlpol32801

I click on it:
Name: OrlPolice 32801
Location” Orlando, Florida

1. residential b&e at 221 E Colonial Dr, Orlando, FL 3280119 minutes ago from web

2. domestic disturbance at 100 S Hughey Ave, Orlando, FL 32801about 1 hour ago from web

3. man down at 300 E South St, Orlando, FL 32801about 1 hour ago from web

The content appears to be some sort of automated (damn-near realtime) Twitter feed of calls to Orlando Police Department in a certain zip code (in this case, 32801).  It had about 100 followers but wasn’t following anyone so it looked typical of an automatically generated feed.  But from where?

so I typed in http://twitter.com/orlpol32806

And sure enough…there was one for my zip code too.   Pretty slick.  In the Twitter profile of each of these feeds I noticed a website link:

http://web.chad.org/projects/orlando-crime/

Which brings up a fracking mashup of the Google Maps of Central Florida and all of the recent calls to OPD?!?!

Yeah…pretty cool, huh?   or just get the XML feed (nice) here:  http://web.chad.org/projects/orlando-crime/orlcrimedata.xml

So at the bottom of this page it says (get ready for this)

A project of Chad Miller. Copyright 2009.

Who the FUCK is Chad Miller?????????

So I do a little digging.   Of course, Chad owns chad.org.

Chad is 33 and lives in Orlando. He’s got a wife and kids.

This is Chad Miller’s “Work Blog” where he blogs primarily about MySql:  http://karateandvoodoo.blogspot.com/

This is Chad Miller’s “Personal Blog” where he recently blogged about experimenting with nootropic drugs: http://web.chad.org/blag/

Chad is the founder of Science Cafe, a “monthly gathering of scientific experts and interested lay community in a pub or other non academic setting. They explore the latest ideas in science and technology, using plain language. Admission is free, and you need no reservation—just come ready to listen and contribute. Please join us!” Heck…read all about it yourself: http://cafesciorl.com/