Ushahidi Situation Room » missing persons

Embeddable Extraordinaries Images

Erik Hersman — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:47:38 +0000

The Extraordinaries have finished putting together an embeddable Haiti image grid. This allows it to be used all over the web and extends their reach significantly (see it in action on http://haiti.ushahidi.com).

You can access it via the URL:

http://app.beextra.org/appflickr/embed/collectionid/haiti/missionid/605/count/12/title/1/bg/white

• count - number of photos you want to display in the grid
• title – title visibility {true, false, 1, 0}
• bg – optional parameter to change background color {black, white, gray, etc}

And here’s sample iframe code:

Here’s an example of it on our site:

Links to the Missing Persons index (API …

Erik Hersman — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 08:48:59 +0000

Links to the Missing Persons index (API page and blog):

http://sites.google.com/site/haitireliefwiki/person-finder/service-api

http://googlepersonfinder.blogspot.com/

Update: Missing Persons Data

Erik Hersman — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 12:49:58 +0000

There have been many heroic efforts ongoing around Haiti. One of them is the work being done by Tim Schwartz of HaitianQuake.com, Chen Li and the UC Irvine team, Andy Carvin and the PersonFinder group, and Google (among many others) to aggregate this data and put it in a standardized (PFIF) format for use by multiple organizations. Due to their work, there are now 17,000 more entries this morning in the correct format.

The aggregator is being run by Google at: http://haiticrisis.appspot.com

Most groups are collaborating on this, including the New York Times who quickly started a process to integrate their data in the right format.

Some groups are still not sharing their data (CNN iReport and the Red Cross at ICRC). This means a lot of manual labor has been needed to collect and integrate it into the system. For instance, Brian Zimmer has created a system for volunteers to go through CNN iReport data (parsed by Chen’s group) and put the data into Google by hand.

(Still waiting on information about the Miami Herald and Facebook missing persons data.)

Just got the JSON export of tagged news …

Erik Hersman — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:26:28 +0000

Just got the JSON export of tagged news imagery operational at http://app.beextra.org/appflickr/haiti

We need to start seeing a lot more colla…

Erik Hersman — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:16:10 +0000

We need to start seeing a lot more collaboration amongst the players trying to collect missing persons data. Who has missing persons data?

http://www.facebook.com/DisasterRelief
Miami Herald: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/haiti/connect/
New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/14/world/haiti-missing-people.html
CNN iReport: http://www.ireport.com/ir-topic-stories.jspa?topicId=381628
ICRC: http://www.familylinks.icrc.org/WFL_HTI.NSF/DocIndex/locate_eng?opendocument

Can we lobby these groups to work towards putting this into the common PFIF (People Finder) format? Put it in a central repository that everyone shares?

Right now most of the independent teams have agreed to merge their info with what Google has created, a Missing Persons Index at: http://haiticrisis.appspot.com This platform has the best ability to aggregate in a common format that can then be used by everyone. Can we get them all working together?

Ben Rigby of the Extraordinaries update …

Erik Hersman — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 10:45:28 +0000

Ben Rigby of the Extraordinaries update on their missing persons matching images with the news media images. Just got a rough search engine up – that makes use of volunteer tags to slice and dice images from the news at:

http://app.beextra.org/appflickr/haiti

This will be integrated into the main missing persons repository at http://haiticrisis.appspot.com run by Google

There is now a “missing persons” embed…

Erik Hersman — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 05:30:52 +0000

There is now a “missing persons” embed that you can put on your own website, provided by Google. Get it here: http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/embed

src=”http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/?small=yes”
width=350 height=300 frameborder=0
style=”border: dashed 2px #77c”>

We should embed this in the map site.

http://www.haitianquake.com Updated with…

Erik Hersman — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:58:29 +0000

http://www.haitianquake.com

Updated with translations and images.

(Google will be taking this over in the morning, US time, as part of the aggregated People Finder/Missing Persons index at http://haiticrisis.appspot.com )

haitianquake.com Missing Persons Index i…

Erik Hersman — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 06:38:47 +0000

haitianquake.com the Missing Persons Index (done by Tim Schwartz and his team)is being politely taken over by Google. Google is using the same design pattern as haitianquake. They have collected 2800+ names into the index thus far. Export formats had already been created for RSS and PFIF.

Here is the new site: http://haiticrisis.appspot.com

They are handing over all the data tomorrow morning (US time). The onus is now on the ICRC to open up their data as well.

The Extraordinaries team has put togethe…

Erik Hersman — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:47:29 +0000

The Extraordinaries team has put together a system whereby news/media images can be tagged by ordinary people so they can be more easily matched against the Missing Persons Index. They are working with the http://www.haitianquake.com team to coordinate a joint approach (thank God!).

Start Here:

http://app.beextra.org/mission/show/missionid/605

(more info: http://www.beextra.org/Haiti )

The Missing Persons Index is up at: http…

Erik Hersman — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:21:03 +0000

The Missing Persons Index is up at: http://www.haitianquake.com – add to it, help aggregate from other indexes across the web.

Contact information in the sidebar for that team.