In this one hour talk, two Google employees tell about Internet tools developed at Google and by other organizations to help manage crisis situations. When earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and other disasters occur, tools like People Finder and Ushahidi are deployed. These tools are used for data collection and retrieval about missing persons, visualization of places in which help and rescue is needed, better communication, and and so on.

Other tools and resources for crowdsourcing of emergency and disaster relief:

• CrisisCommons and CrisisCommons Wiki - "CrisisCommons seeks to advance and support the use of open data and volunteer technology communities to catalyze innovation in crisis management and global development."
• InSTEDD - "InSTEDD has a unique niche — we design and use open source technology tools to help partners enhance collaboration and improve information flow and knowledge sharing to better deliver critical services to vulnerable populations."
• Ushahidi - "We built the Ushahidi platform as a tool to easily crowdsource information using multiple channels, including SMS, email, Twitter and the web."

Video - Google I/O 2011: Crisis Response 2.0 – Empowering Developers in Times of Crisis

Recorded lectures are one of the most valuable learning tools available online. The web is full of them – starting from universities that publish full courses (see YouTube – Education – YouTube EDU), through recorded conferences (see for example Semantic Universe on Vimeo), to privately made tutorials. Here is a way to easily find lots of full length videos on any topic that interest you. [Update 1/14/2010] There's a bookmarklet for that.

Continue reading “Find Full length Video Lectures on Any topic” »

About a month ago Google add a new feature to Gmail – rich signatures. Among other design capabilities, the new feature lets you add images (or icons) to your signature. Now, there is a really big problem with the way images are added to the signature.

Images might change

Instead of just uploading an image and adding it to the email, when you create your rich signature you are asked to give a link to the image (see screenshot below). The link is of a web address, not a location on your computer. When you send an email, the link is a live link.

This mean that whenever someone opens an email you sent, the image is retrieved from it's original location on the web. If the image changed in the meantime – your recipient will see the changed image, and if it no longer exists – he will see no image at all.

Continue reading “Don’t Use Images in Gmail’s signature!” »

Find where  your friends are with Foursquare without a smartphone

don’t have a smart phone but you want to know where your friends are? No problem. You can sign in to Foursquare from your desktop computer and find your friends. Then, go to foursquare’s mobile website (still from your desktop computer). There, you’ll see all your friends’ check-ins. That’s it. Quite simple, but it requires  breaking a functional fixation that make you think that you can’t consume location data if you can’t provide location data…

Continue reading “Some Tips About Web Stuff – June 2010” »

 [UPDATE 6 December 2010] Sorry, It seems the solution in this post no longer apply. I don't think there is a way to send a message to an event attendees on Facebook.

A few months ago when I created an event through one of my fan pages on Facebook, I discovered that I could not send a message to the guests list. After some searching and consulting with friends I found the solution on Facebook's FAQ page:

As the admin of a fan page, you cannot message your guests. You have to appoint someone else to be the admin of the event. Then, he will be able to send the guests a message for you.

(I have no idea why that is, of course). To appoint someone else to be the admin of your event, simply look him up in the guests list and click of the 'Make Admin' button next to his name. Image by Spencer E Holtaway

Linkedin can be a great tool to find the right people for a job, a project or for one time help. In fact, it is that good that sometimes you get too many results and can’t see the forest for the trees. In this post I’m going to explain how to use Linkedin’s advanced search features in order to find people for specific tasks.

Let’s assume you’re looking for a PHP developer for your company. Here’s how you can use linked in to find people to hire:

1. In the search box type in PHP and hit search. The results will display people who mentioned the word PHP in their profile (note that people who are in your network show up first).
2. Refine the results by selecting or typing-in a location in the Location box on the left. Now, you will only see people from that location.
3. To further refine the results, in the groups box choose a group such as “Job networking” (of course you will have to be a member of that group in order to see it). That way you will get back people who are searching for a Job.

I made a video that illustrates how to do that, see it below: