How an Android Phone and Facebook Helped Route Haiti Rescuers

One intrepid Android fan is extolling the virtues of the open smartphone platform that helped him to route SOS messages in the recent Haiti disaster. "Well, when you are in such a situation, you don't really think about going to Facebook, but it happens that I have a Facebook widget on my Android home screen that regularly displays status updates from my friends. All of a sudden, an SOS message appeared on my home screen as a status update of a friend on my network. Not all smartphones allow you to customize your home screen, let alone letting you put widgets on it. So, I texted Steven about it. As Steven had already been working with the US State Department on Internet development activities in Haiti, he quickly called a senior staff member at the State Department and asked how to get help to the people requesting it from Haiti. State Department personnel requested a short description and a physical street address or GPS coordinates. Via email and text messaging, I was able to relay this information from Port-au-Prince to Steven in Oregon, who relayed it to the State Department in Washington DC, and it was quickly forwarded to the US military at the Port-au-Prince airport and dispatched to the search-and-rescue (SAR) teams being assembled. So the data went from my Android phone to Oregon to Washington DC and then back to the US military command center at the Port-au-Prince airport. I was at first a little skeptical about their reaction: there was so much destruction; they probably already had their hands full. Unexpectedly, they replied back saying: 'We found them, and they are alive! Keep it coming.'"

Comments

Internet saves

[Gri3v3r]

First time,Facebook was proved useful...Hope more can get help like that.What a disaster really...

Re:Internet saves

[Ihmhi]

Of course they have missionary schools. If they didn't, then all of those poor newlyweds would be largely unprepared for their wedding nights.

Please, not this SHIT again

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the now obligatory web 2.0 platform saves the day story. The last one was twitter I believe.

Re:FanBoid?

[noidentity]

FanDroids

There, fixed that for you.

Screw you pessimists

[Anonymous Coward]

This is out and outright fucking amazing.

Consider, writing, on a piece of paper 'SOS' - despatching it to a messenger boy (possibly under rubble next to you), who takes it to the nearest train station that then relays it over morse code down the telegraph line, to be received in Cuba, relayed to Florida, then via numerous telegraph operators to Washington to get lost in tens (1x) of messages...

Brand allegiances and political ideology aside - you gotta sometimes take you thumb out of your bum in awe of this.

Re:FanBoid?

[PopeRatzo]

Great, but just about any smartphone can do this, even most of the closed smartphone platforms, nothing special. Is it just me that thinks Android fans are becoming as preachy as the apple fanboys?

Of course this story could easily have been about someone who used their iPhone to do the same thing.

However, the iPhone users lost their proprietary chargers and it was going to take over a week to get a new one.

The Android user just had to plug in any old mini-USB cable.

The point being, maybe this phone worked not because it was special, but because it was not special.

Re:Feeding off Web 2.0 hype

[TapeCutter]

It would never work, just before the proffesor sends the SOS message Gilligan will trip over the delicate instrument and ruin everything