Random Hacks of Kindness

Elizabeth Sabet writes "Google, Microsoft, NASA, The World Bank, and Yahoo! are unlikely partners, but they are bringing together the best and brightest in disaster relief management and the ever-growing hacker community in a progressive initiative called Random Hacks of Kindness. Its mission is to mobilize a world-wide community of technologists to solve real-world problems through technology. RHoK is gearing up for its first world-wide 'hackathon for humanity' on June 4-6, 2010. Following last year's inaugural event in Mountain View, California, which produced software solutions that were used on the ground during the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, the partners have decided to take the effort global. RHoK engages volunteer software engineers, independent hackers, and students from around the world in a marathon weekend of hacking events and coding competitions to develop software solutions for problems posed by subject-matter experts. This first global Hackathon will feature sponsored events in Washington, DC, Sydney, Nairobi, Jakarta, and Sao Paulo." Here's where to go for more details or to register for the DC event.

Comments

Re:in other words

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, you know what really helps a lot the developing nations? stop snorting blow, getting fat, spilling oil, exporting your popculture and buying diamonds.

The cancer trying to get ideas on how to treat cancer FTW.

This smells of greenwashing, and carpetbagging,

[qwerty8ytrewq]

The incongrous partners, the 'Noble Cause', and a big money field (new soft') makes me think that this is all about self-promotion, smokescreening and of course, profit. I would bet that on or near those dates, something is happening that those bears all want hidden/downplayed. Equally likely is that this is a branding excercise----> the Western World is freaking out about privacy, loss of data control, climate change. So, what is a positive spin on all of those issues...... Disaster management! Do not fear, Microsoft will share with Google the unique ID code on your WINXP machine, Goog will let MS know what you searched for, just before the tornado-flood-quake-meteor hit. Nasa gets to trial their new robot to dig you out, and Yahoo uses active tracking cookies they sent into your GPS smartphone to Ping your whereabouts to .05 meters. You, your litter of puppies, a kitten are all saved by open-sauce hot firefighters. Epic PR win! See, privacy and data control is unsafe people. Cynical I know, but the 'war' on 'ter-rorism' is so stale these days.....