Turning off existing Person Finder instances & codebase changes

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Prem Ramaswami

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Oct 16, 2010, 6:53:28 PM10/16/10
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Hello friends of Google Person Finder,

Thanks for supporting Google Person Finder.  Just this year, we have launched the application in response to disasters in Haiti, Chile, China, and Pakistan, and have seen interest from media agencies, NGOs and many others.

We wanted to give our partners some advance notice about upcoming changes.  We will be turning off our Google Person Finder instances for Haiti, Chile, China, and Pakistan sometime next week and wanted to notify all partners who have integrated the tool.  In addition, there will be a few changes moving forward that I've highlighted at the end for partners who integrated via the API.

What’s changing?
The Google Person Finder tool will now be available from one common domain, person-finder.appspot.com, prefixed with the country.  For example: http://pakistan.person-finder.appspot.com/.  This will make it easier and faster to launch future instances.

Based on the feedback from numerous NGOs, we'll be requiring use of an authorized token to download data from future instances of Person Finder.  For organizations that we have worked with in the past, please fill out this form to get access to a key.  

Why are these instances being turned off?
We intend for each instance of Google Person Finder to be up for a limited time.  Once it has served its purpose, we will archive the data to prevent misuse.

What does this mean?
API access to the instances of Google Person Finder being shut down (Haiti, Chile, China, and Pakistan) will no longer work sometime middle of next week.

<iframe> embeds will not break, but will instead show a message directing people to the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in their country.

Where will the records go?
We will archive the PFIF records in a secure location for historical preservation for the next 1 year as we try to find a permanent owner for these records.  Assuming a long-term owner cannot be found, we will delete them after 1 calendar year.

What is the future of Google Person Finder?
Google Person Finder is an open source project, hosted on Google Code at http://code.google.com/p/googlepersonfinder/.  We invite your contributions and participation in improving Person Finder for future crisis events.

Anything else?
We can't thank you enough for everything you’ve done to help connect the friends and family of survivors following the Haiti and Chile earthquakes.  We look forward to working with the developer community to keep improving Person Finder.

Thanks again!
Prem, Ping, and the Person Finder team


--
=======================
Prem Ramaswami
Product Manager - Google
http://www.google.co.in/internetbus
=======================

deborah shaddon

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Oct 19, 2010, 6:42:53 PM10/19/10
to personfinder
Ping,

I understand the need to retire these apps for pakistan, chile, haiti
from a data privacy and retention concerns, but do request that
perhaps instead of shutting this down completely, maybe a 'sample/
prototype app' could be hosted? Something like: http://prototype.person-finder.appspot.com/,
and be seeded by some 'sample' data?

In this way, this would provide a test system under which folks could
still work on indepenent efforts on the API and PFIF analysis, testing
various adapter technology, as well as efforts like the 'search
enhancement' that the UC-Irvine people are working on. This would be
particularly useful in supporting the RHOK event in December 4/5th as
well. Having a reference implementation available will be useful to
continue some of the discussions today that CrisisCommons hosted
conference call on People-Finder App inventorying and comparison, of
which there was general agreement that if the analysis or integration
work (for any solution) could be done 'prior to a disaster' rather
than 'in a disaster' (ie, lowering the barriers to work required to
spin up an instance on-demand and then figure out the integration),
then this would best position the solution for wider acceptance.

Thanks!!
Deborah
*From CrisisCommons google group

On Oct 16, 5:53 pm, Prem Ramaswami <pr...@google.com> wrote:
> Hello friends of Google Person Finder,
>
> Thanks for supporting Google Person Finder.  Just this year, we have
> launched the application in response to disasters in Haiti, Chile, China,
> and Pakistan, and have seen interest from media agencies, NGOs and many
> others.
>
> We wanted to give our partners some advance notice about upcoming changes.
>  We will be turning off our Google Person Finder instances for Haiti, Chile,
> China, and Pakistan sometime next week and wanted to notify all partners who
> have integrated the tool.  In addition, there will be a few changes moving
> forward that I've highlighted at the end for partners who integrated via the
> API.
>
> What’s changing?
> The Google Person Finder tool will now be available from one common domain,
> person-finder.appspot.com, prefixed with the country.  For example:http://pakistan.person-finder.appspot.com/.  This will make it easier and
> faster to launch future instances.
>
> Based on the feedback from numerous NGOs, we'll be requiring use of an
> authorized token to download data from future instances of Person Finder.
>  For organizations that we have worked with in the past, please fill out this
> form<https://spreadsheets3.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dFVDMjIwbU1vO...>to
> get access to a key.
>
> Why are these instances being turned off?
> We intend for each instance of Google Person Finder to be up for a limited
> time.  Once it has served its purpose, we will archive the data to prevent
> misuse.
>
> What does this mean?
> API access to the instances of Google Person Finder being shut down (Haiti,
> Chile, China, and Pakistan) will no longer work sometime middle of next
> week.
>
> <iframe> embeds will not break, but will instead show a message directing
> people to the International Committee of the Red Cross
> <http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/restoring-family-links-...>delegation
> in their country.
>
> Where will the records go?
> We will archive the PFIF records in a secure location for historical
> preservation for the next 1 year as we try to find a permanent owner for
> these records.  Assuming a long-term owner cannot be found, we will delete
> them after 1 calendar year.
>
> What is the future of Google Person Finder?
> Google Person Finder is an open source project, hosted on Google Code athttp://code.google.com/p/googlepersonfinder/.  We invite your contributions

Ka-Ping Yee

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Oct 19, 2010, 6:50:57 PM10/19/10
to person...@googlegroups.com
On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 15:42, deborah shaddon <deborah...@gmail.com> wrote:
I understand the need to retire these apps for pakistan, chile, haiti
from a data privacy and retention concerns, but do request that
perhaps instead of shutting this down completely, maybe a 'sample/
prototype app' could be hosted?  Something like: http://prototype.person-finder.appspot.com/,
and be seeded by some 'sample' data?

A very good idea.  We have a test instance at http://test.person-finder.appspot.com/ which is available for testing.  There is no sample data in it at the moment, but anyone is welcome to enter or modify sample data and conduct tests there without fear of corrupting real data.


— Ping

Mark Prutsalis

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Oct 19, 2010, 7:59:32 PM10/19/10
to person...@googlegroups.com
+1 - no one should be running tests or doing development on live sites anyways.� Thanks Ping.

Best regards,
Mark


On 10/19/2010 6:50 PM, Ka-Ping Yee wrote:
On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 15:42, deborah shaddon <deborah...@gmail.com> wrote:
I understand the need to retire these apps for pakistan, chile, haiti
from a data privacy and retention concerns, but do request that
perhaps instead of shutting this down completely, maybe a 'sample/
prototype app' could be hosted? �Something like: http://prototype.person-finder.appspot.com/,

and be seeded by some 'sample' data?

A very good idea. �We have a test instance at http://test.person-finder.appspot.com/ which is available for testing. �There is no sample data in it at the moment, but anyone is welcome to enter or modify sample data and conduct tests there without fear of corrupting real data.


� Ping
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