Hackers Unite! Help #Sandy Victims. Join #hurricanehackers
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samthetechie
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Nov 1, 2012, 12:52:52 PM11/1/12
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Hey all, Sandy is a major storm, previously a hurricane, that has caused
extensive flooding, power and transportation outages, and physical
damage to the US East Coast and Caribbean. More than 100 deaths have
been linked to the storm. You can see an overview of what is going on in NYC here: http://google.org/crisismap/2012-sandy-nyc
So essentially, over
100,000 people in Lower Manhattan are without power, and will likely
not have it back up for a few days. In order to stay informed as the
situation changes, and to keep in touch with loved ones, they will need
a way to communicate with their laptops
and phones and we are innovating making some quick tools to deploy
using Heroku, Twillio, Human.io, google docs, google maps, crowdmaps,
pretty much anything we can get our hands on. This effort is being
spearheaded by the http://civic.mit.edu/
to help make services and connect tech people with people in need on
the ground. A lot of interesting things are happening in the wake of
this natural disaster: http://www.fastcompany.com/3002598/sandy-prompts-louder-calls-free-wi-fi
This
is a unique oppertunity to innovate to help people (people before
borders, tech beyond borders) and maybe change the debate on issues like
universal free open wifi) so please volunteer some coding / hacking
time and help some real people in a different part of the world that are
not having a great time right now.