DHS to Test Multi-Band Radios at NASCAR Events

DHS to Test Multi-Band Radios at NASCAR Events

Easier uploads to Picasa Web Albums

Easier uploads to Picasa Web Albums: "Posted by Shuangfeng Li, Software Engineer



We’ve made sharing and storing your images in Picasa Web Albums even easier by improving the image upload process. Now you’ll find a smoother upload flow, the five-at-a-time limitation has been removed, and you can upload HD video, too.



To get started from Chrome, Firefox or Safari click the Upload button, select an album and then choose the images and videos you want to upload. After your images have uploaded, you will see large thumbnails where you can easily add a caption, zoom in or delete right from the upload screen.

If you use Internet Explorer, you can continue to use the basic uploader or use the plug-in for drag-and-drop bulk uploading.



Another easy way to upload to Picasa Web Albums is from Gallery on an Android device. For example, with Android 3.0, Honeycomb, you can capture an image or video with your tablet's camera and upload directly to Picasa Web Albums to share with friends.

We’re always working to improve Picasa Web Albums, please share your feedback in our forum. Happy uploading!

"

Verizon, Motorola enable LTE public-private roaming for public-safety networks

Verizon, Motorola enable LTE public-private roaming for public-safety networks

Power of Social Media: How the Medical Community is Embracing Social Media for Better Patient Care and Patient Engagement

Power of Social Media: How the Medical Community is Embracing Social Media for Better Patient Care and Patient Engagement

DHS Working Group Recommends Social Media Best Practices

DHS Working Group Recommends Social Media Best Practices

DHS First Responder Communities of Practice recently launched the Virtual Social Media Working Group (VSMWG), which is comprised of first responders and homeland security professionals from various disciplines, localities, sectors, and government agencies across the country.  The mission of the VSMWG is to provide recommendations to the emergency preparedness, response, and homeland security communities on the safe and sustainable use of social media technologies before, during, and after emergencies.  

Members were selected by DHS First Responder Technologies (R-Tech) program based on their experience in leveraging social media technologies to pursue the missions of their agencies.  Many VSMWG members have served as speakers, trainers, and subject matter experts at major homeland security-related workshops, roundtables, and conferences on the topic of social media. Representing the fields of emergency management, law enforcement, fire, emergency medical services, public health, public utilities, and local government, the VSMWG strives to be a dynamic voice in the social media and public safety arena, incorporating the perspectives of a wide range of stakeholders.  

VSMWG members will collaborate via virtual meetings to identify and discuss responder issues and challenges with social media.  They will look at myriad issues, such as standards and policies, and will provide recommended guidance on using social media in public safety.  The working group may engage with subject matter experts from different sectors to work towards resolutions to these issues.  

The First Responder Communities of Practice platform will serve as the primary location for the VSMWG to conduct activities, share developments, and connect with other homeland security professionals regarding the value of social media for emergency preparedness, response, and recovery.  The group will play an active role in establishing the Make America Safer through Social Media Community on the First Responder Communities of Practice as a national resource for social media and public safety-related information and best practices.   

To collaborate with the Virtual Social Media Working Group, help grow the First Responder Communities of Practice repository of social media best practices and tools, or participate in forward-thinking discussions with others engaged in this field, join the Make America Safer through Social Media Community at https://Communities.FirstResponder.gov.

 

Social media provides an avenue to first responders to connect with the public. Courtesy of FEMA.

 

Coast Guard officers review a hurricane situation report.  Smart phones like this one offer public safety and homeland security personnel a simple way to interact with the public.  Courtesy of FEMA.

 

Download PDF version of this article

Nivana N2 Build 140

My favorite online task manager has been updated

N2 Build 140

Posted by Elbert, February 18, 2011

It’s been a bumpy ride, but we’re finally back on track! Nirvana has been migrated to new, beefier servers — a bit sooner than we were planning for. But now that it’s done we have room to breathe. With the boost in capacity we feel comfortable letting in all of the folks who have been stuck in the beta invite queue for weeks (thanks for being patient).

We lost a few days of development time, thanks to the emergency migration. But hey, we actually pushed a release out a day early (build 136) once we realized that we were pretty much spent on energy for the week, given the unexpected all-nighters we were pulling to stabilize our infrastructure.

So what actually went live this week?

New and Improved Rapid Entry

• rapid entry text field now accepts #tag notation for adding contexts inline
• for example: finish this to do #work
• or maybe: finish this too while you’re at it #personal #due next friday
• or even this: clean out the attic #project #star
• more to come

Desktop Browser UI Annoyances Fixed

• clicking on “focus” star icon when editing a task no longer cancels out
• project due / scheduled dates are now properly captured when editing via project view
• rapid entry textfield no longer “freaks out” under certain conditions (chrome 9 specific)
• new pretty inbox icon (this one’s for you @Slith_hideout)
• some css niceties here and there

Invisible Underpinnings

• recurring tasks engine (for unit testing in production)
• parallel vs sequential tasks (ditto)

Looking forward to relaxing a bit this weekend, and then attacking our list of new features for the next release first thing on Monday. Thanks everyone for sticking with us.

12 new file formats in the Google Docs Viewer

12 new file formats in the Google Docs Viewer: "Cross posted on the Official Gmail blog

The Google Docs Viewer is used by millions of people every day to quickly view PDFs, Microsoft Word documents and PowerPoint presentations online. Not only is viewing files in your browser far more secure than downloading and opening them locally, but it also saves time and doesn’t clutter up your hard-drive with unwanted files.

Today we’re excited to launch support for 12 new file types:

• Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
  
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 / 2010 (.PPTX)
  
• Apple Pages (.PAGES)
  
• Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
  
• Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
  
• Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
  
• Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
  
• PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
  
• TrueType (.TTF)
  
• XML Paper Specification (.XPS)

Not only does this round out support for the major Microsoft Office file types (we now support DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS and XLSX), but it also adds quick viewing capabilities for many of the most popular and highly-requested document and image types.

In Gmail, these types of attachments will now show a “View” link, and clicking on this link will bring up the Google Docs Viewer.




You can also upload and share these files in Google Docs, so that anyone can view the content using their browser.

And as always, the Google Docs Viewer is available for use on any website, with both a full Chrome and embedded option. More information can be found here.

Posted by: Anil Sabharwal, Product Manager

"

Warning: A Social Media Tsunami is Coming

Warning: A Social Media Tsunami is Coming

An update to Google Social Search

An update to Google Social Search: "Today we’re doing a little bit more to bring you all the goodness of Google, plus the opinions of the people you care about. As always, we want to help you find the most relevant answers among the billions of interconnected pages on the web. But relevance isn’t just about pages—it’s also about relationships. That’s why we introduced Google Social Search in 2009, and why we’ve made a number of improvements since then. Today we’re taking another step forward—enabling you to get even more information from the people that matter to you, whether they’re publishing on YouTube, Flickr or their own blog or website.

First, social search results will now be mixed throughout your results based on their relevance (in the past they only appeared at the bottom). This means you’ll start seeing more from people like co-workers and friends, with annotations below the results they’ve shared or created. So if you’re thinking about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and your colleague Matt has written a blog post about his own experience, then we’ll bump up that post with a note and a picture:

Social search results can rank anywhere on the page, and you’ll see who shared the result in the annotation underneath

Second, we’ve made Social Search more comprehensive by adding notes for links people have shared on Twitter and other sites. In the past, we’d show you results people created and linked through their Google profiles. Now, if someone you’re connected to has publicly shared a link, we may show that link in your results with a clear annotation (which is visible only to you, and only when you’re signed in). For example, if you’re looking for a video of President Obama on “The Daily Show” and your friend Nundu tweeted the video, that result might show up higher in your results and you’ll see a note with a picture of Nundu:

Now Social Search includes links people share on Twitter and other services

Third, we’ve given you more control over how you connect accounts, and made connecting accounts more convenient. You can still connect accounts publicly on your Google profile, but now we’ve added a new option to connect accounts privately in your Google Account. (After all, you may not want everyone to know you’re @spongebobsuperfan on Twitter.) In addition, if our algorithms find a public account that might be yours (for example, because the usernames are the same), we may invite you to connect your accounts right on the search results page and in your Google Account settings:

The new setting enables you to choose whether or not to show your connected accounts publicly on your Google profile

For an overview of Google Social Search and our new features, check out the explanatory video:



As always, you’ll only get social search results when you choose to log in to your Google Account. We’re starting to roll out the updates today on Google.com in English only and you’ll see them appear in the coming week. With these changes, we want to help you find the most relevant information possible, personalized to your interests and the people you care about. To learn more, check out our help center.

Posted by Mike Cassidy, Product Management Director, and Matthew Kulick, Product Manager

"

National Public Safety Broadband Network Eyed — Again

National Public Safety Broadband Network Eyed — Again

Updates to the Google Reader app for Android

Updates to the Google Reader app for Android: "(Cross-posted from the Google Reader blog)



Today we’re excited to announce some updates to the official Google Reader app for Android. Over the last couple of months, we’ve added some of your most-requested features:



Unread count widget - choose any feed, label, person, or “all items” and get the unread count on your home screen. Clicking on the widget takes you to straight to that stream.

News ticker widget - if you prefer a bit more information, you can add a larger size widget that cycles through items on any stream you want in Reader. Clicking any headline will take you to the article, while clicking the folder will take you to that stream.

Mark previous as read - if you’ve used the mobile version of Reader before and missed this feature, it’s now back! As you scroll down your reading list, hit “Mark previous as read” at any time to only mark things above the screen as read.

In addition to these new features, we now have an official Russian translation as well.



We hope you enjoy the update - give it a try! You can download the app in all countries from Android Market. The Google Reader app is available for devices running Android 1.6 or higher, with widget functionality available for devices on Android 2.2+.

Posted by Brian Shih, Product Manager

"

Blue Alerts Become Law

Blue Alerts Become Law

KY. county using digital radios for public safety - WAVE 3 News - Louisville, Kentucky

KY. county using digital radios for public safety - WAVE 3 News - Louisville, Kentucky

Social Media and Fire/EMS

The website is intended as a portal to address the intersection of Social Media and Fire/EMS (thus the #SM4Fire and #SM4EMS  hashtags  on Twitter.) 

Radio Resource Magazine: OnlyOnline

Radio Resource Magazine: OnlyOnline

How We Use Social Media During Emergencies [INFOGRAPHIC]

How We Use Social Media During Emergencies [INFOGRAPHIC]

Verizon Tests Voice on LTE Network | Top Tech Reviews

Verizon Tests Voice on LTE Network | Top Tech Reviews

Twiiter 2.0 now available for Android

Twitter for Android is one of the fastest growing Twitter applications. Six months ago, it wasn’t among the top 10 most-used Twitter applications. However, in the last two months, usage has doubled, and now it’s among the top five – along with twitter.com, m.twitter.com (our mobile web site), Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Blackberry.

Today, we’re launching a new version of Twitter for Android. It looks and feels more like our other official Twitter applications and provides a more consistent experience across platforms and devices.

Use Twitter without signing in
You can use Twitter for Android even if you haven’t signed in or don’t have an account. You can view trends, browse your interests and see suggested users in several categories, including fashion, entertainment and travel, or search to find out what people are saying about topics you care about, such as big sporting events. You can now also sign up for Twitter from within the app.


Design
We made some significant changes in the design of the new app. When you first sign in, you’ll see your timeline, along with icons along the top that let you view @mentions, messages, and lists. This layout makes it fast and simple to navigate Twitter on your Android device. Also, the @mentions tab now includes Retweets; seeing replies and Retweets in one place offers a quick way to better understand which Tweets are sparking interest and engagement. In addition, we introduced auto-complete for usernames.


Search
We’ve also introduced universal search to this version of Twitter for Android. This means that when you search, you can find Tweets with the term you’re looking for, Tweets sent by people near your location, or people whose user names include that term.

For example, let’s say you want to search for “packers". As you type “packers” in the search box, you’ll see the following suggestions:

• search packers: this will return Tweets that include the word “packers”
• search packers nearby: this will return Tweets that include the word “packers” and are sent by nearby users
• search packers in people: this will return accounts that have “packers” in the name
• @packers: this option will skip search results and take you directly to the account, if it exists (in this example, it does)

And, last but not least, at the bottom of the search section is one of my favorite new features: you can scan your address book to find which of your friends, who have chosen to be discoverable, are also on Twitter. New users will get a chance to do this when they first go through the sign-up process on the app.

You can download Twitter for Android from Android Market on devices with Android 2.1 or higher.

Advanced sign-in security for your Google account

Advanced sign-in security for your Google account: "Posted by Nishit Shah, Product Manager, Google Security

(Cross-posted from the Google Blog)

Has anyone you know ever lost control of an email account and inadvertently sent spam—or worse—to their friends and family? There are plenty of examples (like the classic 'Mugged in London' scam) that demonstrate why it's important to take steps to help secure your activities online. Your Gmail account, your photos, your private documents—if you reuse the same password on multiple sites and one of those sites gets hacked, or your password is conned out of you directly through a phishing scam, it can be used to access some of your most closely-held information.

Most of us are used to entrusting our information to a password, but we know that some of you are looking for something stronger. As we announced to our Google Apps customers a few months ago, we've developed an advanced opt-in security feature called 2-step verification that makes your Google Account significantly more secure by helping to verify that you're the real owner of your account. Now it's time to offer the same advanced protection to all of our users.

2-step verification requires two independent factors for authentication, much like you might see on your banking website: your password, plus a code obtained using your phone. Over the next few days, you'll see a new link on your Account Settings page that looks like this:


Take your time to carefully set up 2-step verification—we expect it may take up to 15 minutes to enroll. A user-friendly set-up wizard will guide you through the process, including setting up a backup phone and creating backup codes in case you lose access to your primary phone. Once you enable 2-step verification, you'll see an extra page that prompts you for a code when you sign in to your account. After entering your password, Google will call you with the code, send you an SMS message or give you the choice to generate the code for yourself using a mobile application on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device. The choice is up to you. When you enter this code after correctly submitting your password we'll have a pretty good idea that the person signing in is actually you.


It's an extra step, but it's one that significantly improves the security of your Google Account because it requires the powerful combination of both something you know—your username and password—and something that only you should have—your phone. A hacker would need access to both of these factors to gain access to your account. If you like, you can always choose a 'Remember verification for this computer for 30 days' option, and you won't need to re-enter a code for another 30 days. You can also set up one-time application-specific passwords to sign in to your account from non-browser based applications that are designed to only ask for a password, and cannot prompt for the code.

To learn more about 2-step verification and get started, visit our Help Center. And for more about staying safe online, see our ongoing security blog series or visit http://www.staysafeonline.org/. Be safe!

"

Computer-Aided Dispatch iPhone App Reveals Criminal Records

Computer-Aided Dispatch iPhone App Reveals Criminal Records

Skype Mobile with Video Ready For February 28th Launch; Verizon Only?

Skype Mobile with Video Ready For February 28th Launch; Verizon Only?: "

New evidence sent to Droid Life suggests Skype Mobile with video chat features will definitely be ready February 28th. It’s going to be a market update, too, so that might rule out Skype being the reason for the Thunderbolt delay.

The question I have, though, is will this be for Verizon only? We saw Verizon scoop up Skype exclusivity earlier last year while other folks were left with a not-so-good beta version. Everyone eventually got access to the new version of Skype Mobile.

Skype originally promised video chat would be out by the end of 2010, but that never happened. And they didn’t say anything at that time to suggest anyone not on Verizon would be left out.

"

Evernote updated for Android

Update: Evernote for Android

February 09, 2011 | Posted by Andrew Sinkov in Product updates

 

We’re excited to bring you the latest update to Evernote for Android (version 2.6), which includes a number of fantastic new features and behind-the-scenes enhancements. Get the latest version now from the Android Market »

New view: Snippets

We’re always trying to strike a balance between information-density and your device’s form factor. Too much content, and it’s difficult to parse. Too little, and it feels empty. With this release, we’re introducing Snippet note list view. The Snippet View is designed to be more dynamic, giving you the most useful information about your note in the smallest amount of space.

If a note contains an image, then we’ll show the note title, some text and a thumbnail. If the note is text-only, then instead of having a thumbnail, we’ll use the full width to display as much of the text as we can fit. It’s all meant to give you maximum at-a-glance information. In many cases, you won’t even need to open the note–you’ll get all you need from the snippet.

We still have the other views available. You can switch to them from the view options menu.

Notebook Stacks

Recently, Evernote for Windows and Mac added Notebook Stacks, a feature which lets you visually group your notebooks. Now, you can see stacks that you created on the desktop from Evernote for Android. If there are specific notebooks that are most useful when accessed from your phone–trip itineraries or shopping lists–consider creating a stack called Mobile for those notebooks. This will make it easier to find what you’re looking for on the go.

Edit styled notes from your Android device

Now, you can edit any note in your account, whether a text notes, webclip, snapshot, or audio note. You won’t see that pesky “Append or Copy” popup ever again. This feature works by maintaining the styling of whatever element you decide to edit. For example, if you edit a bulleted list, the next line you create will also be a bullet; if you edit a section of bold text, then the content you add will also have bold text; and so on. You can also now edit web clips, notes with images, and any other note that’s already in your account.

A note on this feature: Evernote for Android now supports editing existing styled text, but it does not yet allow you to create new styled text or re-style existing text. We’re working on that. We’re also working on bringing these features to other mobile versions of Evernote. Stay tuned.

And there’s more…

• Improved sync performance: Notes sync around 6 times faster than in previous versions
• Edit Saved Searches before running them by tapping and holding the search name
• Improved image scaling
• Faster note loading and application performance
• Many many additional bug fixes throughout

There’s more great stuff for Android on the way. Also, you’ll start seeing some of the features in this update appear in other versions of Evernote soon.

RedBox App for Android is Here

RedBox App for Android is Here: "

Hey, movie rental fans, I’ve got some good news for you. If you’ve already ditched Blockbuster and don’t use Netflix for your movie rental service, you probably use RedBox. And you probably hate going to the box to get a movie that doesn’t seem to be in stock.

RedBox has released an app for you that’ll let you browse their catalog and reserve DVDs and Blu-Rays at a specific location to ensure you’ll get the movie you’re looking for upon arrival. If you prefer a specific box location and are undecided on a movie, you can browse that box’s stock to see what they have.

Straight forward, really, and it’s in the Android market now. Go ahead and grab it using this link to the market.

"

SMEM: Chat about using SM for Situational Awareness

SMEM: Chat about using SM for Situational Awareness: "

Image by Coal and Ice via Flickr

Post: By Kim Stephens

This is a summary of the weekly chat on the twitter platform using the hashtag #SMEMchat (Social Media for Emergency Management Chat). I was the host this week, and the topic was Social Media for Situational Awareness.

Using social media to provide the public with information (i.e., pushing info) seems to be increasingly gaining ground with the emergency management community, especially since each new crisis brings to our attention examples of how others are effectively using it in this capacity. However, monitoring social media to gain situational awareness (pulling info) is another prospect entirely. We discussed some of the perceived and genuine problems with using social media for this purpose.

The first question was aimed at institutional challenges to adoption:

Q1: What is the biggest impediment for using Social Media to obtain “official” Situational Awareness data: technical, policy, emergency management culture, or resources?

It seemed the answer should be a mix of all of these challenges, which I guess it probably is, but most people seemed to think emergency management culture was the biggest hurdle. James Hamilton stated: “Without a doubt, in circles I have been in at the State level, culture is the largest hurdle to adoption.”

Lack of resources was also mentioned as a concern, especially when it comes to processing information during a crisis. But, goint back to culture, a recent article about a citizens trying to persuade their local OEM to participate in just using social media to push information, reminded me of what a large hurdle this really is. The North Fork, NY town supervisor, Scott Flately stated that: “… he was not sure the additional work involved in using social media in emergency weather situations was worth it or not. Flately noted he has increased his efforts to notify news media of road closings, down trees and accidents during severe storms this winter.” As far as using social media to gain situational awareness he states: “The 911 system we have in place works.” During the chat people reminded me that 90% of the OEMs they talk to do not use social media at all.

Q2. The next question dealt with the concept of using “trusted agents”, similar to how the National Weather Service uses trained weather spotters. Specifically I asked: “The National Weather Service uses trusted agents for weather spotting. Does anyone rely on social-media-trusted agents or crowdsourced data to gain situational awareness?

This question set off a debate about the NWS program, some indicated that the NWS specifically refused reports via social media, however, an experiment is ongoing in North Texas to do just that. (The pic on the left is crowdsourced data from the NWS). Kate Starbird, a Phd candidate from University of Colorado studying crowdsourced data, made a great point that many people seized on: “If you look at larger trends rather than individual reports-then trustworthiness can emerge from consensus.” This NWS map, illustrates her point. One “public” person reports 3″ of snow and 5 miles away a trained weather spotter reports the same amount; the trustworthiness of the “public” person just increased. Furthermore, by taking lots of reports and aggregating them, a full story can emerge and outliers can be eliminated. As some said on the chat”the math works”, others indicated: “Data mining tools should help with trust by consensus.” Kate Starbird stated: There’s a layer model: collect, use tools to filter, use crowdsourcing to vet, use more tools to distribute.”

Another interesting thread of conversation emerged: How do you measure trust, particularly if you are not using aggregation tools that apply mathematical models to weed out false reports? David Wild asked: “Is the fact that you follow someone on twitter a measure of trust in their report?” David answered his own question by stating that the NWS proved a few years ago that “quality from quantity is better than quality by selection”. (In other words, the truth will be the average). Hal Grieb recommended that the emergency management community should use the same individuals that the NWS uses as trained spotters. James answered that trust could simply have to do with reference point. Also, people on the chat indicated that information accompanied by a picture is hard to deny.

But in terms of relying on information from individuals, I asked about using business partners as trusted agents. Glen Gilmore, with the well deserved self-title of “Social Media King”, agreed by stating “trust if often local.” Mr.Gilmore went on to say: “trust takes time; it’s not a matter of “following” , but of listening & sifting.” People seemed to agree with this by stating the importance of building a social media presence before an event. Ms. Starbird wrote that in events, locals sometimes create new accounts to report. The “FireTracker” stated: “Public will trust established local, over newcomer “official”. One great point by @g_r_e_g was that social media can be combined with other information: “be sure to include other tools, too, like call volume, e-mail, media reports, not just social media.”

The notion that emergency managers could use data mining tools in order to establish trust by consensus seemed to receive a collective “YES!” There are only a couple of these tools currently being developed, Swiftriver, which I have mentioned on this blog, is one of the few.

The FireTracker also suggested, that in terms of organizational structure, that “As you establish Incident Command” and RIT, maybe establish a Social Media officer at the scene of the incident.” This would give you a trusted agent for sure!

Q3: Even though the discussion of tools for filtering social media had already been brought up, I specifically asked: What tools do you use/need to automate Social Media monitoring for Situational Awareness?

I know quite a few in the emergency management community use tweetdeck and google real-time searches. Hal Grieb reminded us of a list of tools on one.forty.com. Tools that can integrate information that comes with a geo-tag were also mentioned as something to look forward to.

@g_r_e_g through some water on the party: “Automated monitoring is fine, but how is info analyzed especially in the Joint information center/Emergency ops center/ and Incident command system settings? Pictures/tweets are great, but then what?‘

Q4: That begged the next question: Can volunteers be used to help sort thru comments and @ messages in ur EOC? Is anyone using volunteers?

Alicia Johnson thought volunteers could be an option; and she also asked if local media could help curate information. Jeff Phillips, EM from New Mexico, indicated volunteers could be used and “they don’t even have to be IN the EOC.” Some agencies, however, are quite reluctant to open the door to volunteers.

Kate Starbird brought up how crowdsourcing was used to aggregated citizen reports on the Ushahidi platform. “Crowdmap for Chicago used volunteers–some trained some spontaneous to verify, map & route information during the recent blizzard”. But as a counter point, James stated “Big problem with crowdsourced situational awareness data is time and manpower to search/sort. Why apps are needed to automate.”

Hal Grieb stated: “Data mining is great but need more investment in web 3.0 and the semantic web together with geolocation apps.” @Greg indicated that he was a fan of adding syntax and bringing WebEOC or other CMIS for tasking/posting (versus volunteers). But this doesn’t seem like a short-term solution since, as James indicated: “Current WebEOC Twitter interface lacks true tasking & movement.” Others indicated that they want mobile capabilities.

Just to add in another option I asked if the concept of using mutual aid agreements to help with volume of data from Social Media for Situational Awareness should be explored. The FireTracker stated “Yes, but need legal framework ironed out NOW with MOUs.” Greg stated that you can have agreements with farther flung agencies, particularly to mitigate against the possibility of large-regional events. I found this to be a very salient point by the FireTracker:

“Social Media resource typing and standardization would go a long way towards Mutual aid planning and IMHO so you know what you are getting. CyberCert would play into resource typing, as well as Public Information Officers listed in ROSS, Non-Governmental Organizations and SUV Social Media volunteers.”

One participant asked if anyone was worried about intentional misuse or misdirection? Kate Starbird indicated that they saw a bit of that in Haiti. “Haiti-relatives reported hearing from loved ones to get responder’s MT.” This took us back to the whole discussion of trusted sources and the concept that math aggregation tools could help alleviate this sort of problem. (Of note, this points out the difference between using social media to direct resources to individuals or to just gain over-arching situational awareness. Of course, 911 is still used for directing help to individuals in the US, whereas in Haiti SM became 911 by default.) However, it was noted that we should “plan for disruptive tools” because data can be easily corrupted.

The last question dealt with Mayors & City Managers using Social Media to post updates from the scene, sometimes essentially bypassing the emergency management structure (e.g. by directing resources to citizens that “tweet” for assistance”). Since this article is already quite long, to summarize, people thought that it would be impossible to tell them that they should not be doing this: “Nature of politics!”. These mayors do provide a valuable connection to the residents by “talking” with them through social media, but politically driven promises can create challenges with regard to “expectations management.”

"

FEMA will use social media through all stages of a disaster

FEMA will use social media through all stages of a disaster

BY BRIAN KALISH 02/08/2011

Nicholas Kamm/Newscom

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is set up to use Twitter at all stages of a disaster, before the event strikes, during the event and after, Administrator Craig Fugate tells Nextgov.

The agency maintains a Twitter page with just under 30,000 followers, and the administrator himself has a personal page, CraigatFEMA, with almost 6,600 followers.

Before a forecast storm hits, today's FEMA can monitor local weather reports and Tweets to advise the public in the affected area. On Tuesday, for example, the agency issued a message about a winter storm likely to hit Oklahoma, New Mexico and North Texas through Wednesday. The agency instructed its followers to be sure to follow the affected state's emergency management offices: "Another #winterstorm for OK, north TX & New Mexico tonight/tmrw. Prepare at http://go.usa.gov/akw & follow @okem @txdps @NMDHSEM."

Fugate said his agency is careful to rely only on official information, such as forecasts from the National Weather Service and links from official emergency management agencies. "It's really important I don't try to pose as a weather service," he said.

The agency also uses social media to anticipate what a state might need to prepare for a predicted disaster. For example, as Hurricane Earl moved up the East Coast in September 2010, Fugate could see by monitoring Twitter that tourists on North Carolina's Outer Banks were evacuating, but many long-term residents were adamant about staying put. That gave the agency a heads-up that there would be people left on the barrier islands, and search and rescue plans were readied.

During an event, FEMA looks for what people are saying on Twitter by tracking the service's hash tags, which an eventual consensus of users assigns to mark a given event. During the major snow and ice storm that moved across the United States in early February, the most commonly used hash tag was #snomg.

During that storm FEMA was able to monitor what was happening on the ground by using HootSuite, a Twitter-adaptable program that displays all Tweets using the given hash tag. Hence FEMA could tell that Oklahoma was getting hit by ice and Chicago residents thought the storm had missed them, until they started Tweeting that it quickly got worse, Fugate said.

Another example he cites occurred with Tropical Cyclone Wilma, which hit American Samoa at the end of January. A unnamed man Tweeted Fugate and started giving him local conditions, using #wilma as a hash tag. "When the storm came ashore, he starts describing things that were happening," Fugate said. "But about midway, when [the storm] reach[ed] peak conditions, he starts Tweeting [NFL] scores." That assured Fugate that critical systems such as electricity were working.

After an event, FEMA will typically re-Tweet information from other government agencies and, using a tool developed by the General Services Administration that shortens .gov Web addresses, the agency can track how many hits each link draws. After the snowstorm, FEMA linked back to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "Very useful in case your power goes out & you have a generator - carbon monoxide safety tips f/ @CDCgov http://go.usa.gov/YEa #snomg." That link was accessed 1,400 times, Fugate said.

There is much re-Tweeting of what FEMA and Fugate post, he said, and that gets the message out there.

Receiving Calls - About call widgets

Receiving Calls - About call widgets

Take your photos with you anywhere

Take your photos with you anywhere: "Posted by Tammy McLeod, Software engineer



Picasa Web for mobile lets you view and share your photos, browse photos from people you follow, or search public photos from our Picasa Web community. All on the go. Until now, there was a limit to how many photos you could view, but that limit has lifted and you can view all your photos right from your phone. Browse multiple pages of albums and photos by clicking Next and Prev. Just visit https://picasaweb.google.com from the browser on your smartphone and enjoy photos anywhere.

We'd love to hear what you think. Please share your feedback in our forum.

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imo.im adds message attachments

My favorite IM app has added message attachments (images, audio, video) to its Android app.

FCC approves LTE for emergency responder network

FCC approves LTE for emergency responder network

Using Social Media to Gain Situational Awareness — It’s Time To Question Assumptions

Using Social Media to Gain Situational Awareness — It’s Time To Question Assumptions: "

Post by: Kim Stephens

Many have assumed that after a large-scale disaster event all communications would be silenced in the impacted areas. Recent experience, however, has proved this assumption incorrect — first with Haiti (Jan 2010) and then in recent months in Australia. In both cases, the cell towers proved to be more resilient than assumed. Because social media platforms can be accessed on hand-held communication devices, survivors and public safety organizations have turned to these platforms as a way to keep the information flowing during and after a disaster.

Citizens in impacted areas don’t just receive information, but increasingly, they send out bits of data about what they are seeing, hearing, and feeling through these platforms. These data, if aggregated, can contribute to overall situational awareness. We are really beginning to understand Brian Humphrey of LAFD’s phrase “every citizen is a sensor”, a take on the phrase every soldier is a sensor. But what now? Citizens, obviously, do not pass the information up through chains of command, nor do usually pass that information in any structured way. How do we filter, verify, aggregate and make sense of ALL THAT DATA? As crisis mapper and PhD candidate Kate Starbird said in a recent interview: “Should it be the only source of information? Absolutely not. But if it’s there, why not use the information?”

This is a really big topic so I have just tackled a small part of the issue in this post. I also have tried to include as many links as possible to articles that explore the topic in much greater depth. The point here is to try to aggregate some of these issues and questions for use in our discussion on the SMEMchat hashtag, which is scheduled to take place Friday, Feb. 3 at 1230. If you have other questions you’d like brought up, please post them to twitter on #SMEM or at the bottom of this post.

QUESTION #1: How do we gather information from social media platforms?

(a.) One way to gather data: ask for it. The US Army Handbook on Social Media suggests that during an emergency “Organizations should encourage people on the scene to send information.” They go on to state that “No matter how information is submitted, the command site should promote this content when appropriate.”

(b.) Be a magnet. What I think we are seeing in Australia, is that the Queensland Police Service social media presence has created an avenue for people to provide information that can be more easily monitored by response personnel. They have done this both with their twitter account, by establishing and using hashtags that were widely adopted during the flood and the current cyclone, and by creating a robust facebook page. Just by reading through the comments on the QPS site, you get a sense of how people can provide situational awareness information directly to you. One person states: “Just gotten in contact with family in Kewarra and they have power, not to sure of damage but it wasn’t as bad as we first thought…”

One concern I’ve heard voiced from response organizations is privacy. However, if people are volunteering their information to your open and public site, they most likely understand it is not a private conversation. Another concern I’ve heard came from the QPS media team themselves, there is a LOT of information to sort through. This brings up the question:

Can/should emergency operation centers use volunteers to help sort through the data pouring in through their own social media sites?

(c.) Have trusted sources: Other emergency managers, Cheryl Bledsoe in particular, have noted the importance of having a presence before an event, which helps create real trust with people online. During an event you can turn to these “trusted agents” as sources of information. (Hey @greatguy What are you seeing around the lake?).

Again, Jeff Phillips, aka @LosRanchosEM, provides a great example of this. Here in this screen shot of his twitter feed, you can see that he is retweeting information supplied by others. When asked about his practices in RTing Jeff states: “I do my best to verify “trust” before RT – not the same as saying only “official” sources. Sometimes I RT with a question mark.” I asked him if he includes that information in his official situational report, and he indicated that he does include verified information in his county’s sitrep.

QUESTION #2: Can We Ask for the data, but in a structured format? Even in Australia, however, we have seen that being a magnet for information is really not enough. There is just too much information for response organizations to make sense of it all in a timely manner. Some of the posts on the QPS facebook page received over 1000 comments. There were thousands of tweets during and after the cyclone with the tag #TCYasi. Trying to sort through and make sense of all of that potential data is a real problem. (I say potential because a lot of comments are merely “thanks for the good work!”.)

What smart phone applications and other formats have been developed to help citizens report data in structured format?

(a.) For smaller-scale events, an example of an application that would make it easier for the public to send information in a more structured format is the application “See Click Fix” which is promoted for use in identifying non-emergency issues in neighborhoods. (Thanks to @UrbanAreaAlicia for pointing this out). As stated on their webpage, this application “allows anyone to report and track non-emergency issues anywhere in the world via the internet.” As the “click” implies, people are encouraged to send in photos of the problems. If you are reminded of Ushahidi, I’ll get to that in a moment. But applications like this one might be worth exploring for use after a disaster, particularly for local government with limited resources.

(b.) The public can also be educated about how to structure information shared through social media platforms so that it can be integrated with other data feeds and placed on visualization platforms. One example of this is the National Weather Service’s new experiment called “Twitter Storm Reports” In their flyer they state: “You can now submit your significant weather observations to the NWS via twitter.” The two page flyer gives very specific information on how-to structure tweets, including a full description of how they should be written with or without geo-tagging. One of the example tweets demonstrates the importance of including the person’s location if they do not have geo-tagging. “#wxreport WW 378 W. 156th Rd. Anthony, KS WW Wind Gusts estimated at 60 mph”.

(c.) This reminded me of the “Tweak the tweet”, an ongoing effort on the part of aforementioned Kate Starbird, a PhD student at the University of Colorado, to educate the public about how to better format tweets in order to”leverage twitter as a semi-formal communications channel”. The campaign also informs users on how to format tweets so that computers can aid in processing the information.

“This processing includes extracting location information, creating incident reports from tweets, and sorting these reports into different types of categories. The processed tweets can then be displayed on public web-pages in a variety of formats that allows users to see where different types of information has been reported.”

This is a very impressive endeavor that is starting to yield some great results. See her 3 page description here.

(d.) And Ushahidi (if you’ve never heard of Ushahidi watch this video) has an iPhone app as well. From the iTunes preview page: ”Ushahidi is an open source platform for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories. The iPhone and iPad app synchronizes with any Ushahidi deployment allowing viewing and creation of incident reports on the go.”

The app supports loading of multiple deployments at one time, quick filtering through incident reports, exploring incident locations on the map, viewing incident photos, news article, media as well as sharing incident reports via email, sms or Twitter. Once the data has been downloaded, the app can function without an internet connection, allowing accurate collection of data utilizing the device’s camera and gps capabilities.

QUESTION #3: Can We Combine social media with geo-spatial mapping?

The description of Ushahidi’s app dovetails perfectly with the question of integrating social media with geo-spatial mapping. Again this example comes from the resent back-to-back crises in Australia. Although geo-spatial mapping with crowdsourced data on the Ushahidi platform became very well known after its well-publicized use in Haiti, I think it showed even more promise in the application’s deployment in Australia when it was combined with the power of the GIS mapping giant, ESRI. The application allowed for “trend analysis” and, based on reports from the field, was used by responders “to create releveance and context from social media reporting.” See this article by Alex Howard, of O’Reilly Radar. Alex continues:

The Australian flooding web app includes the ability to toggle layers from OpenStreetMap, satellite imagery, topography, and filter by time or report type. By adding structured social data, the web app provides geospatial information system (GIS) operators with valuable situational awareness that goes beyond standard reporting, including the locations of property damage, roads affected, hazards, evacuations and power outages.

Here is a screen shot of ESRI’s application during Cyclone Yasi.

QUESTION #4: How do we create feedback loops so that responders know when information coming from social media platforms has been acted upon? See the article listed below “From Haiti to-Helmand” for a detailed discussion of this point. Lin Well’s states that feedback is essential to not only know what has been acted upon, but to identify what has not.

There is a lot to discuss. I’m anxious to participate in the online chat with the emergency management community on this topic. I will report back with everyone’s thoughts.

Some Great Sources:

• Wells, L, Welborn R “From Haiti to Helmand: Using Open Source Information to Enhance Situational Awareness and Operational Effectiveness”. Center for Technology and National Security Policy (CTNSP). 2010. Accessed Jan. 2011. <http://star-tides.net/node/745>.


• American Red Cross. ”The Case for Integrating Crisis Response with Social Media” American Red Cross. July, 2010. Accessed Aug. 2010. <http://www.redcross.org/www-files/Documents/pdf/other/SocialMediaSlideDeck.pdf>


• Howard, Alex. “Social Data and Geospatial mapping join Crisis Response” O’Reilly Radar Blog. Great article describing integration of crowdsourced data collected on the Ushahidi platform into GIS. 27 january 2011. <http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/01/esri-australia-ushahidi.html?utm_medium=twitter>.


• National Weather Service: “Twitter Storm Reports” A How-to for the public to report weather conditions via twitter. Instuctions include what info to include and geo-tagging. Google Doc. Accessed Jan. 31, 2011. <http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0Byg_SCfWO_j2YjBkMmNlMTktNDljYi00NGI4LTlkNjMtNWZmYjkyNjAxYTlk&hl=en>.


• StarBird, Kate. “Tweak the Tweet: Social and Technical Considerations”. University of Boulder, Colorado. <http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~starbird/blog/tweak_the_tweet_-_social_an.html>. Aug. 14, 2010. Accessed Feb. 2011.

Your comments and suggestions are invited.

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