Traditional helpers in disaster relief, such as the U.N. and world governments, provided aid after a massive earthquake devastated Haiti in January 2010, leveled Port-au-Prince, claimed 230,000 lives and caused US$14 billion in damages.
The technology space also played a role in humanitarian efforts as Haitians buried under rubble sent text messages with their locations and open-source mapping communities documented the island. To further research technology's role in disaster relief, the United Nations Foundation and it partners commissioned a study from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) on the topic.
"Our job is to design an interface between the U.N. and volunteer technology communities as well as citizens from affected nations," said John Crowley, a research fellow at the HHI and the report's lead author. "We are really at the beginning stages. We need to start this conversation now. What we saw in Haiti will happen again."
While the final study is due out in March, the report's initial findings were released last week to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the earthquake. These early results indicate that mobile technology, the open-source community and Web services each have roles in future humanitarian relief missions.
Relief workers arrived in Haiti without access to data on the country, such as maps, since that information was buried under rubble, Crowley said. Workers had to reconstruct this data while simultaneously dealing with the crisis, he said. They were also given the task of incorporating new data feeds, like text messages, into their work.
Open Street Map, an open-source world map, used old maps and satellite images to construct new maps. The organization, a volunteer group of map enthusiasts, refreshed its maps every minute to address the amount of data being added, Crowley said.
Map Action, a volunteer organization of mapping professionals that is partnered with the U.N., also created new maps using GPS and satellite technology.
These efforts took Haiti "from one of the most poorly mapped countries to one that had routing tools," said Crowley.
To better aid relief efforts, Crowley suggested that the open-source groups place their volunteers on a rotating schedule. This would allow them to better balance their volunteer work with their professional and home lives.
"I wouldn't want anyone getting divorced over relief work," said Crowley.
Despite Haiti's reputation of being impoverished, clusters of advanced technology users do exist, he said.
"Our assumptions about what technology they use needs to be questioned. Yes, it is low but there are pockets that are incredible."
The country's mobile network functioned after the earthquake and people used it to send text messages and create Twitter posts.
Members of the Haitian diaspora were used to translate the most critical messages from Creole to English, Crowley said. Workers then determined which could be acted on and passed along the information to the organizations that were helping in the relief effort.
Integrating these new data fields with the traditional humanitarian groups proved challenging since aid organizations are not set up to incorporate these feeds.
"We've heard repeatedly that there is no template for capturing data," Crowley said. "We're seeing more and more of a demand for data in a structured format."
Web services' ability to process information in near-real time makes them the preferred data organization tool since standard documents can take too long to compose, Crowley said. He acknowledged that Web services also have latency issues, but "the Web cuts back on that delay."
"Without Web services it is very difficult to make decisions in real time," he said.
It's a new dawn, people! As of today, you can walk into just about any Starbucks store and pay for your latte using nothing other than a (free) iPhone app, coupled to an existing Starbucks card account. That's right -- the day of mobile electronic payments is here at last! Ta-dah!
Google co-founder Larry Page will take over as Google CEO in April from Eric Schmidt, who will remain with the company as executive chairman.
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Epson America this week unveiled a new wireless printer designed to help photographers and artists create gallery-quality color images.
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Stofega said most IT managers won't talk about blocking porn because the issue is so sensitive.
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s still a signficant portion -- a majority, actually -- of mobile phone users who do not own a smartphone, or maybe even want one. The social networking giant seems determined to put itself in front of those consumers as well.
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![Shawshank Redemption [VHS]](/512G9J05RJLSL500.jpg)
When this popular prison drama was released in 1994, some critics complained that the movie was too long (142 minutes) to sustain its story. Those complaints miss the point, because the passage of time is crucial to this story about patience, the squeaky wheels of justice, and the growth of a life-long friendship. Only when the film reaches its final, emotionally satisfying scene do you fully understand why writer-director Frank Darabont (adapting a novella by Stephen King) allows the story to unfold at its necessary pace, and the effect is dramatically rewarding. Tim Robbins plays a banker named Andy who's sent to Shawshank Prison on a murder charge, but as he gets to know a life-term prisoner named Red (Morgan Freeman), we realize there's reason to believe the banker's crime was justifiable. We also realize that Andy's calm, quiet exterior hides a great reserve of patience and fortitude, and Red comes to admire this mild-mannered man who first struck him as weak and unfit for prison life. So it is that The Shawshank Redemption builds considerable impact as a prison drama that defies the conventions of the genre (violence, brutality, riots) to illustrate its theme of faith, friendship, and survival. Nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor, and Screenplay, it's a remarkable film that signaled the arrival of a promising new filmmaker--a film that many movie lovers count among their all-time favorites. --Jeff Shannon 
The iPad 2 could be launched in April, according to reports from Taiwan, with Apple making plans with several circuit board suppliers.
