

Person Finder: Boston Marathon Explosions - danso
http://google.org/personfinder/2013-boston-explosions

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DanielStraight
The Red Cross already does this. It's called Safe And Well. This is one place
where we definitely don't need fragmentation.

If you need to check on someone in Boston, I recommend Safe And Well. Just
please don't go to the site unless you actually need to check on someone. The
servers don't need the added load (which I guess would be a reason to want to
use Google, but they aren't going to be on scene like the Red Cross will be).

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danso
The Red Cross link: [http://www.redcross.org/find-help/contact-
family/register-sa...](http://www.redcross.org/find-help/contact-
family/register-safe-listing)

> _Due to high volume, Safe and Well is experiencing slow page loads at this
> time. Please continue to check back._

Edit: Also, I hate to bag on anything disaster-relief related, but it's not
very useful even when it is working, as it returns results from what looks
like the Red Cross's entire database of these records, rather than those
scoped to today.

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sukuriant
This might be a place where the Red Cross might be able to improve their
services by creating an AppEngine or EC2 instance to handle the traffic?

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toomuchtodo
Or let Google do it. Google can scale _much_ faster than the Red Cross can
outsource it.

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nnutter
Until Google decides to close it a few years from now in order to focus on
what matters.

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jmillikin
There is no need to run a person finder for longer than the duration of the
disaster.

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jarek
We've had wars that run for decades, a timespan in which it's definitely
possible for a company to lose interest (or even cease to operate altogether).
Thankfully this doesn't seem to be an issue as long as the company running it
uses the open data format as pointed out by magicalist.

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shoopy
This is helpful, I passed the link to a friend whose cousin ran in the race.

And the whining in this thread is deplorable.

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level09
I'm impressed by the speed of software engineering at Google, do they pre-
design these systems for such events ?

that was pretty quick indeed.

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ldh
This has existed before today. Check out the home page:
<http://google.org/personfinder/global/home.html>

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xoail
"Status: Someone has received information that this person is alive" \- I wish
they reword it to something less scary. like, "Status: Someone has received
information that this person is fine"

~~~
jd007
the two do not mean the same thing though. the former means the person is not
dead, while your version means the person is not harmed. in google's version,
the person might have lost a limb or was injured, but still alive. this is not
"fine". it's better to be clear about what the information that the message
carries in this situation IMO.

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koltkorivera
Thank you for posting this, danso.

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sukuriant
I wonder what the ramifications are for this functionality with regard to
people that are in the Witness Protection Program. I suppose that might just
be another thing our civil servants will be considering when they're
protecting their witnesses.

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throwawaay
Batshit insane.

What kind of implications could this tool possibly have for witness
protection? It returns data that was explicitly entered in connection with a
specific disaster, and you can only search by name. Someone who's in hiding
isn't going to give out their original identity, so how exactly do you propose
to use this to track them?

Did you even click through to see what this thing really does, or did you
actually just assume that "Person Finder" must be some kind of magical
privacy-violating anal probe and rush to type out the first paranoid,
nonsensical and idiotic thing to run through your head and click post as a
knee-jerk reaction?

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sukuriant
Wooow. I was just curious. I wasn't intending to throw FUD around or anything
of the sort. I didn't think it was privacy violating. I think it's great, in
fact. Calm down :)

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tommys
Yet another Google service soon to be discontinued... When one need it as most
probably.

~~~
PetrolMan
Is this really the time or the place for your comment?

