18686214
submission
Twisted64 writes:
After the Australian floods, a few sites have popped up, attempting to get flood victims in touch with their would-be saviours in the shortest time possible.These include qldfloods.org, floodaid.com.au, wikifloods.com.au, ozfloodhelp.org and mydisasterbuddy.com.
The sites use different methods to get people to register their needs or areas where they can provide assistance. Floodaid is a basic list for people to search through, wikifloods provides a bulletin board, and My Disaster Buddy is a basic networking site, requiring registration (but after registration it automates the searching process, matching users based on their preferences).
What do you think is the best approach to getting people in contact with each other, with the minimum of fuss? It's clearly too late after the fact to throw together a website and expect it to be a polished production, but there is clearly a need that is being answered in several differing ways. Disasters will continue to happen, and plenty of people with a mobile phone have enough internet access to make these projects worthwhile.
18666668
submission
Twisted64 writes:
Due to the ongoing saga of Australia's amazing floods, several pages have sprung up on facebook and other social networking sites to help volunteers assisting in flood cleanup. However, there are thousands of people more willing to lend a hand than donate money, and figuring out where to send them is a massive effort in coordination.
One new community-driven website, My Disaster Buddy, has done away with the donation element entirely with the aim of bringing the needy and the helpful together. Although it is still very basic, the intention is clear. The site allows users to check off their areas of possible assistance and then matches them with a user affected by the disaster. They can then interact on a one-to-one basis.
It figures that this more altruistic type of networking site would emerge in Australia, where the people are known for being both helpful and early adopters of technology, borne out by the torrent of youtube videos of cars being washed away and stories of men wading through chest deep water to rescue wallabies.
Obviously this kind of connectivity will only be effective in areas where most people have access to the internet, but can such a solution work?
18652264
submission
Twisted64 writes:
Due to the ongoing saga of Australia's amazing floods, several pages have sprung up on facebook and other social networking sites to help volunteers assisting in flood cleanup. However, there are thousands of people more willing to lend a hand than donate money, and figuring out where to send them is a massive effort in coordination.
One website has done away with the donation element entirely with the aim of bringing the needy and the helpful together. The site allows users to check off their areas of possible assistance and then matches them with a user affected by the disaster. They can then interact on a more personal one-to-one basis. While it may not make much sense for the initial cleanup job, this approach may have some long-term benefits after the media attention dies down.
It figures that this altruistic type of "helpful networking" site would emerge in Australia, where the people are known for being both helpful and early adopters of technology, views borne out by the torrent of youtube videos of cars being washed away and stories of men wading through chest deep water to rescue wallabies.
The site does seem a touch slow, so here's the Coral Cache link.
14737290
submission
Twisted64 writes:
If you're interested in voting below the line in the upcoming federal election in Australia, but don't want to waste time in the booth individually ranking up to 76 candidates (for the unfortunates in New South Wales), then Cameron McCormack's website may have what you need. The website allows voters to set their preferences beforehand, dragging and dropping Stephen Conroy at the bottom of the barrel and thrusting the Sex Party into pole position (as an utterly random example). Once preferences are set, the site can generate a pdf to be printed and taken to the booth.
There's also something to educate the above-the-line voters — if you check the box for your single party of choice, the site will fill out the effective party preferences below the line. This shows that a vote for The Climate Sceptics hands first preferences to Family First, and so on.
The website claims not to harvest voting information, but for the paranoid it recommends printing out a blank ballot sheet and copying your preferences from the screen. There is also a button to set up a donkey vote when in the ballot view, in case you have trouble counting from 1 to 100.
