As we should all know by now, there has been what sounds like it will be a disaster of epic proportions. On Saturday, March 8th, Malaysia Air flight 370 vanished over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam. This is a major mystery for several reasons: The plane, a Boeing 777, is one of the safest planes ever made, without a single crash until last year's crash at San Francisco International Airport, which ultimately was blamed on pilot error anyway. It vanished in good weather with no distress call or transponder signal, but its last known contact showed it was way off course. To make matters worse, no trace of the plane of the plane has been found. No debris, no oil or fuel on the water, no wreckage, no nothing.
There is so much mystery surrounding it all that now the public can pitch in to look for evidence of the plane over the water from their own PC. Tomnod lets people use satellite imagery to scour the surface of the ocean looking for evidence of the missing plane, and tagging it if you find something. I had trouble getting it to run in the Chrome browser, but it worked in all others. You'll need to click [Start Tagging] to begin your search.
It's an offshoot of the concept of grid computing we discussed earlier, where many, many processors are being used as a singular machine to perform a task, and if you have a few minutes I certainly encourage you to take a look and see if you can find anything. Great things happen when complex issues are opened to the crowdsourcing model; remember when a bunch of gamers took less than a month to solve an AIDS-related problems that scientists had been working on for years? Good luck.
I found this quite fascinating! Technology is truly amazing, it is hard to believe that you are actually able to use satellite imagery to look for important evidence. This technology can be used is so many helpful ways. I believe that the crowdsourcing model is truly beneficial.
ReplyDeleteI think that this is a great way to help find any information regarding the missing plane from Malaysia. If this site is broadcast and posted on social media sites to inform others of its use, I think that we will have to find some sort of answer regarding where the plane is because of so many people looking for any sort of clue or evidence.
ReplyDeleteThis could also be used in any type of investigation because crowdsourcing is very beneficial and when you have that many people looking for something you will most likely find some sort of information regarding what you are looking for.
- Shane Booth
I actually was able to get on this site last night and play around on it. I was able to see ships down below in the ocean. Very amazing technology at our fingertips. There was one guy that actually saw an object that looked like a plane in the water.
ReplyDeleteI like how you related this example to the crowd-sourcing example you gave in class. When introducing totally unrelated factors to a problem, might just give you an unexpected answer. This was a terrible disaster to a lot people. To make things worse, they don't know what happened or why, giving them no closure. Having everyone help look for plane is a great way to involve people and gives them a sense that they are helping. Even if it's just a little bit.
ReplyDeleteI first heard of this crowdsourcing campaign thru CNN about three days ago. When I went in it was getting so many people trying to go in that it wouldn't let me do any searches and just crashed. I went back in it yesterday and what you can do with it is incredible, great technology that can be used for something like this I think it is awesome. Some people don't think this will be any good or of any help but those people don't know that it was this exact website and technology that helped find the missing hikers in Peru and searches after the Super Typhoon Haiyan
ReplyDeleteThis whole story is extremely disheartening, how many planes just go missing without a trace? I commend you for sharing Tomnod with the class, where we can all go on this virtual satellite search together. A group of fresh eyes is much better the one single person's set of eyes. I think Tomnod is an excellent resource because now the public can aid in the search to find out what really happened!
ReplyDeleteThis whole situation is just plain weird and I don't know if this has ever happened before. Another discovery that was weird to me but has since been disproved is the two Iranian men who stole passports to get on the plane. They were originally thinking there may have been terrorist link but that is no longer the case. To be able to look at satellite images to try to help find any clues as to what happened is very cool. I have not been able to get it to work for me yet (Chrome, IE, and Opera). It could be possible that i have too much running on my computer right now for it to function properly. It would be cool to say that you helped find the missing plane!
ReplyDeleteWhich raises the question: How can a plane of that size simply disappear? *raises eyebrow*
DeleteI believe the whole thing is mind blowing because I find it hard to lose an entire aircraft without a trace being found yet. No offense, but if experts can not find any sign of the plane, then what makes them think that we can from our own computer? Sounds like a good ploy to get people to look into the tragedy.
ReplyDeleteThis tragic event has been mind boggling and just appears to get worse. The disaster has been a hot topic with many brainstorms to what possibly occur. It's a fascinating thing to know how valuable technology truly is in an event like this. It's a very sad occupancy and I truly value how helpful technology is during a time like this, these individuals families deserve closure and hopefully they will find out what truly happened and where it's located.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how people come together in times of crises. I personally hope the plane was hijacked because it would be mean the passengers are still alive. With technology today that allows multiple people to search an area, it is a tremendous help to the few that actually have to do the work looking. I have gotten on the website, however, was not really sure what I was looking at. The current map was not showing anything., so I was not much help. However, it seems there are a lot of people looking and hopefully someone finds something. If this technology was not here today, how could people all over be able to help?
ReplyDeleteI still can't believe that this plane hasn't been recovered yet. They seem to come up to all types of different scenarios of what may have happened. If they were high jacked at least one person on the plane would have tried calling out on their cell phone.
ReplyDeleteThis is a pretty cool application. If this type of technology is out there for everyday people to use, then this just means better advancements are to come in the near future.