Tag: EARTHQUAKE

You have to hand it to Lady Gaga; she's pretty tapped into tech. Her latest venture is a partnership with Zynga, in which she's donating $1.5 million for earthquake relief via its in-game funding drives. The partnership is not particularly surprising on either end. Gaga has been making the tech rounds recently, and Zynga has long been savvy about using its games as a platform for ...

With rescue workers continuing to search for survivors among the rubble from last week's devastating earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, a group of engineers from the U.K. have constructed a robot that could make their jobs a little easier -- thanks to Microsoft's Xbox Kinect. The Kinect's motion-detection sensors can instantly model the robot's surroundings and scan them for survivors, ...

Google has launched a 'Person Finder' app, like the ones for Haiti and Chile, whereby users can submit and find information on any friends or family in Christchurch, New Zealand, which was struck by a devastating earthquake earlier today. At the moment, Google has information on about 5,100 people, so, if you're looking for loved ones, or have information that could put others' minds at ease, ...

In August of 2008, we covered a program called Quake-Catcher that turned laptop and desktop PCs (with a $50 USB sensor) into powerful data collecting tools for seismologists. Protecting the hard drive with an accelerometer (which is built into many a modern computer), Quake-Catcher is able to gather information about the size, speed, and strength of earthquakes. At the time of its inception, ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... ChatRoulette, the spontaneous online video interaction service, has exploded in popularity but has also given rise to an epidemic of exaggeration and hyperbole. Worried that children will be exposed to sexual deviants, various organizations are labeling the site as a "predator's paradise." But, there's one easy solution to that ...

A hemisphere still reeling from the tragedy in Haiti was struck again this weekend by an 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile. With the death toll now tallied at over 700, and over a million Chileans displaced or homeless, President Michelle Bachelet has called the quake "an emergency unparalleled in the history of Chile." While the infrastructure of the South American country is stronger than ...

As Monday morning quarterbacks around the world continue to discuss the structural, long-term steps that could've been taken to mitigate the enormous damage inflicted upon Haiti, a group of engineering students in India have designed a new robot that may help dampen the effects of an earthquake in the short-term. Inspired by the horror they saw unfurl in Haiti, students from JT Engineering ...

Despite the reported rash of text-to-donate scams that have surfaced in recent days, it appears that people are still using text messages to give money to relief efforts in Haiti -- and doing it in droves. According to LiveScience, Americans have so far donated millions of dollars to relief organizations via text message, marking the first time that SMS-facilitated donations have been used so ...

After a dearth of old-school, English-language reporting on yesterday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti, people were naturally turning to Twitter to share photos and news of this horrific event. Even the New York Times does not appear to have correspondents anywhere near Port-au-Prince, or even in the country; the top story on NYTimes.com today was reported from Santo Domingo and Mexico City. ...

Seeking to disseminate information more quickly, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is turning to Twitter for a little help. According to Ecopolitology, a group of seismologists led by Dr. Paul Earle recently created an application, dubbed the Twitter Earthquake Detection Project, that monitors tweets for earthquake-related keywords. The idea grew from the deluge of tweets that quickly hit the site ...

The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management wants to make earthquakes, or at least learning about earthquakes, fun. In order to accomplish this, they created a Quake Quiz Web site, which features tips on how to prepare and react when an quake occurs. The site features an interactive quiz that places the user in six different scenarios -- at home, on the beach, in the car, at work, and ...

An Italian seismologist has demanded a public apology from the Italian authorities that suppressed his predictions of the earthquake and resultant aftershocks. The quake and its aftermath have taken over 200 lives and left as many as 17,000 homeless since it first struck near the town of L'Aquila yesterday, according to reports by the Daily Mail and the New York Times. Over a month ago, National ...

What would happen if a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Southern California? We certainly can't think of anything good, and our thoughts are echoed by the findings of a 300-page study from the U.S. Geological Survey, which detailed the likely resulting damage should such a disaster hit along the San Andreas Fault. That inspired the Institute for the Future and the Art Center College of Design to ...

Earthquakes strike dozens of times every day around the world, usually doing no more than rattling a few dishes, but occasionally causing some real damage. There's a worldwide network of sensors able to track and locate the center of earthquakes after they've struck, but a new network is being built up in the hopes of detecting quakes as they happen, communicating that information to those likely ...

Yesterday, Twitter proved its mettle, and for once, didn't buckle under the pressure as a barrage of tweets poured in just seconds after the earthquake struck (and before it ended). Twitter, while popular, has become known for its frequent unscheduled "down time," symbolized by its accidental mascot, the Fail Whale. Yesterday, Twitter stayed strong, allowing those on the west coast to share news ...