The Extraordinaires' new project is helping to sort through the flood of images emerging from Haiti
The pictures of the devastation in Haiti, have caused an incredible outpouring of support from business and individuals around the world. Along with the usual organizations that are on the frontlines when disasters strike, there are a number of technology organizations (from Google to Ushahidi to Frontline SMS), working around the clock with the State Department on a coordinated effort, that uses technology to support the relief efforts in Haiti.
The Extraordinaries (which we’ve written about before) has teamed up with these organizations to help. According to an email they sent to us, they’ve just built a Haiti Earthquake Support Center with brand new image recognition technology, which provides two ways that volunteers can micro-volunteer anywhere they have access to the internet.
Here’s how people can help, right now, from right here at home:
The Image Tagger — Micro-volunteers can help sort through news photos coming out of Haiti and categorize (tag) them with keywords like “adult, child, alive, deceased.” Never before has there been a system that can bring together thousands of photos from across the web and have them sorted by live human beings (no computer could ever know that there is a teenager in a photo).
The Matcher — A system that matches faces of missing people to faces in photos coming from Haiti. The goal is to help desperate families find their loved ones. Volunteers use the matcher to look for a missing person in images that have been tagged with the image tagger. This system will be live very soon.
i have several relatives who were also vicitimized by the earthquake in Haiti. thank God that they were not seriously hurt. i hope and pray that Haiti would be able to recover soon from this disaster.