crisis
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Twitter says it won't amplify false content during a crisis
It will add labels to 'high-visibility misleading tweets' related to the war in Ukraine.
Google will use AI to better detect and address personal crisis searches
The company is trying to surface more relevant resources.
Lyft outlines its disaster response strategy
Lyft just illustrated how it will respond in the middle of a crisis. The company has introduced a Disaster Relief Access Program that promises support for people in affected areas. In situations when the roads are safe, the ridesharing firm will typically hand out free codes both through its own social network avenues as well as local news outlets, non-profits and Facebook's Crisis Response Hub. It'll also honor emergency declarations that affect road closures and pricing, including caps on Prime Time (read: surge pricing).
Major UN report says climate change is worse than first thought
Even if nations stick to the Paris agreement and keep global warming below two degrees, it will still be a major disaster for the planet, according to a blockbuster UN report on climate change. What's more, we now have less time to act than previously thought. If governments don't take massive action over the next decade, we could see severe food shortages, increased forest fires and large scale coral reef die-offs by 2040. The report also predicts more serious issues, including the potential migration of tens of millions of people that would increase the risk of wars.
Facebook Lite adds Community Help crisis response tool
Facebook announced today that it's bringing its Community Help tool to Facebook Lite. The feature, which evolved out of Safety Check, helps users connect in the event of a crisis, allowing them to share updates, communicate with others and find or provide help. Now the tool will be available on Facebook Lite in more than 100 countries, giving more Facebook users access to information on essential needs such as where to find food, shelter or transportation after a disaster. "Our priority is to build tools that provide people with ways to get the help they need to recover and rebuild after a crisis," Facebook Crisis Response Product Manager Jeong-Suh Choi said in a statement. "By making Community Help available on Facebook Lite, event more people can get the help they need in times of crisis."
Facebook Community Help crisis tool is no longer limited to individuals
Facebook has been evolving its Safety Check feature over the last year, adding complementary capabilities to go alongside it and building it into a crisis hub. Last February, Facebook introduced Community Help, a feature that allowed users to find and provide help during a crisis and in September, it launched Crisis Response, a one-stop spot where people could access Safety Check, Community Help and media, like articles and videos, related to an ongoing crisis. Now, Facebook has announced some changes to Community Help that will allow organizations and businesses to post in the forum rather than just individuals.
Facebook's 'Crisis Response' provides info during a disaster
Last year, it was reported that Facebook was working on an always-ready crisis hub that would bring together its Safety Check feature with posts and videos relating to an ongoing emergency. Today, it announced that the tool is going live.
Google and the UN answer Syria queries with a poignant website
Most Syrian refugees are just families with children thrown into turmoil by an unwanted war, so it's a cruel twist that the US and other nations have slammed the door on them. To help folks better understand their plight, Google has teamed with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) on a new website that answers the five most common search queries from around the world. The website will appear today on Google's home page in select countries or directly at www.searchingforsyria.org.
Google puts Hurricane Sandy on its crisis map, hopes to help you weather the storm
Just because Google abandoned its October Android event doesn't mean it's left its users out to dry -- Hurricane Sandy now has its very own Google Crisis Map. It isn't the first time Mountain View has lent its mapping tech to folks in harm's way -- survivors of Hurricane Issac used a similar Crisis Map to track the storm, follow public alerts and find shelters. Sandy's map is no different, providing locals with information on the storm's path, forecast information, evacuation routes, areas of high wind probability and even links to webcams surrounding affected areas. Google isn't the only firm lending a hand, either -- both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are lifting site paywalls during the storm, ensuring the public has access to developing news as long as their internet connection doesn't give out.
Japan considers using social networks in disaster situations
Emergency services are embracing technology as new ways to investigate, send alerts and receive reports of crises. And now, the Japanese are looking at social networks to support communication in disaster scenarios, especially when traditional services fail. The local Fire and Disaster Management Agency put together a panel discussion on just that topic, with representatives attending from the likes of Twitter, Yahoo, Mixi and NHN Japan, as well as various government and emergency bodies. The talk was motivated, in part, by the March tsunami, when the internet was the sole means of information for some, and with initiatives like Google's Person Finder playing a role in the aftermath. Any formal implementation of the ideas discussed is probably a long way off, and this is the first of three planned meets to hash it out. In the meantime, however, Twitter's Japanese blog posted some suggestions on how their network could be used in emergencies -- we just hope they won't be needed anytime soon.
BBC assembles experts to comment on Sony crisis
The fact that it's been one of the worst couple of weeks for Sony -- and its customers -- cannot be disputed. However, the future of this crisis, which started a couple of weeks ago when Sony's network was hacked and user information was stolen, is anybody's guess. As such, BBC News assembled a panel of four industry experts to comment on the situation and speculate where Sony might go from here. Richard Merrin, a PR director, said that Sony demonstrated both the worst and best ways to respond to a crisis: "In the first instance, Sony waited ten days before telling users what was happening, which is a classic error in terms of communications. It knocked consumer [confidence] and damaged Sony's reputation. But with the second incident, it has acted extremely quickly and seems to be following the four golden rules in crisis PR -- to be open, honest, transparent and fast." "In terms of PR, I think Sony can turn it around," said ComputerandVideoGames.com's Tim Ingham. "Consumers are often quickly outraged by this sort of wobble from a global corporation -- but we tend to have short memories if we're not personally damaged by a given incident." The security expert, Sophos' Graham Cluley, said this doesn't change how users should protect themselves: "People need to be more careful with their passwords and make sure that they have different passwords for different online accounts." You can read the rest of the comments at BBC News.
Officers' Quarters: Verge of collapse
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press. If ever there were a time for guild-leader or raid-leader burnout to set in, we are living in it. We are at the end of perhaps the most challenging six months of raiding content in WoW's history -- not in terms of its difficulty, but in its sheer potential for drama and member loss. First we had the half-hearted tier that consisted entirely of Trial of the Crusader, a one-room raid that took all of an hour to clear, and Onyxia, a well-loved but well-worn raid boss that was also a quick, and often boring, clear. Keeping raiders motivated during what felt like an endless four months wasn't easy. Many raid leaders were pulling out their hair trying to fill slots. For the most serious guilds, ToC was an absolute nightmare. Not because the content was itself difficult, but because of the rewards offered for clearing the zone without a single wipe, or even a single player death. Some very good players cracked under this kind of pressure. In a situation where one person's mistake -- not to mention disconnects, lag, or other external factors -- can quickly cause a death or a wipe and cost the entire raid access to loot, offering these achievements seemed to me like Blizzard was going out of their way to cause drama. Icecrown Citadel was supposed to be our savior, but instead it brought new and unanticipated problems.
Emergency broadcast messaging coming to NYC
In a crisis situation, every moment is crucial in saving lives. Starting in early 2008, New York City will pilot a program that will deliver emergency notifications via text messaging alerts. "These messages could contain crucial information about the steam pipe explosion or subway flooding," says COO Paul Klein of Cellcast -- the company that will be providing the solution to the city -- "and these type of alerts can delivered even if wireless traffic had crashed the networks." [Via textually.org]
OnStar teams with Red Cross for location-based disaster info
With Japan doing the whole earthquake awareness thing, it's not too surprising to see America embracing a more sophisticated method of divulging crisis-related information to those in need. OnStar's new Crisis Assist capabilities will not only provide access to "specially trained crisis advisers" that can contact emergency responders and provide real-time updates to the situation(s) at hand, but subscribers that can actually drive away from the disaster will be routed to the nearest established shelter. Additionally, frantic customers can be connected to friends and family that they have listed as close to their heart on the American Red Cross Safe and Well website, and public safety officials can be notified of a request for help and track down that person's location using OnStar's embedded GPS. Interestingly, there's no word on a timeframe in which we can expect the service to officially go live, but here's to hoping a disaster doesn't strike in order for you to find out.
First Disaster: Day of Crisis screenshot
Nintendo released a single screenshot of Monolith Soft's Disaster: Day of Crisis, the natural-disaster survival game announced at E3 2006. We now have our first indication of how the game will play-- that arrow suggests a Quick Timer Event. Whether that means an action/adventure game with occasional quick-button-press segments, or a Dragon's Lair-style game, we don't know. What is surprising even to us is that we're kind of hoping for the latter. We miss those laserdisc games! Are we the only ones?
Disaster: Day of Crisis Interview
IGN recently interviewed Monolith Soft's president, Hirohide Sugiura about their Wii game Disaster: Day of Crisis. Sugiura had little to nothing to tell about the game and kept requesting IGN to wait for more information, be patient or ask Nintendo themselves. Hmm... Honestly the game sounds a bit like that movie that came out in 2004. The US is in danger of a lot of natural disasters and instead of watching people die or survive them, we play as someone trying to survive. Sounds interesting but we still don't know a lot about the game and all we are getting is:
