Techie Volunteers Get New Yorkers Online After Sandy

The days of techies hiding in their basements or thinking only about stock options and foosball tables are long gone in New York City. Instead, they are organizing en masse to help small businesses, schools and nonprofit organizations get up and running after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. And they are spreading beyond the Big Apple to offer assistance in Long Island, New Jersey, Upstate New York and Connecticut.

The efforts could also be the beginning of a regular commitment of technology pros to serve the New York community, as well as a model for the whole country, say organizers.

Much of the effort is coming from the New York Tech Meetup (NYTM), which has more than 28,000 members, including major tech entrepreneurs, investors and coders.

The campaign started taking volunteers the day after the storm (Tuesday, Oct. 30.) and had more than 350 by Friday morning. Most requests have been for getting organizations back online. But the meetup is also offering help with data recovery, backup power systems and temporary websites.

In addition, co-working centers, where freelancers or small companies rent office space, have volunteered to take people in. One of them, New Work City, is in the blackout zone. But the company’s co-founder, Tony Bacigalupo, secured a donated space at the Brooklyn Brainery, a continuing education school. There he has provided a space for about 15 people to do their own work and also to organize the volunteer effort.

Others can go to a Web site, called Sandy Coworking, featuring a “crowdsourced” map where people report places that provide free or paid office space, as well as power outlets and Internet access. People can also get help at a Hurricane Recovery web page or by texting a request to 646-392-7353.

Techies are envisioning ongoing programs long after the Hurricane Sandy aftermath. “We are…already starting to build the framework for NY Tech Corps that can be in place to support recovery in future disasters and emergencies, and do other ongoing volunteer work,” Jessica Lawrence, managing director of NYTM, told TechNewsDaily in an email.

That would be a continuation of efforts begun a decade ago after the 9/11 attacks. Back then, Andrew Rasiej, chairman of the NYTM and Founder of Personal Democracy Media, organized a similar effort. But he took it a step further, working with Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon on a bill creating a national technology corps called Netguard, the program made its way into the Homeland Security Act of 2002. But neither President Bush nor President Obama has made use of the program, said Rasiej.

While Internet access may seem like a minor concern next to flooding, lack of water and medical needs, Rasiej said that technology is key to fulfilling those needs. “The support mechanisms that are critical to keep those things running are technology based,” he said.

Other Ways to Help

Rasiej named other things that technology can do, such as creating a database of residents requesting help. Bacigalupo agreed. “Just making people aware of what’s going on has been a big help for folks,” he said.

In the near future, the technologists also plan to include relief projects in “hackathons,” which bring programmers together for a day or two with the challenge of building a new product, app or Web service. Several that were already scheduled, beginning next week, may now include challenges to create relief tools along the lines of that crowdsourced map of workspaces.

“In a hyper-connected world where the economy and our livelihoods are so reliant on technology, the need for emergency tech support should not be a fantasy,” said Andrew Rasiej. “It should be a fact of life.”

This article originally published at TechNewsDaily
here

Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/11/02/tech-volunteers-sandy/

Techie Volunteers Get New Yorkers Online After Sandy

hurricane sandy, New York city, tech, U.S.

New York Tech Companies Struggle to Rebound After Hurricane Sandy

“It was like a war. People were disappearing and you didn’t know where they went.”

That may sound like hyperbole to some, but for John Pavey, the CTO of The Huffington Post, Hurricane Sandy brought back memories of 9/11. Pavey, who is based in Princeton, N.J., pulled an all-nighter during the storm on Monday night as the AOL news site suffered an unprecedented outage. By Tuesday morning, HuffPo was back up and running even though the ISP responsible — DataGram — wasn’t functioning.

On Thursday, DataGram was awaiting the delivery of a generator and had just a “small amount of water” in its basement. A flood in the basement — which houses its fuel tanks and sump pumps — prompted a voluntary shut down on Monday. Like other tech firms, DataGram blogged about its tech woes during and after the storm.

DataGrams’ outage also crashed BuzzFeed and Gawker’s network of sites. Like HuffPo, BuzzFeed‘s IT department was up all night scrambling to get the site back online. As detailed in a post on the site, BuzzFeed essentially rebuilt its site using Amazon Cloud Services.

“It was really amazing work,” BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith tells Mashable. “Basically our developers rebuilt the whole site overnight on the cloud. One of them had a tree hit his house and kept working through it.” Reps from Gawker, which has been using a Tumblr and then a back-up site this week, could not be reached for comment.

While those news sites are probably the most high-profile tech victims of the superstorm, across the New York region, other tech-based businesses large and small were scrambling to get their businesses up and running.

At this point, there’s no word on what kind of long-term impact the storm will have on New York’s startup scene. Some firms estimate that the damage from Hurricane Sandy could have total cost of around $50 billion. Stephanie Balaouras, an analyst at Forrester Research, said the only parallel that came to mind was the Japanese tsunami in 2011, which cut about one-third of the nation’s Internet access at one point. “This is pretty huge,” she said.

As analysts and insurers tally the damage, many tech startups were working around the clock and using their blogs and Twitter feeds to vent, inform and often celebrate the fact that they made it through relatively unscathed.

“Our data center will run out of fuel for the backup generators at 10:45 AM ET,” Derrick Miller, a member of the tech staff at Fog Creek Data, blogged during the height of the storm. “If the outage will be long, we have plans to move servers elsewhere in New York City, but that could be a long process.”

Fog Creek’s extraordinary blog detailed in almost real time, the company’s efforts to keep things going with diesel-based backup generators. “This is what is powering our Internets now,” read one entry showing a pic of a couple of barrels of diesel fuel.

Meanwhile, Shapeways, a 3D printing firm which had just opened a new printing facility in Long Island City in Queens prior to the storm, blogged about its efforts to secure and deploy a generator. “The temporary rollup generator has been secured and is currently en-route to the site,” read an entry from “Team Shapeways.” “Once the generator arrives, there is still electrical work and testing before finally powering up.”

Startup Branch (pictured above) had a more upbeat message:

After several days of group texts sent over spotty 3G signals, our team has finally regrouped in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. For now, we’ll be bringing you Branch from two makeshift “offices:” Branch North (top) on New York’s Upper West Side with Josh, Hursh, Libby, Geoff and Julius and Branch East (bottom) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with Cemre, Andrew and Ian.

Another high-profile New York startup, Fab.com, also skimped on the technical blow-by-blow in favor of a more emotional message from CEO Jason Goldberg:

About 1/3 of Fab’s employees are currently without power. The other 2/3’ds of us with power are welcoming those without power into our homes. There’s this beautiful, heart-warming email thread amongst Fab employees called, ‘Team Together’ where team members with power are offering up their homes. It’s special. We’re a Fab Family.

As I write this 12 Fab team members are huddled around my kitchen table working on out recovery plans and our holiday shops. Hotel Betashop (my couch!) is open tonight too!

Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/11/01/ny-tech-rebound-hurricane/

New York Tech Companies Struggle to Rebound After Hurricane Sandy

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Scientists Think Bubbles May Hold the Key to Understanding Storms

Bubbles might be fairly innocuous, but they may also hold a clue to understanding a more sinister natural phenomena — storms.

French physicists at the University of Bordeaux are studying the behavior of the soapy substance to more accurately predict the intensity of large storms on the scale of Hurricane Sandy.

The flow of liquid on the bubbles’ membranes resembles the movements of weather systems that travel over the Earth, according to a report in the Daily Mail. By rotating the bubbles and varying their temperatures, the French research team has the ability to mimic storm-like system patterns. The process is filmed with a camera that shoots up to 500 frames per second, creating colorful renderings of the research results, according to a New Scientist report.

Of course, the behavior of soap bubbles in a controlled environment is far less complex than that of major storm systems but, based on the research team’s results, it appears to be a good place to start. The research could eventually be used to develop new ways of tracking the formation, path and wind intensity of some of the most massive storms.

In fact, the team has already discovered significant similarities between bubbles and real-world storms. For example, the vortices in bubbles and in many storms reach their peak intensities in the middle of their lifespans.

Ultimately, the research team believes the study has the potential to save lives in the face of destructive weather patterns. According to a CNN report, at least 165 people died as a result of Hurricane Sandy and the massive storm caused approximately $50 million in damage.

Read more: http://mashable.com/2014/02/02/bubbles-understanding-storms/

Scientists Think Bubbles May Hold the Key to Understanding Storms

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http://twitter.com/#!/SpeakWithAuthor/status/264544632417947648

Tonight, the Erie County, Pa., Republican Party is reporting the results of a new statewide poll:

Susquehanna Polling and Research results for Pennsylvania released today shows Mitt Romney leading President Obama 49% to 45% among 1376 likely voters. Two percent are undecided and 3% are for other candidates.

Update/Correction, November 3, 8:18 am ET:

Jeryl Bier forwarded us the following email from Jim Lee of Susquehanna:

This poll is three weeks old, Jeryl.  Not sure why this poll is still being circulated as “new”. Tomorrow the Pittsburgh tribune review will release a new poll they commmissioned us to do “post hurricane sandy”. It shows a tighter race. Jim

 

Read more: http://twitchy.com/2012/11/02/new-poll-shows-romney-up-by-4-in-pennsylvania/

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