Last week during the Tropical Storm Ondoy, we relied on technology a lot. As we all know, some of the cellular phones services we’re not available, even landlines, and even electricity. For some few lucky people (including me) our electricity we’re not cut and my internet is still available.
We all know that, Twitter, Facebook, Plurk and other internet services saves a lot of people. How? Since these services can have a facility to share anything you want to say to the public, therefore the people shared what they see.
Based from different sources, (news, personal witnesses, etc.) we see item such as:
- Missing Persons
- Weather Updates
- People that needed help
- Traffic Updates
- Needed item, volunteers or any other things for help
- News Update
Since these are like SMS (140 characters per twit) that you send to the whole world. We expect that all the information are clogged up and unorganized. Some groups stepped up and created a site for a consolidated information (http://sites.google.com/site/ondoymanila/)
OK, just got advice from a friend, we need to FOCUS. Let’s not make the RT’s remain as echoes… Pls read this http://tinyurl.com/y8pv24p
8:37 PM Sep 29th from web by @JiggyCruz
They maximized the power of Web 2.0 they used the following:
- Google Maps – by plotting the geographical information for those who needs help and the relief centers
- Google Spreadsheets – by providing different information on where to donate, missing persons, emergency numbers, and many more.
In the end, we are not medical professionals, nor rescue or military experts. We cannot say that we did this smooth and perfectly. However we, the Filipino Netizens, did the right thing by sharing the information we got. And we witnessed that these information saves a lot of families. I want to express my gratitude to the silent majority of the Filipino Internet Users for sharing the information they got in order to save lives, and for doing a good job!
For closing, I want to share this picture from twitter and it said:
To all the people in the world I just want to say: 我最喜歡我出生和長大在菲律賓 (I am very happy that I was born and grew up in the Philippines)
Mga Kuwentong Barbero 