Browser and Management App for Google’s Person Finder

Heiko J Schick

4/13/2011 1

Preliminary Statements

• All conclusions and observations are my personal view and are based on my own interpretation.

• The proposal is made for an major disaster (e.g. Japan earthquake).

4/13/2011 2

INTRODUCTION Section 1

4/13/2011 3

End-User Behavior (1)

Source: Google URL Shortener Statistic for Japan Person Finder

Source: Bit.ly URL Shortener Statistic for Japan Person Finder

Source: Bit.ly URL Shortener Statistic for Christchurch Person Finder

4/13/2011 4

End-User Behavior (2)

Source: Google Trends

4/13/2011 5

Sequence of Response to Earthquake

Source: Behavior During Earthquakes: A Southern Italian Example, http://www.ijmed.org/viewpdf.php?pdf=mar1990

4/13/2011 6

Observations (1)

• A “people finder” tool has the highest usage during the first week after the disaster happened. – Quick response is a must!

– Scalable infrastructure since many requests as to be handled.

– After the first week the usage is going dramatically down.

4/13/2011 7

4/13/2011 8

Usage of social media during an emergency

4/13/2011 9

How help will be requested

4/13/2011 10

Which information is useful?

4/13/2011 11

Pros and Cons with social media

4/13/2011 12

Observations (2)

• People would use social networks to communicate that they are save.

• People would request help via a text message or a social networks (for a known person).

• People would use social networks to get information. – Location of food and water – Evacuation routes or shelter locations – Road closures or location of medical services

• Remember the benefits, threads and challenges of social networks!

4/13/2011 13

GOOGLE’S PERSON FINDER Section 2

4/13/2011 14

Google’s Person Finder (1)

• Japan's Person Finder has nearly 607,400 records.

• Person Finder was created and launched 72 hours after the Haiti earthquake, within one day of the February 2010 Chile earthquake, within three hours of the February 2011 New Zealand earthquake and within one hour after the Japan earthquake.

Source: Google Person Finder , April 4

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/17/technology/google_person_finder_japan/index.htm?hpt=T2

4/13/2011 15

Google’s Person Finder (2)

• The Japanese people finder is available in 8 languages: Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese.

• The application consist out of 45 Python, 25 HTML, 5 CSS, and 25 Language files. So in theory it can be available in more as 8 languages!

• Programed in Python with Google's App Engine's API. – Dynamic web serving, with full support for common web technologies

– Persistent storage with queries, sorting and transactions

– Automatic scaling and load balancing

– APIs for authenticating users and sending email using Google Accounts

– Task queues for performing work outside of the scope of a web request

– Scheduled tasks for triggering events at specified times and regular intervals

• The GUI has a very simple and functional UI flow.

• All data and information is handled in the People Finder Interchange Format (PFIF), so that it can easily shared with other sides.

4/13/2011 16

Google’s Person Finder Front Page

4/13/2011 17

Google’s Person Finder I’m looking for someone

4/13/2011 18

Google’s Person Finder Detailed Information

4/13/2011 19

BROWSER AND MANAGEMENT APP Section 3

4/13/2011 20

Proposal

• Have a browser or management web application for the Google Person Finder database, which can be used by friends, relatives, companies, aid agency or shelters to administrate and manage several person entries of the Google Person Finder database.

• The browser or management web application is outside of any social network, but uses third party social network APIs (e.g. Facebook Graph API, Twitter OAuth API) and the Google Person Finder database.

• You can create lists, add persons to the list and share a list or a person via social networks (Twitter, Facebook) with comments (e.g. missing, alive, etc.).

• You can get easy access to Google Person Finder database entries without the need to search for persons or access the detail page of persons individually.

• Get a fast status overview of one person or all person within a list (e.g. 3 of 10 are missing).

• Display detailed data of a person (including maps, social network posts, etc.).

4/13/2011 21

Further Ideas

• Add a “seen” button, which is similar the Facebook “like” button. Increased click rate indicates that the person is alive. Also, you can see which people pressed the “seen” button, so that you can request more information.

• Use the information which a person is sharing within its status network as indication that the person is alive. For example: If someone posted a status update, the coresponding Google Person Finder database entry can reflect this as “it is likely that person is alive”.

• Use the last known geo tag location (e.g. address) of a person to display additional useful information on a map. This information can be use by friends, co-workers, etc. For example: – If the status is “missing” display emergency routes, hospital and shelter location that are close to the geo

tag location. This gives people an idea where they can search for the missing person.

– If the status is “alive” display food and water locations to give better advices.

• If the status of a person changes (e.g. from missing to alive) sent an e-mail, SMS, Facebook message or Twitter message. This enables easy usage of push notification services for mobile devices like smarphones.

4/13/2011 22

Lists People Information

1

2

1

2

3

Header •List item 1

•List Item 2

Nulla dui purus, eleifend vel, consequat

non, dictum porta, nulla. Duis ante mi,

laoreet ut, commodo eleifend, cursus nec,

lorem. Aenean eu est. Etiam imperdiet

turpis.

Nulla dui purus, eleifend vel, consequat

non, dictum porta, nulla. Duis ante mi,

!

4/13/2011 23

Examples (1)

Source: TweetDeck

1

1,2,6

3

4

5

4/13/2011 24

Examples (2)

Source: Seesmic Web

1

2

3

4

5

6

4,5

4/13/2011 25

Legend

1. Social Network Activities (Sharing, Tagging, Marking, etc.)

2. Search

3. Short Information about a List or a Person

4. Detail Information about a Person

5. Status Updates

6. List Management

4/13/2011 26

More Examples Display more Information and Search

4/13/2011 27

More Examples Sharing on Social Networks

4/13/2011 28

More Examples Login and Authentication

4/13/2011 29

End

4/13/2011 30