Wired News

09/02/05

Of all of the websites tracking the Katrina disaster, surely one of the most remarkable is Scipionus.com. Visitors swoop down over a map of the Gulf Coast that's awash in hundreds of red teardrops, each denoting information about specific geographical points in the area. That's pretty amazing in itself, but there's more: All of the information on the map has been provided by ordinary citizens, most of whom presumably have come to the site in search of information on the flood themselves. ... The site is the brainchild of Jonathan Mendez, a 24-year-old computer programmer living in Austin, Texas. Mendez says he grew frustrated combing message boards trying to find out if his family home -- the one his parents and brother had just fled from -- had been destroyed. Mendez turned to his co-worker, Greg Stoll, a 23-year-old software engineer who had experimented with Google Maps' API, and asked him to code a way for people to report and find damage assessments on a Google Map...

http://www.wired.com/news/hurricane/0,2904,68743,00.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp