About MyStats
Q: What is this thing anyway?A: This site is intended to be a way for friends, loved ones, and coworkers to find out about each other in the event of a disaster like an earthquake, hurricane, terrorist attack, etc. Often times during such a disaster the normal infrastructure for contacting each other (like phones) is unavailable. People are often displaced, sometimes for weeks on end, without being able to get information about people they care about. Often times after such a disaster you might see on TV a picture of a crude-but-effective bulletin board set up by the Red Cross in a shelter or aid station. On it, people post pictures and notes trying to find each other, or find out about each other's health. This kind of bulletin board was the inspiration for this site. Since the Internet (more precisely ARPANET) was originally conceived as a way for the US government to communicate with itself in spite of major disruption, it also lends itself to ordinary people communicating in a disaster. There are many ways to integrate with a web site--browsers, email, text messages, fax, phone, etc. The first release of this site will only work with browsers, but the long-term intention is to give people as many ways as possible to report their status in a place where everyone who cares about them can get to it. Q: Why is this site so crude looking?
A: I want this site to be as accessible as possible, which includes getting to it from cell phones, ancient and underpowered computers in a shelter, etc. To facilitate that, I'm keeping the pages simple and small. That, and, the version you are looking at right now is an early version developed by one guy on a bus commuting back and forth to work. Q: What's next on the road map?
A: Mainly I want to build out three areas of functionality:
- Increase the number of ways to communicate with this site (email, sms, fax, etc)
- Increase the number of ways I detect disasters. For example, integrate with the USGS website to detect large earthquakes
- Make the mechanism for adding new users and people a little more robust
A:Me, Tim Cull, initially for my own family, but then for a wider audience after I thought it would be a nifty idea. Please send me feedback at feedback@thedwick.com. I wrote this both for my own family and for an excuse to learn about Ruby on Rails. You can read all about my experience on my blog. Q: How can I help?
A:I haven't put much serious thought into how people can help, though I'm happy to get it. If you are serious about wanting to help with time, money, or bandwidth, then please contact me at feedback@thedwick.com