this is an interesting read!
US agency's balloon hunt tests internet accuracy
By Emilio San Pedro
BBC News
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8397649.stm>
*The US defence research agency has used 10 red balloons in a contest to
assess the accuracy with which information spreads on the internet.*
The giant moored weather balloons were launched on Saturday morning at 10
undisclosed locations across the United States.
More than 4,000 groups competed to be the first to pinpoint all 10.
A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Mit) won the
challenge and a prize of $40,000 (£24,000).
Johanna Jones, a spokeswoman for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (Darpa), said that beyond the actual contest, the aim was to see
whether social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter should be seen as
credible sources of information.
Darpa is no stranger to innovative uses of technology.
The agency - which is part of the US defence department - played a pivotal
role in the creation of the internet itself.
That original network was created at the behest of the US government as a
way to access and distribute information in the case of a catastrophic
event.
Forty years on, with the internet in full swing, the same agency was keen to
see if the power of social networking sites - with their tens of millions of
users - could be used as a credible source to alert authorities of impending
disaster or unrest on US soil.
Kind Regards,
--
"It is time,Africans moved from a knowledge based society to a wise society" Dr. Nii Quaynor