Posts Tagged ‘freealert’

What is information trapping?

Posted: 10 April 2008 in Uncategorized
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Most people have at least a passing familiarity with information trapping, if not the term itself. That is, most people who are early adopters of new technology, technogeeks, etc. In a nutshell, it is the practice of collecting information from the web as it happens. Subscribing to rss feeds, setting up Google alerts, and using FreeAlert to find free stuff on craigslist are all examples of information trapping. If entering a query in a search engine is fishing for information, using one of these (and many other services) is setting a trap for information.

I think this is an area that is going to be taking off in the next few years for people in various industries that are expected to keep up with the latest trends.

Laptops for Tanzania

Posted: 17 September 2007 in Uncategorized
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My friend Israel is trying to raise $2000 to buy laptops for young people in Tanzania. Tanzania is a country of over 35 million people, but only 15,000 graduated high school in 2004. Of course giving money would help him out, but another way to help him would be by voting for this cause on Facebook via the Razoo Speedgranting Campaign. This gives you a free way of helping them raise money and it only takes a minute of your time.

FreeAlert Laptops for Tanzania Campaign

Vote for this cause on Facebook

FreeAlert.org

Posted: 28 August 2007 in Uncategorized
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Last year I worked on a project with my friend Israel Kloss called FreeAlert. The site is not-for-profit and was originally intended to help refugees entering the Washington, DC area find things they need for free. It now covers major metropolitan areas all across the United States and is intended to benefit everyone.

The idea is simple. Enter some keywords and get matching free items off of craigslist for your city sent to your cell phone. You can enter up to 5 sets of keywords and each set has exclusion terms. This makes it so that you can receive notices with the term computer but without the term desk. Israel just took the site out of private beta last week and it is currently in public beta mode.

It was an interesting project for me because it gave me the chance to work in python on some http and smtp protocol code. It also gave me the chance to work on processing xml and rss feeds. Definitely some cool stuff there and it has resulted in a spin-off that will probably be functioning fairly soon. Israel is one of those people with a lot of great ideas and he has the personality to inspire you with them. Plus he is also one of those rare people that actually care enough about the suffering of others to actually try to do something about it, which you just have to admire.

So, please, check it out and let us know how we can make it better.