Amanda Echevarria's List: Technology And Hurricane Sandy

• There are more than 20,000 Airbnb listings available in affected areas. Airbnb is waiving all fees for these spaces. They are encouraging their entire community to help anyone who has been left stranded or in need because of the Hurricane.
• New York’s technology community has taken a hit from Sandy with flooded offices, lost power, downed data centers and a subway network that is struggling to come to life. But local co-working spaces and companies are stepping up to find room for Sandy’s refugees, providing internet and office space for workers in need.

• If you need as much information about Hurricane Sandy as you could possibly get in a single glance, a tool created by Google's Crisis Response Center may be your best bet. Reliable and well-vetted, it tracks the storm's progress and keeps you apprised of emergency resources and more.
• Google's Crisis Map combines information from the National Hurricane Center, American Red Cross and other trusted sources.
• It offers details about the storm's current and forecasted locations, emergency shelter locations, live webcam feeds, public safety alerts, traffic conditions and a wealth of other vital information. 

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• The best performer throughout both storms was Verizon Wireless.
• Keeping cell phones charged was a challenge, but people were figuring out all sorts of ways to do that.
• This brings me to my second winner, the family car.
• has a built-in 110-V receptacle
• 3G USB dongle
• Another big winner for me was the LED, the light source for both a lantern and a three-way flashlight
• powered by four D batteries,
• I didn’t think much of this L.L. Bean 10-Day Camp Lantern when we first got it, but I pulled it out immediately after the lights went out.
• Yet another winner for me was natural gas.
• But although the electric ignition on the stove wasn’t working, we were able to use matches to get the burners started.
• Cooking food wasn’t a problem,
• The shortage of gasoline that occurred in the storm’s aftermath made it very difficult to keep generators powered.
• The Long Island Power Authority was the big loser,
• instead of smart phones or tablets to input data or receive maps, crews relied on paper maps and pencils.
• The other loser in the superstorm is Cablevision, my triple-play provider on Long Island.
• Cablevision is apparently okay with hanging its customers out to dry with regards to phone and Internet service as soon as power goes down.
• The lesson here is to make sure you have a cell phone for communications and a way to charge it.

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• This week, in Hurricane Sandy’s wake, those of us with Internet access across the country took to social networks to talk about the storm. And talk we did: Facebook and Twitter mentions of “Hurricane Sandy” skyrocketed, and Instagram saw 10 photos uploaded per second during the height of the storm on Monday.
• But there was one person in particular who managed to steal the #Sandy social spotlight this week, whom the world has come to know as @ComfortablySmug. The hedge fund analyst, whose real name is Shashank Tripathi, decided to use the viral news peg to spread misinformation about the storm, including posts that said the New York Stock Exchange floor was under three feet of water and that Con Edison was shutting all power off in Manhattan.
• Now Tripathi has a decent amount of followers – approximately 6,000 – and the media picked up on some of the false information he was spreading, adding confusion to the mass amount of chaos already consuming the East Coast news cycle.
• • A quote by someone who felt as though your freedom of speech should be used to only assist and reassure the well being of any person. Not to cause chaos and misinform others. 
• “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”
• A steep stairway was the only route of evacuation, and people were trampled and killed in the chaotic attempt to flee the building.
• So why the history lesson? Because it’s become all-too relevant in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and @ComfortablySmug’s false allegations.
• The simple act of tweeting out unsubstantiated information resulted in the likes of established, respected news sources like CNN and The Weather Channel picking up and further spreading the news — and thus, further spreading the panic.

• A bevy of inaccurate images spread like wildfire thanks to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, including this now-immortalized photo:

   

  
• It certainly isn’t the first time a hoax has taken over Twitter; just last week a rumor that Justin Bieber had cancer and was shaving his signature locks took over the network and a handful of distraught fans shaved their own heads to support the singer (which, itself, is a disputed fact: Redditors claiming to have started the prank say the photos were supplied by friends in on the joke who lent their bald heads and Twitter accounts to the cause to lend it more legitimacy).
• In all of this, fingers are being pointed at Twitter. There’s plenty of discussion about whether or not a person or the network should be held accountable for spreading false information that leads to panic (which, it should be noted, is an incredibly difficult, likely impossible thing to quantify).

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