Newsroom
News Archive: All | 2011 | 2010 | 2009
June 9, 2012
With telephone lines jammed, many Mumbaikars turned to a familiar alternative: they posted their whereabouts, and sought those of their close ones, on social networks.
Read full article »
April 12, 2011
In Japan, Meier says, colleagues familiar with the Ushahidi approach launched their own crisis map "within a couple of hours." It may be the largest crisis map ever created, containing more than 8,000 reports from social media detailing such items as shelters, food stores, open gas stations, road closures, building damage assessments and cellphone charging centers, he says. "They had it all down, and organized. They knew how to use the software and the links. That was not the case in Haiti."
Read full article »
April 7, 2011
One of Ushahidi's founders, Ory Okolloh, a lawyer, explained in an interview last year that Ushahidi started out as "an ad hoc group of technologists and bloggers hammering out software in a couple of days, trying to figure out a way to gather more and better information about the post-election violence".
Read full article »
June 9, 2012
But now a contrary trend is forming: a number of groups working to bring back some of the authority and trust that has been lost. A prominent attempt is SwiftRiver, which is affiliated with Ushahidi, an Internet platform of Kenyan origin that allows users to crowd-source real-time testimony during crises and then mounts the bits of testimony on a Google map.
Read full article »
Open-sourced, Crowd-sourced Ushahidi Platform Following Snowmageddon May 31, 2011
Snowmageddon is a website set up to help people dig out of the blizzard in New York. It was originally set up last year in Washington; it is an attempt to crowdsource information, where people can use their computers and cell phones to notify others of problems and solutions. It doesn't seem to getting a lot of hits, but there is a fascinating story behind it.
Read full article »
May 14, 2011
A bunch of Twitter users have come together to gather information about power cuts in India and make an infographic that will map the geographical spread of power cuts across the country.
Read full article »
May 4, 2011
What’s the No. 1 thing to be excited about Ushahidi? Right now, we’re currently ramping up production on the SwiftRiver Project. It’s a way to process and manage data that hasn’t been done in open way before. We’re taking large data sets and trying to figure out what’s important. When there’s a disaster, there are now millions of people Tweeting about it. We’re trying to find the messages that are important and relevant. It’s our next big thing. We’ve automated some of these processes to better manage flow of data.
Read full article »
May 3, 2011
Chairperson Hilde Schwab said, “Ushahidi is one of the few social enterprises that has, in just a few short years of existence, dramatically changed the face of how individuals and communities can influence democracy and economic development around the world.” She added that “Ushahidi is a social enterprise that was born out of the frustrations of what was not working in the world and it was started by a team of young, driven and passionate African professionals. It serves as a superior example of how social entrepreneurship can and will change the world."
Read full article »
Internet Activists Mobilize for Japan March 14, 2011
Just a few hours after Japan was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami early on Friday morning, people mobilized online to help. Within two hours of the Japanese earthquake, a version of Ushahidi, Web software that helps people share information during a crisis, had been created by Japanese volunteers working with the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Read full article »
March 2, 2011
An Interview with Patrick Meier: Changing the world, one map at a time.
Read full article »
The World's Top 10 Gov 2.0 Initiatives January 19, 2011
The site has grown to become an important resource for citizen journalists in times of crisis like the Haiti earthquake. The Ushahidi platform provides tools for communities to crowdsource real-time information using SMS, email, Twitter and the web.
Read full article »
How Mapping, SMS Platforms Saved Lives in Haiti Earthquake January 11, 2011
Tomorrow marks the anniversary of the devastating earthquake that shook Haiti last January, killing more than 230,000 people and leaving several million inhabitants of the small island nation homeless. Though natural disasters are common, the humanitarian response this time was different: New media and communications technologies were used in unprecedented ways to aid the recovery effort.
Read full article »
Clever services on cheap mobile phones make a powerful combination—especially in poor countries January 11, 2011
A third, perhaps even more promising category is “crowdvoicing”. Ushahidi, founded by a group of activists in Kenya, is among its pioneers. After the country’s disputed elections in 2008, Ushahidi (which means “testimony” in Swahili) mapped reports about violence, most of them text messages, on a website. Now the organisation offers software and even a web-based service to monitor anything from elections to natural disasters. Similarly, text-messaging software called FrontlineSMS collects and broadcasts information.
Read full article »
Gathering resources online after the tsunami January 11, 2011
That site also has updates from people using a platform called Ushahidi. It's open source software aimed at engendering crowdsourced information collection, visualization, and mapping. We reached Shu Higashi at his home near Tokyo. He's had an Ushahidi based site up and running for a while now but once the quake hit, the site kicked into high gear and has become a nerve center for people sharing information and resources. Higashi isn't with a government office or big media organization. He's just a guy on the internet.
Read full article »
December 28, 2010
Snowmageddon is a website set up to help people dig out of the blizzard in New York. It was originally set up last year in Washington; it is an attempt to crowdsource information, where people can use their computers and cell phones to notify others of problems and solutions. It doesn't seem to getting a lot of hits, but there is a fascinating story behind it.
Read full article »
Ideas of the Year - #6: Digging Out DC (With Help From Kenya) December 5, 2010
Ushahidi (Swahili for “testimony”) proved to be the Zelig of 2010 disasters. A social-media application built in Kenya to let citizens alert each other to election unrest, Ushahidi also played a crucial role in mapping the oil spill and the Haiti quake.
Read full article »
Tufts map steered action amid chaos December 5, 2010
Meier enlisted hundreds of tech-savvy colleagues at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy to translate data moving via text messages and social media networks into an online resource, showing real-time updates on where help was most urgently needed or available.
Read full article »
The internet's cyber radicals: heroes of the web changing the world December 5, 2010
Kenyan-born Ory Okolloh helped create the website Ushahidi in the aftermath of her country's disputed presidential election in 2007; it collected eyewitness reports of violence sent in by email and text-message and placed them on a Google map, and the open-source software has since been released freely and used elsewhere for similar projects.
Read full article »
Mobile technology takes centre stage in disaster relief June 18, 2010
Some 80,000 messages came in in the first six weeks, all needing to be logged and geo-tagged. Using a crisis mapping team at the Fletcher School in Boston, they were able to map latitudes and longitudes for search and rescue requests.
Read full article »
Ushahidi Empowers Global Citizen Journalists November 11, 2009
Now, Ushahidi is moving to fine-tune its service, setting up mechanisms to help verify the accuracy of field reports.
Read full article »
Can new technology prevent conflicts? November 11, 2009
As it happened, most people who were caught up in Kenya's election violence relied on their own observations, family networks and radio reports to determine which areas were safe and when it was time to leave. But even after the fact, Ushahidi provided valuable information about the patterns of the violence.
Read full article »
Modern networker: using ICT to change Kenyan life for the better November 11, 2009
"ICT can transform lives for the better," Okolloh says. "With Ushahidi, we are building a remarkable open source software with a team that is primarily African through an organisation that is primarily virtual. ICT makes this possible." - Ory Okolloh
Read full article »
Kenyan gives platform for airing post-poll atrocities November 11, 2009
The Ushahidi experiment was extraordinarily successful. Successful in the sense that, for the first time, civil violence was being tracked and monitored and the information shared in real time and in its raw form.
Read full article »
Mapping a better world November 11, 2009
"We're building a platform that makes it easier to gather information around a crisis so that governments, or whoever is trying to hide the crisis, can't do it anymore," says Erik Hersman, Ushahidi's operations director.
Read full article »
Opinion: Crowdsourcing crisis information November 11, 2009
Jen Ziemke, the co-founder of the International Network of Crisis Mappers (CM*Net), describes Ushahidi as "one of the best examples of next-generation crisis platforms."
Read full article »
In mobile phone journalism, Africa is ahead of the west November 11, 2009
Today, Ushahidi can provide a model for crowd-sourcing projects elsewhere as the issue of how to process and verify massive amounts of information isn't just an African problem.
Read full article »
Omidyar Network grants $1.4M to Ushahidi November 11, 2009
Developers plan to adapt the system for use by NGOs and others around the world to use in trouble spots. Its software is now being tested in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other places.
Read full article »
Mapping the Afghan elections November 11, 2009
A project combining two technologies developed for use elsewhere in the developing world, Frontline SMS and Ushahidi, is enabling people in remote areas of the country to send in reports of incidents or vote-tampering so that they can be plotted on an online map.
Read full article »
Web tool maps Congo conflict November 11, 2009
Ushahidi is now being used in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to report on the war that has torn the country apart for the last 15 years.
Read full article »
Crisis mapping brings X-ray style clarity to humanitarian response October 12, 2009
Map-sharing portals such as Google Earth and open-source platforms, like Ushahidi, created to help collect witness reports of violence after the disputed 2008 elections in Kenya, have been at the forefront of innovative efforts to visualise conflicts.
Read full article »
Karen Turner: Harnessing the Power of Mobile Devices May 11, 2009
"We took the feedback sent to us by people on the site, and via e-mail and phone calls, to fine tune it. This is the type of process we enjoy, because it forces us to do our best work," - Erik Hersman
Read full article »
Innovation: The cellphone economy January 30, 2009
Ushahidi lets people flag up "crisis" information, such as outbreaks of violence to be avoided.
Read full article »
All content ©2008-2013 Ushahidi