harmonyst.org

“SMS to Twitter to Yahoo Pipes to Google Map”

This map will display New Orleans street addresses sent via SMS messages on a Google Map, automated and in real time.  The system uses Yahoo Pipes to monitor Twitter hash tags for certain users, parse the address (number and street is all that is necessary) sent by the user and render the on a map.

1. The user sends an SMS like this: “#dumping 4200 Dauphine” to their twitter account.
2. A yahoo pipe monitors the user’s twitter feed and imports tweets tagged with “#dumping”.
3. The Yahoo pipe then updates the city/state/zip and geocodes the tweet feed.
4. The geocoded feed is then picked for display, for instance, on this Google Map below.
5. Yahoo pipes is also capable of notifying users any time a new item is appears in the twitter feed, thus establishing a real time feedback loop .

Applications: neighborhood resident reporting of illegal dumping, potholes, streetlight outages, crime etc.  Users just need a simple cell phone and a free twitter account.  Their usernames can the be added to the pipe/map and anything tagged, for instance, with the “#dumping” tag would display on the Illegal Dumping Map.  Could also do #crime and #street tags.

Illegal Dumping in New Orleans
View Larger Map