NASA wants you and your smartphone

NASA

Flood waters innundate Memphis, Tenn., in this NASA satellite photo acquired on May 10, 2011. NASA announced a challenge to leverage its data such as imagery and new technology such as smartphone computers to create applications that benefit humanity.

By John Roach, contributing writer at msnbc.com.

Over the decades, NASA has collected mountains of data that could, potentially, improve life for us Earthlings ? if only we could make sense of it all. And that's where you ? and the computer in your pocket ? come into play.

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The space agency recently announced the International Space Apps Challenge to "leverage data and new technology to create practical applications that benefit humanity." The challenge is open anyone on Earth (and space) and will culminate with a two-day event in 2012 that showcases the best concepts.

The idea is similar to other distributed computing efforts such as the wildly popular SETI@home project where idle computers around the world help scientists identify potential communication signals from ET.

Problems that could be tackled, the agency suggests in its announcement, include harnessing weather satellite data to study the impact of storms on the global economy, to studying depletion of ocean resources.?

Proposed concepts posted to the program website include a Solar Map, akin to Google Maps, to help people make decisions about solar power projects and using satellite imagery for city planning and population density studies.

(via Wired)

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John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com.

When Sal Khan began posting free math lectures on YouTube, he became the darling of education reform advocates. But now that his Khan Academy is expanding into real classrooms, teachers are arguing over the value of the approach.

Source: http://futureoftech.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/26/7973257-nasa-wants-you-and-your-smartphone

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