superstorm

Pay for sexy Instagram pics, help Sandy victims

Photographer Clayton Cubitt is using some of his recent, slightly naughtier work to entice donations for Hurricane Sandy victims, but with a unique Instagram- and Twitter-based twist.

For every $200 donated to Occupy Sandy Recovery, the photographer based in New York and New Orleans releases one of his sexy #babesofsandy photos on Instagram.

So far we've only seen two storm babe shots, including one that's complete with the requisite DOLCat (drooling on laptop) and another that would would win the approval of Sir Mix-A-Lot. With a little more attention to the cause, hopefully Cubitt will need to fill a few memory cards with some more sexiness soon.… Read more

Superstorm Sandy 'hurricane hackers' gather to help

A new kind of digital activist has emerged from the devastation of Superstorm Sandy this week -- the hurricane hacker.

This weekend, an in-person "Sandy CrisisCamp" will take place in Boston, cities on the West Coast, and even New Zealand. The events are basically set up as cross between a hack-a-thon and a workshop where geeks come together to design and code projects that can help local communities prepare for and cope with crisis.

Among some of the projects CrisisCampers will be working on are crowdsourcing tools to categorize images for building damage, allowing FEMA to prioritize its efforts, and a simple Google doc that attempts to keep track of all the sources of Sandy recovery data in a single place.… Read more

Newark mayor takes to Twitter to help amid Sandy

Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J., took to the streets and the tweets over the last couple of days to help the city make it through Superstorm Sandy.

Booker spent much of yesterday and last night driving around in an SUV loaded with diapers, water, and other supplies for citizens in distress, personally enforcing curfew on some roaming teenagers, and coordinating crews to move the homeless to shelter. Along the way, Booker was communicating with citizens via tweets and direct messages:

When one man tweeted at Booker that a tree had fallen on his aunt's house, the mayor apparently sped to the scene:… Read more

Featured Freeware: SuperStorm

Despite a cluttered interface, SuperStorm proved simple to use, letting you quickly and securely store data files in a password-protected form embedded within media files.

It may look confusing to some at first. Its interface is cluttered with buttons, a number of fields, and some amateurish graphics. The appearance is a bit deceptive, because what looks somewhat childishly designed actually works pretty well and is easy to use. Selecting a data file and a media file in which to embed it was a simple matter of dragging an item into the built-in file browser to the selected graphic. Clicking Execute … Read more