Ushahindi Revises SwiftRiver Platform
March 6, 2013
Ushahidi shares information on the latest version of its open-source intelligence platform in, “SwiftRiver Throws a Lifeline to People Drowning in Information.” The group is mixing its metaphors—rivers do not throw lifelines, people do. No matter; we’ll cut them some slack since we appreciate their dedication to open source.
SwiftRiver does what many, many programs do—wrestle huge amounts of data from disparate sources into something manageable and, ideally, useful. One difference from other options—this platform sorts for authority and accuracy, not simple popularity. The developers have devised some terminology that is kind of cute, but also memorable and intuitive. The write-up tells us:
“Simply, the ‘river’ is made up by billions of bits of information. In the context of SwiftRiver, we call these things ‘droplets.’ For example, common droplets in the river are tweets, Facebook updates, and blog posts. These are common examples, but by definition, things like text messages, emails, and even rows in a database table are considered droplets, too. . . .
“Once SwiftRiver analyzes all the droplets, you then have the ability to filter them down from that torrential river to a manageable stream. In addition to filtering, you can run different analyses on them, helping you get the ‘big picture’ of your set of droplets.”
The team rebuilt much of SwiftRiver so it would play nicely with the Ushahidi core platform and its Crowdmap, but it also works as a standalone application.
The non-profit Ushahidi, whose name means “testimony” in Swahili, has unusual roots. It began as a Web site which mapped episodes of violence and peace efforts, as reported by witnesses online or with mobile phones, across Kenya in 2008. The platform designed to managed these reports grew into SwiftRiver. The organization has since dedicated itself to developing open source-software that democratizes information collection, visualization, and interactive mapping. Their volunteer developers reside primarily in Africa, but Europe, South America, and the U.S. are also represented.
Cynthia Murrell, March 06, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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