[opendtv] Re: Rochester Responders Tuning in Datacasts

  • From: "Kon Wilms" <kon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 13:30:03 -0500

> Triveni wanted to sell Skyscraper data carousel equipment, and expected 
> someone else to design the data infrastructure, the back channels,
even the 
> field laptop equipment.  First responders were only interested in a 
> completed off-the-shelf end-to-end system.

Seems this little datacasting to first responder beatie rears its head
every now and again.

I find this amusing, since 5 years ago I designed a system called
AlertStorm that was completely end to end with a complete client
interface (alert overlays on maps as they came in, integrated streaming,
rss feeds over datacasting, ..) and standards based. It was demo'd for
everyone and their mother - first responders, capitol hill meetings,
DHS, you name it. All claimed they didn't have any money (you know the
'we're getting funded next week.. no next month.. no next year.. can we
keep the demo?').

The competition were and still are file delivery systems throwing text
files into folders on the remote desktop. Talk about amateur hour.

And the ultimate hilarity - the guy that wrote the article that Bert
posted was there in person to witness many of these demos. Selective memory.

We still have the first and only STB
(http://www.logici.com/content/prod/lines/emer/) that receives emergency
alerts that are based on *standards* so you don't have to spend a year
writing a server-side alert generator for messages to send to your
responders - not some flat text files that can't be dolled out to other
systems without writing code to parse them. It still sits on the shelf
gathering dust, even though it actively sat at the FEMA HQ for demo for
a considerable amount of time.

At the rate we are going, the next time we have a 9/11 people will be
blaming the EAS system once again for not functioning and someone who
should have made a decision will be pulling their head out of their ass,
FEMA-Brownie-style.

Cheers
Kon

 
 
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