You and I in a little toy shop,
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got.
Set them free at the break of dawn
‘Til one by one, they were gone…
Actually, it’s 99 minus 89, but references to the 1980’s hit by Nena are inevitable. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has come up with a creative challenge “that will explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.”
According to the challenge website ten red, eight-foot weather balloons will be tethered to locations around the United States. The first person (or team) to provide the latitude and longitude of all balloons will win a $40,000 prize.
CNN.com quotes Johanna Jones, a spokeswoman for DARPA, and provides a few more details…
At 10 a.m. ET, the 8-foot-wide red weather balloons will be released on property accessible to the public.
“They’re not going to be out in the middle of nowhere,” Jones said. “They’re going to be near places where there is traffic.”
She said the balloons will be tethered and will remain aloft for at least six hours. Each will be accompanied by a DARPA representative.
The first person to report the latitude and longitude coordinates of all 10 balloons will win the prize. The competition will remain open until December 14.
Nationwide balloon-hunt contest tests online networking
By Doug Gross, CNN
December 4, 2009
So, the balloons will only be aloft for a few hours on one day. That means no individual could travel to all 10 locations. Seekers will be forced to search for references to the balloons and reports in social media such as Twitter, Facebook, or Flickr. That is, of course, assuming someone reports the sighting and is willing to provide coordinates. If I didn’t already know about the challenge, I doubt I would stop and Tweet about a red balloon, giving its lat/long coordinates.