Random Hacks of Kindness By "hackers for good" Build Applications For Humanity!

These days the news is full of all negative vibes and it really good to hear when people do good, not for themselves but for others, to be specific, for the mankind in general.
Started earlier this month, hackers from all over the world participated in RHoK, Random Hacks of Kindness, to build applications for humanity.
RHoK was founded by Google in 2009 with support from other industry luminaries and Governmental organizations like NASA, Yahoo, Microsoft, World Bank to build and support Open Source technology for crisis management. These crisis and the crisis spots are the exact reasons for negative news that I mentioned earlier.
Of all the RHoK efforts that are coming to fruition, according to Google;

"The UN, in partnership with the Colombia government, is considering adopting the shelter management system developed at RHoK Bogota to aid the 3 million victims of winter flooding in South America. Of the nine hacks submitted for judging at RHoK Sao Paulo, two are already in use and two others may be further developed and incorporated into the restructuring of the National Weather Service. The winning application at RHoK Philadelphia, developed in response to a problem proposed by the World Bank Water group, is set for further development at the WaterHackathon, RHoK's first community-sponsored event, later this year."

The RHoK Silicon Valley, One closest to us, also celebrating three winners;

• SMS Person Finder enables anyone with a phone to interact with Person Finder, a software application that Google built to help people connect with their loved ones following a disaster. The Google Crisis Response team is working with this group to integrate their application into future Google Person Finder deployments
• Hey Cycle makes it easier for people to reuse and recycle items by setting up email alerts when free items that they’re looking for are entered on freecycle.org
• FoodMovr connects people with excess food to others who need it through a simple live application

So let us see what people can do and what others are already doing, please visit RHoK.org.


Official Google Blog: Thousands of “hackers for good” build applications for humanity