Blog closed.

Due to recent events, this blog will no longer be updated.  Thanks for reading.

World Water Day?

I was completely unaware of anything related to this event.  Apparently, since 1993; March 22 was declared World Water Day by the United Nations General Assembly.  This day is designed to encourage people to refrain from using their taps for the entire day in efforts to raise awareness of the plight around the world; water shortage.  Check out these facts regarding water around the world.

• Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water related illness.
• Women spend 200 million hours a day collecting water.
• More than 3x more people lack water than live in the United States.
• The majority of illness is caused by fecal matter.
• More people have cell phones that a toilet.
• Lack of community involvement causes 50% of other projects to fail.

Visit HERE for more in depth statistics for what I talked about above.

I learned about this movement from a very informative YouTube channel that I subscribe to called SourceFed.  They cover 5 randomly interesting stories a day in a segment they call 20 minutes or less.  I find them to very entertaining and the knowledge I gain doesn't hurt as well.  Check them out, here's the video related to this topic.

By choosing to help spread the word about this cause you attribute to potentially saving lives, even if you can't donate you may enlighten someone who can.  Thanks for reading and please feel free to leave comments below. 

Avoid Crime via GPS

I had recently seen a video on YouTube that mentioned this sort of technology, and I thought it was interesting so I looked a bit more around the internet to see what I could find.  Apparently, certain GPS' and downloadable content is available to alert you when you approach high crime areas and re-route you accordingly.

More particularly, there's CrimeFind for GPS in Chicago.  CrimeFind for GPS uses your proximity alert function of your GPS to alert you while you are driving, when you approach areas of the city with a higher than average crime history.  It uses crime incident data for violent crimes. Violent crimes are: Homicide, Aggravated Assault, Robbery, Aggravated Robbery.  Incident data over the past 12 months is used.

This is a proximity alert file that you install on your GPS.  The file already contains the alert radius, therefore, you install it without setting your own alert distance.  This is done because the alert radius varies with each census tract depending on the census tract size.  The alert radius is used to coincide with the census tract size.  As you drive, when you approach a census tract with average violent crime over the past 12 months greater than 3 times the city average, your GPS will alert you so you are informed.  The crime rate (i.e, "4X") is displayed along with the census tract number.  Each census tract is an individual POI within the file, so you can also plan ahead and search "along your route" for the CrimeFind POI to know whether your proposed route will take you into, near or through a high crime area.  Any high crime census tracts will show "along your route" just as a gas station or hotel can be displayed "along your route."

 Is this feature a good idea?  Tell me some of your opinions on this topic in the comments below.  As always, thanks for reading!

KONY 2012

News of Joseph Kony is spreading around the internet and other media like wildfire; Who is this guy?  Why don't more people know about him?  Kony is the leader of a guerrilla group by the name of Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA.  The LRA sets its goals on abducting children to recruit soldiers and sex slaves for it's officers.  They murder, maim, and rape entire villages.  It is estimated that the abductions are in the 66,000's and they have forced the displacement of over 2,000,000 people.

With out stealing too much thunder from this movement, or going too deep into detail;  I beg you all to please take 30 minutes to watch the video they have made and make a decision for yourself.  Will you help spread the message?

Video and Link to their site below, please watch and share.

Kony 2012 - Learn More