Reuters AlertNet Makes Featured Mashup List

Reuters AlertNet is a web-based humanitarian news network launched by Reuters in ‘97 to keep relief professionals, journalists, and the public current on humanitarian crises worldwide. The site was recently selected as a featured mashup by the Windows Live Dev team, who picked out 10 of the most innovative mashups that feature the use of Windows Live technology. AlertNet was my personal favorite as it incorporates Virtual Earth in a really unique way. On the site, you can visually “mine” for headlines from a particular part of the world on their interactive map just by zooming into a country or region. You can select what kind of crises you want the map to display from conflicts to food shortages to natural disasters and more, or you can choose all the categories to see everything. This is really an ingenious use of the Virtual Earth mapping technology and one that serves such a good purpose, too. Before the Windows Dev article, I was not even aware of the map existence, but I’m glad to have found it as this could prove to be an invaluable resource for learning about what’s happening in different parts of the world.