Tomorrow morning, teams from all across the United States will try to find 10 red balloons. The federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plans to moor 10 red weather balloons at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States, and whoever sends in the GPS coordinates of all the balloons first will win $40,000. With this event – called the DARPA Network Challenge – DARPA wants to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Arpanet – the predecessor of today’s Internet. DARPA wants to test how the Internet, crowdsourcing and social networking can help to solve “broad-scope, time-critical problems.” Read on to see how you can participate in this event.
Teams from all over the United States have registered for this event – although anybody can participate. Entries will be accepted until 12 p.m. ET on Dec. 14. The balloons will be on display during daylight hours from 10 a.m. ET until 4 p.m. local time.
Strategies
Some teams have developed iPhone apps (iTunes link), while others are going to scour Twitter for clues. Some teams are also taking a more traditional approach and plan to simply drive around hoping to spot the balloons – and hoping their team will be large enough to find them. Click here for a list of teams; most of them are still more than happy to accept new volunteers. Even if you don’t belong to a group, you can still send out a tweet with the GPS coordinates if you happen to come across a balloon by coincidence. The teams will surely be grateful for this information as well.
DARPA is financing this challenge because it hopes that this event, just like earlier DARPA challenges, will foster fresh thinking and encourage technologists to discover “new, collaborative ways to approach problems that were not dreamt of 40 years ago.”
