You Can Hunt for Flight 370

A Malaysian Airlines jet with 239 persons on board vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. “Using high-resolution satellite images and the eyes of any human that’s willing to help, earth imagery company DigitalGlobe launched a campaign to scan the Gulf of Thailand for survivors,” reports Lizzie Crocker for the Daily Beast, about the company that provides imagery for Google Earth and Apple maps. “With five high-resolution satellites in space, DigitalGlobe is the leading earth-imagery company in the world, offering services to clients that range from the defense community to the oil experts.” DigitalGlobe arranges the connections with Tomnod, its crowd-sourcing platform, which “outsources the analysis of satellite photos to anyone with the time and energy to review them.” In one day, more than a half million users volunteered to study satellite images – and then as word of the project spread, the site crashed. With global interest so high, the company is working to restore the site. – YaleGlobal