I have a dream

When Howard posted the blogad - I was inspired. Your post now has me on a mission :)

Lets do this and make it happen.

One thing we could do is build a special section here, since categories automatically get their own RSS feed. And create a special content type for PSA announcements.

How can we organize folks to publish them thru blogads?

From what I understand, not everyone can particpate in blogads - and it seems by limiting participation, we'd be doing the program some harm.

I'm thinking we should setup a .org and have something that generates html code that people can copy and paste - kind of like those quizes/memes that are so popular on livejournal - but only with information for the missing.

The html could point to a graphic we host - todayphilly.jpeg or todayboston.jpg - where we have the most recent person.

We could have another page with a big list of the missing and appropriate graphics/banners - but with their respective html info. So if someone wants to run an ad about Imbo and Petrone, they can do that too.

We could set up an e-mail list/action list to send out to interested parties/people that sign up for when something has been updated, so they know when there's someone new.

We really need to check into the legality of this all too.

Your take on blogads makes a lot of sense. We want as wide a distribution of this information as possible.

As for the .org - PhillyFuture.org, if everyone was ok with it - could be that .org. Are you familiar with Flexinodes? We could create a special content type for a PSA category that would generate the HTML/Javascript.

The legality is a big concern though. Who to ask?

I have 0 problem with Phillyfuture.org for the philadelphia area - but if we want this to be a national thing and we want it to come up on google/we want people to know that they can contact us/come to this place to participate in it - is phillyfuture.org/node/somethingsomething going to be too difficult for them to remember?

And maybe there are a few bloggers around here that are lawyers we can talk to?

we can alias the url.. so it would be www.phillyfuture.org/somethingsomething

As for national... ah man - you think big! there goes the fly in the soup! phillyfuture as the domain name would be wrong.

it should be something like www.psa.org/philly/ www.psa.org/newyork/ then. Good thinking.

I just wanted to chime in and say that I think that this is a great idea, and that I would love to help work on it.

I am so ashamedly illiterate about this stuff (I used to have at least a working knowledge, but after years of non-use that part of my brain has completely atrophied) that I really need to rely on your expertise. Just tell me what to do.

I just came across a link to Project Jason on Tamika Huston's web-page. It's an adopt a missing person organization; there are also links to other organizations on her page. Maybe when we get this idea better sussed out, we can send an email to all of them to feed in reports and stuff.

FWIW - I just saw a promo for next Friday's Dateline NBC. It looks like they'll be interviewing Tamika Huston's family and covering the disparity in media coverage/lack of coverage of similar cases when the victim isn't white.

That's the thing - there are no 'experts' out here - no matter what some try and sell :)

Together we'll figure it out. You pulled together the big picture - and that's the most important part. I'm confident the participants here and elsewhere, will be able to pull this off.

How about "The Missing Persons Network"

I have a trusted co-worker with a server, and great Python development skills, who can help us make this happen. More info soon.

I sent an email to the National Center for Missing Adults last night to let them know what we're trying to do (and about Piggy & Tazzy's Missing Monday campaign, as well). Today's Inky has an interesting article on missing adults and the protocol the Police follow (pity it wasn't printed on Monday to tie directly in with the launch of the Missing Monday campaign - mind you, it didn't stop me form blogging about at DF)

I got a really nice response to my email from one of the advocates at the Missing adults network:

Dear Pamela,

Thank you for your e-mail. Some families of missing persons find that the general public just doesn't come together to aid with the search so it's nice to see a community action trying to offer support and attention to the cause. From your e-mail and from the websites, it sounds like you have high aspirations with the project but really, that's the only way to reach for the stars. :) Please keep us posted. We wish you the best of luck in your endeavors.

Sincerely,
Annie Converse
Family Advocate

Once we have our banner ad programming and a system/server for getting info fed into it, we can start talking to the PDs and the missing person organizations with something more concrete.

On the way....

I started laying the foundation for this project a few months ago. In my spare time I've been hacking around some ideas around a web site that would allow a blog author to put up some dynamic data on thier site with a few lines of javascript or a flash widget.

At this point I can deliver an RSS feed containing the top missing people and am very close to allowing a web author to select which people rotate through the widget.

So the user story is this:
1) website owner comes to site and views all of the missing people.
2) they select some names or setup a filter based on thier interests or what they feel will be the best based on thier site.
3) They put up a some code (javascript/flash) that displays the photos of missing persons on thier site.
4) When a website reader sees the ad they can click on it and be presented with a range of links.
5) links can include- 'official FBI' details page, family site, news articles, blog discussions, WHO TO CALL WITH INFORMATION, and anything else to allow the read to quickly get up to speed on this person.

My skills are in the backend processing, I have a server, I have some code - I have no art. I'm thinking of a mix between http://weatherfeeder.com/ and https://addons.mozilla.org/. For the blog authors is should be a quick one page process - they make some selections and click a [rss] or [flash] button and thats it.

I'm not sure how to handle people that want to contribute links or information yet.

I'll try to get something running over the weekend so people can play with the concept.

My original codebase was destined for another purpose, butafter Karl told me about this I realized I could use the code "missing persons network". I'm a parent and every time I hear about one of these cases I think about my own kids.

We need to use the Internet to combine the pervasiveness of the old milk carton ads with the suddenness of the Amber alert system.

How about a setting where we could override all of the ads out there with a single photo - within minutes of the amber alert being issued???

As I mentioned I'd love to focus on the core of this and welcome any help with the user interface and general concepts. If anyone is interested please let me know and I hook something up so we can get started.

Aheld folks is the developer I was talking about...

Aaron.. see the Have You Seen Latoyia ad in this site's right hand rail? If we can get a widget usable via javascript running that does that... as a first pass...that uses publically missing person information I think many folks will use it.

I just got back from LA to see the updates (which have me pretty darned tootin happy). I like the idea that if/when an Amber alert is issued for a child, it will temporarily override what the blogger has selected to send out the Amber alert. I think we should definitely try to link up with the National Center for Missing Adults to get their opinion of whether it'd be best/easiest to funnel input of information through one organization (i.e., a pratnership through them) or if we set up user groups for input/removal of information similar to how Philly Future is set up and then do some sort of push out to organizations in addition to Police Departments/FBI like the following list I found from Tamika Huston's website (we may want to correspond with Rebkah Howard, Huston's Aunt, for ideas of how to make things easier for families to contact someone ASAP):

FYI - another missing woman in the city, Carrie Ann Rivera a 74-year old black woman with Alzheimers and hypertension who was last seen 8/10/05. She's wandered off before and been found at various locations in the city, but this is a really bad time for her to be outside, especially without her meds.

I'm a bit behind, but I'll work on getting a website up for you to look at. In the meantime the two things I need right away are a look and some data sources.

If anyone as HTML / Javascript skills I need the main page as well as the widgets that people can put on thier site. Other webmasters should be able to choose bewteen an iframe, snipped of javascript code, or an RSS feed.

For data sources I just need to create scrapers that can scan other pages and consume thier data (which we can republish as friendly rss)

In the land of the bigger picture we can also use some documentation and 'about this project' pages that can be sent to other websites for thier feedback. But I would wait on that until we have something to show.

Let me know what you can/want to do and I have plenty of open tasks. I guess the first should be the website with a bugtracker so we can manage the dev process.

unfortunately, I have no actual useful skills for the coding/data needs (it's very depressing). I have, however, been in contact with a few of the missing persons organizations and will continue to do so to get their feedback/buyin. I'll also continue to post stuff about the project on my own lame little piece of the blogoshere and think I can drum up some support from some of the B-listers to start a little swarm when we have something to show. To be honest, once we have something to show, I think we may even be able to get a little chat from some of the MSM outlets we'd contacted about Latoyia.

It's probably not a good sign that I don't understand all this talk about widgets, but I'm willing to help where I can. Can you let us know what kinds of tasks need to be completed? I'll pitch in where I can.

And, like ol'cranky, I'll definitely help promote this once the technical work is done.

Good luck with it -- you are doing something that will prove very important to a lot of people.

there's a missing & abducted blog. I just found it on a search for additional updates regarding this morning's news.

A widget is a little thing that you can put on your webpage or desktop. A good example of a web widget is weather.com's offering. Anyone can go to that page and add the weather the thier website.

A desktop widget is more along the lines of Yahoo's Konfabulator.

So right now I'm past the prototype "I can do this" stage and just need to get something usable online.

If you guys want to look around for resources that are simiar and start keeping notes that may help. Also in general what should happen if a user clicks on a photo? I think they should come back to this site where they get a list of links either to learn more, or who to contact.

blogads are another perfect example of a web widget. So would be our blogroll list: http://www.phillyfuture.org/node/870

I think this is a great idea. I'm terrible at tech-y stuff but if you can make it so that folks like me can add it, I'd be happy to. I love the idea of the ad, it would work nicely on anyone's site.

MissingAbducted.com has released it’s latest project: The Wiki @ MissingAbducted.com, we need your help. We do not have the man power or resources to build pages for all missing persons.

Anyone can edit the wiki. Anyone can contribute, change, and add. Most websites you frequent are static — meaning you only read them and they may be outdated. The down side of static webpages for missing people is that the friends, families and those concerned have to wait for someone (staff or otherwise) to update the pages. This allows all interested parties to update pages as often as they choose and is a very different model of community activism. As soon as a friends and family are putting up fliers, they can put up their virtual flier here as well. Since YOU control the content, there is no waiting. And all pages are crawled by 50 or 60 search engines, so information you post here will be available to anyone who searches for your missing person’s name over time.

Simply type your missing person’s name in the search on http://wiki.missingabducted.com, and if there is no match, click on the “build an article using this title link “.
This is your place, your resource, and your voice.

More info here