Data empowerment through iPhone apps. That seems to be the running theme. Project Noah—for networked organisms and habitats—is a location-based eco-field guide, submission-powered wildlife spotter, and mission dossier. And it’s pretty slick.
That might sound a little complicated, but it’s not. Basically, you take pictures of wildlife you spot in an environment, descriptively tag it and submit it. It winds up on the site, where animals and plants are plotted against Google Earth tiles.
Obviously, you can use the data to see what’s around you—that’s the eco-field guide part—or you can look up missions, where you’re directed to gather particular data, maybe for a project or research experiment somebody else is working on.
Suddenly, everybody’s an environmentalist. [Project Noah, ITP]
