• Disease Outbreaks
• Earthquake Monitor
• Flood Monitor
• Tsunami Warning
• Stormpulse
• Weather
• Fire Maps (US)
• Earth Monitor (NASA)
• UNOSAT
• GDACS: Disaster Alerts
• GDACS: Coordination
• World Clock
• Website Preview Tool

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TrackerNews.net is an aggregator with a few twists. Its beat covers health issues, humanitarian work, technology that supports both and is broadly defined. "Health," for example, includes animal, plant and planetary health along with human health.

Every humanitarian crisis, of course, has a health component and vice-versa. It is all of a piece.

TrackerNews is about the mix and the match of news, research and innovation. It is a medium as well as a resource. (Contact TrackerNews.net)

TrackerNews headlines are not organized by topic, nor is there a standard navigation bar. Rather, stories (news, research papers, blog posts, websites, book reviews, e-books, software downloads - print, audio, video) are grouped together for contextual relevance. It makes for a somewhat eclectic mix on any given day and the hope is to provide people who tend to "niche" themselves in specialized fields, a broader multi-disciplinary perspective. (see flickr slide show)

Although groups of links tend to be driven by news events, in general TrackerNews is not an aggregator for this-just-in news. Nor are stories ranked by popularity, which tends to create a self-reinforcing skew. Links are selected for their bearing on a particular subject and their utility. Academic papers are often included in groupings to make is easier for interested readers to see original research and find contact information.

Some link sites require free registration, but TrackerNews does not link to stories that require fees to view (sometimes this means access to a research abstract rather than a full paper).

Groups of links start either in the green bar banner or in the top left column, then snake up and down the three columns and finally archived. This gives readers a few days to see the stories on the main page. Also, the layout changes with every new addition, giving stories three chances to be on the top of a column and thus in the initial screen view.

In addition to the Headlines, TrackerNews has a section of Resource links - which is a v.1 prototype work-in-progress. In addtion to direct links (all with pop up "tool tip" descriptions) there are links to directories and aggregators that go into more depth on specific topics.

Trackersdash links are to sites of particular utility in a humanitarian crisis (maps, weather reports, warnings, software apps -- see drop down on upper right of screen)

Custom Trackers are another tool that still needs some development. Essentially, these are DIY site maps for the collective knowledge of a group or event. The back-end user interface is drag'n'drop adn wysiwyg ("what you see is what you get"), so it is easy to create and arrange as many categories, sub-categories and listings as needed. Here is an example of a Custom Tracker roughed in for a colleague who helped put together a one-day tech camp in Cambodia.

The Editor's Blog highlights some of the stories behind the links.

Finally, you can follow TrackerNews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TrackerNews.

I hope you enjoy exploring TrackerNews. Please write to us with your ideas and suggestions for v.2.

Thank you!

J.A. Ginsburg, editor

TrackerNews was incubated at InSTEDD, an independent nonprofit that develops, evaluates, harnesses and distributes technologies that improve surveillance, collaboration, preparedness and response capabilities for humanitarian and relief purposes.

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Last Update: June 2, 2012, 6:42PM GMT