14 Apps Connecting You to the Gulf Oil Spill
If It Was My Home allows you to gain some perspective about the size of the spill by overlaying it on your home area. By seeing it in a perspective you're more familiar with, you can grasp the scale much easier. Here, it's centered over San Francisco. The sheer amount of area it covers is enough to wake anyone up about the size of the problem at hand. The information for generating the map is updated daily.
iPhone and Android, opensource data
Oil Reporter for the iPhone and Android allows anyone to become a citizen journalist of sorts. At least, it allows anyone to report what they see happening near the spill, mapping the information as it is sent in to organizations and communities can organize response efforts. Oil Reporter has an open API, so anyone can access the data used, and mold it for their needs in responding to the spill.
Not surprisingly, Google is on top of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill. On the site, you can view various types of maps of the oil spill, as well as view and upload videos of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill. It's a great one-to-shop to see what's happening with the spill and add your own first-hand experience if you wish.
The Oil Spill in Gulf Coast iPhone app shows which species of wildlife are the most impacted from the spill. Showing photos, videos, and facts about the animals such as how their nesting and migration sites are affected, you can learn the extent of the ecological impact of the oil disaster. Links are provided for volunteering or donating to save the species, as well as minute-by-minute updates on what's happening with the spill.
CAP-A-RIG is a new time-waster for iPhones and iPads. A player uses their finger to try and stop leaks from an offshore oil rig. But there is one excellent feature to the $0.99 app -- 50% of the proceeds go to the clean-up effort. Whether or not you can trust the developers to donate that $0.50 is another issue.
Oil Spill 2010 keeps you informed with the latest videos, official White House responses, official BP responses, Twitter feeds and news articles, all updated in real time. The $0.99 app isn't the best one out there for staying up to date with on-the-ground news and updates the way some of these other apps do with citizen reporting, but it'll certainly keep you informed on the big news items.
The
Oil & Gas app by the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association provides "total coverage of the oil & gas industry from a local & national perspective." It provides a news feed broken down by topics, and a tagging feature so you can find stories later. So not only can you keep track of the spill, but the antics of the industry as a whole.
More on the BP Oil Disaster
NRDC Maps Beaches Closed By Gulf Oil Spill
VIDEO: Disaster In The Gulf: The Oil Spill Environmental Impact
