DARPA–the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency–is the research and 
development office for the U.S. Department of Defense. DARPA’s mission is to maintain technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise from harming our national security. We also create technological surprise for our adversaries.
DARPA’s latest challenge: Locate these 10 balloons
To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.
The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of 10 moored, 8-foot, red, weather balloons at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States. The balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads.
HOW TO COMPETE
- Register on this web site on November 23.
- Find other people interested in helping you solve the DARPA Network Challenge.
- Starting December 5, submit locations to the web site immediately after you find them.
- For updates, follow us on Twitter.
PRIZE
A $40,000 cash prize will be awarded to the first entrant to submit the latitude and longitude of all ten balloons.
Interested? check here. But hurry. Over 300 people have already registered.
Any ideas on finding the balloons without even leaving your couch? Leave a comment. Better, if you see a balloon, post it below. When we’ve collected all ten locations, first one to notify DARPA wins $40k.
Join the MIT team, invite your friends and you can win money, help
science, and help charity!
Find all the information about our approach at
http://balloon.media.mit.edu/
THANK YOU AND… GOOD LUCK!
The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team
Anyone besides me could use $40,000? Let’s do it!
The MIT Red Balloon Group seems to be the most organized – Read more here: http://balloon.media.mit.edu/Whartonman/
Team DeciNena (think of the 80′s song about 99 Red Balloons) is one of the best-organized and fastest growing, and we are now incorporating other teams into our web site and recruiting teams to join us if they feel they are too small to compete alone.
We are offering to share part of the prize money with all particpants who are active on Dec 5th, not JUST the actual balloon finder (who will receive a larger reward).
Join us, and tell all your friends. That’s what the whole goal of the challenge is — to build large teams quickly.
http://decinena.com
Here is what one group is doing:
https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:CampaignPublic/id:26653.2642338382/rid:050a5ad69cee0b80d646659a2a3212df
Looks like a great cause.