MIT-based team wins DARPA's Red Balloon Challenge, demonstrates power of social networks (and cold hard cash)

DARPA would have you believe that it's the splendour of recent period ethnic networks that led an MIT-based aggroup to get its flushed expand oppose this weekend, and while there's no uncertainty that the proximity of the internet assisted in the locating of decade randomly placed floating objects, we're crediting the bright minds at the university for their strategy of soliciting aggroup mates. The oppose was constructed in order to "see whether ethnic networking sites same Facebook and Twitter should be seen as credible sources of information," not to name analyse new structure to move to various threats that need fast attention. Less than figure hours after the oppose began, MIT's aggroup had flat the hopes of around 4,000 another teams by finding every ten, though it's hard to feature just how many members were discover looking. You see -- university ingrained a website that promised hundreds, modify thousands of dollars to individuals who dispatched in the correct coordinates of balloons, noting that the $40,000 in accolade money would be graciously diffuse should their efforts advance to a win. bureau haw call it a boast of the aggregation superhighway; we're calling it victory in numbers.

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MIT RED BALLOON TEAM WINS bureau NETWORK CHALLENGE

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has declared that the university Red Balloon Challenge Team won the $40,000 change accolade in the bureau Network Challenge, a rivalry that required participants to post 10 large, flushed balloons at undisclosed locations crossways the United States. The university aggroup received the accolade for existence the first to identify the locations of every 10 balloons.

"The Challenge has captured the creativity of people around the world, is flush with scientific intrigue, and, we hope, is part of a ontogeny 'renaissance of wonder' throughout the nation," said bureau director, Dr. Regina E. Dugan. "DARPA salutes the university aggroup for successfully completing this Byzantine duty inferior than 9 hours after expand launch."

DARPA declared the Network Challenge to evaluation the 40th anniversary of the ARPANet, pre-cursor to today's Internet, to explore how broad-scope problems crapper be tackled using ethnic networking tools. The Challenge explores basic investigate issues much as mobilization, collaboration, and consortium in diverse ethnic networking constructs and could help to render innovation crossways a panoramic spectrum of applications.

DARPA plans to foregather with teams to analyse the approaches and strategies used to physique networks, amass information, and participate in the Challenge.

DARPA is the bicentric investigate and utilization organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). The Agency manages and directs investigate and utilization projects for DoD and pursues investigate and profession where the venture and payment are both rattling broad and where success haw provide hammy advances in hold of expeditionary missions.