The site is http://3dstoneage.com

Congratulations. You now have an e-mail address that will get 10K pieces of spam per day as the bots search BB comments.

@LittleJohn Actually, the flight time depends on time zone. 6 hours EST, 7 hours CST, 8 hours MST, and 9 hours PST.

Also note that the submitter must pay income tax on the prize, so the distribution would be significantly less than $40k. Still, I would also propose that if BoingBoing puts together a team that half the money would go to the EFF and the rest split between the first submitters.

10 roter Wetterballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Hielt man fuer UFOs aus dem All
Es war ein Medien-Notfall
Eine Bloggerrstaffel hinterher
Alarm zu geben, wenn es so war
Dabei war da am Horizont
Nur 10 roter Wetterballoons

I’m in. I’ll keep an eye peeled for balloons in the suburbs of Detroit and the Ann Arbor area. I’ll fire off an email if I see anything.

On a related note, wouldn’t it be hilarious if 4Chan found all the balloons?

Also, how do you prevent against the same person submitting three times?

Finally, you are anonymous here and I don’t see your name and contact details anywhere on your site. What makes you think people will trust you?

I forsee a lot of fake twittering as well. People saying they saw balloons etc.

Oh, also, THE GAME.

Now, where to get a bunch of Red weather balloons?

http://www.ispyaredballoon.com/
or at facebook
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=201028633372
or
text: (262) I-SPY-SPY (262-477-9779)

DARPA Internal Report: How Problematic Will the Internet Be in the Event of a Civil War?

THE GAME.

We’ve got a better idea. Forget splitting the money- If we win we’re going to use it to build a giant 30′ tall flying cupcake entirely out of balloons. Seriously! Go see for yourself-

http://findtheredballoons.com/

And if you want, you can even fly a cupcake over most any website you want using our flying cupcake-inator: http://airigami.com/cupcake/

Life is too short, lets have fun!

And we are “cupcake-free”.

No, seriously, whomever wins will be using a mixture of all sorts of tactics from team recruiting to passive data mining. I’m sure there will be a lot of disinformation out there, and it will be important to combat it.

The tax issues are solveable — by running it through my LLC, I don’t have to pay gross taxes on the income that I immediately turn around and pay out to the team members. Each of them is liable for taxes, but only on their smaller amount, which due to the progressive rate schedule, usually works out for the better.

Join us, it’s free, and you could actually win something. We’re even sharing some reward money with those team participants who DON’T themselves find a balloon.

http://decinena.com

Of course, then all the other elements of this experiment come into play. For instance, it should probably be on an invite-only forum, so that passer’s-by who stumble on this thread wouldn’t find out the locations of the nine balloons already posted here…

Yes, it’s the American way of doing things. Talk big about community spirit and civic service and the public good, but seek the champion, praise the hero, the saviour, the one man in his badge and white hat, his shining armor, his expensive suit who can save us from the evildoers, rescue us from all peril, deliver us from yea, even ourselves.

I don’t want to sidetrack a thread of comments with a political commentary, but I see the pattern too obviously in DARPA’s approach not to point it out.

Topic change: Did you folks actually look at the rules?

“All balloons are scheduled to go on display at all locations at 10:00AM (ET) until approximately 4:00 PM (local time) on Saturday, December 5, 2009.”

These balloons are displayed for only six hours, somewhere in the continental U.S. (i.e., not Hawaii, PR, etc.). We’ve then got 9 days to use Twitter or FB or homing pigeons and our secret decoding rings from the clubhouse to divine the locations and submit them to DARPA.

“Latitudes and longitudes [must be] entered in degree-minute-second (DDD-MM-SS) format … with an error of less than one arc-minute to be accepted.”

DARPA appears to anticipate that not all ten will be found. Finding five would still qualify for the cash payment (to the one person registered as a participant).

Good luck, you guys.

Instead they would be searching for announcements about balloon locations, from TV, twittering, etc.

I’d recommend leveraging the BB name to gather people to actually look for balloons, or to quickly tell BB about balloons they hear have been found nearby. BB has trust enough that an email address being provided would be enough to make the finder feel sure of payment.

BB is warm and open. But there is a conflict with the need to maintain secrecy, an interesting problem. Also the team has to be open to as many people as possible, even non-elite people on the street calling it in on a cellphone number.
- How to gain maximum number of people from general public?
- Is it enough for members to sign up while pledging they will not give Team BB info to other teams or the public?
- Policies need to be worked out. Some examples could be:
. Payment for information rises with time
. Extra paid to keep lone finds secret
. Secret information to be given only to a single person (leader of Team BB). That info to be kept secret based on preset policy, so its location/existence cannot be given to other teams.
. Creation of alliances with other teams (e.g. how to share balloon locations while maintaining ambiguity of location)

BB should use the time to prepare, and perhaps run ads prior to the event to attract other groups which can join in an alliance.
It may all be over by 11am Saturday EST.

A small website should be created including:
- explanation
- member signup
- policies
- assignment of tasks, such as creation of tools, coordination, phone answering, and monitoring of eBay, CraigsList, Google
- server should be hardened against hacking
- a threaded message board. Ordinary single thread BB is not enough.

What will the winning team be like? So far I have:
- Has members competent in these areas:
Technical skills, monitoring auction and news sites, typing and collating information, brainstorming, policy creation
(who also will be up before 7AM in California)
- a somewhat trusted front, especially if offering a premium for info which is to be kept secret.
- not just a strong brainstorming group but also a strong leadership that can update publicized rules and negotiate quickly.

What do you think?

Darpa Balloons for Peace will use the $40k to promote peace.