More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter

Re:More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter by danso on Wednesday January 01, 2014 @11:46PM (#6998237)

This is cute, but it kind of falls under the "Let's do this thing we've done, but with new social media technology!" category rather than something genuinely useful.

Not being attacked by a shark is a real-time scenario... A shark that is 0.75 miles away could easily be 0.5 miles away by the time you've checked your phone, got off your towel, and tip-toed into the water.

I'm not dismissing the program by making it keep promises that it hasn't made...it just highlights how technology needs to be a strategy...to have these signals out in a public API is very cool, but for it to serve its ostensible safety purpose, the beaches need to be equipped with a public-announcement system that keys off of that data (whether it be a Twitter feed or whatever the scientists were using before).

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Re:More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter by blasphemous on Thursday January 02, 2014 @12:15AM (#6998321)

100% agree, a solar powered siren connected to the GSM phone network in the middle of the beach you'd think would be more useful.

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Re:More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter by yaeger on Thursday January 02, 2014 @05:02AM (#6998924)

No no no. No Siren, they must play the Jaws theme!

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Re:More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter by rithi on Thursday January 02, 2014 @02:53AM (#6998659)

+ the adrenalin rush when running from trouble (the fun in danger)

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Re:More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter by jfoster on Thursday January 02, 2014 @03:10AM (#6998689)

I was also thinking along these lines, but I wonder if they chose the distance to match the behaviour patterns of sharks. How quickly would a shark approach a beach when feeling hungry?

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