This effort/Challenge serves as a pilot research project aimed at locating and capturing information about AEDs in Philadelphia. What an awesome effort to not only bring awareness to the importance of having community access to life saving AEDs but this is also an awesome way to showcase the power of geo location and supporting technologies to create compelling apps and provide a very useful service.

Spearheaded by the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, the challenge leverages the power of crowd-sourced information to build a robust database of location of AEDs within the community. Participants are invited to use the mobile app, capture and share geolocated photos and maybe even win a cool prize - everyone really is a winner in this effort though!

Participants can register as individuals or teams and have a shot at winning a cool $10K! Imagine, community groups, schools, or sports teams taking part in this scavenger hunt style competition! The project is part of a larger ongoing collaboration between faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Washington and is modeled after the DARPA Network Challenge, a crowd-sourcing experiment in which social media users raced to be the first to submit the locations of 10 moored, 8-foot, red, weather balloons at 10 fixed locations throughout the United States.

Ways to win:

• Find and photograph the most AEDs in Philadelphia County in four weeks and win the $10,000 grand prize.
• Be the first to submit a photograph of a "Golden" AED and win $50. 
• Submit addresses of locations without AEDs or that you wish had an AED - this is just for fun.

One group who's jumping in and tackling the challenge is the team from HeartCrowd - http://scailab.media.mit.edu/heartcrowd/

See more information:

• official press release. 
• For more information about the MyHeartMap Challenge, visit: http://www.myheartmap.org
• See also the web app http://philly.myheartmap.org/
• The Challenge on facebook
• http://twitter.com/#!/myheartmap
  
• The smart phone apps can also be downloaded for free for the iPhone at http://itunes.apple.com/app/id492442372?mt=8 and from the Android Marketplace
  

See on Twitter - Liking this challenge to community groups to geotag and map photos of life saving deffibrilators (AED)