The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced (PDF) the MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team has won the DARPA Network Challenge which 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.”
DARPA’s rationale for the challenge is that it is “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 MIT Team has not released how the balloons were spotted but their plan is to split the challenge’s $40,000 reward at a rate of $2,000 to the people finding one of the balloons, $1000 to the person who invited the finder to the team, $500 to their inviter, $250 to who invited them and the final $250 to charity.
All of the balloon locations where near urban areas (smallest city appears to be Katy, Texas, population 11,775), so that must of helped the MIT team find them.
Red Balloons before the contest