Yes. I spoke to MetaCarta founder and CTO John Frank who clarified this statement from Microsoft:

How is location information attached to the alerts/reports?
Content (people and places) are geo tagged via natural language processing.

Vine taps into news and other feeds from a variety of sources to populate the "hyperlocal" situation. MetaCarta's engine does the work on the backend to find the geographic references and geocode them. This is the same technology used in the company's GeoSearch News.

I asked Frank if the alerts/reports were geocoded in the same way and his answer reflected the difference between structured and unstructured data. Those alerts and reports, he suggested, most likely will have structured location information derived from GPS, cell-id, or clicking on a map for a location.

---- post of 4/28/09 3:35 pm -----

Is it Virtual Earth? It does not look like it in the graphics.
No, it is not Virtual Earth. [I've asked what it is, don't worry!] Updated answer 5:26 pm: "Apologies, we misspoke. Vine is using the Virtual Earth platform."

How is location information attached to the alerts/reports?
Content (people and places) are geo tagged via natural language processing. [I'm not sure I follow...but this assumes text location information is available to be used for this process. MetaCarta?]

What is the difference between an alert and a report?
An alert allows you to send information to a group all at once — the sports team you coach, people who live nearby, family far away, special friends, and the people you might want to reach in an emergency. ... A report on the other hand allows you to share information by sending to directly to someone’s personal dashboard. [Kind of like a group vs. direct message, I guess.]

Plans for mobile support?
With Microsoft Vine, you can send alerts via text (a shortcode will be assigned to your emergency contacts ). We are looking into a mobile-based application of the service as well.


--- original post 8:00 am ----

Yesterday Microsoft shared details of what some are calling "social networking for emergencies," its new Vine program.

The Windows (XP/Vista) only client is now in beta in Seattle, with other trials to be held in other geographies. The idea is a dashboard of sorts where users can post "alerts" on a map. Also loaded onto the maps are alerts from over 20,000 local news sources. While some may think of this as a tool for social networking (tracking, getting updates from friends and family), Microsoft is really aiming it at governments and response personnel. The idea popped up after the confusion in information sharing after Hurricane Katrina. I've found nothing about how it taps into location information (if at all) and it appears to use something other than Virtual Earth for its maps.

I've posed some questions to Microsoft on these issues and will post answers when I receive a reply.

- Mashable
- Seattle Times
- Fact Sheet