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Another critical app for emergencies: Family Locator
By WDavidStephenson | February 8, 2008
Sprint has just announced its Sprint Family Locator service is now usable on all Web-enabled Sprint phones. It allows family members to locate other family members — especially children and the elderly. The contacted phones don’t have to be Web-enabled — more than 100 other non-Web enabled phone models sold by Sprint can be used.
The system uses GPS to locate the other phones. For example, according to Sprint’s news release,
“Parents can login on their phone or a PC to locate a child on an interactive map, even when the child is using their phone to make a call or send a text. The service also gives the address, surrounding landmarks and accuracy of the child’s location within a specified radius, along with the ability to click to call or send a text to the child directly from the service. Additionally, the service enables a parent to set Safety ChecksSM at certain landmarks such as a school, home, or relative’s house, at specified times. The parent is automatically notified whether the loved one is near the specified landmark at the set time, providing “hands-off” peace of mind. “
The feature costs $9.99 per month.
Even though this service is proprietary to Sprint, I think it merits inclusion in my list of “21st-century disaster tips you WON’T hear from officials”, because it fosters use of social networks in an emergency, offers a texting option that’s more likely to get through when bandwidth is limited and because it offers real-time, location-based information that can be critical in a rapidly-changing situation — and could foster collaborative response by a family to a crisis, encouraging “wisdom of the crowd” to emerge. I expect other carriers will offer similar programs in the future.
Technorati tags: homeland security crowd-sourcing wisdom of crowds crowdsourcing smart mobs swarm intelligence emergent behavior networked homeland security location-based services geo-spatial web web 2.0 homeland security 2.0 disaster management 2.0 disaster management GPS cellphone wireless disaster planning disaster planning 2.0 Sprint Family Locator
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