Amber Alerts coming to iPhone
New app ties into the AMBER alert system.
Jonathan Zdziarski has announced the pending release iPhone app that will tie into the AMBER alert system. According to his Web site post:
The AMBER Alert folks and I have been chatting lately about building a revolutionary new tool, which is now complete after a weekend of hacking. The iPhone AMBER Alert System is now pending approval and not only provides up-to-the-minute detailed information on on all AMBER Alerts, but revolutionizes the way that sightings are processed. By using the iPhone's GPS, we're able to create a geo-analytical model to identify multiple credible sightings within a given radius. This information is relayed to the appropriate state police barracks for faster and more reliable responses to missing children sightings. The first version of AMBER Alert sends this data through email, but they are building an XML service for future versions to post to, opening the door for taking photographs of sightings for visual confirmation and further improving response times. All of this is made available, of course, at no cost to law enforcement, and the application itself will be a free download.
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Additionally, according to Zdziarski, there will be code available to iPhone developers to make their application AMBER aware and Zdziarski will be incorporating this feature into some of his own iPhone software. Exactly how this will be delivered remains to be seen, but it is supposed to run transparent to users, but will notify them of any new AMBER Alerts that are issued in their geographical area.
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If you want to get AMBER Alerts you can sign up to get them in other ways like e-mail at http://www.amberalert.org/.
Zdziarski's AMBER Alert app will be released at no cost through the iTunes App Store sometime in the future and we'll post a full review of the App and look at how Zdziarski has implemented AMBER Alerts into his other apps like Ballistic at that time.