It’s time for America to wake up and realize that we’re not without a way to help our 911 heroes get there faster. Last Friday (Aug 6th) the Martins of Sutter County, California were murdered in their home despite managing to make a 911 call before the crime could be carried out. Read the Appeal-Democrat article HERE.

According to the article:

“A deputy was dispatched at 10:15 p.m., two minutes after the cell phone call to the CHP. But the CHP was unable to pinpoint the origin of the call…”

You will have probably noticed by this point that a good number of our posts tend to address situations where SafeKidZone could have helped. We’re just trying to get the message across that it’s time for people to become more active in making the world a safer place. Our hope is that you read this blog or go to our website and begin to realize the possibilities that the existence of a service as robust as ours presents.

It is definitely true that most 911 dispatches do not have a way to effectively pinpoint 911 calls that come from cell phones. This is an issue because, as we all know, most 911 calls – in fact most phone calls in general – come from cell phones. Currently the method of locating a cell-based 911 call is cell phone tower triangulation (Click here to read our previous post explaining it in more detail) but as the article states, it’s less than dependable:

“There is no official system for us to retrieve the address and subscriber immediately,”

Depending on which phone company is involved and the type of phone, the CHP [California Highway Patrol] can triangulate the call and get an approximate location “but many factors have to align to make this happen,” McElfresh said

That’s why SafeKidZone uses real satellite GPS so we can help friends and 911 accurately locate a person in trouble, no matter where they are on the globe. It’s time to get the word out to your community and we are more than ready to help where we can.

Cell phones are replacing home phones with cheap rate plans. This picture was taken Aug. 11 2010

The prevalentfactor here seems to be that more and more people are completely ditching their home phones and replacing them with cell phones. It’s not neccesarily a bad thing as crime can happen anywhere and it’s better to be connected than not. In the Martins’ case it happened in their home but it’s far easier and safer to conceal a cell phone from an intruder and remain mobile than it is to run to a land line outlet and be pinned to that spot. Even cell phone service carriers are stepping up aggressively to encourage people to go 100% mobile with low-cost plans packed with minutes. Just today I snapped a shot of this billboard at a cell phone store, illustrating that very phenomenon.

Rather than resist this change I think it’s better to embrace it and help 911 do the same. Everyone knows that the major bottleneck that slows the process of upgrading 911 systems is budget concerns. SafeKidZone knows this too so we are more than happy to help with our service which requires no special equipment other than a computer and a cell phone. We need to start the conversation and roll with the change to make our environment safer for us and our children.

So download SafeKidZone and join the conversation on Twitter, FaceBook and right here on our blog.

Today’s article entitled “No 911 location from cell phone calls” comes to us via The Democrat.  It frames calling 911 from one’s cell phone as a problem because of a common problem of accurately locating where the call is originating since a cell phone is not tethered to any landlines. That is, back in the days before cell phones, 911 could find you easily because they knew where your land line was and what home address it was registered to.

Those were the days of the legacy systems but the alarming thing is that many 911 dispatch centers still use the very same systems to handle 911 calls today! The problem they face is that well over 90% of 911 cell calls come from cell phones nowadays. What’s more is that people are replacing their land lines altogether in favor of using their cell phones as their only phone line.

Most 911 calls come from Cell phones now.

And why not? Cell phones are packed with features and now we have smart phones (i.e. Blackberry and Android phones) which are essentially hand held computers that allow you to do just about anything. The iPad is nothing more than a giant iPhone, if you think about it, and it’s being marketed as a tablet computer.

The Democrat article drives home the fact that 911 operators have issues locating cell-based 911 calls which makes it harder for them to find you if you’re in an emergency, which means it takes longer to find you and that can be dangerous considering every second counts.

So what’s stopping them from upgrading their equipment to handle cell calls? Money. Here’s a quote right from the article:

Copeland says an equipment upgrade would help the problem, but it would cost the county several hundred thousand dollars to implement.

If you to tell us at SafeKidZone that this problem is a fact that you can’t change, our position would be this: we respectfully disagree.  Although it is true that the problem described by the Democrat article is very real, we and our users all know that we have the solution and it doesn’t cost the city, the county or the state one red cent.

SafeKidZone sends your GPS location to 911 dispatchers. Period. That one simple fact about our service solves the problem completely, but that’s not enough for us. We’re serious about keeping you and your family safe so we’ve even included vital information and a photo that can be sent to 911 so they can not only locate you in an emergency, but also identify you quickly. We save time and have the potential to significantly cut down the time it takes for 911 to arrive with help simply because they know where you are and know what you look like.

That’s power.

Sign up and start making your streets safer from your cell phone.
Tell all your friends about us on facebook by clicking HERE ! Make sure you hit the “Like” button at the top of the page to spread the word!

Photo: LA Times

It is with great sadness that I write today about the abduction and slaying of Norma Lopez in Moreno Valley. The LA Times article is located HERE and you should give it a read and comment. Our hearts go out to Norma’s family and loved ones.

There is a killer among the residents of Moreno Valley, CA and those who knew Norma Lopez are living in fear. We’re tired of hearing about things like this and we’re tired of living in fear.

How long will we gamble with the balance between fear of change and our children’s safety? How long will we resist change?

We at SafeKidZone know that although we are stalwart allies in the fight against sex offenders, murderers and kidnappers, we are also fighting our own small battle against the winds of change. People sometimes fear change, for example change in the way that SafeKidZone is changing how people use their cell phones. No longer is a cell phone just a toy to text your friends with, but with our service we turn it into a vital safety device that can actually prevent danger or stop a crime in progress if used correctly. A crime no different than the one that claimed the life of Norma Lopez.

The LA Times article raises chilling questions and issues. Here are some quotes from the piece:

“With word that a killer was among them, fear spread quickly among Moreno Valley’s parents and teenagers Wednesday after authorities confirmed that a body found near a patch of farmland was that of a missing 17-year-old high school student.”

“Sonia DeLeon, a prenatal health counselor, wasn’t taking any chances. She’s sending her 17-year-old daughter to live with relatives in San Diego County for a few weeks.”

“It’s scary. The person is still out there,” DeLeon said. “I work, my husband works, we can’t keep an eye on her every minute.”
“News of Lopez’s death, mostly through text messages and cellphones, traveled quickly through her school long before the Sheriff’s Department made the official announcement, Principal Kristen Hunter said.”

SafeKidZone could have helped. Here’s how:

1. Killer among them: SafeKidZone has access to the National Sex Offender Registry and Crime Data. That means that parents in the area could know about what’s happening in their neighborhood and whether a sex offender lives near and set proximity alerts when a kid gets near a sex offender or crime zone.
2. Sending her 17-year-old daughter to San Diego: There is no need to do this in a general sense when your kid has SafeKidZone running on their cellphone.  San Diego, while a beautiful city, is not inherently more safe than the place where Norma Lopez was abducted. Lest we forget that Chelsea King and Amber Dubois were both abducted in San Diego. SafeKidZone is a community application meaning that out goal is to help build safer communities through vigilance and information sharing between neighbours. Moreno Valley could be made much safer if residents there adopted SKZ as a safety solution.
3. I work, my husband works, we can’t keep an eye on her every minute: Yes you can with SafeKidZone’s real time GPS tracking. We don’t expect parents to watch every movement of their child, but in an emergency a child in trouble can hit the Panic Button, which will send an email and text alert to the parent with GPS coordinates on a map and situational information, while also opening a conference call with our Call Center and others in your personal safety network. If it turns out that it’s a real emergency Safety Network Members or our call center will escalate the Panic Button alert and all the information to police.
4. News of death traveled quickly through texts and cellphones: Wouldn’t it be great if instead of news of death being transmitted over cellphone networks, we could have news of life and a chance to stop a kidnapping or murder from happening? Yes! SafeKidZone already does this. The Panic Button sends a text and email AND a phone call from the kid’s cellphone to people who can help.

So what’s the hold up, people? SafeKidZone values your privacy and there there is no privacy issue since personal and location information is only shared between you and people you hand-selected as trustworthy individuals. Our product works on just about every cellphone on the market with an iPhone 4 app forthcoming, so there is no compatibility issue. Our product works – period.

The battle we fight is making sure people spread the word and open their minds to change. So spread the word,with one or all of the links below, for the sake of your children and ours. We can’t afford to wait any longer.

Join us by clicking HERE.
Follow us by clicking HERE and HERE.
Share this post, get active! Contact us by clicking HERE.

Today we talk about the concept of a panic button both online and “offline.”

I was sent this article about Facebook installing a ‘panic button’ for children. The article appeared in Yahoo News and tells of Facebook piloting a “panic button” that will allow kids to click it when they think they see suspicious behavior.

Online panic buttons are only 1/3 of the battle

The implications here are optimistic and I can see that perhaps the the most common use for this would be someone else reporting what they think is suspicious behavior relating to another user who may be a potential victim of an online sex offender. The reason I say this is that, as in the article, the victims of online sex offenders usually don’t know that they are victims until its too late and they are already physically in the clutches of a violent offender.

While SafeKidZone is all for any form of child protection measure we still have to ask the question of “how does this work in real life?” That is, although the prevalence of online sex offenders is pretty big, the hard fact is that it’s a lot harder for a sex offender to get to your kid online than it is for him to get him when s/he’s out for a jog, or walking home from school. The hard fact is that all sex offenses happen in person. It’s one thing for an offender to type messages to your kid, but it’s a whole other terrible ballgame when that kid meets up in person with that offender.

So let’s say that the Facebook panic button doesn’t do its job and your child finds him/herself setting up a meeting with an online sex offender and actually meeting them. What can they do when they’re in imminent danger? Hit the “offline” SafeKidZone Panic Button, that’s what. Not only will the panic button send a message to a kid’s safety network that they are in trouble but it also has the ability to alert 911 and give real GPS coordinates to emergency responders no matter where your child is. The SafeKidZone panic button is ALWAYS there for you and your family whether you’re at the computer or out and about and that’s a true comprehensive safety measure.

I’m also happy to announce that SafeKidZone is now officially fully 911 routing capable! That means you can be sure that 911 will be there for you in an emergency that calls for help from the professional heroes at our 911 dispatch centers!

So what are you waiting for? Share this blog and download SafeKidZone to your phone HERE!

EAVB_GJODVAONEJ

Photo credit: http://ccpoa.org/reform

Readers, we need to have a talk. Although we at SafeKidZone are viewed by many as experts in family safety I don’t think it takes an expert to crunch these numbers.  Less police + shorter prison terms = high risk to families.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association has put up the following website: California Prison Reform Now to address awareness of this issue. The issue is that due to budget cuts and overcrowding, 40,000 convicted felons are being released early from their sentences in California State prisons. What’s worse is that those same budget cuts are seeing to it that our police forces are becoming smaller as good cops are laid off and new candidates are not getting the job.

I don’t know about you, but considering that the reported recidivism (chance that a released inmate will re-offend) rate is about 70%, I would say that having less police presence is just scary.  Overcrowding prisons is just one issue, but consider that a lot of crime is prevented in the first place because of the sheer presence of police.  The problem now is that with less police on the streets they will be spread thin across the breadth and variety of calls that 911 receives from solving a minor domestic dispute to stopping a felony in progress, for example a kidnapping.

I say firstly to support prison reform if you’re as concerned as I am. However I also think that our 911 heroes could use the help in keeping the streets safe. Because of budget cuts to the police system you can also bet that 911 dispatch will be busier than ever. Think about how many less than emergency calls are made per day that could take up the time of a dispatcher that would otherwise be helping somone in serious trouble. How do we filter them out?

I put forth SafeKidZone as a way to address this problem. Because SafeKidZone gives you and your community a way to coordinate action as is needed with our own call center when the panic button is pressed it’s usually easy to get the information to 911 should the need arise.  Also, since all information about the victim is sent to 911, including their Satellite GPS location from SafeKidZone’s web app, that means that we save you a lot of breath on the phone with 911 and ultimately save time and save lives.

As for the lack of police, since SafeKidZone is a way to practice “community policing” it gives you the ability to partner with local police and notify them when something serious is afoot. Crime data and Sex Offender data is already loaded for you in the SafeKidZone web app so you can know in real time what’s going in your neighborhood while also giving police a leg up on the situation so they can triage (prioritize) their duties as needed. Often a potential emergency can be avoided altogether with just a bit of prevention, and that’s what SafeKidZone is all about: prevention.

I recommend you get involved where you can do address this issue and I strongly recommend you download and try out our service. It’s free so what are you waiting for? Click here to join us!

So if you’ve been following our tweets, you may be wondering what on earth is NXNEi and GovCamp. Well I’ll tell you that they are very exciting to say the least!

I was privileged enough to be attend North By Northeast in Toronto for the last two days and even more privileged to take part in the first interactive conference offered by it in Canada. NXNE is the counterpart to South By Southwest and is a place where the most influential people in media and technology come together in a mutual forum to discuss the future of communications, entertainment and interactive technology, like SafeKidZone. Some of the best developers and web gurus were present and I was honored to meet Ze Frank, Zachary Lieberman, and Erica Ehm or YummyMummyClub.ca.

In the past, I’ve recommended Cafémom.com as a great forum for moms to talk about all the issues, so I’m excited to recommend Yummy mummy club as well to our Canadian subscribers. Yummy Mummy Club is a website for moms to come together and discuss just about anything they want with the common ground of being parents. They are providing a great sounding board for mothers to become part of a very large community to pass on pearls of wisdom whether they be advice about how best parent one’s child to where to find that perfect nail polish color. Either way, it’s the place to be and if you’re a a Canadian mom, I highly recommend yummymummyclub.ca

On to GovCamp: If I could describe it in one word, that word would be “challenging.” GovCamp was put on by Microsoft and it was a forum to demonstrate and learn about applications that utilize public data. Obviously this was right up SafeKidZone‘s alley.

SKZ's table at GovCamp

I met some influential people in the Canadian government and one in particular really grilled me about the implications of SafeKidZone. Her main concern was privacy and I was happy to inform her that SafeKidZone usage is opt-in, permission based. That is, a SafeKidZone user with a

protected phone can invite specific people to their safety network who are trusted and then decide how much information to share with each individual in their network. For example, if you don’t want to share your panic button alerts but don’t want to share your location with a contact you can set that.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been to several conferences, met many people and showed SafeKidZone to just about every person I’ve spoken to and I noticed that the common response from all those who have discovered SKZ has consistently been positive. To be more specific, people are feeling like SKZ is simply a no-brainer, or what I like to call, an “idea in good currency.” Of course! Who wouldn’t want to keep their families safe in a socially responsible way! This sentiment keeps us going and we appreciate your input at all times.

So please sign up for safekidzone and help us make it better! Download it to your phone and give us your feedback – we’re always listening. Email us or join the conversation on twitter.

Rolling with the hard questions

Before I do the NXNE and govCamp Wrapup I think it’s very important that you all watch this video. With budget cuts happening there has never been a time when America needed SafeKidZone more than now.

Please sign up, help us make it better and bring SafeKidZone to your local police!

Fresno Police Dept. deals with expected budget cuts | abc30.com.

We’re at North by Northeast (NXNE) 2010 and we will have much to report at its conclusion.

The weather is beautiful and we’re out to play. For those of you that don’t know, NXNE is in its 16th year and is the place where new ideas and music are showcased! This year NXNE added the NXNE interactive conference and you can bet SafeKidZone was there!

So far NXNE has been a perfect way to take SafeKidZone out into the field as an application that can help keep track of our friends and family in large crowds. With an eye to safety and panic button in hand, we can enjoy NXNE with a little less worry!

Stay tuned for our wrap up and some pictures! Follow us on twitter to get the latest updates as they happen!

View Larger Map

Bell City Council to vote on cutting police force | 89.3 KPCC.

The article linked above is a bit unsettling. Bell City is situated pretty much at the heart of the Los Angeles area and they’re thinking of cutting their local police force.

It’s no secret that police in that area are spread a little thin and it’s not just in Bell City. The Wall Street Journal did a piece on the cutting of police all over California and it’s not just happening in California either. It’s happening in Dallas, Boston, Jacksonville and pretty much all over the country.

The common cause? Budget contraints. We’re still in a recession, no two ways about it, and it’s serious enough that cities are actually considering cutting essential service like police! It’s no stretch of the imagination to know what this means for the safety of our communities, families, and friends.

One of the main reasons SafeKidZone was established was because we knew that much of the problem of improving 911 systems and helping police, fire and ambulance save lives more efficiently depended on what the fiscal budget was relating to such an undertaking. Most emergency departments simply can’t hire and train more staff and they certainly can’t budget out the equipment costs related to improving 911 services to be up to date in a cell-phone user’s society.

So we figured we would GIVE them a call center staffed with trained representatives and build the technology that could bridge the gap to keep our communities safer while making our 911 heroes’ jobs that much easier.

So if you’re reading this and you live in a town, city, county or state that is thinking of cutting its police force, speak up! Take SafeKidZone to your representatives and tell them that you have a way!

Follow us on twitter and facebook or go to our website and  Sign Up! We support most cell phones and that also includes Blackberry and Android!

Here’s a video of concerned community members speaking out in Jacksonville.

I was reading this article on what seemed at the outset to be a pretty positive thing for the 911 system. As the title of the article implies that there is some movement on making 911 systems better, I got excited.

However upon closer reading of the article I must be frank in saying that Carbon County’s decision to pay an outside company to assess their wireless 911 service’s ability to track the origin of emergency calls seems a bit expensive at $184,000 considering the answer pretty much depends on the location and amount of cell towers that exist in a particular location. I don’t think residents of Carbon County will be all too pleased about having to pay another dollar that will be levied by their cell carriers to recoup the cost for the project.

If you’re one of our regular readers you will know the story already: Improper 911 call routing usually takes place in remote areas or even in developed areas that don’t have a lot of cell towers to aid in triangulation.

Saying that triangulation is GPS is sort of a misnomer because real GPS uses satellites in orbit to locate you no matter where you are, whereas Cell tower triangulation makes an estimate of your location in relation to the nearest cell towers. If the towers malfunction in that particular area (i.e. what happened in Salt Lake City: click here to read the post) of if there are not enough towers, your 911 call may go to th wrong dispatch which could mean that help arrives late or not at all! Bottom line: satellite GPS is actually more accurate.

SafeKidZone uses real GPS that’s as good as it gets. Because your satellite GPS location and information can be sent as a package to 911, emergency services can find you even if your cell signal is being routed to the wrong call center. This means that the common error of misrouting can be instantly corrected and sent to the right 911 dispatch, potentially saving a life because help can arrive faster as a response center (i.e. police station, fire station, ambulance station) that is nearer to you will be the one that is sent into motion.

Today’s article says that the system of cell phone tower location has made it safer for hikers and hunters with cell phones in the woods, and that’s true, but SafeKidZone GPS would make it even safer and I would caution against relying on cell tower geolocation in an emergency, especially in remote areas.

The other issue that plagues 911 emergency response is broad and I will discuss that with you tomorrow. What I can tell is that cell phones now account for the vast majority of 911 calls made by sheer virtue of the fact that just about everyone has one and that most emergencies happen outside of one’s house.

Here are two articles that I strongly recommend you read before I comment on them tomorrow.

The first one is about the importance of having a cell phone as a safety device and can be read here.

The other one is about the common problems current 911 dispatch deal with because many dispatch centers are not set up properly to handle 911 cell calls. Read it here and check back tomorrow because I will show you how SafeKidZone can bring 911 up to speed today.