The iPhone AMBER Alert System is now pending approval and not only provides up-to-the-minute detailed information on all AMBER Alerts, but revolutionizes the way that sightings are processed.
Developer Jonathan Zdziarski explains, “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.”
AMBER Alert is the official iPhone AMBER Alert notification tool for AMBERalert.com. AMBER Alerts are issued whenever a missing child case is granted AMBER status and has been used to aide in the recovery of missing children. The iPhone application provides a real-time feed of recent alerts including victim photos and information, suspect photos and descriptions, vehicle photos and descriptions, and a reporting mechanism allowing you to report a sighting.
The iPhone’s GPS is used to include your current GPS position with your sighting report, allowing AMBERalert.com to create a geographical search radius based on the number and pattern of reports in a specific location. This provides for smarter policing and can help filter false positives. The information is forwarded to the appropriate state patrol barracks where it can be responded to in a much faster fashion than traditional phone call screening.
AMBER Alert is also available to iPhone application developers who would like to make their application AMBER Aware, and can run as a background task to periodically check for new alerts. This allows your application to provide the functionality it does now, but also have the added benefit of notifying your users of critical missing child alerts. You can help save lives with your iPhone application simply by making it AMBER Aware. A number of different techniques can be used ranging from flashing an icon (example) on the navigation bar to popping up a dialogue.
More info and additional screenshots here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple should bake this app into every iPhone ASAP.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dirty Pierre le Punk” for the heads up.]
