VirginiaTech Massacre: The Mobile Alerting System
Besides the mobile video taken by the Palestinian student that has been played throughout the day on TV and elsewhere (taken on Nokia N70), there’s another more important question about the campus-wide alerting system in light of such tragedies. There was an incident late summer last year at Vtech, a campus manhunt for an accused double murderer, where the school relied on e-mail, the Web and messages sent to dorm phones in an attempt to alert the students.
This story from last year right after that incident says that University officials were considering following the lead of Penn State University and other schools, which use E2campus’ campus-wide alerting system. Nearly two dozen schools have signed up in the last six months.
A competing service, NYC-based Rave Wireless, even has a blog on campus mobility. We have written about them here in the past. Its system differs in that, along with allowing text alerts, it enables college police departments to monitor the locations of students, both on and off campus.
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Comments (5)
Apr 17, 2007 8:17 AM
There’s another text messaging alerting company for colleges, cleartxt, has offered a version of their system for free for a couple of years. Their website said they created the free version after hurricane Katrina specifically for sending emergency alerts. Their website is http://www.cleartxt.com.
Apr 17, 2007 10:14 AM
Can we not use tragedy to peddle product. PR guys should know better. It’s absolutely absurd, ridiculous and unprofessional. Mark should be ashamed and cleartxt should fire their firm.
I remember one PR lady who used 9-11 to pitch Hot Pockets…. she doesnt work in PR anymore…
I hope E2campus‘ and Rave Wireless didn’t pitch Rafat on this and I hope journalists around the country would black list people who use national tragedy as a way to peddle products. Of course these companies need to use such examples to help people understand what they do, but not on day 2…
Apr 17, 2007 11:37 AM
Matt
The post was done to highlight precisely how maybe such tragedies maybe could have been averted through the use of mobile technology. And no, no one pitched me on this.
Apr 19, 2007 4:59 PM
Hola :
Soy tatiana de Chile les queria dar mis condolencias a nombre de mi pais por tan duro gorpe que tubieron que vivir desgraciadamente todos aquellos estudiantes,profesores,reptores,etc.En general EE.UU.
Mucha fuersa para todos hojala que como pais salgan adelante por tan dura prueba que una ves mas han tenido que vivir como pais.
las mas sinceras condolencias atodos de una chilena que a la distancia los apolla y sufre como una mas de ustedes.
ATTE A UD.
TATIANA PEREZ (SANTIAGO DE CHILE)
Apr 20, 2007 10:52 AM
Rafat,
Thank you for responding to my post. I am glad to hear it. I do believe we need to highlight ways that we can avoid such tragedies. Thank you for doing so and thank you for easing my fear of PR’s pitching tragedy.
Matt