More Curious Than Worried

Week in Review: March 24, 2009

It’s nice to finally get through a relatively normal week at the new house. And it’s REALLY nice to get this posted on time for the first time in 3 weeks.

Things I Think I Liked

• Had my birthday/St. Patrick’s Day party at our house. Lotsa fun and lotsa beer.
• Meeting some cool people on Twitter.
• I really want to see this: Badass cop car of the near-future.
• Ordered my new motherboard and processor for my desktop so I can geek out with friends better. Thanks Dan!
• My new neighbor, Mike, is a cool guy.
• Chevy started production of the new Camaro.
• Found Splinter Cell for the XBox. Now I can turn my XBox into XBMC …as soon as I find the cables for it.
• Flowers are starting to spring up in our backyard.

Things I Think I Didn’t Like

• WiFi should be a free service! You hear me Starbucks!!
• Ashlynn’s leg went all tingly Saturday morning, but was better by Monday so we couldn’t get the doc to look at it. So frustrating!
• Is there anyone who likes the new Facebook home page? I don’t.
• I had to struggle through 3 REALLY slow nights at work. Good for citizens, but boring as all hell for me.
• Spent at least 3 days updating my newly installed Windows XP. Installing Ubuntu has spoiled me.
• Dealing with dozens of towed vehicles at work due to greedy tow companies!
• Hearing about police officers getting killed hits home a lot more when I work with cops all the time.

Things I Think I Think

• As I get older I care more about having friends and family around for my birthday than gifts.
• I’m gonna have to do a stand-alone post about Twitter.
• People involved in social media really seem to enjoy talking about people involved in social media.

This Week Made Me Wonder…

• How many devices can I connect my phone to at once via Bluetooth? Right now I’m listening to a podcast on my phone with my Bluetooth headset and loading a podcast on my phone from my laptop via Bluetooth.
• Would Englewood let us set up a Twitter account for the police?
• It’s getting easier and easier to find stuff to post on this weekly blog. Are these posts getting to long?

Things to look forward to

• Hanging out with my half of the wedding party tomorrow night and getting measured for tuxes.
• Finding a furry, fluffy, feline friend for family fun. (This bullet was brought to you by the letter ‘F’)
• Installing my new motherboard and processor!

Emergency Alerts in On-Demand World

I’ve been thinking about the digital TV transition and why it’s a big deal. It’s just TV, right? It’s just entertainment! Why does the government care if the public can’t get their American Idol fix? The truth is, it doesn’t care about that. They’re concerned that the public won’t get their emergency alerts without their TVs.

The government, and especially us involved in public safety, have become dependent on people always having a TV or radio around. With so much on-demand content out there now, we can’t count on that anymore. More and more people are watching TV episodes online and listening to their iPods while driving. They’re not connected to radios or TVs constantly anymore. So how do we alert the public now?

Until it’s possible for public safety agencies to send messages (text messages, email alerts, etc) to people based on their location, it’s up to the public to seek out ways to get their information. Some ways to get this info:

• Twitter – Search for your local law enforcement/fire agencies on Twitter and you might be lucky enough to live in the boundaries of one of these progressive agencies.
• Check your agency’s website. Even some of the smallest agencies have their own websites and most have many ways to stay connected (email, RSS, text messaging, online reporting, etc.). I just found out my sheriff’s office is on Facebook! (Looks like they haven’t done much with it though.)
• Check your local news websites. They will probably have breaking news email alerts/text messaging/rss feeds.
• amberalert.gov - You can view current Amber Alerts and even sign up for mobile alerts on your cell phone.
• weather.gov - The National Weather Service is using RSS feeds as a supplement to their normal emergency alert notifications. You can find them here.

 I wonder if people will ever be comfortable with the government providing real-time location-based communications. Would that be too much Big Brother looking over your shoulder? Maybe public safety agencies could use services that are already out there like Google Latitude or Brightkite.