Hyper-local Smartphone App Unveiled [VIDEO]

A new smartphone app created to alert citizens about public safety and emergency situations was promoted at the on March 19 as the latest in cutting edge technology, developed right here in New Hampshire.

The application, Citizens Alert, was built by Ping4 Inc., a virtual company that’s been around for about two years and is being run by former Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jim Bender.

The company, which will soon open a facility in Nashua, created the app for a number of different uses, from notifying shoppers in a mall parking lot that they should lock their cars to alerting Americans in a nation overseas that they need to evacuate immediately.

Mike Wells, a senior vice president with Ping4, said the company is focusing on the “third screen option” as people move from television and personal computers to smartphones and tablets. The app is using a “hyper-local nature, in a sense, identifying a certain situation, narrowing it down, and reaching out to the local community to solve that crime or that incident, in real time,” he said.

Right now, the company is pitching the product to police forces, with the Manchester Police Department signing on as its first one in New Hampshire.

The system works relatively simply: A public service agency enters the information into the alert system, adds the alert type – from low to severe, adds a picture or graphic, sets the time, expiration and an address. The agency then draws a geo-fence alert notification on a computer map and sends out the alert. The alert can be text or audio and only those with the app inside the geo-fence will be alerted.

On the user end, residents can download the free app and then make sure the phone’s geo-locator is activated. If there is an emergency situation where the resident is living or visiting, the phone will be activated by the alert system.

“It does not inform the police station or even the world of who that user is,” Wells said. “It actually resides in that phone. We know where the phone is, that’s it.”

Bender noted that he was working on the product during his Senate campaign and pitched the Manchester Police Department’s head of investigations about working with the company to conceptualize and refine the product.

“We look at this as another tool,” said Chief Dave Mara. “We’re excited because it’s not often that we’re on the cutting edge technology. Usually law enforcement catches up afterwards.”

Mara added that what was great about the product is that anyone with the download who is inside the geo-fence can be alerted whether they are residents or visitors. A lot of times, he said, witnesses from outside of a community see a crime while they are driving or visiting. Mara said the department has already used the system and it has been very helpful.

Nick Willard, the investigative division commander of Manchester Police Department, said the great thing about Citizens Alerts is getting the alerts down to even smaller locations, such as a Fisher Cats or Monarchs game. If a child is lost in the stadium, for example, there could be three officers looking for the child, he said. But with the Citizens Alerts, anyone with the app in the stadium can be looking for the missing child.

“We’ll have 6,000 people, helping to find Johnny, in short order,” he said.

While the app is a free download, there is a cost to departments and agencies that want the service. The cost can range from $5,000 to $25,000 annually, depending on the size of the community, although Manchester is getting the service for free.

Bender said it empowers the local police not to wait for an Amber alert but instead, to tell a very mobile citizenry about things going on around them. He noted that there are dozens of other applications for the product. The product also has commercial applications is being pitched to the state lottery, the state wine and liquor outlets, and other commercial entities, he said.